If the critic, like the early Russell, denies that there is any causality at all, he owes us an account of how he can coherently take such a position, and in particular how he can account for our knowledge of the world physics tells us about if we have no causal contact with it.

The claim isn't that nothing ever causes anything. Rather, the claim is that the principle "everything has a cause" is false. There are still plenty of causal events within quantum mechanics. Radioactive decay is not one of them.

The burden of proof is rather on the critic of Scholastic metaphysics to develop an alternative metaphysical framework on which the rejection of the principle of causality is defensible

The metaphysical stance is that not every effect has a cause. The evidence in favor of this stance is radioactive decay. That meets the burden of proof, unless you believe somehow that radioactive decay doesn't happen or that it somehow has a cause. Anything else is just word games.

anyway thx for engaging.

I wish you would reciprocate, but you're welcome.

If you take the scientific method as a given and stay within its boundaries, I don't think a scientist has to think about metaphysics at all.

However, if you begin to make all kinds of unwarranted claims about things outside the purview of the scientific method, then philosophy can show you the error of your ways.

For a full treatment of this, see this book: http://www.amazon.com/Oracles-Science-Celebrity-Scientists-Religion/dp/0195310721

I misphrased there, sorry. I meant that if it is of vital importance to the eternal trajectory of my soul, it would seem to make some real difference to my life now whether I treated it as being true or not.

How do you see a scientist's views on Aristotle's metaphysics affecting his or her science? Do you think it would? Maybe not in terms of quality (although I suspect it should, if it were actually important). Maybe in terms of topic or approach.

Well, this requires metaphysics and I think it's pretty darn important if it is valid.

http://thinkingbetween.blogspot.com/2014/06/introductory-remarks-to-argument-for.html

I don't know what you mean by the following:

"And if it is something important, maybe of vital importance to my life, to my very soul, what difference does it make to the world whether its true or not?"

You think something could be vital to your soul that is not true?

I think a previous response I gave on this same thread (not to you; I don't remember who to) addresses this. Some things I can see the intrinsic worth: love, ethics, having a scientific method. I don't see the intrinsic worth to Aristotle's metaphysics. It doesn't seem to make any difference to anything I care about whether it's true or not.

This is not an argument, but a concern, about this kind of metaphysics. It may be as Flynn said, a sort of arcane mathematics that is very important to those who wish to study it. Why, then, does Strange Notions spend so much time talking about it? And if it is something important, maybe of vital importance to my life, to my very soul, what difference does it make to the world whether its true or not? It seems as though something that would affect my eternal trajectory would also have some impact on the way I would do my work.

Paul, I think the bigger issue is that the scientific method depends on something outside itself, something it is intellectually subordinate to.

Even though philosophy has important things to say about the physical world (like what it means to say something changes or has a cause), I think a person who only cares about the physical world would be pretty limited intellectually, wouldn't he?

"Ethics? Values? Oh, I'm not interested in those because they cannot be scientifically tested."

The logic is very very simple and easy to see...anyway thx for engaging.

Much of the order of the universe is discovered. Admittedly, it would have to have been assumed in order to get people to do such hard work to find the order (of a very different sort than the Scholastics imagined). In that sense, Christian Metaphysics may have been a sort of training wheels for science. Useful for a time. Now that we've got our balance, the training wheels may not be necessary. Maybe they even start to get in the way, and should at some point be discarded.

you have to care about this one bc this one determins the next!

That is what many people say.

But if there is no next then nothing you or anyone else do here will matter in 3 million years

And therefore nothing matters right now? I can't see the logic in thinking that way.