Oscar Martinez II’s Reviews > Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction > Status Update

Read about: the relationship different kinds of things have to their end. Efficient causes always actualize some potency. Principle of causality = actual comes before actualized potential. Potential cannot actualize itself. What a contingent thing is. Every composite has a cause and contains both actual and potential. Scholastics do not believe everything has a cause, that's an atheist strawman of first c. arguments

Read about causation. Efficient cause = agent cause. Final cause = Teleological cause. Intrinsic vs extrinsic finality (ex. acorn vs watch parts). Platonic vs Aristotelian teleology. Thomistic teleology rests between the two and utilizes both in a way. Immanent vs transient causation. All 4 of Aristotle's causes presuppose final causality. What chance is and why it not only cannot replace finality but presupposes it.

Read about different theories about what the laws of nature are, disconnected from God. Purely logical vs virtual distinctions. Major/absolute vs minor/modal distinctions. How to know if something is a logical or real distinction. The problem with formal distinctions. Arguments for a real distinction between act and potency.

Read about how Ockham's views on powers in analytic philosophy, later developed by Descartes and other early moderns ultimately culminated in the views of David Hume who constructed the system most people assume is the default as opposed to the scholastic view. Feser spends the rest of the section refuting the Humean view by pointing out various issues with it that do not plague the Scholastic view.

Read about how the distinction between act and potency debunks the paradoxes of the pre-socratics like Zeno. Being in potency is the middle ground between being in act and non-being. In other words, it's real just not in the same way as being in act. There are many different sub-distinctions within act and potency. God is pure act while pure potency without any act is non-being. Substantial vs accidental form.

Currently on the section which points out 4 problems with Scientism: 1) It’s either self refuting or trivial 2) the scientific method in principle cannot give us a complete description of reality 3) it cannot in principle give us a complete explanation of reality and 4) its main argument of having predictive and technological successes has no force.