(“Interior Dialogue” in the shop)
The Fourth Way has a startling simplicity. Things exist that are more or less good, true, and noble; but more and less is said in relation to the most. So there is a supreme good. The only questionable part of the proof is the second premise. Interpretations of the premise must keep in line with the simplicity of the proof.
1.) The notion of measure might be helpful: just as numbers are measured in relation to a least, goods are measured in relation to a greatest. Given numbers, a least necessarily follows; and so given good things, a greatest good necessarily follows.
2.) The goods we see are limited, but limitation is contrary to goodness. But some X existing with its contrary is not what we call X. So the goods we see are not what we most mean to call good, and are therefore named in relation to some maximum.
3.) Is it simpler? It is self evident that if there is something more and less good, there is something most of all good. At the bare minimum, it could be the “better” we just spoke of. The question then becomes “what are we talking about when we mean something is “most of all good?”
Objection; “whatever is most of all good is a matter of experience, if we find it, great, if not, why try to prove it must be there?” Response: if “experience” means sense experience, why would we expect the greatest of all goods to be given that way? It is a common experience that the better something is, the harder time we have describing it, even in sensible terms. We would not expect the highest of all goods to be known in a merely observational manner. We should expect to stammer before it.
Just Thomism 
Thom-thom said,
April 7, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Is the existence of the first good self-evident? Surely not, and yet it seems that this is how some take the Fourth Way.
William H. Stoddard said,
April 9, 2009 at 6:28 am
Doesn’t this whole discussion turn on the ontology of value? That is, if you think that goodness is an attribute that inheres in a thing, like mass or electric charge or acidity, then it may be conceivable that it should be present in an unlimited or infinite amount (though the latter requires that you believe in the actually existing infinite and not just the potential infinite). But if you think that it’s a relation between one thing and another, and that in particular goodness for us exists in a relation of a thing to us as human beings, then the magnitude of goodness is limited by our capacity to experience goodness. And any of various ways of defining that capacity seem to make goodness finite:
We can’t experience an infinite intensity of pleasure or any other feeling;
We can’t pay an infinite price to attain anything, either in money or in time/effort (limited by our lifespans);
We can’t, in our natural lifespans, experience any reward for an infinite duration.
So the good-relative-to-human-beings seems to be finite; we can conceive of theoretical greater goods that aren’t actually attainable.
James Chastek said,
April 9, 2009 at 10:12 am
Goodness is not finite or limited in virtue of being good. A limit is a principle by which one thing is fails to be another, and we cannot love one good because it fails to be another good. To do so would be to love it because it failed to give us something desirable.
Your examples show that if there were an infinite good, we could not attain it in a complete fashion by our own power, or in our present state of life. I agree.
William H. Stoddard said,
April 9, 2009 at 11:04 pm
You say, “we cannot love one good because it fails to be another good.” But I love the woman I live with because she is a specific person, and in being that specific person, she inevitably fails to be any other specific person, or a chimpanzee, or a rock. I love my elder cat because she is the specific cat she is and not another, and because she is a cat and not a dog or a housefly. I love The Lord of the Rings as a specific novel.
Any finite entity is a specific thing, and in being so is not any other specific thing; if we love the thing it is, we also love its not being the things it is not. We love the identity of the thing, and identity is negative as well as positive.
James Chastek said,
April 10, 2009 at 4:27 am
No one says you can’t desire finite goods, and, in fact, as goods they are desirable by definition. All the goods you spoke of are finite, and in many more ways in addition to the ones you mention. The identity you love in another person is finite, but so is her femininity, so too is her humanity, her animality, her life, being, etc. But it does not follow that because we love some limited good that we love the limitation of the goodness, for it is impossible to do such a thing.
William H. Stoddard said,
April 10, 2009 at 1:15 pm
What would it be for the goodness of my cat, or of my favorite novel, or even of the woman I love to be infinite? The entity in question is not going to be infinite. What would an infinitely good version of any of these entities be like? My intuition doesn’t suggest anything.
James Chastek said,
April 10, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I agree. Infinite goodness is understood by way of negation of these things. The “infinity” mentioned is itself a negation.
The “goodness” of an unlimited good, however, is a positive predicate, and deservedly so. A goodness without limit most of all deserves the name “good”, even though it is not what we first name good.