(Still feeling out possible answers.)
Thesis: Metaphysics is methodologically supernaturalist. This can be seen by comparing it to the inquiry into heat, which is methodologically naturalist.
A discourse into heat presupposes that there is something that heat is per se and convertibility. St. Thomas thought this was fire (and so he thought everything that was hot had the element of fire mixed in: blood, warm stones, hot tea, etc.) Fire was not just hot of itself, it was what heat was. The theory was wrong- the consensus seems to be now that heat energy is the quivering of a sufficient number of molecules. All that we’re interested in here is that “the quivering of a sufficient number of molecules” plays exactly the same role in an explanation of heat that fire once played, and the search for such a thing is exactly what the inquiry into heat is looking for. Aristotle called this what was hot kath’ auto and kathalou, and the Scholastic tradition calls this same thing per se and primo.
Though we can’t know before the inquiry whether the per se and primo of heat is fire or quivering, we can see some outlines of the answer in advance: for example, the per se and primo of heat must be something physical and contingent. And so there is a methodological naturalism with respect to heat and other things like it.
But the case is different in the inquiry into existence. The per se and primo of existence is that which exists by its very nature or essence, and in this sense it is utterly divided from a methodologically naturalist sort of discourse. The inquiry into existence is, in fact, methodologically supernaturalist, because we can discern in the very outlines of possible answers that we are looking for an essence whose nature is to exist.
E.R. Bourne said,
January 8, 2013 at 8:06 pm
This is a question worth asking, and part of the reason it is so crucial is because it demands a real metaphysics, i.e. an account of being as such. Proponents of materialism or physicalism, which ever name you prefer, mostly only characterize their positions as negations and therefore do not engage with the concept of being sufficiently enough to see it as a real feature of the world. This sounds counter-intuitive but it is true. People just do not talk or think about existence in a way similar to heat. There is a sense in which this should not even be controversial. If metaphysics is the science of being then it is perfectly reasonable to expect metaphysicians to ask these types of questions.
Brandon Watson said,
January 8, 2013 at 8:21 pm
A question that comes to mind is how this relates to the old point that if there were no immaterial substances, physics would be first philosophy.
Elliot Milco said,
January 9, 2013 at 12:05 am
I’m no metaphysician, but I find this post delightfully clever, because it almost compels me to say yes to the ontological argument, which I would not otherwise do. But I don’t want to say yes, so I’ll look for a loophole. Does the analogy between heat and existence carry in this way? The per se and primo of heat is that by which everything is hot. Every warm object shares in that form. But does every existent share in the form of the per se and primo of being? There’s something essentialist about the comparison, isn’t there? Existence is a form, but it’s an individuating and unifying form. Forms like heat and squishiness and weight are common and universal, but existence is always singular and particular. I have a sense that I’m thinking (indistinctly) along the same lines as Mr. Bourne above: there is a reason metaphysics is a different science from physics, and that reason is sufficient to kill the analogy (which is still delightful!) in the post above.
Elliot Milco said,
January 9, 2013 at 12:20 am
Or not to kill it, but to kill any easy anselmian extension of it.
James Chastek said,
January 9, 2013 at 9:12 am
There’s something essentialist about the comparison, isn’t there? Existence is a form, but it’s an individuating and unifying form.
I don’t think that considering the mode of predication of existence is essentialist. Cajetan says flat out in his commentary of ST 1.3.4. that the proof just shows that God exists in the first mode of per se and the manualist tradition picked up on this (many say in the opening paragraphs of their metaphysics texts that God alone exists in the first mode). This might have contributed to Gilson suspecting that there was a fundamental flaw in the idea of predicating existence, but he backed away from the claim under questioning. I don’t think we need to posit some late Medieval Suarezian essentia-esse if we speak about the modes of predicating existence.
FWIW, If “existence” is the hang-up I can run through the same argument with any term involving a transcendental perfection. The argument here is not proper to existence: to ask what is “primo and per se” for goodness, truth, dignity, and other such things also requires methodological supernaturalism. This is why the Fourth Way works.
Elliot Milco said,
January 9, 2013 at 12:23 pm
I think I see it. Thank you.
Jhf(@mojo884) said,
January 9, 2013 at 12:59 pm
Following up on what Brandon asked, does it matter to the argument in the post whether or not the Divine itself is the* subject matter* of Metaphysics or whether metaphysics treats the Divine not as its subject matter but only insofar as the Divine is *the principle* of all being?
It is the latter position that I take to be Thomas’ position in the Division and Method of the Sciences. There he makes the claim that Metaphysics (philosophical theology) treats as its subject the being that is definitionally separate from matter and motion, but treats the being which can in no wise be in matter or motion as its principle. In contrast, the theology of Sacred Scripture does treat being which can in no wise be in matter or motion as its subject.
I don’t know if this affects your argument in the OP. Perhaps I am merely thrown off by your use of the word “supernatural” which seems somewhat ambiguous.
Anyways, thanks for the thought-provoking post!