Talk:Primum movens

Protologos
You directly implied Protologos ('Primum causa/movens') is not Logos Metakinethoun ('Motus causa/movens'), but Logos Asugkinetos ('Immotus causa/movens,') a.k.a. Logos Alogos ('Sine causa causa,') a.k.a. Aitia-ola ('Allatus-causa,') which some call ultimate.

Protologos is not Logos Alogos, a.k.a. (in Hellenismos) Chaos. What if one assumes Protologos is unmoved? If Protologos is ultimate, such as asugkinetos ('unmoved,') then it has neither a beginning nor end; is alogos ('causeless.') Primum is also 'in the first ('proto') place,' i.e. unus, and AFAIK a form of 'primo' (or vice-versa,) i.e. 'in the beginning.'  Hence, Protologos is beginningless-endless, unmoved, causeless, and Protologos is proto/ena--has a cause moving it into beginning-end, particularly ena ('one,' Protologos in Peano axioms, but not Logos Alogos.)  That is one to three contradictions. One is bounded, but beyond are unbounded sets. Therefore Protologos is Logos not Alogos. Unbounded sets are used in dynamic/chaotic systems. Therefore Chaos is Logos Alogos ('causeless cause.')

Compare all the Classical Philosophers that led to HPB, and ideas such as Godhead vs. God, and the implications of pralaya on Arianism. Pralaya was defined by pre-Greek philosophers that led to HPB; they call Chaos Parabrahm. They describe this as an omnipresent, eternal, boundless, immutable (sounds like 'immot.') cause of non-eternal causes (that cause everything else)--bounded in time--mutable--not present when only Parabrahm is--Dchmelik (talk) 10:45, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposed move to First Cause (over redirect)

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was merge this article with Unmoved mover. First cause may be created as a separate article. Aervanath (talk) 05:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The following message was left on my Talk Page
 * Could you pretty please rename the article Primum movens to be First Cause. Aristotle was not Latin, did not speak Latin, and in this situation the article needs to refect the concept in English. And a First Cause article will need to be created in order to properly frame the idea if the concept is left in Latin.
 * Thanks
 * LoveMonkey (talk) 14:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Is there any objection to this move?

P.S. While we're at it, is there a reason why there is also an article at Unmoved Mover? I don't know much about philosophy but it seems to me that Unmoved Mover and First Cause are part of the same topic.

--Richard (talk) 15:59, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge the two, but I would call the result First Mover; First Cause is a different but related idea. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm a little confused. I think you're saying we should merge Primum movens and Unmoved Mover and leave First Cause to stand by itself.  Did I get it right?  --Richard (talk) 02:49, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I throw this out as a possible minor improvement on the proposed name. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with the proposed renaming. Aristotle did not use (of course in Greek) the equivalent of either "primum movens" or "first cause" (which are not identical in meaning as words, though we can treat them as the same as a reality).  The phrase he used means exactly "unmoved mover". I think the Unmoved Mover article could be used as the introductory part in place of the present short paragraph on Aristotle
 * I don't think that "First Mover" is as familiar a term as "First Cause". They may not be precisely the same idea, but likewise "primum movens" seems to me to be not exactly the same idea as Aristotle's "unmoved mover", but rather a later elaboration of it.  Platia (talk) 15:46, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Prime mover (as a compromise) or unmoved mover are both or either good, anything that makes the article here Greek to English. Having a Greek philosopher's concept in Latin on an English encyclopedia is stretching it. First cause does work well as modal to Aristotle's causality logic like Argument from contingency.LoveMonkey (talk) 02:40, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Prime mover would be good too. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Second thoughts
On second thoughts - sorry for being tardy in my thoughts - the article title and its introductory paragraph (lead) are not followed up with discussion of the First Mover idea. The rest of the article is on Aristotle's really quite different Unmoved Mover idea, and should, I think, be merged with unmoved mover. The title and introductory part, which is in line rather with Aquinas's thought, not Aristotle's, should perhaps be made a redirect to cosmological argument. Platia (talk) 05:48, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

sentence fragments???
i don't have time to go through the whole article right now, and i may actually never get around to it, so i should mention here that this article is fraught with several pretty well-butchered sentences. so, if i don't get around to it, let's try to clean that up, shall we? 8-| —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.57.102 (talk) 18:51, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

merge to Unmoved mover
I see that a few times in the past people have asked why this article is not merged with Unmoved mover, but the discussions have never gone very far, presumably because this article is short and not often seen. Personally I think that this article can be safely changed to a redirect. Two questions to anyone who watches this page: 1. Is there anything which comes under discussion of "primum movens" which would not also come into discussion of the "unmoved mover"? If not, let's get this done. 2. Concerning that merge, is there anything in this article which is better or more complete than what is currently in the unmoved mover article, that we should try to recover?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:28, 8 September 2011 (UTC)


 * My explanation below is why I think this is a bad idea.--Dchmelik (talk) 14:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

confusing first cause with causeless cause
As my (and apparently the) first argument on the page described, though rather unclearly, verbosely, and with at least one error, it is easy, especially in the West, to confuse first (but moved) cause (primum movens) with causeless cause (unmoved mover.)

As philosophers explain, and as in systems like most of Hinduism, and Kabbalah based on Semitic mythology like Genesis, and Jakob Boehme's texts, ideas/terminology of which are now common, these causes are different. The idea of causeless cause is that it always existed, exists, will exist. The first cause, as 'first,' denotes a point in time at which this cause came into motion--was moved--so its motion will eventually stop (but maybe reoccur.) This implies an earlier, non-numbered, unmoved/causeless cause that 'first' was moved/caused from.

In Hinduism, causeless cause is formless Para Brahman, and first cause (first Logos) is the first god, such as Brahma in post-Vedic Hinduism, and the first stage (like thought) in the sound Om. Kabbalah has the idea of causeless (void--not tikkun) and first (divine, tikkun--logos) causes, which in Jakob Boehme's mysticism are Godhead (not logos) and God (logos.) In Eastern and Western systems, first cause is 'protologos' and there are usually two subsequent divine logoi (in systems of triple manifestation.) Causeless cause--unmoved mover--is described as 'beyond divine:' the 'void' or Godhead is certainly not a god/logos, but is called the source of 'God,' and Parabrahm denotes 'beyond' (para) 'god' (brahma) (sometimes, perhaps incorrectly, called the supreme god.)

Earlier versions of this article discussing protologoi had advantages; this article should clarify the difference between unmoved/causeless and first causes. Of course, without the systems I mentioned, someone might argue first cause is causeless and 'the universe' only ever was caused at one time in the past. All such arguments have critical flaws.

Causeless cause with logoi is not the only causality theory: an alternate is dependent arising.

I want to suggest merging causeless cause into unmoved mover, but it might be original research associating 'causeless' with 'unmoved.' However, likely the language is similar enough that this is not true, and I think there is no plausible philosophy going against this.--Dchmelik (talk) 14:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Edward Feser, a professional philosopher and author of books on Aristotle and St. Thomas, would say that the article as written promotes an almost entirely false caricature of the primum movens, based on a modern misconstruction of the meaning of "movens," or its usual English translation "cause." Aristotle did not rely on precedence in time. It is simply untrue that he argued anything that remotely resembles the assertion that something, a first cause, must have preceded all other causes in time.

Did he argue that a first cause must have preceded others logically? Yes, I think so, but the argument so posed still misses the point of Aristotle's thought. Aristotle was more subtle than that.

Regrettably, what Aristotle did argue is beyond my competence to write an article about. I hesitate to touch the text as written for fear of making it worse. Tbtkorg (talk) 14:29, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're entirely correct and the Unmoved mover article attempts to reflect what you're saying here. Blavatsky's syncretic Secret Doctrine and “causeless cause”, while charming, are in no way relevant in the context of an Aristotle article. Given the typically appalling misconceptions in this article, I see no reason not to proceed with a “merge”, apart from the lack of anything worth “merging”.—Machine Elf 1735  19:03, 15 January 2012 (UTC)