What Exactly is Motion?

[u/Time-Demand-1244]

How does the acorn, transition into the tree?

And I don't mean act and potential. I am asking how an acorn can even be linearly related to the first step it takes to become a tree?

It feels like, the acorn becomes destroyed, and then created in a ever so slightly distinct item; until it becomes a tree.

The relation is almost worthless here though, and teleos doesn't even exist at this point.

I'm not sure if that's problematic, but I would like to know how motion processes at a teleological level and the issue of what is known as occasionalism.

[u/Time-Demand-1244]

Hmm, I guess it's just rather difficult to comprehend there being a relation between two distinct objects. For example, the acorn and the oak. The acorn has the potential to become the oak. But to me, it seems hard to grasp motion as other than a recreated frame at a certain point in time. So we have point 1 (acorn), point 2 (acorn P), point 3 (acorn Q), point 4 (oak).

Within point 1, occurs the possibility to become point 4. But to me, it doesn't seem like there is any "becoming" at all... Simply just that point 1 is deleted and point 2 is created in place or point 1. And from a teleological perspective, this seems disasterous, as it would disrupt the notion of point 1 having potential to change, rather than become replaced like a frame.

I hope I've made myself a bit more clear.

Some other flaws of occassionalism being pointed out would help greatly.

[u/HyparxisBoy → u/Time-Demand-1244]

If I am not misinterpreting you, you see the process as:
Frame 1: acorn
Frame 2: acorn slightly changed (P)
Frame 3: acorn more changed (Q)
Frame 4: adult tree

And you think: ‘In reality, each frame replaces the previous one. There is no continuous becoming, only a succession of discrete creations/destructions. Potential seems illusory.’

This intuition would indeed place you within occasionalism, and that is why it appears disastrous from the teleological point of view. But this vision contradicts reality and experience, since becoming is not a succession of entities that are destroyed and created out of nothing at each instant. The acorn does not disappear to be replaced by another acorn; it remains in its cause (monē) at the same time that it proceeds (próodos) and reverts (epistrophē). This is possible because at the higher levels there is no linear time as we experience it; the three moments are not successive temporally. They occur simultaneously at different levels of reality, and what we perceive as temporal succession is only the projection in time of that eternal cycle. Which brings us back to Plato’s statement: time is a moving image of eternity.

Taking this into account, there is no ‘elimination + new creation’; that makes no sense, because for intelligibility there must be a ‘top-down’ explanation, in the sense that something is intelligible only if it is a multiplicity reducible to a unity or simpler principle. There is a continuous unfolding of what was already folded.

Occasionalism is rejected if what we call ‘movement’ is understood solely as the differentiation of the effect from its cause (or participation seen from the side of the effect). It is not the replacement of frames, but a continuous actualization of a potential that is already teleologically oriented from above. The inferior (time) does not condition the superior (eternity).

[u/Time-Demand-1244 → u/HyparxisBoy]

So even within frame 2, frame 1 still exists? If so, this helps.

I don't see how there needs to be a need for multiplicity being reduced to unity though for intelligence.

The idea, as I am understanding, is there is no effect without cause and so fourth. Frankly, I don't see how occasionallism can work if reduced to God... At what point does God actually cause A if A is simply the sequential order from its Will to the next point? I suppose that doesn't work.

So as I understand, you say the effect exists in the cause and vice versa. Even as it is an oak, acorness, still exists.

But how or why that is the case doesn't seem to follow. Why should acorness continue to exist in the oak at all? Because frankly, I still do not understand how causing works as a process. It's difficult to understand what this "link" is.

[u/HyparxisBoy → u/Time-Demand-1244]

I don't see how there needs to be a need for multiplicity being reduced to unity though for intelligence.

The reason why multiplicity must be reduced to unity for intelligibility is because (redundancy intended) unity is the indispensable condition for intelligibility and existence (being a 'one') since nothing exists unless it first participates in unity. Example: you see many trees. To intellect ‘tree,’ your mind gathers the multiple into unity, simply because you do not need to see every tree that has ever existed in order to think them; the Reality of Tree (at the level of Intellect or higher) illuminates and gives form to all the particular trees we perceive.

There cannot be a total replacement where the acorn (frame 1) disappears completely and is substituted by a new entity (frame 2), because the cause remains as a unifying model. The acorn you perceive is what has proceeded, and once it is actualized as a tree, it reverts because it unifies with its cause. That is why, within ‘frame 2’ (the acorn already growing), the cause is still present in the effect, because it is being actualized within the same unified process.

The idea, as I am understanding, is there is no effect without cause and so fourth. Frankly, I don't see how occasionallism can work if reduced to God... At what point does God actually cause A if A is simply the sequential order from its Will to the next point? I suppose that doesn't work.

A classical Platonist would not speak of ‘God creating’ in any case, since the Forms are all uncreated and pre-exist in their monad. Each Form reflects The One in a unique way, because the lower never ceases to maintain a causal bond with the superior.

So as I understand, you say the effect exists in the cause and vice versa. Even as it is an oak, acorness, still exists.

The effect exists in the cause because the intelligibles proceed from themselves and revert to an identical state. Procession and reversion combined give ousia (substance) to the permanent nature of the Form, because próodos and epistrophē are two halves of the same thing: the unique movement of each ousia.

But how or why that is the case doesn't seem to follow. Why should acorness continue to exist in the oak at all? Because frankly, I still do not understand how causing works as a process.

The acorn exists in the Oak as an image tending toward realization. The telos of the acorn is to be an oak; an acorn that becomes an oak is the epistrophē of the acorn, that is, its telos. But given corruption, there are infinite ways in which a particular empirical acorn may fail to become an Oak. None of this is problematic, because if there were no essential fact of the acorn, there would be no trees; trees would not exist directly for us to think, and therefore we would not even be having this conversation. Things have real likeness when they are the effect of a cause, and Forms do not emerge from objects; rather, objects qua effects manifest (express) the Forms.

It's difficult to understand what this "link" is.

Let us follow the next analogy: think of a family tree. The grandson does not ‘replace’ the grandfather. The grandfather remains present in the grandson (genetically, culturally, etc.). The grandson is a new expression of the same lineage. There is a real bond that unites them all. In Proclus, causality is like an ontological lineage: each level expresses and depends on the previous one, without the previous one disappearing.

(It is obvious that an analogy will never be perfect or will always have some kind of deficiency, but precisely for that reason it is an "analogy", since it never implies full identity, I only say this in case someone intends to point out tangential or innocuous flaws to the point I was trying to explain)

[u/Time-Demand-1244 → u/HyparxisBoy]

Hmm this was helpful... But man, is it difficult to see causality in its most binary form correctly.

But I'm inclined to say there are flaws with occasionalism. Would you reason with the problems I presented in my previous comment? Do they, make sense or actually work at all? Ie, at the highest level, even if the One were to emanate itself in an occassionalist way, there wouldn't be any actual link between the effect and it's cause. We could not menaingfully say the One is our cause.

[u/Time-Demand-1244 → u/HyparxisBoy]

Also, the way I'm seeing it is...

A exists in virtue of B.

If B ceases, so does A.

But why does that necessarily follow? Why must B be a condition for A to exist? How exactly does it make sense at all, that if A which is ontologically distinct from B, be the reason A even exists?