Aristotle's Revenge

My problem with modern Aristotelianism and neo-Thomism is that they explain everything, and they don't explain anything at all. By this I mean that these philosophies are shallow and superficial, they are designed to explain things away in a fiercely dogmatic and outrageously dull manner; these are theories of everything that explain nothing. If you write polemics, it would be better to ensure that you are trying to convey something deep and original, rather than explain things away in a manner similar to "that's that".

It's impossible for me to give a detailed critique of Feser's positions here since they are actually too funny that I don't even know what I should say, but I can expect that physicists, mathematicians and biologists would be profoundly bored by Feser's arguments: what's he trying to do here? I mean, you have the point, your explanations make sense, but so what? By this I mean, Feser does not understand why some scientists are trying to develop a brand new metaphysics at all (I suspect that he doesn't even know that this is the case; it seems that for him all scientists are subscribers to scientism). No one really wants an Aristotelian interpretation of quantum mechanics since the so-called interpretation is devoid of mathematical consequences and any connection to other disciplines and any explanatory power that leads to deeper and novel discoveries and speculations like those made by Connes, Landsman, etc. For instance, the Aristotelian solution to Zeno's paradox - if it can be classified as a solution at all - doesn't lead to anything similar to constructive analysis or intuitionistic continuum. Aristotelian continuum is basically a bunch of garbage that explains everything - let's pretent that it really provides a solution to Zeno's paradox - but does nothing, similar to some "hylomorphic" account of life. Yes, an animal is a composite of matter and form, the form is such and such, e.g. the form dictates that it eats, shits, etc. and so what? I sense with my sensory perception, namely, with the perceptive power of sight, that a girl is pretty, and I ask modern Aristotelians why she's so pretty, then philosophers like Feser - totally devoid of depth but good at manufacturing working systems that explain everything - might, might, answer that because in the essence or the form or whatever of the girl there's prettiness, and pedantically try to correct me in that it is not the sensory perception that renders the girl pretty and so on. Of course scientists' possible answer to the same problem should be equally hilarious, but you get the point.

At least for me, terms and phrases in philosophy are usually convenient constructs, tools to unravel deeper mysteries and structure the world and a standing ground. If the phrases and definitions one uses lead to barren lands, then it is the phrases and the definitions that should be altered, rather than the intuitions of working scientists and mathematicians. Of course rational inquiry corrects and refines the intuitions with philosophical concepts, but when the intuitions are outside of the expressive power of a philosophical vocabulary, then there's no reason that natural science and mathematics should reshape themselves in order to fit into the narrow coffin of old metaphysics. Metaphysics in its older form pertains more to theology, and should concern itself with something deeper and try to discern something meaningful in the abstract world, rather than giving obvious explanations and pretending that it is useful - in its very form that is legitimate to be called ancient - to science or even omnipotent in some sense.

We need philosophers that do not accept easy and superficial solutions and instead ask deep questions and try to unravel deeper mysteries, like Dummett and Wittgenstein and Frege, or philosophers who provide brand new points of view, like Whitehead and Schelling. But Feser, while a great scholastic philosopher, doesn't even have a sense of what is deep and what the present age needs.

It's a despair that Catholics are buying into this old, barren, boring neo-scholasticism and willingly keep themselves ignorant and dumb.