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Okay, fine, but I would argue that any such being would not be maximally great and would not exist necessarily. Maximal greatness is an all or nothing affair and a being that is unlimited in some respects but not others will be unlimited in arbitrary ways that could have been otherwise and thus such a being cannot be necessary.
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You are just swapping one instrinsic maximum for another, more problematic one. The way in which
a being is unlimited is not arbitrary, what is chosen to be dependent only on that being's prior definition, such as the attributes of "letterbox" and "blue". This is like saying that "a being that exists in
some respects [a key phrase here, it is X in exact respect to its prior essential
beingness, that's why you use the term
a being.] but not others will be existent in arbitrary ways that could have been otherwise and thus such a being could not be necessary." It should now be apparent that here, your working definition for "necessary" was also circular:
- Why is a being necessary?
- If it's aspects could not have been some other way.
- Why could its aspects not have been some other way?
- Because it is necessary.
And finally, (but not least
), your saying "maximal greatness is an all or nothing affair", priorly assumes that you are talking about the greatness of being itself, and not a being. What is the Maximal Greatness and how maximally great can X obtain are two different propositions. And even if you state that maximal greatness must refer to being itself, however that can be achieved ontologically (hint: it can't, but that's not the purpose of this current debate), your admission of the coherent concept of maximal greatness also admits that there is an ontological scale of "great," in which existence of a concept can be solely derived from how much "great" such a concept obtains, thus by definition a concept can be self-defined as great, and thus necessary existence can be derived from such.
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Why not? To say that God is necessary and that God is defined by a certain set of properties, G, is to say that G is instantiated in all possible worlds. This is not to say there could not be other sorts of relational properties that God holds, in addition to G, in some possible worlds but not in others.
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Gx1 is the definition of God obtained when God is causing some event X, whereas Gx2 is the definition of God obtained when he is
not causing some event. This event is contingent, so Gx1 must be true in some possible worlds whereas Gx2 is true in the rest. God must either be one or the other, and if he is, then he only exists in some possible worlds, and not all, and is thus not necessary.
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Okay, whatever floats your boat, but, as far as I can tell, all your parodies of the OA making positive existential claims amount to nothing more than the atheistic version I gave plus a few additional (and dubious) premises.
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Yes, they are pretty much the same, logically. I just prefer, aesthetically and semantically, one over the other. However, what extranneous premises do you find dubious? That truth of a proposition is implied by knowledge of a proposition? I would have thought this to be necessarily true.
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Yes, that’s correct, provided that the premises exchanged are still true premises. The fact that one can plug in different premises and reach a different conclusion shows nothing.
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The atheistic premises
must remain true, if the theist assumes the argument valid, because the rationale behind them is the exact same as the rationale behind the theistic ones. So either you reject the rationale for the premises in the theistic OA, leaving you with an unsound argument, or you reject the logical structure of the OA as it leads to contradictions, leaving you with an unsound argument.
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I could be convinced that this particular version of the OA is unsound if I were shown that there were substantial logical or philosophical difficulties in accepting its definitions or its base premise (of course, that wouldn’t mean I would stop believing in God as a necessary being, only that I would stop believing in the soundness of this particular argument). So far though, I have not been shown anything of the sort.
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Come my dear Kenny, we have not been recently arguing over
nothing.
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Actually, that reflects an assumption on your part. Clearly intuition does function as a source of warrant in certain cases and intuition can, in itself, function as a reason or rational for accepting a certain premise in basic sort of non-inferential way. If you hold that the only beliefs which can be rationally accepted are those that can be arrived at through inferential means, you are bound to find yourself facing an infinite regress. And, if you dismiss intuition as a source of warrant, I think you will find the number of knowledge claims you can make about the world rapidly diminishing.
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Intuition means unsubstantiated. A sound logical argument must not have unsubstantiated premises. Simple as that. Why don't you claim that, instead, the argument is not of
logical, but of
intuitive structure. I think we'll both be happy with that.
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If one can see that the argument is unsound but simply chooses to believe in it anyway on the basis of emotion, then yes, that would be irrational. But if, upon reflection and critical thinking, the argument seems valid and its premises intuitive, then I see nothing irrational in believing that the argument is sound, even if others might not be convinced.
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"Relfection and critical thinking" about unsupported premises, still eaves you with nothing but
unsupported premises. Unless this "relfection and critical thinking" actually obtains a justification for them.
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Human beings share certain basic intuitions in common with one another.
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Tell that to a solipsist, a Taoist, a skeptic, a Christian, a gnostic, etc., and leave them in the same room together. Tell that to a libertarian, and a tyrant. Tell that to one who thinks logic and mathematics are necessary truths, and one who thinks they are merely subjective artefacts. And so on... This is obviously false.
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They also differ in their intuitive understanding from time to time. But, there are large overlapping territories in our shared cognitive domain and experience which we can often use to critique one another’s ideas and settle disagreements. Because there are still differences, however, it is not possible to settle all disagreements.
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It
is possible to do this... By simply
supporting your premises.
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Actually, upon reflection, I would dispute the property of maximal-Barney-ness on the grounds that the property of being a stupid annoying dinosaur seems wholly arbitrary, making the property of maximal-Barney-ness an arbitrary necessity – which is a contradiction.
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Once again, you fail to realise the criteria for
logically holding a belief. "Seems like..." and "feels like..." do not cut it.
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Again, you seem to imply the only premises in an argument that we can accept are those held on inferential grounds. Welcome to the infinite regress.
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This is a topic for another discussion. Right now, we are talking about
logical arguments, which require, by definition, backed-up premises.
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The short answer is, no, I don’t have a problem with it. Rational people sometimes disagree. That doesn’t automatically make either of their beliefs irrational or even unwarranted.
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It makes at least one of the beliefs wrong, however.
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No, reason is a powerful (God-given, I believe) tool for critiquing and refining our beliefs and ideas. Since human beings share vast areas of cognitive domain and experience in common, reason allows us to come to agreements on many things. And, even where we cannot agree, we can often use reason to test the internal consistency of each other’s opinions and to mutually challenge and benefit one another in our quest to develop our own understanding of the world. Critical dialog should always be sought and attempts to solve controversies made. But, let’s also be realistic. That is not and cannot always be done.
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Irrelvent. Reason is not here to reinforce people's prior ideas of intuitive truth.
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In some cases, it may be possible that a clash of intuitions is not caused by a cognitive malfunction, but by information, experience, or cognitive refinements shared by one rational individual but not another.
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How do you know this? From intuition? Is it possible that your intuition about intuitions is wrong? And so on. No matter how much you want it to be, intuition is not a valid substitute for proof.
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That clarification stated, however, in the specific case of atheism verses theism, I do believe that atheists suffer from a cognitive malfunction brought about by the noetic effects of sin. Because of original sin, human beings have an innate aversion to the things of God which causes them to repress the truth of God’s existence, even though God has made it plane and obvious to them through Creation and conscience, and atheism is one of the ways in which certain members of humanity carry out this tendency.
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Ech. Don't even get me started on
this part of Christian mythology.
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No doubt you believe that I am the one who suffers from a cognitive malfunction, that I believe in God for emotional reasons or because of social and cultural conditioning, etc. and that I am thereby unable to see the truth concerning the matter.
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I don't think you have a cognitive malfunction. I just believe you are wrong, on the matter of the existence of God, causes for this belief being irrelevent and merely arguments
ad hominem.
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So who judges who is right? Well, I suppose we do (the ones making the judgments). I do not believe myself to be delusional even though the theoretical possibility exists that I am mistaken in that respect. Likewise, I doubt you believe that you are repressing any truth about God or that you have engaged in any form of self-delusion. Who’s right – that depends on what the nature of reality actually is. We can challenge each other’s views of reality, draw out their various metaphysical and epistemological consequences, and see where things lead. Ultimately, though, it is reality that settles the matter. If God really exists and has implanted knowledge of His existence in the human heart and made His existence clearly known through His creation, then it is very likely that my belief in Him is warranted and that your lack of belief is the result of some sort of cognitive malfunction (which Christianity would attribute to the effects of sin). If, on the other hand, God does not exist, then you are correct and it is very likely that I am delusional and that my belief in God is unwarranted.
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So in essence, nobody really knows what's right, even though they have the "invincible" tool of intuition, which is just an arbitrary belief that could well be wrong. Why again, is this an adequate substitute for evidence, proof, argument, clarification, etc.?
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But, to agree on mathematical truths, certain basic intuitive postulates must be accepted at the outset. It is possible to provide proofs that 2+2=4, for example, that rely on other basic intuitive postulates such as 1+1=2, for instance. And, there are even proofs that 1+1=2, but, of all of these proofs, none of their premises are any more intuitive than “1+1=2” itself.
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It's easy to prove one and one is two. "Two" is the expression referring to this || many units, the addition operator puts together units as if they were a single expression, and "one" refers to this |, thus | + | is tautologically equivalent to ||, or "two". After such a proof, the mathematical skeptic would have to reject some of this reasoning. There's no unreasonable premises required.
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If you have a non-circular argument for the reliability of induction, I’d like to see it, since philosophy has unsuccessfully hunted one for years.
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1. Either the universe (sum of our perceptions of existence) is ordered or disordered (total arbitrarity) on a greater scale. (Excluded middle)
2. If the universe is ordered, then no arbitrary states will obtain in the future that were not present in the past, and change is generated from causal interaction (and quantum fluctuations, on the small scale). This affirms induction.
3. If the universe is disordered, then there is no probabilistic tendency for the future to conform to the past in any manner. In such a universe, conscious minds would be impossible.
4. My thought exists, and as such, at least one entity exists that has conscious thought.
5. Thus, the universe, on a greater scale, cannot be disordered. (
modus tollens, 3 and 4)
6. Thus, the universe, on a greater scale, must be ordered. (disjunctive syllogism, 1 and 5)
7. Therefore, induction is affirmed. (
modus ponens, 2 and 6)
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The problem of other minds stems from the fact that it seems impossible to make a legitimate probabilistic inference from one’s own direct experience of consciousness to the proposition that other persons exhibiting similar behaviors to one’s own also share this experience. Such an inference makes an inductive generalization from one and only one observed case. If you can come up with a good argument that avoids this difficulty, I’d love to hear it.
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There are plenty, but I don't feel like getting into any more side issues at the moment.
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Nowhere have I admitted that the argument is not sound, nor that it is circular. I believe the opposite in both cases.
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Argh! How many times do I have to show you. When Plantinga admits that only the
believer, one who has
already accepted the conclusion, he admits that it is circular.
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The premise and the conclusion are not identical.
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Yes they are. <>[]p is
exactly logically equivalent to []p, there is only a semantical distinction between the two. Stating it is possible for X to exist, when X is defined as essentially necessary, is stating,
tautologically, that X is indeed necessary. The argument is circular, via its probability premise, and by the fact that that accepting the principle in support of <>p, that "something is assumed possible until proven impossible", this same support gives us <>~p being true (UNTIL it is shown that ~<>~p is true, which is the same as []p!), which gives us the opposite conclusion. So either the principle itself must be wrong (unlikely), or the argument is circular. etc. etc. There are so many ways to show how the whole thing is just a meaningless tautology, I don't see how you can continue to maintain that it is even
remotely sound!
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And rational intuition is not the same as something simply “feeling right” (though admittedly, it is difficult to describe what the difference is, but, then again, it is difficult to describe the difference between memory and imagination, but we all know the difference for the most part and recognize different phenomenological qualities to both types of experience).
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"Rational intuition" is a contradiction in terms. If one had a rational justification for something, they would not need to back it up with their claim to intuitive "truth". BTW, memory is a tangible record of past experiences, whilst imagination is merely creative thought-processes. Why is this hard to distinguish?
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I do admit that this particular argument is not very useful for convincing non-theists. That’s why I chose it as my example, as my point here is not about coming up with a convincing argument, but discussing the manner in which differing intuitive and intellectual commitments can condition our epistemic attitudes toward whether or not a particular argument is sound.
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It's not very convincing, for the fact that it is unsound.
Until next time, seeya Kenny.
08-19-2002, 09:58 AM
