fishbulb

I don't deny the value of metaphysics and logic as valuable intellectual exercise, nor do I deny that, for many people, including myself, examining logical puzzles and problems holds intrinsic value. If you wish to deconstruct and critique this particular argument, I do not wish to stop you. I hope you enjoy yourself.

What I am saying is that this kind of argument is entirely suspect when used to try to prove some real world hypothesis, such as the existence of God. However impeccable the logic behind the syllogism may (or may not) be, I find the connection between a purely ontological argument and any real-world phenomenon to be specious. In my opinion (and yes, it is my opinion, but it's not something I just pulled out of thin air or decided arbitrarily) before we even consider the merits of an ontological argument for the existence of God it must first be convincingly shown that pure ontological arguments can, in fact, demonstrate something about the real world. It seems to me to be a case of NINO: nothing in, nothing out. Regardless of the quality of the reasoning that goes into processing one's premises, if the premises don't come from real world observations, the conclusion doesn't tell us anything about the real world.

Jobar

I agree with fishbulb, mostly. A logical argument cannot prove existence or nonexistence; if a conjectured entity cannot be pointed to, touched, or inferred from the physical behaviour of things which *can* be sensed, then existence is unproven. Any argument which states that 'entity E is possible; therefore, E in fact exists' is NOT a proof.

McHugh seems to think that because he has a *concept* of God, which is not on the face of it self-contradicting, God exists. Leaving aside the ambiguous nature of his definition-by-negatives, I would like to see this method of proof applied to some mathematical entity, and see if it results in anything but gobbletygook, before I grant it has one whit of value.

Of course, I view the universe from a physicist's vantage, more than a philosopher's...

Ernest Sparks

fishbulb & Jobar,

if the premises don't come from real world observations, the conclusion doesn't tell us anything about the real world

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be stuck in this box. I believe physics (mathematical & theoretical physics) has gone far beyond that now. The job of figuring out what works in the real world comes later. The premises originate in what Rudy Rucker calls "the mindscape".

ernie

K

Chris McHugh's argument has at its foundation, the idea "much like a logical law or mathematical truth, God cannot have the possibility being unreal." To support this idea, he offers a simple proof. While this is not his final argument, spending a little time examining it is worthwhile since it will shed light on some problems with the proof he does offer.

1) If God is conceived to be something without deficiency of any kind, then God cannot be conceived to have the possibility of not existing. [This proceeds from the intuition that having the possibility of non-existence is a form of deficiency.]
2) God is conceived to be without deficiency of any kind. [This is from the definition of God as an absolutely perfect being.]
3) God cannot be conceived to have the possibility of not existing. [From 1 and 2]

This proof does not succeed or even intend to prove the existence of God. As 3) plainly states, it proves that "God" cannot be conceived to have the possibility of not existing. This is quite obvious since the definition of God entails existence. The proof says absolutely nothing about whether or not God actually exists, only that concepts of anything with a possibility non-existence can not be called concepts of "God".

In order for 3) to imply the actual existence of God, an assumption similar to the following must be made. Without this type of assumption, concepts are only concepts.

Objects that are conceived as not having the possibility of non-existence actually do exist.

This implicit assumption is why parody works so well with the type of argument provided. It is very easy to give an object a definition that directly or indirectly includes existence. Any such object can not be conceived to have the possibility of not existing. A concept of an object that has the possibility of not existing does not meet the "existence" part of the definition.

There is no reason to believe that assumptions like the implicit assumption listed above are true. If they were true, we would literally be able to define things into existence.

McHugh proceeds to present a more formal proof of the existence of a perfect being, or God. The proof relies on the truth of two contested assumptions.

If a perfect being exists, it is necessary for that being to exist.

It is possible for a perfect being to exist.

McHugh attempts to reformulate the description of God so that the new version is guaranteed to be possible, and so that the proof can not be parodied to prove the existence of absurd objects. To achieve these ends, he uses the concept of negative properties to redefine God.

However, McHugh makes another implicit assumption in order to guarantee the possibility of God's existence.

The existence of any object whose properties are all logically compatible is not impossible.

The truth of this assumption would mean that it would be possible for objects with physically incompatible properties to exist so long as those properties were logically compatible.

For instance, the existence of an object of infinite mass and infinite velocity would be possible. Non-finite mass and non-finite velocity are negative properties and are logically compatible. However, they are incompatible when viewed in terms of physical laws.

This leads directly to a parody.

I will define an object to be "x-like" if and only if it possesses at least the following three negative properties essentially.

(1) Non finite in mass.

(2) Non finite in velocity.

(3) Non contingent.

The parody of McHugh's ontological argument proceeds as follows.

1) Either the existence of something x-like is logically necessary or logically impossible. [The property of being x-like entails the property of non-contingency by definition, and whatever is non-contingent is either logically necessary or logically impossible.]
2) It is not the case that the existence of something x-like is logically impossible. [The property of being x-like entails only negative terms, and therefore can contain no conceptually incompatible properties.11]
3) The existence of something x-like is logically necessary. [From 1 and 2]

Using McHugh's method, I have proven that an object of infinite mass and infinite velocity exists. By adding a further negative property of "non finite in number," I could just as easily have proven the existence of an infinity of these objects.

It should be clear that McHugh's use of negative traits neither guarantees the possibility of the existence of an object nor creates parody-proof ontological argument.

Ernest Sparks

K,

Your parody OntArg can be countered by the following:

Possession of an attribute of mass immediately entails possession of a finite value of mass.
Possession of an attribute of velocity immediately entails possession of a finite value of velocity.

This renders that description in the minor premise of the parody argument automatically incoherent.
McHugh's G on the other hand doesn't require either mass or velocity. The G gets whatever it wants without effort or effective resistance. Of course, you might turn this criticism against the original ontological argument:

Possession of an attribute of power immediately entails possession of a finite value of power.

This can be countered as follows:

G doesn't overpower everything else. Once again: The G gets whatever it wants without effort or effective resistance. 'Power' is best translated physically as 'Work', which is only physically defined neatly when some effective resistance (counter-force) is encountered. G simply wills and stuff changes, without interaction or time delay. Resistance is, indeed, futile. 'Not limited in power' just translates to 'Not subject to being overpowered by other things'.

But I think it might be more fun to chase after my arguments:

Possession of an attribute of mass immediately entails possession of a finite value of mass.
Possession of an attribute of velocity immediately entails possession of a finite value of velocity.

I do argue that modal logic has this built-in tendency toward virgin births.

Regards,
Ern

K

Earnest Sparks:

Only because of physical constraints. What is logically incoherent about the terms 'infinite mass' or 'infinite velocity'?

It was my assertion that physical constraints could render an object impossible. McHugh only sought to eliminate logical incoherencies.

Ernest Sparks

K,

Possession of an attribute of mass immediately entails possession of a finite value of mass, because mass without a finite value is NOT mass at all.

Possession of an attribute of velocity immediately entails possession of a finite value of velocity, because velocity without a finite value is NOT velocity at all.

Physical limitations have nothing to do with the matter; these are conceptual limits, and well within the logical sphere.

[now let's see where this goes next!]

Ern

K

Earnest Sparks:

Let's discuss an unbounded universe with a fairly even distribution of non-zero mass. Are you saying that such a universe is LOGICALLY impossible? Are you saying we can't compare the mass of this universe to that of a finite universe?

While this type of universe may be PHYSICALLY impossible, you certainly haven't shown why I should consider this concept logically incoherent.


And if you like, I can just as easily refine my example by saying that the object is:

1) Not limited in mass.

2) Not limited in velocity.

That is, unless you propose that there is a mass at which the concept of mass becomes incoherent and a velocity at which the concept of velocity becomes incoherent.

Ernest Sparks

Let's discuss an unbounded universe with a fairly even distribution of non-zero mass. Are you saying that such a universe is LOGICALLY impossible? Are you saying we can't compare the mass of this universe to that of a finite universe?
While this type of universe may be PHYSICALLY impossible, you certainly haven't shown why I should consider this concept logically incoherent.

Good! *RHO* is a constant density function of some global spatial coordinates for some selected global time. A volume integral using some volume measure (some function V) diverges as V increases indefinitely, since *RHO* is constant.
Is there really a total mass to this in any meaningful sense? Newton considered this as a universal model and groaned at the divergence. He decided it just didn't matter. In a true isotropic, homogeneous situation, the action on a single (with meaningfully-assigned value) mass object is subject only to nearby, local spatial assymmetries, under his universal law of gravitation; the rest just cancels out, finite-patch-by-finite-patch, from spatial symmetry. The would-be gross mass of the whole thing simply doesn't matter.

And if you like, I can just as easily refine my example by saying that the object is:

1) Not limited in mass.

2) Not limited in velocity.

I am unsure how this changes the situation. Does that mean IT could have a larger actual mass and actual velocity if IT wanted to, whatever mass and velocity IT actually has?
Maybe, IT has a larger actual mass and larger actual velocity than any contingent things have.
Maybe,

1) NOT equaled or surpassed in mass

2) NOT equaled or surpassed in velocity

. That would put a real elephant in the room (, but not for long!).

That is, unless you propose that there is a mass at which the concept of mass becomes incoherent and a velocity at which the concept of velocity becomes incoherent.

No, I don't want to do that.

You have, nevertheless, demonstrated (after some cleanup) an instance where the modal logic machine invents something quite spurious.
With that, I gladly concur.

Ern

fishbulb

Unfortunately it is not a matter of what one wants, but rather of what one can get.

I am not a physicist. However, my understanding of any hypothesis that isn't based on empirical observations and cannot be tested through repeatable, empirical experiments is that it is not a scientific hypothesis and would thus not fall under the category of physics. Maybe a scientist here could confirm that. I know that physicists are dealing with some pretty complex and strange-sounding hypotheses, but I am not aware of any branch of physics that has forsaken an empirical foundation and is still acknowledged as science by the scientific community at large. Physicists have and surely still do postulate the existence of entities that cannot be directly observed or verified, but these hypotheses are almost certainly based on the behaviour of entities that can be observed, and until their existences can be verified, they remain just hypotheses and not established fact.

(The planet Pluto, for example, was inferred from the orbit of Neptune before it was ever directly observed.)