Philosoft

I used the word "infinity" but did I convey information to you about infinity iself or did I just make you think about equations we don't fully understand?

<strong> Exactly, we are approximating. That is, we are using a concept that as closely represents the desired thing as possible, with language that fundamentally prohibits description of the thing. We do not conceive 'infinity.' We can't. Our concept must be something else.

<strong> It's on the shelf, but it will have to wait in line.

<strong> You can, of course. In fact, you do. But, unlike approximations of actual things, we don't have an actual God with which to compare. If I say, "think of a dog, but not a particular dog," you can approximate a dog. Enough dogs have certain characteristics that the template-dog you see in your head is going to be a pretty close approximation to some actual dog. We have no such ability with "God." We have no ability to determine if whatever we picture in our heads is in any way God.

<strong> <a href="http://www.wvquine.org/" target="_blank">http://www.wvquine.org/</a> is a site maintained by Quine's son. It is quite extensive. I have certainly not made a huge dent in the material contained therein.

flatland

Ronin:

Yes you could. However, since the concept represented by the word 'god' is not popularly known by 'doomaflitchee', you probably wouldn't be able to argue very well. My point is that it is not the word that matters, but the concept. The previous post seemed to be saying that by using the word 'god' I was admitting something inadmissable, when all I was doing was trying to represent a concept.

Philosoft:

I think we are agreeing. I don't believe I claimed to be able to comprehend infinity, only that I could use the placeholder-name to discuss the concept in some useful way(as infinity is used in mathematics, comprehension be damned) regardless of the fact that I am incapable of comprehending it. I believe I said that we cannot understand god, and I was using infinity as an example that we are all familiar with of something that is discussed without truly understanding. We can do it, and we will, but we can never be sure that what we are discussing corresponds to the reality of the situation.

If you accept 'infinity' as a placeholder, you have to accept 'god'. After all, we have no infinity to compare to, but the consensus seems to be that we can use the concept.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by flatland:

"I'm trying to say that god could have created the logical, mathematical, physical, etc. laws without being subject to them himself."

And then God could change them at any time. Further, we define 1+1 to equal 2; to say that God created the laws of logic is misleading because a case can be made that it was we who created them. And as for God creating the bits of the universe themselves, well, there are interesting questions about whether the laws of the universe supervene on anything in the universe. But most people I think would have the intuition that there was nothing to create; a universe without these rules couldn't exist.

"As for access to predicates, I think that any concept involving infinity (omniscient, omnipotent, etc.) can be understood linguistically at best, and not truly. You can say god is omniscient or omnipotent, but you cannot truly understand these things."

I say I do. I know exactly what "omnipotent" and "omniscient" mean, and I don't think either of them has anything prohibitively infinite about it. Even if they did, I feel like I understand what "infinity" means -- maybe I can't picture it, but that's surely not required.

You assume a heavy burden of proof if you say we can't trust our dictionaries and our intuitions about what words mean.

Jobar

[mod hat on]
In this thread, Wackyboy has made some fairly thoughtless statements- but some of us unbelievers are far from guiltless on that front, too. IMO Wackyboy is making a most honest and creditable attempt to understand our positions- his incorrect assumptions are a result of massive social indoctrination, and though it is certainly appropriate to point out his assumptions and explain why he is wrong to make them, we must also be willing to give him time to assimilate our explanations. All of us have seen far more objectionable behaviour from believers, and when one comes here with only a few misconceptions, we should try to show considerable patience and restraint. By and large, we have; and the few comments I have thought out of line, were not very far so.

This thread has been excellent, and I hope that Wackyboy understands our position the better for it.
[mod hat off]

Now with that said Wackyboy, I feel duty bound to give you the warning I have given to several other theists who came here with minds open to some degree. Some of the following will not apply directly to you, I'm sure; it is not meant tauntingly, but because we have seen some come here and go through fairly agonizing reappraisals of their beliefs, I offer it all.

I have told this to other Christians who have come here- I want to give you fair and plain warning. Your faith is at risk here. Oh, I am sure you will scoff at me when I say this, maybe even get very angry and self-righteous. But if you remain here, and actually listen to us instead of simply trying to preach to us, you may, suddenly or slowly, find your faith, which you think to be solid rock, shattering beneath your feet like rotten ice.

We are worshipers of truth here. Note I do not capitalize it and call it Truth; that would imply that I consider it to be something established and absolute, unchangeable and unquestionable. No. The truth we seek is always open to new questions! We worship an admittedly approximate, but constantly improving, vision. We welcome new questions fully as much as we revere new answers.

We consider the Bible- the Truth you consider so unquestionable- to be, at the very best, a version of truth grown stale, and petrified, and proven untruthful long long ago. We can demonstrate it- with vast numbers of things undreamt of in your theology. Bones. Telescopes. Photographs. Medicines. Computers! Philosophies and ideas so far beyond the tiny tinkertoy universe described by your precious holy book that even the wisest on the Earth at that time could not understand, which even elementary school students of today can explain!

If you would keep your faith, and continue to believe your world is flat, and less than ten thousand years old- flee. Now. We will not pursue you.

But if you come here and ask, we will try to teach you of these truths we are sure of, and we will also tell you of the things we are *not* sure of. We will try to correct your ignorance, as gently as we (in our individual, harried, and humanly fallible ways) are able.

We will try to tell you the truth.

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: Jobar ]</p>

Philosoft

Well, there are extrapolated concepts and there are extrapolated concepts. 'Infinity' represents the fundamental limitations of a mathematical system. I'm not sure if 'infinity' is a legitimate thing, but the word tells us, "Okay, this system cannot explain what you want it to explain." And, in some cases, Zeno's Paradox for example, 'infinity' might tell us, "You're looking at this the wrong way" or "You're using the wrong system." I am not sure how any of this applies to 'God.'

flatland

You say that you understand the concept (not word) 'omnipotent' within the rules of our universe. Please explain your view on the problem of conflicting power, namely the Big Rock Argument. God can create a rock af any given size. God can lift a rock of any given size. I state the size I want to be "big enough that god cannot lift it". This is valid, given a strict interpretation of omnipotence, and yet it creates a contradiction, based solely within the concept of omnipotence. Thus, it(omnipotence) cannot be, based on the law of non-contradiction. If it is, then it must be understood differently than the accepted definition, based on language.

And I say I assume a very light burden of proof. Our intuitions can and often are wrong; see Descartes' argument against experience. Our dictionaries are only as good as the people within the cultures that develop them, and are essentially arbitrary. Language is only a system of labelling concepts; it must necessarily fall short of truly containing the concepts that the objects represent. That is an activity of the mind, which can be started by language. However, the mind is subject to our own fallacies in perception and logic, and so cannot be trusted to give a perfect answer.

Philosoft, I would say that the concept of infinity is not only important, but necessary to the idea of God. God is thought of as a collection of attributes, usually knowledge, power, and benevolence, expanded to an infinite degree and inseperably meshed. It seems like 'God' refers you back to infinity for further clarification of nature, at which point you run smack into the limitations of math and our conceptual abilities.

On a separate note, I'm curious as to people's opinions on two different conceptions of infinity. I think you can reasonably define infinity(conceptually, not mathematically), as either something without end, or something without limitations, and the two can be differentiated. Without end is fairly self-explanatory and agrees well with mathematical infinity. But 'without limitations' does not require endlessness as a quality, only totality. I thought of this when reading Spinoza, who defines god as the totality of natural existence. It seems like god could then be a thing that does not reach endlessly, but beyond which there simply is nothing. It's difficult to articulate, and difficult to grasp(and impossible to visualize), but consider a system like the universe. Imagine an end to the extension of the universe, beyond which there is simply nothing. no void, no empty space, just not-ness. In this way god is infinite in that it contains all that there is, but still is not endless. I'm sorry for the confused explanation, but it's a confusing idea.

Ronin

Now you seem to be appointing your own personal preconceived concept to the word 'god' ~ or at the very least ascribing some special 'popularly known' attribute without giving specifics.

For clarity, please address my first question, which I will rephrase for simplicity ~

What new information would using the word 'god' supply to the already defined word 'infinity'?

'Doomaflitchee' is equally valid a word if no direct quantifiable definition or unique concept is provided ~ or if I simply attach it to another named concept such and 'infinity' or 'universe'.

But it is the concept that generates the word ~ infinity is describable as meaning boundlessness.

Saying 'god' adds nothing new to the equation until one begins ascribing attributes to the word 'god' such as benevolence, love, anger, waving backparts, etc.

Then please elaborate on exactly which concept of 'god' you are attempting to represent.

For now all I can glean from your posts is some sort of pantheistic concept.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by flatland:

"Thus, it(omnipotence) cannot be, based on the law of non-contradiction. If it is, then it must be understood differently than the accepted definition, based on language."

The "accepted definition" hasn't been the one you seem to be offering. Philosophers of religion define "omnipotent" to mean "the ability to bring about any agent-bring-aboutable logically possible state of affairs," or something similar. I feel as if I understand that definition, and it's up to you to argue that I don't, should you choose to do so.

The state of affairs in which there is a rock too heavy for God to lift is a logically impossible state of affairs, so it does not present a problem for God's omnipotence that He cannot bring it about. (I think this definition of "omnipotent" will ultimately conflict with God's omniscience and His moral perfection, but this will do.) And in addition, the fact that omnipotence seems to produce a contradiction is not reason to doubt we understand the concept of omnipotence, only that any being can be omnipotent by that concept.

"Our intuitions can and often are wrong; see Descartes' argument against experience."

Descartes offered the Dream Argument against experience, and analytic propositions are invulnerable to it. We know analytically that a word w means what we think it means. His Evil Demon argument could be offered against analytic propositions, but I don't think that argument is ultimately defensible.

"Our dictionaries are only as good as the people within the cultures that develop them, and are essentially arbitrary."

Exactly. Definitions are arbitrary; we choose what "omnipotent" means so there's no chance we don't know what it means. The only thing in question is whether there is a being that fits these definitions.

"Language is only a system of labelling concepts; it must necessarily fall short of truly containing the concepts that the objects represent."

Well, of course; the content of concepts is not exhausted by the name we give to them. But I'd say that if something is a concept, then we have direct introspective access to it and therefore can make up a word to refer to it. Maybe we can't picture infinity, and we don't know all the implications of infinity in every situation, but that just means the concept doesn't contain those specific contents. It doesn't mean we don't have the concept, or that we can't tell whether something possesses that concept. At least, it won't without some argumentation.

"In this way god is infinite in that it contains all that there is, but still is not endless."

This seems to be the opposite of how I'd take infinity. Something is infinite if it is endless, but infinity is not exhaustive; there could be a being with an infinite number of properties that's still not red. But infinity itself doesn't seem to be exactly what we're looking for here. Infinity seems to be a property of sets, not of objects in general. So one could say the set of all of God's properties is infinite, or all of God's powers is infinite, where these mean that for every finite subset of God's powers, say, there will be another power that is not a member of this set.

If we want to talk about a being possessing "infinity," I think it would be more useful just to call it endless, or encompassing all existence and therefore endless (which follows if existence itself is endless).

flatland

Ronin, the very fact that we are discussing this by using the word 'god' means we have some shared idea of what the word represents. If you substituted in 'doomaflitchee' in for 'god' throughout this thread, it would not make sense. I would say that it is reasonable to assume that when a discussion in Western terms about god takes place, then we are talking about the Judeo-Christian concept of god. If you want to deny that, I have nothing to say.

I would say that 'god' adds to 'infinity' the association with characteristics of benevolence, knowledge, and power. The concept generates the word only insofar as the concept requires some symbol to be shared between minds. There is nothing special about the word itself; that is what I was trying to say. I don't think we're in disagreement here; your insistence on the viability of other words makes me think that we're saying the same thing, but not getting across to each other, for some reason.

The only thing I was trying to represent was the Christian conception of god. This conception of god is illogical as I interpret it, which is the whole reason behind my interjection into this thread.

Metcalf, I didn't know that definition; I am relatively new to philosophy, and haven't read any specifically religious philosophy. However, you seem to be subordinating god to the natural laws; specifically, that of logic. This would make god less than perfect, a description which I don't think many theists would be happy with. A perfect being must have all perfections, and being limited is certainly not a perfection.

I took 'intuitions' to mean something similar to sense experience, which can often be deceiving; a distant square tower appearing round, or a stick partially in water appearing bent. I am an empiricist, so I discount inborn knowledge. Any intuitions would come from our experience of the world, and so must be suspect. I did not mean analytic propositions, since I don't think you can define 'infinity' in a purely analytic way. "Endless" or "boundless" are based on experiences of extension, and cannot be accessed before actually experiencing extension.

And I maintain that we can understand a concept without fully grasping it. Leaving infinity for a while, imagine a chiliagon. I can define it, and if I knew more about geometry, I could give you all kinds of information about it. However, I cannot picture it in my mind, not matter how I try. I can understand and speak of a two-dimensional or four-dimensioanl figure without truly having full acess to those ideas. I draw a distinction between understanding(able to be analyzed in the mind) and true comprehension(knowing and holding in our minds the properties and full descriptions of an idea)

I agree that the 'endless' definition of god is more useful for this type of discussion. I merely came across the idea and wanted some opinions on it and its validity, separate from what we are discussing here. Perhaps I should start a new topic?

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by flatland:

"However, you seem to be subordinating god to the natural laws; specifically, that of logic. This would make god less than perfect, a description which I don't think many theists would be happy with. A perfect being must have all perfections, and being limited is certainly not a perfection."

I think most theists would prefer to say God has all possible perfections; if you claim He has all perfections, then we might just as easily defining Him to be self-contradictory. It seems fairly intuitively plausible that no being can be above the laws of logic, as far as conceptual possibilities and the like. If that's true, God would be the most perfect being possible, and I don't think the theist has given up anything substantial.

"I did not mean analytic propositions, since I don't think you can define 'infinity' in a purely analytic way. 'Endless' or 'boundless' are based on experiences of extension, and cannot be accessed before actually experiencing extension."

I'm an empiricist about concept acquisition as well. But I'm sure one can define infinity analytically; all definitions are analytic. Even if to define infinity required experience, our (analytic) definition would be "The phenomenon that matches observations O1 through O5" or something similar. Maybe a set is infinite if and only if for every proper subset, there is a subset with more members. Boundlessness and endlessness are still understandable, insofar as we can use the words and have an idea of what they mean.

Suppose I told you that I am acquainted with a sport that uses a ball that is infinitely red all over and infinitely green all over at the same time. If adding "infinity" to a discussion removes our understanding significantly, you would have no clue about whether I was telling you the truth or not. Yet most people would say such a ball is probably impossible.

"And I maintain that we can understand a concept without fully grasping it. Leaving infinity for a while, imagine a chiliagon..."

I was thinking of introducing this example myself, actually. We may not fully comprehend a chiliagon, but we know it has more sides than a square. We know that on a plane, its interior angles add up to more than 360 degrees. We know that viewed from far away, it'll look a lot like a circle. Again, we have an example of a situation or phenomenon we cannot picture or maybe "fully comprehend," but that doesn't mean we can't speak meaningfully about it.

As for endlessness, well, again, I think we can understand it to some degree. If I told you I rode on an endless highway that ended in Albequerque, you would immediately know I was mistaken or lying. I assert that we also know what "endless" means; the question is whether some individual is indeed endless. Again, we can't picture an endless object in our minds, but it seems intuitively beyond reproach that we can still make some statements about it.