seanie

So you say.

But what does it really mean to understand or believe something from reading, comprehending, and otherwise using the tools of logic and reason and other parts of the intellect to determine or verifying the true-ness or false-ness of a statement made by someone and/or from a book?

NialScorva

No, no, no, no, no!!

Arguments in this forum are evidential as well as linguistic. A linguistic truth is a truth about the language, not about reality outside of the language. Check out Quine's "Word and Object" where he discusses this at length for the first couple chapters of the book. If I were to say that "The cruelty exists in the world" in this forum, it would not be an analytic statement like you seem to be implying. Look for Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" for a quick overview of why the analytic/synthetic distinction is questionable to begin with.

IMO, a better statement would be "There is nothing to mathematics and tautologies other than the world." Logic and math are language games that work because we design them to work. What you call analytic statements are truths about reality only to the degree in which the language game they're played in corresponds to reality. Platonism and essentialism are dead.

That's where all versions of the ontological argument fail, they presume that our language dictates reality, that our language is a perfect match with reality rather than a continuous struggle to make the two correspond. It doesn't tell us anything about what is real, the fact that it's an analytic argument damns it to being nothing more than expressing a truth about how our language is designed, not a truth about what reality is and isn't. It fails because it pushes the edges of how our language fits reality. *That's* what analytic ultimately means, a statement about the language that may correspond with reality, but only due to the matching of it's individual parts.

Lord Asriel

I have the most curious feeling of Deja-vu.

seanie

Er........


I'll get my coat.

Thomas Metcalf

An Existence of God forum provides also for empirical evidence. No one here (I hope) thinks that it's only possible to confirm or disconfirm God's existence through analytic truths.

The ontological arguments for God's existence are all failures. This is not explicitly a consequence of their analytic nature; it is conceivable in principle that one could derive God's existence from analytic truths, but it just hasn't happened so far. Yet, it is easy to argue against God with the use of analytic truths. Consider:

1. Assume God exists.
2. If this is the case, God is omnipotent and omniscient.
3. If a being is omnipotent, it is not omniscient.
4. Therefore, God is not omniscient. (From 2 and 3 by modus ponens.)
5. Therefore, it is not the case that God exists. (From 2 and 4 by reductio.)

1-3 are all analytic truths or assumptions; they depend upon the definitions of "God," "omnipotent," and "omniscient." (In case you're wondering about 3, omniscience precludes omnipotence because no omniscient being can learn, but learning is a logically possible action.)

Unfortunately for the theist, there is no known way to argue from analytic truths to the proposition "God exists," where that proposition means anything, well, meaningful.

Lord Asriel

Sorry, I think I've been spending too much time in RRP and I've picked up some bad habits.

Sole Controller

It is impossible for a being to be what god must be, in order to be a god, and not be completely undeniable and known by every person on this planet. In other words, if there was a god everyone would know it and there would be no atheist like you and me.

phlebas

Hmmm... "Logic and God"....

For $200 dollars, the question is:

"Name two things that go together worse than anchovies and chocolate."

NialScorva

Orange juice and green-death flavored Nyquil.

Or Jagermeister and milk.

seanie

"compassionate"

"conservatism"