Albert Cipriani

Dear Datheron,
Sorry you don't appreciate my "wacky numerology." (Correction: matter actually has a fifth state when it gets oh so cold.)

You mistake as numerology regarding "some fundamental property of the Universe" for what is actually a descriptive component of being. Three is the essence of being, ergo, of being Yahweh God. And only by extension is it therefore necessarily fundamental to our universe. Nothing "magic" about the number 3 at all. Rather, everything else would have to be magic, would be inconceivable were not everything else a function of three.

You surmise:
No, there can be no before or after in eternity. You must shake the habit of thinking in terms of time and space, which are anomalies, relatively unreal anachronisms compared to being, i.e., the Ultimate Being.

The technical term is "proceed." The Son and the Spirit proceed from the Father. By this is meant a causal order, not a temporal, spatial, or hierarchical order as you surmise.

You ask:
This is a fallacy of interrogation. The question is loaded with the false assumption that God could be derivative.

I'll "answer" it another way. The fact that a single thing exists is mute testimony that existence is in and of itself a Divine phenomenon. The question is not how can God exist, but given the fact that a single thing does exist, how can it not be God?

I distinguish a grain of sand (color, shape, number of atoms) from the being of the grain of sand. It is in the being of sand that it is Divine as opposed to anything else we can know about it. Being is utterly transcendently mysteriously non-material, non-spiritual, non-anything but Divine.

I apologize for this being so dense. On this topic, words fail thought. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> – Sincerely, Albert the Trad Catholic

Datheron

Albert,

Really? I didn't know that - what's it called, BTW? Just interested to learn more about this; as far as I know, absolute zero is the coldest one can achieve, and I didn't know before that there existed something beyond solids when one nears that temperature.

Only if you presuppose God first. Remember that in order to argue that three is magical, it is not a matter of assuming a priori that three is the basis of the Universe. In such a case, your case for the fundamental element of three is stretched extremely thin - like I said, you would fare much better if you were arguing for two rather than three. Alas, 10 = 4 + 4 + 2 is not exactly a convincing argument for the "special" number.

That was what I meant - to "come before" can be applied to both time and cause, and I thought I made it clear by referencing "contingency" in my argument. But that still does not void the argument; the idea that there existed a state (very careful to not say "time") without the Son and Spirit is still central to the proceeding reasoning.

But that's eluding the point. I've made it very clear to not allow such explanations as "because he is God". Hence my arugment is logical, and presumes that God thinks in the manner that we know. You wish to push it back into abstract form; rather than trying to explore the implications of perhaps how God exists and how his will works, you're taking back to the point where we're fully occupied with trying to glorify and marvel at his works, which is of course avoiding the question altogether.

No, not really; remember that my OP states that thought itself cannot exist without some context, and one of the fundamental parts of that context is language. In other words, to think without language is impossible. (you are, of course, free to show me the fault in that claim)

What I think you're trying to do here is give all objects an additional property - the property of being, which is a gift from God. However, as you define it as non-anything, I am not inclined to believe your claim on this completely undetectable property.

Wizardry

Albert's probably talking about Bose-Einstein condensation. When atoms are cooled to really really low temperatures, they begin to lose distinction and just become one giant atom. There's more <a href="http://www.coherentinc.com/cohrLasersAPPLICATIONS/html/atom.html" target="_blank">here.</a>

Oh, and by the way, according to the third law of thermodynamics, it's actually impossible to reach absolute zero, because then it would be possible to have 100% efficiency and a perpetual motion machine.

Peace out.

[ December 08, 2001: Message edited by: Wizardry ]</p>

Ender

Please clarify and make yourself intelligible with this apparent endorsement of a paralogism. If you haven't had your Kant indoctrination, perhaps that would explain why you presume that the understanding of a temporal or spatial order is exclusive from and independent of a casual order.

Indulge me.

~Xenologer~
((edited 4 grummah))

[ December 08, 2001: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

Albert Cipriani

Dear Xenologer,
I respect your knowledge and welcome any Kant indoctrination you may wish to inflict upon me. Like lima beans, I'm sure he could do me good even tho his books were put on the Catholic Church’s Index (as were Descartes' and just about every philosopher since them until the Index itself was banned).

I know I am in deep water here, as I indicated to Datheron with the head-bashing icon at the end of my post. But I believe I can logically defend what I intuitively sense and what you understandably deem to be a paralolgism. (Now that’s an oxymoron: an understandable paralolgism!)

Our conception of causes is based upon our observation of effects. Ergo, time is the necessary link between causes and their effects. This, I believe, is your position. I, to the contrary, believe that time need not link all causes to their effects.

Argument #1 Against The Necessity Of Time for Causality
Time itself is an effect. (Time is a man-made way of conceptualizing motion, i.e., motion causes time. If nothing moved, time would be inconceivable.) So how can an effect (time) be necessary for a cause?

Argument #2 Against The Necessity Of Time for Causality
Since nothing in this universe can be created or destroyed, we may define cause and effect relationships as the temporal rearrangements of pre-existent things. But God, by definition, is not a thing. Ergo, the rearrangements of God as expressed in His Triune Godhead are not necessarily subject to the temporality with which the cause and effect of things are subject.

Argument #3 Against The Necessity Of Time for Causality
Causes are man-made conceptualizations for specific types of motion (as time is a man-made conceptualization for motion in general). For example, the cause of battery acid and the effect of a disfigured face can be described as the proclivity for certain types of atoms to move in such a way as to join other types of atoms when they come into contact.

God, by definition, is the Unmoved Mover. Ergo, since causes relate to specific types of motion, they necessarily cannot relate to what by definition cannot move -- namely God. So the proceeding of the Son and the Spirit from the Father in the Blessed Trinity must not be conceived of as causal motion but as causal dependency. For example, the number 3 depends on the number 2 and the number 1, and 1 can be considered the cause of number 2 and number 3, yet this numeric relationship, tho causal, involves no motion or time. – Sincerely, Albert the Trad Catholic

Ender

Glad to see you bit that bait with much gusto.

As well as I respect your ability to wring exciting metaphorical allusions out of english that titillates readers. However, upon closer inspection, too often they are found to be largely aesthetically pleasing, aimed at the sentiments rather than rigorous philosophy made palatable for the intellect.

Quite! FYI, a paralogism is the result of the illusion of reason, a search for the unconditioned, a "pseudo-rational inference" of reason that is bereft of any empirical worth. A paralogism is also an attempt to transcend all possible experience and abandon empirical knowledge in order to satiate the demands of reason. An idea of reason does not necessarily require an object that corresponds with it in sense experience, because the goal of reason is to arrive at absolute totality in the series of conditions for the empirically given. Reason in Kantian epistemology serves two functions- either manipulate actual or possible intuitions or in the absence of actual or possible intuition. the positive work of classifying and organizing intuitions/sense-impressions is the work of the understanding and is discussed in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique. However, the traditional metaphysicians traditional speculation of reason in the absence of any intuitions is discussed in the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique and covers 3 kinds of paralogisms- Descartes' cogito, Antinomies, and the classical arguments of God. Reason is never satisfied with a partial or incomplete explantion of any state of affairs, and constantly urges for or hints at a complete or exhaustive explanations. This leads reason to seek for more and more basic conditions until a "unconditioned" condition is reached, one that no longer depends on anything further. Reason will continue to pester us until we reach an explanatory condition that is basic and supports the entire explanation but does not need one itself- i.e. the structure of an atom or the anger of a malignant God (sounds familiar). To sum it up- once reason extends itself beyond the limits of a possible experience, there is no longer any intuition to correspond with it and render it at all intelligible. Reason has often led us into transcendent metaphysics that "overstep the limits of all experience, [and] no object adequate to the transcendental ideal can ever be found within experience." Kant, Critique A 327/B384

Actually, my position is more or less a phenomenological one- one that has graduated from the debilitating skepticism of Humean empiricism as well as the solipsistic tenets of idealism- but i wanted to play devils advocate and argue as a Kantian scholar against your violation of the principle of significance. The 'principle of significance' or empirical significance is the postulate that concepts applied outside the empirical realm are meaningless. Kant provides this epistemological formula for knowledge that includes both Intuition, which is immediately before us via perception; and Understanding, which is how the mind organizes perception into an object of experience. "Thought without content is empty, Intuitions without concepts are blind." Knowledge comes from a synthesis of concepts and experience: without senses we would not be aware of anything worth piss, and without understanding we would form no concepts. therefore all objects of experience must be spatial, temporal, substantial, and causal. Anything that strays beyond the limit of knowledge, i.e. discussion about non-spatial or non-temporal objects cannot yeild any possible intuition, and amounts to nothing more than empty hot air.

Time, as well as space, is actually the form of intuition, which conditions human sensibility that receives the raw data of empirical information from the senses. In the "Transcendental Aesthetic" section of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant pulls off a balancing act with the claim that space and time are both empirically real and transcendentally ideal, that space and time are "pure forms of sensible intuition." All our experience of things is in space and time; yet, both Space and Time are also transcendentally ideal because they are forms of intuition. Like Hume, Kant says the content of our sensory knowledge comes from experience. However, Kant breaks off from Hume into a new direction- the form is not derived through the senses, but is imposed upon the content by the mind in order to render the content universal and necessary. Forms of intuitions are not simply concepts because a concept refers to other concepts in the same class of things belonging to the concept. There is plenty of leeway with the concept of a book; that some books are thick, some thin, some old, some valuable, some are leather bound, some are hardback, etc. as the conditions of all our experience. Likewise, all concepts of space/time refer to only a particular space/time. Kant elucidates the difference between concepts and pure synthetic judgment, that there is only one Space or Time, a universal a priori judgment that includes all possible particular concepts of space and time. Space and Time are both a priori, known before experience, & by no means are they mere concepts derived from experience. With an alternative proposal for metaphysics, Kant retains the a priori aspect, which deals only with objects of sensory experience. These objects are "given" to the human mental faculty, "sensibility." Space and Time as forms of intuition determine how experience is possible for human beings. Kant leaves room for the possibility that for some other beings, their intuition may be completely different. With this transcendental turn to subjective idealism, Kant is saying that space and time are "in" us. The logical objection is that by denying that space and time are in the world itself says something about the noumena, that it is neither temporal nor spatial.

Unless you can derive the concept of time itself from our sensations, most certainly it isn't an empirical concept. Here you end up in skepticism of the Humean doggie-doo flavor. Can you even conceive of the possibility of an intelligible experience without presupposing time? "nothing moved" isn't sufficient to illustrate such a endeavor because the concept "moved" is a temporal one. Temporally ordered states of consciousness include perceptions of spatially ordered things as well. In order to undermine the necessary presupposition of every intelligible human experience which temporality, and to a lesser extent, space or spatial form of intuition you have to devise a counter example that is intelligible. many commentators on Kant have tried to come up with an counterexample of a possible experience that doesn't presuppose time, and none have succeeded. It appears that temporality is a necessary condition for all human experience and the onus is on you to present a counterclaim. Otherwise you're just waxing poetry about incoherent nonsense.

Nor does this at all establish causality specifically sans the concept of time. It also appears that time is a presupposition of language as well as experience. IOW, you cannot render yourself intelligible in conveying your concepts, your notions, without necessarily implying temporality in every sentence you utter.

You are being unclear here. Please restate, and hopefully with more success, on how causality is independent of temporality. All the exhortation that time is "man-made" conceptualization in no way supports your initial premise- nor do i see an example on how a single cause & effect event does not imply temporality.

Actually, arithmetic is a derivation of the synthetic a priori forms of intuition, i.e. time, whereas Geometry is derived from the spatial objects.

~WiGGiN~
((edited 4 embellishment))

[ December 09, 2001: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

Datheron

Um....yea, I was aware of the limits of absolute zero (not a complete dunce, you understand), but after reading that article, it doesn't sound much like an actual verified state of matter than a phenomenon. Alas, it's distracting from the main discussion, so I suppose I'll quit while I'm ahead. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Albert Cipriani

Dear Ender,
Kant, like his name implies, CAN'T be comprehended. I re-submit your exhibit A:


Allow me to deconstruct:
1) "Reason extends itself" is metaphorical mumbo jumbo at best.
2) "Beyond the limits of possible experience" is a synesthesia of a redundancy. First, the redundancy, experience by definition is possible, for there is no such thing as in impossible experience. Next, the synesthesia, how can one step "beyond the limits" (another metaphorical substitution for thought) of what is necessarily possible. That's like saying a fish must not swim beyond the limits of water.
3) "Intuition" and "intelligible" are undefined and could mean anything anyone wants them to mean in this metaphorically-laden nonsense sentence.

I won't bother with Kant's second sentence, which is even worse than the first. The quote you provided could have been taken out of any turn of the century Theosophical Society tract -- pure gibberish. That's my critique of this much of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

You argue with Kant:


That's a circular argument. How is it any different than my contrary assertion:


What's meaningless are these collections of words. Why? Because Kant's words are based upon the false dichotomy between empiricism and abstraction.

You argue with Kant:


I argue: thought without content is like matter without mass, an impossibility. And, intuitions are concepts.

You argue with Kant:


I think that's a sloppy way of saying: knowledge is the recollection of a temporal experience in relation to another temporal experience.

Your most significant and thought-provoking point:


No doubt, our milieu is temporal. So it is unfair to exclude any non-temporal reality from the superset of reality simply because our subset of reality is temporal.

If fish could talk, your argument would sound like this:


I’m the tuna whose counter argument goes like this:


The point is that all our concepts, not just our concept of time, derive from our sensations. Thus, all concepts (even insane ones) are empirical.

So, yes, "temporality is a necessary condition for all human experience"... at this point in time! And, no, the onus is not on me to present a counterclaim for my speculation that, eternity, that is, the lack of temporality may be a condition of human experience "when" humans experience death (like the chinook winds along the dorsal side of a fish floating on still waters). -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Tercel

Datheron,
Is the problem not simply solved by God having omniscience? Does not him having knowledge of all possible worlds concepts and ideas solve the problem?

Datheron

Tercel,

Not necessarily - mainly, how did he even begin his omnipotence without having any reference to his knowledge? You may argue that he was "always omniscient" or perhaps that "he gained all that knowledge at once", but that's just either begging the question of "God is God" or shifting ex nihilo to the process of thought itself, which is still unresolved. I still do not see any way which one can logically explain the creation from nothing without ultimately reducing to some form of "God can do anything!"