Albert Cipriani

Dear Datheron,
Your hidden assumption lies in your conception that knowledge is an attribute of God. But God is the ultimately simple unified thing, so much so, that He can't have attributes (such as omnipotence or omniscience).

When we say that God is omniscient, that is to say, from our knowledge-based perspective we mean that God has all knowledge. But from God's existential perspective He has no knowledge whatsoever.

You see, knowledge is an anomaly of our temporal condition. It is a subset of experience, the wake that experience forms behind our being temporal beings. God, who like the number 3, is not a temporal being, cannot know. All He can "do" is experience.

For example, no matter how well I know what an orange tastes like, there is no substitute for the experience of tasting it. God's omniscience is like that. He is not, properly speaking, a know-it-all, but rather, He is the be-all of all being.

We can only know that 2 + 2 = 4. God, on the other hand, Who is the Truth, does more than know this truth. He experiences this truth along with every other truth so help me God! Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>

Ender

Albie, thanks for the diversion! Your entire post only demonstrates a complete whiff on who just might be the most important philosopher of the enlightenment. My personal opinion after a semester of studying his Critique of Pure reason is that based on a misunderstanding of Hume Kant redirected philosophy from the skeptical dead end of Empiricism and dogmatic contradictions of rationalism.

Are you are pre-empting your understanding of Kant in the following post in order to cover your tracks or what? Kant isn't that hard to understand, if you put in the time. There's no secret formula – the trick is akin to not jump into a soap opera middle stream and try figure out everyone's motives immediately without a program or a loyal fan whose watching habits revolve around that show, which is what you are doing, going on initial impressions and assuming that your knee-jerk reaction is correct. D'oh!

If that's deconstruction then I'm Yasser Arafat. Of course it is “metaphorical mumbo jumbo” to you because you have neither the wherewithal nor the background to assess what did Kant mean with that phrase. Kant divided the faculties of the human mind into three: sensibility, understanding and reason. Sense is the capacity to be affected by sensations; while understanding is categorizing and identifying those sensations and reason is the application of concepts to themselves.

Oh, sure there is, and you're just saying there isn't. That's an endorsement of a passive mind subject to “all possible” experience, that nothing is unintelligible. Come off your solipsistic kick! Kant formulated a project of philosophy that was to determine the limits of experience and declared that unlike the empiricists or the rationalists, the mind arranges reality into a possible experience, and argued for an active mind. In order to show how the mind affixes reality, Kant had to illustrate a diagrammatic, a schema of synthetic a priori[ channels of human sensibility (intuition) and understanding (concepts, categories). The central thesis of the first critique is this: Knowledge is possible because the self determines the structure of its experience. The shift from the notion of a passive mind to the active was monumental in traditional philosophy. Instead of posing the mind as a receptacle, Kant insisted that the mind configured its order on nature: “The understanding does not derive its laws from, but prescribes them to nature.”

Are you shitting me? If a fish cannot swim beyond the limits of water then that's quite obvious that the survival of the fish is limited to a specific environment, not that there is no other possible environment besides the water. The analogy fails because Kant is assessing the limits of experience, not the limits of adequate environment. You can conceive of an uninhabitable environment- i.e. Venus -but not of a possible experience w/o time or space. Try again!

You could instead of shoving your feet in your mouth, ask what does kant means with these words, which aren't “metaphorically-laden” nonsense but actually very technical philosophical terms. By intuition, Kant means to establish an answer to Hume's destructive skepticism- that the mind isn't limited to pure sensory data but actually arranges them according to an “intuition”- that imposes spatio-temporal apprehension of reality. Kant's “rescue” of rationalism from empirical skepticism re-fashioned mathematics as examples of synthetic a priori, or forms of intuition. This moves in opposition to Hume's earlier classification of mathematics as analytic a priori truths, and marks a great turn in philosophy. Kant argued that mathematics, or specifically Euclid's axioms were not analytically true because it wasn't possible to derive the truth from the meaning of terms used to express them. Kant stresses that the truth of mathematics, i.e. Euclidean geometry is grasped in an intuition. Our sensibility or intuition expresses the representation of space and is a continual endorsement of Euclidean principles. Anything that diverges from Euclidean geometry no longer is conceivable, as space, for us at least. This leads to the conclusion that geometry is no longer analytic but actually synthetic a priori. Kant means that Euclidean geometry is the reflection of the conditions of our mental faculties, specifically intuition.

This is no “critique” of a great philosopher, but an admission of willful ignorance. Not to put it too succinctly, but - Albert, you're an idiot. You have a great deal to go before you can criticize someone because in order to do so, first you must show that you understand Kant and be capable of arguing his side BEFORE you attempt at criticism. Ca-peesh? Not that I am saying Kant is the ultimate thinker, because I think he's wrong about just everything, other than a few snippets here and there.

Your understanding is utterly incompetent if you refuse to take the step from where you are to a middle ground in meeting Kant's arguments. An empirical data is anything received through the senses, and conditioned by our form of intuition (space/time). Then we apply our schema of understanding in assessing the raw data of sensory input to make it INTELLIGIBLE.

There is no false dichotomy as you put it because Kant thinks that in order to have intelligible experience, both the understanding and the sensibility must be in concert, in accordance. If I have a concept of an intuition, then I have a possible experience. The only possible experience via senses presupposes spatio-temporal aspects.

Incorrect- intuition is a form of sensibility, a precondition of empirical data. how do you like crow? Well-done or medium rare? Bloody rare?

No, that's a formulation of memory. Try again, chico.

Nope! If the fish could talk, their argument would be exactly like human sensibility- that they are bound by the exact same intuition- time and space because they are three-dimensional creatures just like us. Dryness is an empirical concept that flying fish or walking ones like the coelacanth experiences, so you lose here as well. You're not really trying here, are you?

Water is an empirical concept inasmuch as our understanding of air is. You confuse water with a precondition of intuition or sensibility. It's possible for a fish to experience non-water, because there are certain species that do, whereas there are no human beings that transcend space/time limitations. This analogy utterly fails on all counts.

Not quite! Were I to take you seriously, if time was limited to sensory data, then could you provide an empirical proof of time limited to a simple impression? My $$$ says you cannot because time is merely a complex idea that we formulate after experiencing constant conjunction of succeeding impressions. Ergo, time is not a simple idea derivable from a simple or single impression. Here you find out why Hume was the greatest empiricist of them all- he proceeded to push the tenets of British empiricism to its logical conclusion in skepticism.

~Speaker 4 the Death of Kant~

[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

Datheron

Albert Cipriani,

How so? Is there such a point that once we past it, the accumulation of properties becomes the negation of properties?

I don't see how you can observe that knowledge must be placed in time. True, knowledge must be discovered via experience, in which itself requires some temporal context to make sense of, but knowledge can also be given; it can be transferred. As such, God would still require that someone transfer that knowledge; the issue ultimately comes back to an ex nihilo creation of knowledge.

But knowledge is not limited to experience alone. I can surely "know" something, without having directly experienced it myself; you can say that I do not truly "know" the subject unless I experience it, but that merely equivocates the two terms. Is it even possible for God to have experienced everything; say, including not being God?

Indeed, God help you.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Ender,
You’re welcome... for the diversion that is. I’d hoped to be more than that, but what the hay.

I accept your "You're an idiot" charge. Under normal circumstances, I'd consider that name-calling. But in the context of Kant, you are simply being correct. I admit my ignorance and sincerely appreciate what light you've shined into my darkness. I was being willfully smug, facetious, and somewhat tongue in cheek in taking Kant to task. It's my humble way of trying to further my understanding of what I do not understand.

In all seriousness, tho, I do believe the mind is passive and not active. By this I mean that it is not endowed with intuitions, reflexes or instincts, yes, but conceptual intuitions, no. The basis for a passive mind paradigm are, sad to say, kitten experiments.

Newborn kittens who had their eye-lids sewn together for only two weeks were made mentally blind for the rest of their life by the experience. Tho their eyes functioned perfectly, their brains did not. Proof that even the sensation of sight must be learned by the brain. It has no innate capacity for vision.

Newborn kittens were placed in an environment of vertical stripes. Thereafter, they were forever "blind" to horizontal lines or movement. For example, they would paw after a stick waved vertically in front of them but ignore a stick waved horizontally.

If brains must learn something so basic as to recognize as sight the neural impulses it receives, how dare we suppose that the brain is born with any of the higher cognitive functions Kant calls intuitions, such as time, which, as you say, "determines the structure of its (the brain’s) experience?" – Sincerely, Albert

Albert Cipriani

Dear Datheron,
You ask, how can God not have properties. I answer, because of His eternal context. Properties are a function of time; they reside in the domain of finite temporal things. They are divisible. That's how come we can split the atom. All things are like that.

Abstractions, or what Descartes called "simple natures" are not like that. They are eternal, infinite, and non-divisible. Sure, in terms of arithmetic, any number can be divided by any other number. But in terms of metaphysical truth, each number is always the same number and our division of it is really its own begetting of other numbers (like how God the Father begot God the Son) while each number remains the same today, tomorrow and yesterday.

You ask:


No. God is not a snowball that has agglomerated every flake of snow on the mountain. If every flake of snow were all the possible properties in this universe, God is not an agglomeration of a single one of them. Rather, God the Father is the coldness, God the Holy Ghost is the atmosphere, and God the Son is the mountain slope the snowflakes distil out of are transported by and rest upon.

You agree with me that knowledge is a function of time but then make the contrary assertion:



The transference of knowledge, even the direct infusion of knowledge, is still a function of time. Without time, no transition is possible. The transition from stupid to smart via the insertion of information requires time. That's how we (or at least some of us! ) do it. For humans exist in the medium of time. Our transitions, thus, take time.

For example, fish live in the medium of water, ergo, their spatial transitions require that they swim. Water is to swimming what time is to our learning. Your insistence that God's knowledge must likewise require time is like insisting that fish must walk like we do if they are to be able to get anywhere. You are demonstrating a lack of intellectual precision and imagination.

You fallaciously assert:


Knowledge is sensory inputs. Sensory inputs, by definition, are our experiences. To assert that you have knowledge of something you did not experience is like asserting that you can build a brick wall without using bricks.

Our sensory inputs are the bricks we use to build up our knowledge base. We may do a bad (non logical, dishonest) or good (logical and honest) construction job. That is how you and I, with fairly similar experiences, can build up what we know from them into wildly different intellectual structures. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ December 23, 2001: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>

99Percent

Albert Cipriani: Knowledge is sensory inputs. Sensory inputs, by definition, are our experiences. To assert that you have knowledge of something you did not experience is like asserting that you can build a brick wall without using bricks.

Wrong. Knowledge can be obtained via language, like reading a book.

Albert Cipriani

Dear 99Percent,
So language isn't sensory inputs? A book isn't a time capsule of sensory inputs?

How can knowledge obtain from anything other than sensory inputs? You are engaged in the grossest form of equivocation to substitute "language" or "books" for "sensory inputs" when these words are just types of sensory inputs.

You are confusing vicarious experiences with personal experiences. Language, being symbolic, can only impart to the reader an approximate or vicarious experience of the writer. But it is an experience none the less! Or to put more simply, remembering our own experiences is an approximate or vicarious experience too; it's the experience once removed. – Sincerely, Albert

Datheron

Albert Cipriani,

Well, we could split the atom because there laid an even more elementary particle, not because it was held in a temporal context. Just wanted to point out that mistake.

But your argument is held on shaky ground because you assume that God is completely outside of time, hence not requiring a time function; alas, he would not be able to interact with time without having to step into time in some manner. If we take the propertial time function (PTF) as an actual mathematical function, then we can see that the function itself can exist at all points, and that God would have to actually step into the function in order to influence the function. Koy has argued this before, and I ask the same question - how exactly is God "timeless", without time? Please spare the poetic references, as I am seeking a clear explanation.

But that does not exclude them from having properties. The properties may be stable and constant, and you may argue that the object merely begets other properties, but that does not make the object's properties themselves static in reference to the object.

But you're going around in circles. My original question was how ex nihilo is possible - you're still responding with the same tautology, that "God is the guy that makes properties themselves possible", but with no explanation as to why or how this comes to pass.

You just defeated your own stance! Yes, the transfer of knowledge requires time; it requires the movement of particles, which is a function of speed, which itself is a function of distance and time. Thus, for God to gain knowledge, he must do so in time, or otherwise admit to have no knowledge. This is indeed void of imaginative explanations - I am logically showing the impossibility of the situation, not making up grand excuses to get God around this hurdle.

You're equivocating the "experience" that of us actually performing the event that brings about knowledge, and the "experience" of us listening to others tell us of that knowledge. Of course, that makes the term "experience" itself ambigious, and it shows in the confusion of our discussion. As such, it does not challenge my point - even if God only "experiences" to gain knowledge, he can only do so if there is something to experience to begin with. Remember that if he is to have created ex nihilo, he cannot have any context by which to promote any experience, and hence he is still without knowledge. You have ruled yourself out the possibility of receiving knowledge via transfer, so creation ex nihilo is still impossible.

Albert Cipriani

Datheron:


OK.

Datheron:


I have no idea what you are talking about.

Datheron:


I only exclude God from having properties. "Pure natures," such as numbers or the concept of straight, are indivisible and in that sense may they be likened to God. Unlike everything else, pure natures have only one or two properties, not a zillion properties such as you or I.

For example, a number can be odd or even or prime. You, on the other hand are odd, not even-tempered, and way past your prime.

Datheron:


I see. The price of belief is an explanation as to why or how what we believe comes to pass. OK. I will concede my point about God being a guy Who creates properties if you will apply your basis for belief to other matters.

For example, if you believe you are a thinking person, please explain why or how this thinking comes to pass. What? Can’t do that?! Don't know how you think yet you persist in your belief that you think?!? So not only does my God not create properties, but one of the properties you thought you had, cognition, you don't.

Datheron:


Didn't you bother to read my 12/19 post to you? I said "When we say that God is omniscient, that is to say, from our knowledge-based perspective, we mean that God has all knowledge. But from God’s existential perspective, He has no knowledge whatsoever."

God is experiencing all things that ever were or will be all at once. This experience trumps knowledge, renders knowledge passe. God only looks like a know-it-all from our side of the temporal fence.

Datheron:


This is just too silly. I experience the BEWARE sign and thus have learned to avoid the dog. You, on the other leg, experience the dog's teeth, and thus have learned to avoid the dog. Somehow these aren't both experiences? They don't both qualify as sensory inputs that result in knowledge? This is an example of the logical fallacy of equivocation? I don’t get it. – Albert the Traditional Catholic Frustrated Beyond Belief <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Datheron

Albert Cipriani,

You keep on talking about how God is timeless, eternal, etc. But how is that possible? What does it mean to be "timeless"? Once again, no obscure poetics please. Be precise as to the definition and the usage.

Then I don't see how your analogy shows anything. You're still left w/ the claim "God doesn't have any properties", but you fail to explain why this is so or how this is so. You assert the abstract concept, cover and pretty it up by obfuscation, and then present the entire mess with more confusing poetry and metaphors. All in all, when everything is plucked away, you still have an unfounded assertion.

Oh, sure. I believe this comes to pass via the firing of neurons in my cerebrum.

But what you're mainly objecting to is the fact that one cannot justify an axiomic principle. Now, you could try to justify your God as axiomic as well - except that by your rationalization (where you give no reason that your worldview is superior to other worldviews, but only as an alternative) - you cannot have your concept to be axiomic as well and have any argument that is convincing.

Oh, I read it, but didn't understand it much. I still don't really comprehend what you're saying, as you seem to be using two different definitions of "knowledge" - one for us, and another for God. The knowledge that we are accustomed to, of course, requires time to experience and transfer; God's version of knowledge, I have no clue what you prostulate as its properties. In any case, it still does not explain how God created something so that he may experience it in the first place.

It is equivocating my obvious reference to "experience" - the latter example by your paragraph - with the "experience" of transferance of knowledge. They are, of course, experiences, but I have split the general term into their more-often used definitions, and I was employing the definition of "experience" more as "direct experience of the event" throughout.