Simplicity of Being

[penfold]

@ Jac,

Firstly thank you for your OP. I read it, and the ensuing discussion, with much interest.

I thought I would divide the following into three parts. The first will deal with the theological problems your view of God throws up. In the second I hope to explain why your kind of reasoning is, in philosophical terms, deeply unappealing. Thirdly a few words on morality. I apologise in advance for the length of this post.

i Nature of God

I hope you will forgive an edited quote from the OP:

... divine simplicity (hereafter DS) is the idea that God not a composition of any kind. [...] there are three broad categories into which pretty much all compositions will fall:

1. Composition of parts - [...] as in form and matter, etc.

There are no individual parts in God. Thus, there is nothing to which we can point to in God that can be differentiated between anything else in God.

2. Composition of potentiality and actuality - [...]God, properly speaking, is pure act.

3. Composition of essence and existence - [...] There is no distinction between God's essence and His existence. [...][/list]

[...] we cannot point to any part of Him and make such statements as "God became angry" or "God loves you." [...]DS literally means that God's love is His omnipotence, and His omnipotence is His omniscience, and His omniscience is His omnipresence, etc. There are no distinctions within God.

These days most people would describe me as an atheist (I dislike the term, I don't believe in the theory of Platonic solids either â€" but no one calls me aplatonic). However, once upon a time I was a devout young thing, and the problems of theology held a deep interest for me. For a while I held a theological position very similar to the DS one you have outlined.

The problem I encountered was that any God who is ontologically self-identical at all scales (ie cannot be divided) is a God who cannot change. Change requires the ability to differentiate states of affairs either spatially or temporally, so an object which is absolutely indivisible must be unchanging, QED. This leads to several serious theological problems.

There are many areas where a changeless God becomes problematic; theories of Atonement, Christology, Salvation etc... However most can be circumvented using your formulation of God as pure act (I have deep problems with that concept - I would argue it is meaningless â€" I have said a little more on the subject at the end of Part ii below). There is one problem though that this does not help with. That is the existence of perpetual change which characterises the phenomenal.

Our experience of the universe consists of change. In fact the phenomenal universe constantly changes and is never motionless, even atoms cooled to absolute zero still vibrate (as if they did not it would violate the uncertainty principle). The DS theory, however, requires that the universe be based upon an indivisible, and hence unchanging (see above), ontology.

This raises a fundamental conundrum. If, ontologically, nothing changes what accounts for the forever changing nature of the phenomenal? (Or to put it another way: if God is ontologically simple what accounts for complexity in the phenomenal?)


ii Ontological games

I want to really drill down into what you had to say about ontology and epistemology:

In philosophical terms, God is subsistent existence. In fact, when you come to grasp the terminology, the statement "God exists" is a tautology. It is tantamount to saying "Existence exists."

...Yet there is only one thing that all of reality has in common: being. Everything that exists, both in the mind and in itself, has in common being. If we are to know what a thing is, then, so that we can know how we know it, how to talk about it, and how to understand our communication, we first must know what being is.

Most philosophers don't start this way, which is why most philosophers reject DS. Most start with epistemology, which I think begs the question.

In fact most philosophers used to start with ontological considerations. However this way of doing philosophy fell out of fashion, and did so for good reasons. Really the first man to hit upon why this was a bad idea was David Hume.

His point was that the empirical cannot justify the ontological. For example, he pointed out that while all our empirical observations showed causality in the universe that could not lead us to the conclusion that causality has ontological basis (ie we cannot be sure Causality exists). He played the same game with our notion of the self existing through time.

Hume's line of thinking was taken up by Emmanuel Kant (who once said that Hume “woke me from my dogmatic slumbers). Kant went further than Hume and made the division between the phenomenal and the noumenal. This division was epistemic. His point was that we can gain knowledge about the phenomenal universe by empirical method (what was becoming, at the time, the modern scientific method). While our perceptions are prone to error a yardstick is a yardstick to everyone; thus we can measure, compare and derive facts about the universe. However these facts are about the phenomenal universe only. Facts about the noumenal universe cannot be discovered by any such method. As such all ontological claims are by definition untestable and unproveable.

Wittgenstein, a hundred and fifty years later, took this idea further pointing out that not only is our knowledge limited empirically but also linguistically. So any discussion of ontology is not only epistemically unsound, but a forteriori meaningless!

This is why philosophy must start with epistemology. If we do not start by discerning the limits on what we can know and talk of meaningfully then we will end up having nonsense arguments about competing but untestable theories.

We can see this in the pre-Kantian philosophers: Leibniz uses one particular ontology to promote one kind of idealism; Berkeley another. Descartes and Locke use theirs to argue for dualism. Spinoza for pantheism. The problem is that they all start with an argument from ontology. And just like your theory of DS these arguments were axiomatic. Leibniz needed God to guarantee divine harmony. Descartes needed God for memory. Spinoza (like you) for an ontological basis for existence.

What Kant showed was the futility of such theories; they approach the problem backwards; because their philosophies rested upon untestable claims (Hume's point that the empirical cannot tell us about the ontological again), so everything that follows is no more than speculation.

Interestingly Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein were all devout men. However what they realised is that God, and ontology in general, is beyond knowing. It was this limiting of philosophy by examination of epistemology that allowed it to progress. As Kant said in the preface to the 2nd edition of the Critique of Pure Reason “I set limits to knowledge to leave room for faith”.

To my mind to appeal to ontological arguments as prior to epistemology is one of the most philosophically wrong-headed moves anyone can make. Not only will any such position be readily undermined by the scepticism of Hume and Kant, but will be meaningless as it loses all reference points (Wittgenstein's point).

[NB a good example of the kind of meaninglessness Wittgenstein warns of is found in your description of God as 'pure act'; an act is something we normally understand as requiring change, which implies division (see part i). However the 'pure act' is something without division, meaning that a 'pure act' is not an 'act' as we understand it. The phrase then becomes a linguistic rorschach test; we have no common reference point, so we will never be able to distinguish the nature of a 'pure act' from what we read into the phrase. Without a reference point we can never check to see if we are talking about the same thing; a discussion of 'pure act' will consequently be meaningless â€" (cf Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)]


iii Morality

I sympathise with your mission. I frequently worry about how the very same arguments I use to explain my lack of belief in God could be turned upon moral beliefs. I long for their to be a neat ontological solution which demonstrates the validity of my moral beliefs. However, that desire is no excuse for intellectual double-dealing. Kant, Wittgenstein, and many more who followed have shown us that if we deny our epistemological limitations then fact and faith become mixed and we lose the ability to discern the truth. If we are to be philosophers we must be honest. There are some things we cannot know, and of such things we must follow Wittgenstein's advice and pass them over in silence.

peace

[Jac3510]

penfold,

Thank you for the fantastic reply. As I said to Davin, I only have time for one substantive reply tonight, which went to explain why I hold to DS in the first place as the correct concept of God. I look very much forward to exploring this issue with you, especially since you mention Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein. Analytical philosophy, I think, rests on a fairly simple self-contradiction. Veatch will be very useful for us (at least, his arguments - I'm not much one on quoting authorities unless they put an argument in such memorable terms that to phrase it any way other than theirs would be to do a disservice to their argument!). To give you a preview of where I'll be going in my reply, look up his Fallacy of Inverted Intentionality as discussed in his Two Logics. I'll also be making heavy use of Gilson's arguments as put forward in The Unity of Philosophical Experience.

Thanks again

[penfold]

I only have time for one substantive reply tonigh

Take your time. Will check back in a day or two.

[Tank]

 Just watching in the intention of learning something.

[humblesmurph]

:pop:  Just watching in the intention of learning something.

Me too.  

[Jac3510]

God is not the subject of morality. He is that by which it is defined. He is that of out of which it springs.

If god decides what morality is, then morality is subjective. If god cannot decide what morality is, then god is subject to morality.

Davin, you are just incorrect on this. I don't know how to state it any more clearly than I already have. Both of your statements are mistaken.

1. If God decides what morality is, then it doesn't follow that it is subjective. At best, it follows that it is subjective to Him, but since He is the One who decides order and creates reality, such morality would still be objective to us. You know that I don't hold to this divine command theory, but the point is that its failure is not that morality is subjective to us, but that it is arbitrary in God. There are enough problems in that, I think, to warrant rejecting it.

2. If God cannot arbitrary change morality, it does not necessarily follow that God is subject to morality as if it had its existence independently of Him. Consider existence itself. God cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time, as I'm sure you would agree. Not even God can violate the law of non-contradiction. But does this make God subject to the law in the same manner that we are subject to morality? Of course not. The law of non-contradiction is not something that exists independently of Him. It is rooted in the fact that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time. It is, in essence, a statement on the nature of existence in things. And yet God, under DS, is existence. The law of non-contradiction turns out to merely be an expression of God's nature, that is, of the fact that existence turns out not to be the sort of thing that both is and not is in the same way at the same time. That is the reality with which we are confronted. God doesn't change that because it is what He is, yet He is not subjected to a law external to Himself. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true with morality.

So again, we see that God is not the subject or morality. God is the standard by which morality is judged.

Philosophy is subjective in itself, to say, "it is improper, philosophically speaking, to say[...]" is an error, because, philosophically speaking, there are several proper ways to say pretty much anything. However if what you meant by this is that using the philosophical concept that you set up it is improper to say this or that is perfectly fine, but not philosophy in general.

The reference to "philosophically speaking" is merely pointing out that we are being very precise in our predication. I am perfectly correct in saying "God is good," for we can certainly attribute goodness to God in a popular sense of the concept of "attributing." But, when we are being very precise in our language, we know that we attribute nothing to God, and thus, "God is good" turns out in this context not to be true. Instead, we attribute to goodness the nature of God. "Good is what God is." It answers the question, "What is goodness?" Answer: "That which God is," not "that which He commands" or "that which He loves."

Just in this post you stated, "Good is what God is." That is attributing good to god. Like saying wet is what water is. However instead of logically following with "water is wet" you're stating that we cannot do that. To say that you can only attribute things one way and get no attributes from god is not something I can accept because in essence it's making god an attribute black hole where you can attribute anything to it, but get absolutely nothing from it. However if what you're saying is that nothing can be attributed to god, then this god is meaningless in that this god has no attributes, no definition and no meaning.

You are simply misreading me, Davin. "Good is what God is" is not attributing anything to God. It is attributing to goodness.

Now, since this is a thread on DS, I can answer your in more detail. Words can be used univocally, equivocally, or analogously. If univocal, then two words are used in two sentences in the same way. If equivocally, two words are used in two sentences in two different ways. But if DS is true, we cannot attribute anything to God properly speaking. This presents us with something of a problem, because if we use the word "good" to describe both us and God univocally, then we are attributing something to God, as you note. If, however, we are using it equivocally, then what we mean by "good" in God and "good" in us is different so that there is no connection between the two, leaving goodness totally unexplained for us! The third option which DS advocates take is analogy. What we mean is that goodness in the world corresponds to God in some similar manner. Imagine if you will a photograph of a house. The photo is not the house, but it is very similar to it, and even if you had never seen the house, but only the photo, you would know something very real about it. Then, when you encountered the house in real life, you would say, "Ah, yes, that is precisely what I expected it to be." To further demonstrate this, let me quote from an article on whether or not God has emotions. I strongly recommend reading all of it, but this point is particularly important:

Since creatures are effects of God they are like God in some respect.  But their likeness to God as creatures cannot consist in possessing the same nature or in being of the same genus.  Thus, according to the second view, even our concepts that properly apply to ourselves, understanding, willing and love, cannot be directly applied to God in the sense that they apply to ourselves.  Since our concepts of features found in ourselves present to our minds realities or natures that do not entail their existing, these realities or natures cannot be aspects of God’s necessarily existing essence.  Thus, to say that God understands or that God wills or loves, should not be taken to mean that what is presented to our mind by those concepts are intrinsic aspects of God.  Rather, such statements should be understood as being indirect or analogical:  God understands, should be understood somewhat as: creatures are related to God in a way that is in some respects similar to the way what is understood is related to one who understands, and God is in himself what it takes to be the term of that relation.  God wills creatures to be = contingent beings are related to God in a way that is in some respects similar to the way objects willed are related to a free agent, and God has in himself what is necessary to be the term of that relation.

So you see that when we say "Good is what God is," we are not predicating anything to God. We are speaking analogically of the essence of Goodness with reference to the nature of God.

I wasn't talking about changing the label of the meaning, but reversing the meaning itself. If I went from the philosophical position that god is evil, then all the same effects would result from the example I was responding to, but in reverse. Instead of absence of god being bad, the absence of god would be good. It's an equal philosophical statement from the opposite position, as if applying a negative mirror to the concept you presented. Both stand points (though opposite), in comparison of the effects, are indistinguishable from each other.

But the positions are easily distinguished. Sight cannot be understood as a privation. Blindness can. Goodness can never be understood as a privation. In every case of evil, we find on inspection that it is actually a lack of something else. We cannot attribute to God that which is fundamentally non-existence, because non-existence is not a thing to be attributed. Or, to be more technical, we cannot ground non-existence in subsistent existence.

It is, of course, a matter of debate as to what exists and what does not in terms of virtues and ethics. Is hate a thing or is it just a lack of a thing? Through discussion, it isn't very hard to see that hatred is truly a lack of love and kindness, which implies, in turn, that love and kindness are things. But even if we disagree, the point is that we can have a really productive discussion about this precisely because reality is the kind of thing that can be discussed productively.

I brought no more theology into the discussion than you had, I had just made an opposite stand point to the concept you presented.

I didn't say you did. I am merely pointing out that we need to keep the order properly before us. The question is what exists so that we can draw out perfections that can point us to the nature of God (analogically, of course).

Previously you already stated that we can't attribute anything to god, sentience is an attribute. So because we cannot attribute sentience to god, we can't then go into defining god with sentience.

The above emphasis on analogy should be sufficient to explain this issue.

Even in philosophy, we can falsify a thing, the concept of falsifying comes from philosophy. Things can make sense philosophically, one can even say that if there are no contradictions then philosophically speaking it is true, however I've no reason to accept this kind of thing as true, because I define true as something that is verifiable, testable and demonstrable. It may be fun to speculate many things that aren't real, however there is little useful purpose in doing so. You made several references to reality and what is real, which means that you're talking about real things, not merely philosophical things. Either the references to things being reality are dropped from your argument, or I'm allowed to link it to reality. Those are the rules I'm willing to go by, but I'm not going to accept that you're allowed to make references to reality and I'm not allowed to use the philosophical tools necessary to determine what is real.

Falsification in scientific theory means that a theory offers predictions about future observations. If those future observations do not line up with predictions, then theory, at least in principle, is falsified. In other words, scientific theories work on the principle A -> B -> C; if ~C then ~A. The closest thing we have to that in philosophy is a reduction to absurdity. We don't "falsify" philosophical concepts in the way that we falsify scientific theories. You can use the word "falsify" if you like, but it is an analogical usage at best and equivocal usage at worst.

In any case, your test for truth is self refuting. It is called "verificationism." To say something is true if it can be verified was the position of A. J. Ayer, and it was dropped rather quickly for the simple reason that the statement itself "something can only be true if it can be verified" cannot be verified! This is why I made such a big deal about doing philosophy properly. It must done by studying being qua being. It will yield truth so long as the method is rigorous and the logic impeccable. So far, I've offered to no reason to believe that DS is true insofar as whether or not God actually exists. But if it can be shown that the concept of God is only coherent under DS, then DS must be true if God exists. That, I think, I have taken steps towards demonstrating.

[pinkocommie]

Jac3510 - while I do find fault with a good deal of what you say, I can't express enough how much I appreciate your demeanor and respectful attitude.  Thanks for contributing here.  

[Sophus]

Jac3510 - while I do find fault with a good deal of what you say, I can't express enough how much I appreciate your demeanor and respectful attitude.  Thanks for contributing here.  

I second this.  

[i_am_i]

Jac3510, please excuse me for needing to ask this question. It's just a yes or no one.

You're starting with the assumption that God exists, is that correct?

[humblesmurph]

jac,

I love this. This is great.  I like your blog too.  At the risk of being charged with encouraging somebody to preach, could you move on to the next step please.  This is a great foundation to come back to regarding the nature of god and resolving conflicts within the theistic outlook.  When subsequent problems come up, we'll have this as a reference.

You say there are many proofs for god.  Could you present one?

[Jac3510]

OK, penfold, let's get to your arguments:

@ Jac,

Firstly thank you for your OP. I read it, and the ensuing discussion, with much interest.

I thought I would divide the following into three parts. The first will deal with the theological problems your view of God throws up. In the second I hope to explain why your kind of reasoning is, in philosophical terms, deeply unappealing. Thirdly a few words on morality. I apologise in advance for the length of this post.

No apologies ever necessary for length. It just shows that you are taking the issue seriously, which is all I could ever ask for! And if apologies are necessary, you will have to forgive me all the more, because I think my response is significantly longer than your own, primarily because of my digression on the difference in analytical and classical philosophy!

NOW

I hope, again, you will forgive the long digression, but I think the point is of the utmost importance. The moment Hume and Kant started talking about reality in analytical terms, they lost the right to speak of reality itself. Everything I said above is very easily confirmed by the definition of epistemology itself: it is the branch of philosophy that deals with how we know what we know. But what is it that we know if not reality? Thus, epistemology actually presume ontology. It is absurd to say that we are going to wait to talk about what reality is until we know how we know what reality is. Knowing what something is assumes that it is in the first place! In response to this, analytical philosophy asserts that it isn't talking about reality, but actually just the labels that our mind creates for the sense-experiences we encounter. But if you are honest about this view, you will see that if you aren't talking about reality, you really aren't talking about anything. It leads to absolutely skepticism, which is humorously demonstrated in this video:

EDIT: VIDEO REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE - HERE IT IS ON GOOGLE VIDS
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 060678292#

The conclusion is that we cannot start with epistemology without necessarily being lead down a path of either self-contradiction or absolute skepticism in which we are not allowed to speak about reality. We can move on, then, to talk about specifics such as what causality is (which was the common thread between Hume and Kant), how we should properly understand subject-predicate statements, etc. Those things, however, should be discussed in their own contexts. To try to take them in an analytical light, as you have done here, to disprove the entirety of metaphysics, which, after all, is precisely what Kant believed he did (and it is what analytical philosophy does), is not a valid approach in my own opinion.

As I said early in this, the reason I believe DS is that it is the necessary result of the philosophical method I employ. In that regard, it is similar to hermeneutics in theological studies. The method you employ will, in large part, determine your findings. I simply believe that I am more than justified in rejecting a method that on one side says that I cannot talk about reality and on the other presumes to talk about reality anyway.

iii Morality

I sympathise with your mission. I frequently worry about how the very same arguments I use to explain my lack of belief in God could be turned upon moral beliefs. I long for their to be a neat ontological solution which demonstrates the validity of my moral beliefs. However, that desire is no excuse for intellectual double-dealing. Kant, Wittgenstein, and many more who followed have shown us that if we deny our epistemological limitations then fact and faith become mixed and we lose the ability to discern the truth. If we are to be philosophers we must be honest. There are some things we cannot know, and of such things we must follow Wittgenstein's advice and pass them over in silence.

peace

Yes, if we are philosophers we must be honest, and Kant and Hume, fortunately, have made no such demonstrations. Their methodology was fundamentally flawed as I have tried to show above. The error has not all been theirs. It has been repeated time and time again in the history of philosophy. Kant and Hume are just two of hundreds of philosophers that mistook their field of study for philosophy, and the result, as always, is skepticism and mere moralism.

Dealing honestly, then, with the issue of morality, we must be willing to admit that if morality is not ontologically grounded in the reality itself as imposed upon it by a super-sentient being, then it is absolutely meaningless. Do you recognize that, penfold, or has your worry led you to some other place in which to ground your moral beliefs? Or do you recognize that if you wish to continue to follow the analytical method, that you cannot properly speak of moral beliefs at all, but only of your personal labels for personal experiences that, by definition and nature, have absolutely no bearing upon reality itself? Do you recognize that in your view, murder is not wrong, but rather, it is only true that "murder" is "wrong"?

I very much appreciate your call to intellectual honesty. Therefore, I must be honest enough to admit that since I do think we can talk about reality, I must reject the analytical model and continue to embrace the classical, Aristotelian structure, which means, practically speaking, studying being qua being and ending up at DS.

[Jac3510]

Because the above post was so long, I want to offer a very, very quick tl;dr to summarize the points to penfold:

1. Change in nature does not require change in God, for though God is the first cause, He is first in the sense of priority, not sequence. He is simultaneously the primary cause of all things in all history. He is above the causal chain, not a part of it. Thus, the volatile nature of the causal chain is not attributed to Him.

2. Analytical philosophy, the method penfold employs, forbids us to speak of reality. However, when penfold attempts to tell me what is true about philosophy, words, causal chains, God, DS, etc., he is speaking of reality. In short, his method allows him only to speak of the meaning of words, not to the actual thing to which they refer. As such, it necessarily leads to absolute skepticism since it can say nothing of reality. As such, since we do think we can talk about reality, we should simply reject the method. There is no reason not to study reality given the method I have first suggested, namely, being qua being.

3. If penfold is to be intellectually honest as he asks me to be, then he, along with everyone here, must admit that any person who adopts the analytical method he employs can't really talk about this issue, morality, or anything else. Further, he must admit that morality is absolutely subjective in the worst of ways since he cannot speak of morality at all, but on the label "morality" which he uses to define his own personal concepts.

Hopefully, that should cover it.

And HS, I'll be more than happy to get into arguments for God's existence. While DS is interesting, as I said in the first post, I mostly want this thread here for reference. I'm more than happy to continue talking about this as much as people like, but fundamentally I want to have a place where I can fall back to when the issue comes up, as it will again and again. I'll start a thread on general arguments for gods existence in the next day or so. I'll probably stay on the metaphysical route and present the argument for subsistent existence, since we have already laid the groundwork for it here. It is much harder than the others to explain, but, frankly, its the one that I find so absolutely compelling.

[Davin]

1. If God decides what morality is, then it doesn't follow that it is subjective. At best, it follows that it is subjective to Him, but since He is the One who decides order and creates reality, such morality would still be objective to us. You know that I don't hold to this divine command theory, but the point is that its failure is not that morality is subjective to us, but that it is arbitrary in God. There are enough problems in that, I think, to warrant rejecting it.

If a sentient being decides what is moral, then that morality is subjective. You have not shown where my logic does not follow, only said that it does not.
For morality to be truly objective, it cannot be decided upon, it would just be. You're essentially saying that gods morality is both subjective and objective.

2. If God cannot arbitrary change morality, it does not necessarily follow that God is subject to morality as if it had its existence independently of Him.

I didn't say arbitrary, this would be much easier if you responded to what I said and not add or remove anything from the statement you're responding to. The point is that if morality is not in gods control, just as objective morality must exist independent of any sentient being, then even god would be subject to that morality. If you're not willing to discuss what I'm saying, then just say so, but don't start responding to something else while pretending to respond to me.

Consider existence itself. God cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time, as I'm sure you would agree. Not even God can violate the law of non-contradiction. But does this make God subject to the law in the same manner that we are subject to morality?

Yes.

Of course not.

Hmm.

The law of non-contradiction is not something that exists independently of Him. It is rooted in the fact that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time. It is, in essence, a statement on the nature of existence in things. And yet God, under DS, is existence. The law of non-contradiction turns out to merely be an expression of God's nature, that is, of the fact that existence turns out not to be the sort of thing that both is and not is in the same way at the same time. That is the reality with which we are confronted.

It cannot be linked to reality without being able to provide evidence of it. You keep putting these statements in then tell me I can't use the philosophical tools necessary to determine what is real? This is definitely not the reality with which we are confronted, there is nothing in reality confronting us that would even point us in this direction.

God doesn't change that because it is what He is, yet He is not subjected to a law external to Himself. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true with morality.

Here you say god doesn't change, not that god can't change which is what I said. This is comparing different statements. Of course if god has the power to change the law but doesn't is no reason to assume that the god is subject to the law, however if the god can't change a law, then the god is subject to the law.

So again, we see that God is not the subject or morality. God is the standard by which morality is judged.

No, there is no way to judge morality from god, because there is nothing about god that we can be sure about.

The reference to "philosophically speaking" is merely pointing out that we are being very precise in our predication. I am perfectly correct in saying "God is good," for we can certainly attribute goodness to God in a popular sense of the concept of "attributing." But, when we are being very precise in our language, we know that we attribute nothing to God, and thus, "God is good" turns out in this context not to be true. Instead, we attribute to goodness the nature of God. "Good is what God is." It answers the question, "What is goodness?" Answer: "That which God is," not "that which He commands" or "that which He loves."

The problem with this statement is still the same, in the example you gave you can certainly say we can and can't do certain things, but I'm explaining my problems are with the concept itself and am not even going to go into the world of the concept until after these things are cleared up. "[W]e know that we attribute nothing to God" is not a good statement and is something I disagree on because there is no way to know this. However if you will refrain from statements like "[W]e know that we attribute nothing to God" and "That is the reality with which we are confronted" without actually backing that up with how we know and the evidence that it is the reality we are confronted with. Either stay purely philosophical or start providing evidence, but stop trying to be philosophical and linking it to reality without fulfilling the burden that that entails.

Just in this post you stated, "Good is what God is." That is attributing good to god. Like saying wet is what water is. However instead of logically following with "water is wet" you're stating that we cannot do that. To say that you can only attribute things one way and get no attributes from god is not something I can accept because in essence it's making god an attribute black hole where you can attribute anything to it, but get absolutely nothing from it. However if what you're saying is that nothing can be attributed to god, then this god is meaningless in that this god has no attributes, no definition and no meaning.

You are simply misreading me, Davin. "Good is what God is" is not attributing anything to God. It is attributing to goodness.

Now, since this is a thread on DS, I can answer your in more detail. Words can be used univocally, equivocally, or analogously. If univocal, then two words are used in two sentences in the same way. If equivocally, two words are used in two sentences in two different ways. But if DS is true, we cannot attribute anything to God properly speaking. This presents us with something of a problem, because if we use the word "good" to describe both us and God univocally, then we are attributing something to God, as you note. If, however, we are using it equivocally, then what we mean by "good" in God and "good" in us is different so that there is no connection between the two, leaving goodness totally unexplained for us! The third option which DS advocates take is analogy. What we mean is that goodness in the world corresponds to God in some similar manner. Imagine if you will a photograph of a house. The photo is not the house, but it is very similar to it, and even if you had never seen the house, but only the photo, you would know something very real about it. Then, when you encountered the house in real life, you would say, "Ah, yes, that is precisely what I expected it to be." To further demonstrate this, let me quote from an article on whether or not God has emotions. I strongly recommend reading all of it, but this point is particularly important:

Since creatures are effects of God they are like God in some respect.  But their likeness to God as creatures cannot consist in possessing the same nature or in being of the same genus.  Thus, according to the second view, even our concepts that properly apply to ourselves, understanding, willing and love, cannot be directly applied to God in the sense that they apply to ourselves.  Since our concepts of features found in ourselves present to our minds realities or natures that do not entail their existing, these realities or natures cannot be aspects of God’s necessarily existing essence.  Thus, to say that God understands or that God wills or loves, should not be taken to mean that what is presented to our mind by those concepts are intrinsic aspects of God.  Rather, such statements should be understood as being indirect or analogical:  God understands, should be understood somewhat as: creatures are related to God in a way that is in some respects similar to the way what is understood is related to one who understands, and God is in himself what it takes to be the term of that relation.  God wills creatures to be = contingent beings are related to God in a way that is in some respects similar to the way objects willed are related to a free agent, and God has in himself what is necessary to be the term of that relation.

So you see that when we say "Good is what God is," we are not predicating anything to God. We are speaking analogically of the essence of Goodness with reference to the nature of God.

I have no reason to accept this even just philosophically. All this means is that people are making things up and saying they are kind of like what they think god might be represented as. Too much uncertainty to be taken as meaning anything. Analogies are not useful for showing what is real or not because they require no link to reality.

But the positions are easily distinguished. Sight cannot be understood as a privation. Blindness can.

You link sight as analogous with good, however I'm linking sight as analogous with evil.

Goodness can never be understood as a privation. In every case of evil, we find on inspection that it is actually a lack of something else.

No, I don't. I can see evil as the presence of something and good as the lack of something just as you can see good as the presence of something and evil as the absence.

We cannot attribute to God that which is fundamentally non-existence, because non-existence is not a thing to be attributed. Or, to be more technical, we cannot ground non-existence in subsistent existence.

But we would then need to show that either good or evil is non-existent, before we can say that we can't link good or evil to a god that can only have things that exist attributed to it... analogously. Remember we are only attributing things to god through analogy, so it doesn't matter if the thing exists or not.

It is, of course, a matter of debate as to what exists and what does not in terms of virtues and ethics. Is hate a thing or is it just a lack of a thing? Through discussion, it isn't very hard to see that hatred is truly a lack of love and kindness, which implies, in turn, that love and kindness are things.

How is hatred truly the lack of kindness and not that kindness is truly the lack of hatred?

But even if we disagree, the point is that we can have a really productive discussion about this precisely because reality is the kind of thing that can be discussed productively.

Then why do you have objections to my wanting to have evidence and falsification before determining if a thing is real?

I brought no more theology into the discussion than you had, I had just made an opposite stand point to the concept you presented.

I didn't say you did. I am merely pointing out that we need to keep the order properly before us. The question is what exists so that we can draw out perfections that can point us to the nature of God (analogically, of course).

Analogous references to god are meaningless to me because analogies are not reliable representations of reality. Because analogies can be completely fictional and even make absolutely no sense at all.

Falsification in scientific theory means that a theory offers predictions about future observations. If those future observations do not line up with predictions, then theory, at least in principle, is falsified. In other words, scientific theories work on the principle A -> B -> C; if ~C then ~A. The closest thing we have to that in philosophy is a reduction to absurdity. We don't "falsify" philosophical concepts in the way that we falsify scientific theories. You can use the word "falsify" if you like, but it is an analogical usage at best and equivocal usage at worst.

Right, so what you're presenting cannot be falsified because it's analogy. At best you can say that god is an analogy for what really exists.

In any case, your test for truth is self refuting. It is called "verificationism." To say something is true if it can be verified was the position of A. J. Ayer, and it was dropped rather quickly for the simple reason that the statement itself "something can only be true if it can be verified" cannot be verified!

Somewhat funny.

This is why I made such a big deal about doing philosophy properly. It must done by studying being qua being. It will yield truth so long as the method is rigorous and the logic impeccable. So far, I've offered to no reason to believe that DS is true insofar as whether or not God actually exists. But if it can be shown that the concept of God is only coherent under DS, then DS must be true if God exists. That, I think, I have taken steps towards demonstrating.

But it's not coherent under DS, you've just removed all links of DS to reality by making all attributions analogous, and analogies are easily shown to be unreliable representations of reality. One can draw any analogy to anything, the only useful purpose of analogy is to explain a concept, not to show how something is true. So because you removed all ability to show that DS is true, there's no reason to continue except as an exercise in speculation.

[humblesmurph]

I hear a rumbling from the peanut gallery:  PROOF! PROOF! PROOF!PROOF!PROOF!PROOF!PROOF!PROOF!PROOF!

Seriously, I appreciate the education I am getting here.  Not trying to offend, just having fun.

[Jac3510]

Just wanted to make a very quick post, Davin. You're in good company with your objection. Long ago Duns Scotus made precisely the same argument you are making here, namely, that analogical language makes all talk of God meaningless. One of the things that is forever fascinating to me when it comes to philosophical debate is that people keep making the same arguments. I don't at all think that is a bad thing. It just goes to show that, I think, the subject matter being discussed isn't just random speculation, but actually the product of real investigation into actual reality.

If you get some time, I think you'd thoroughly enjoy Etienne Gilson's The Unity of Philosophical Experience. I've mentioned it before, but what you said comes right out of the historical debate, almost as if you have been studying Scotus. It just makes me very happy and deeply satisfied. I cannot tell from a strictly personal perspective how much I enjoy this and how much it makes me appreciate the rigorousness on both sides of this discussion. Very, very good.

edit:

No offense taken, HS. As I said before, I'll be sure to make a thread on the arguments for God's existence in the very near future--as in later tonight or perhaps tomorrow. This thread and the PW thread (which has become a thread about objective morality) has taken up a good deal of my time. Can you just see opening up another thread on God's actual existence? Goodness gracious, there's no way I could handle all three and give them the attention they deserve. But I think the PW thread is wrapping up, insofar as my position is there abundantly clear, so we can probably move on any time now.

As far as being let down, my advice is not to get your hopes up. I find the arguments deeply persuasive. My goal isn't to persuade with them, however. It would be merely to explain why I find belief more reasonable than disbelief, and in fact, a necessary consequence of the philosophical method I've adopted (that is, the study of being qua being).