Simplicity of Being

[Jac3510]

A statement which is an interpretation of reality.

This is all that needs to be responded to, because it is at the heart of our disagreement.

An interpretation of reality is still reality. For instance, if someone says, "How do you know anything is real? After all, it could just be an illusion!" the response would be, "Then, if nothing else, the illusion is real, even if what it represents is not."

You are saying that you interpret your own state of mind as being non-belief in truth, yet that interpretation is a reality as well to which truth necessarily corresponds. Epistemological nihilism isn't just practically impossible. It is logically impossible.

Again, you stated that if I could demonstrate that you can know anything for sure, then you would reject nihilism. I've shown that you can know for sure, at bare minimum, that truth exists as a correspondence with reality. Again, when you say, "I interpret my state of mind to mean that I lack belief in reality," you are making a truth statement about what you are actually doing, and that is known to be true.

[Sophus]

A statement which is an interpretation of reality.

This is all that needs to be responded to, because it is at the heart of our disagreement.

An interpretation of reality is still reality. For instance, if someone says, "How do you know anything is real? After all, it could just be an illusion!" the response would be, "Then, if nothing else, the illusion is real, even if what it represents is not."

You are saying that you interpret your own state of mind as being non-belief in truth, yet that interpretation is a reality as well to which truth necessarily corresponds. Epistemological nihilism isn't just practically impossible. It is logically impossible.

Again, you stated that if I could demonstrate that you can know anything for sure, then you would reject nihilism. I've shown that you can know for sure, at bare minimum, that truth exists as a correspondence with reality. Again, when you say, "I interpret my state of mind to mean that I lack belief in reality," you are making a truth statement about what you are actually doing, and that is known to be true.

You are taking that statement (put in bold) to mean that it can be known. I never said that. To borrow from another analogy made a while ago on this forum (apologies to whomever it was, I can't remember) you're viewing belief as a switch. That isn't the case. There are varying degrees of certainty one can have. A belief is not limited to being on or off. This position of mine, too, is open to question. I am not certain of it to the fullest degree.  

For fun:

We were certainly uncertain, at least I'm pretty sure I am.

[Jac3510]

Again, no one is claiming we can know "the truth that truth cannot be known".

You are taking that statement (put in bold) to mean that it can be known.

Which position do you hold?

[Sophus]

Again, no one is claiming we can know "the truth that truth cannot be known".

You are taking that statement (put in bold) to mean that it can be known.

Which position do you hold?

This question doesn't make sense. Both. A position held does not mean knowledge gained.

[penfold]

Dear Jac,

Sorry I took so long to get back to you. Have spent a few days indulging my vices.

Your post presents me with a problem in its sheer density. There is much I would love to discuss, however I am afraid I have had to pick and choose. I have decided to focus on the more theological end of the discussion first. I may post later on analytical philosophy, I am just worried that we are going to come stuck upon a fundamental disagreement about what Kant means by the phenomenal/noumenal and the synthetic. There is nothing in this universe more dull than a discussion about the niceties of Kant...

On to the problems of God. First analogy, I fear I have not been explaining myself well. I just wanted to pin down a few general claims you seem to have been making. I'll start with a quote from the OP:

The closest thing we can say to what He is, the closest we can define His essence, is this: God is Being. He is existence.

And one from your last reply to me:

It is true that we do not know what God is...

But therein lies the rub. You have defined God as Being. You have also defined God as unknowable. Thus Being is unkowable; here is the important bit; except by analogy:

We can, however, know what He is not, and as such, we can know that certain descriptions of Him are closer to representing whatever He must be than others.

Which leads me to...

[bold my own] Finally, as far as my own inverted intentionality, I appreciate the sparring, but if that were true, then no analogy would really be possible. It is true that we have to be rigorous in our recognition of what we do and don't apply to God and how we do so. The analogy of act, as I've said somewhere else, is the act of being. It is the most perfect of all acts, because that act gives reality to all other acts and perfections. Do we "be" though? No, so to speak of God as the 'act of being' as analogical to our own actions. From this, it should be all the more apparent why there can be no potentiality in God, because that would imply that God was, in some sense, both being and not being in the same way at the same time, which, of course, is impossible.

It was sparring and an unfair charge, yet a serious accusation lay behind it. The section I have put in bold is perceptive. However, it is not quite correct, it should read no analogy would ... be possible for making claims about an object, without the ability to compare the two..

This is not contentious:

Proposition 1: Analogy describes an object imperfectly.

Neither is this:

Proposition 2: Knowledge about disagreement between a description and and its object requires comparison of the two.

It follows that:

Conclusion 1: Without the ability to compare analogy to object we can never check the accuracy of the description; neither in terms of content, nor breadth, of inaccuracy [Following P1,P2]

Now let us add to it your claims about God (see above):

Proposition 3: God is Being.
Proposition 4: God can only be described by analogy.

It follows that:

Conclusion 2: We can never check the validity of a description of God [following C1,P4].
Conclusion 3:We can never  check the validity of a description of Being [Following C2,P3]

As far as I can see you have tried to dodge these conclusions by virtue of the following:

We can, however, know what He is not, and as such, we can know that certain descriptions of Him are closer to representing whatever He must be than others

.

You don't really explain the mechanism behind this other than by saying:

[Bold my own] Whatever conception you or I have in our head is wrong for the simple reason that it cannot capture the infinite. It is rather like being warned about a particularly spicy food and then tasting it, only to discover that it was far more spicy than you expected. Your original conception that it was spicy was true. Until you experienced it, however, the best you could do was an approximation.

The section I have put in bold can never happen in the case of God. We can never check the validity of our analogy. Imagine a man who has formed the mistaken impression that vanilla ice-cream was spicy. When I warn the man that the curry he is about to eat is spicy his analogical “approximation” would be totally in error. The only way to distinguish the useful analogy in your example to the completely erroneous one in my example is by reference to the experience of eating the curry. You can only know which analogy was accurate by checking and eating the curry. Which is exactly the conclusion I reached at C1.

In the case of God (and/or Being) we can never 'eat the curry', we cannot know if our analogical descriptions are as accurate as vindaloo or as wide of the mark as Ben and Jerry's. (sorry ... so sorry)

So, maybe you were not committing the fallacy of inverted intentionality; however the problems raised by analogical descriptions of God are profound. Without the ability to refer your descriptions of God carry no more weight than any other set of descriptions. [NB arguably that should read ... no more weight than any other set of non-contradictory descriptions]

To my mind, your theology/philosophy misses the point about God. God requires faith. To think that, with only ourselves as reference points, we can describe her is arrogant. If God is infinite, then she is utterly beyond our understanding. If a person really believed in her they would not worship. There is only one religious act and it is faith. (he, she, it(neuter), it(dyadic), all of the above, none of the above? How do I ascertain the best analogy, or do I just guess?)

Else you could come join us soulless folk who think the whole game's a sham ;-)



Onto creation ex nihilo and complexity:

You seem to have gotten yourself in to a bit of a muddle here:

[Bold my own] This gets into the actual meaning of creation ex nihilo. Properly understood, the doctrine teaches that the universe has an efficient and final cause, but not a formal or material cause. God, as Being, can simply will other things into Being. That is what we mean by saying that God is the First Cause.

As far as how He would do so, remember that all perfections are in Him virtually, though obtained and thus exemplified, though more eminently than in us, since in Him they are all unified whereas in us they are diversified. He is certainly capable of willing a nature into existence that has any of these perfections He so desires. Yet it cannot logically be that any of these creations would be simple, because none of them would be pure being. All created beings will receive their existence from outside of themselves, and since they all receive their being, all will be limited. As such, all will be a combination of potentiality and actuality, meaning that all will express their perfections in a limited and diverse way, and this is the thing we call complexity.

The biggest problem with the above, as I see it, is that you start with a basic monist ontology: “God is Being”. Yet by the end you are talking of “created beings” who “receive being from outside of themselves”, and are “combinations of potentiality and actuality”; which sounds awfully like a dualist ontology.

That inherent tension aside you have still ducked my question about complexity. Your initial premise is that: God is simple and undivided Being.

Yet you say there are “created beings” who have division within them (ie complexity). But if all Being is God, then that would entail God has division (ie complexity) within herself! Which is a contradiction with the initial premise.

If not then "created beings" must be outside of God (so she can remain undivided), this entails that there is something outside of God which has ontological status. If that is the case then there is division (ie complexity) within Being itself ('inGod ontos' and 'outGod ontos' groups). This also is a contradiction with the initial premise!

Am I missing something really obvious here?

peace


PS I am the last person who should be criticising another for excessive verbosity; however there are so many technical terms in what you write that I sometimes worry I miss your meaning. University was five years and a lot of drugs hence... Perhaps, if you reply, you could help me out a bit by cutting back on the jargon?

[Jac3510]

Hey penfold,

Thanks again for the response, and no worries about the time involved. Thankfully, I think that a reply here can be fairly straightforward, as there are just two small issues that need to be clarified. Part of the problem is the difficulty in addressing this issue given the constraints of language. The two issues are what can be predicated of God and how that effects creation ex nihilo.

1. Put bluntly, we can have no positive knowledge of God. The best we have in terms of positive statements are approximations, and, as you note, there is no way via positive language to confirm the degree to which those approximations are accurate. The analogy is not so much to understand God but to understand ourselves. In the strictest sense, if we could understand God (which we cannot), we would see that what we have is not knowledge, it is just like knowledge. What we have is not power. It is just like power. By analogy, think of a statue and a man. The statue is like the man; the man is not like the statue. We are like God in some metaphorical sense. God is not like us. The likeness, then, is one way.

This is true of every predicate, including Being. Even when I describe God as pure being, I am speaking only analogically. Our being is only like His; again, if we could understand God, we would say that what we have is not being, it is just like being. We can't pinpoint that analogy because we don't know both. God does. It is enough for us to recognize that we can't know anything positively about God, and yet all of our perfections must be united and exemplified without limit in this being.

I am not arguing that we can know what God is. I am arguing that we can know what He is not. That is not simplicity, but it is the basis from which we begin, for we can start by denying all divisions of any kind. Many people don't like negative theology. I am afraid it is all we are left with. It is very meaningful to say that God is not a body, that God does not have emotions, that God has no potential. These are not analogical statements. They mean exactly what they say.

Few people appreciate the radicalism of all this. But there are two ways to proceed in light of it. Let me quote Gilson on this:

That God is infinitely above anything we can think and say about Him, was a universally accepted doctrine in mediaeval theology. St. Thomas Aquinas had made it the very foundation of his doctrine. We do not know what God is, but only what He is not, so that we know Him better as we more clearly see that he is infinitely different from everything else. This principle, however, can be used in two different ways. We can, with St. Thomas Aquinas, posit it at the beginning and at the end of our theology; it will then act both as a general qualification applying to all theological statements, and as an invitation to transcend theology, once we are through with it, by entering the depth of mystical life. Yet, between his initial statements that God is, strictly speaking, unknowable, and his ultimate endeavour to experience by love that which surpasses human understanding, St. Thomas Aquinas never forgets, that if we do not know God, the reason is not that God is obscure, but rather that He is blinding light. The whole theology of St. Thomas points to the supreme intelligibility of what lies hidden in the mystery of God. Now, if God is intelligible in Himself, what little we know about Him may be almost nothing, but it is not nothing, and it is infinitely more important than all the rest. In short, even when St. Thomas Aquinas uses reason as a means to a mystical end, he does not use it in a mystical way. . . . Not so with Eckhart. Fully convinced that if God is unknowable for us He must be unknowable in Himself, the German theologian was bound to use reason as a mystical means to a mystical end (

The Unity of Philosophical Experience, 86-87).[/list]
Don't, then, mistake my insistence on analogical language with a belief that we can have true knowledge of God. The best we can say is that, in some sense that we cannot penetrate, that which is in us called (say) wisdom is in some found in God in an unlimited way. This is true knowledge in that it is a true statement that we acknowledge. It is not meaningless. It is only to say that we cannot pinpoint the nature of that analogy. More importantly, however, we can certainly know what He is not, and by denying Him what He is not, we remove every false picture of Him in our mind until we are left with the naked blinding light (in Gilson's words).


2. Knowing that the statement "God is Being" is merely analogical, there is no problem between a monist and dualist ontology. If we are being, it is only in some way analogous to His being. God is not Being, strictly speaking (though we can, and must, use the term when talking from the human side). God is the cause of being, here, understood to be that which makes you and me real.

Put differently, that which makes you and me real is not the same thing as that which makes God real. That which makes us real is caused by that which makes God real; that which makes God real, whatever it is, is what it means to be God. That which makes us real is not what it means to be us. Thus, in God, that which makes God real is identical to Himself, whereas that which makes us real is added to what we are to make us things. We are composites, and are thus limited with potential. He is not. He cannot be.

Let me add one final note here as I finish up.

Supposing we could understand God in Himself, there would be absolutely no way to get from God to creation, as if creation could be deduced from the concept of God as a First Cause can be deduced from the concept of human existence. From God's side, in Himself, the language would be positive. He knows what He is and what we are and perceives the analogy perfectly. Yet He Himself is complete and was not required to create. Our existence is nothing more than an act of His free will. From our side, outside of Him, all knowledge of Him is negative and all language is analogical. We know not what He is. Since we know what we are, and we know that our existence is ultimately rooted in Him (as the proof in the other thread shows), He is required by us. We are not required by Him.

We should not, think, then that this whole enterprise of theology proper is to tell us what God is, because every concept of "is" that we have is born out of the sensible world. Theology proper is to help us understand what He is not. It teaches us how to train our thinking so that we can think about God properly. After realizing His necessity for our existence, His simplicity for our proper thought is the next step.

[Jac3510]

Again, no one is claiming we can know "the truth that truth cannot be known".

You are taking that statement (put in bold) to mean that it can be known.

Which position do you hold?

This question doesn't make sense. Both. A position held does not mean knowledge gained.

So your position, as I said before, is that you don't know whether or not truth can be known, and you object because I take the position that truth can be known. As such, you are essentially asking me (again) to prove that truth can be known.

Again, your "position" is self-contradictory. You are saying, "My position is that I don't have a position."

If you take a position, then it is true that you take the position, meaning there is truth and that it is known. If you say you don't know whether you hold a position, then you are declaring the truth of your agnosticism with regard to your position, meaning that there is truth that you know. The moment you declare your position--even if you qualify it by saying it is only an interpretation of what you think your position might be--you are making a knowledge claim.

A final silly example:

"I don't know anything, and not even that" actually means, "I know (I don't know anything, not even that." So you modify it and say, "I don't know that I know (I don't know anything, not even that)." But that really means, "I know (I don't know that I know (I don't know anything, not even that))."

The problem with your "position" is that you are trying to operate from nothing, which cannot be. Every statement is something. It is a statement. Every position, every interpretation, every thought, is something. Therefore, truth is inevitable, and it is inevitable that you know it. Descarte proved this forever ago. I think, therefore I am. More specifically, I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am. If I doubt, then it is I who do the doubting, for if there is not an I to do the doubting, there  is no I. The moment you declare your position (or lackthereof), you make a truth claim and declare your knowledge of it.

Epistemological nihilism is internally incoherent and completely irrational.

[penfold]

Jac,

Interesting reply. As you may have noticed, I am ill-fit for conversation by interwebz;  I like to take my time; so thank you for your patience. Thank you also for being so precise and clear in what you wrote; really appreciated it.

So onto content: I think your position contains some profound, possibly fatal, weaknesses.

[...] ...we can have no positive knowledge of God. The best we have in terms of positive statements are approximations, and, as you note, there is no way via positive language to confirm the degree to which those approximations are accurate.

I'm glad you accepted the central point that we cannot use analogy to gain positive knowledge about God. What puzzled me was what followed:

[BOLD MY OWN]

...By analogy, think of a statue and a man. The statue is like the man; the man is not like the statue. We are like God in some metaphorical sense. God is not like us. The likeness, then, is one way.

This is true of every predicate, including Being. Even when I describe God as pure being, I am speaking only analogically. Our being is only like His; again, if we could understand God, we would say that what we have is not being, it is just like being. We can't pinpoint that analogy because we don't know both. God does. It is enough for us to recognize that we can't know anything positively about God, and yet all of our perfections must be united and exemplified without limit in this being.

The problem with the above is that it begs the question. How can we know that 'our perfections' are 'united and exemplified' in God, given that you 'can have no positive knowledge' about God?

"Perfection" is a very telling term. Nothing we experience is perfect, however we can extend a principle to conceptual perfection. To give an obvious example: no circle ever drawn has an exact ratio of its diameter to circumference of pi; yet we understand that the perfect circle would. So in that sense I have no problem with the idea that we (being imperfect creatures) can conceive of perfection.

What you cannot establish is that God in any manner is perfect... (Trivially there is a problem here that to do so requires you make a positive claim about God. Something you concede is impossible!) More generally without the ability of making positive claims about God you cannot even grant the premise that an anthropocentric examination has any agreement at all with God; a claim you implicitly are relying upon (see passage of quote in bold). We agree anthropocentric analogies of God cannot make positive claims; but if follows for exactly the same reasons(ie lack of reference) that we cannot use theocentric analogies to make positive claims about humans!

As before your solution to the above problems rests in the discipline of negative theology and that is what I really wanted to discuss in this post:

Negative Theology

I am not arguing that we can know what God is. I am arguing that we can know what He is not. That is not simplicity, but it is the basis from which we begin, for we can start by denying all divisions of any kind. Many people don't like negative theology. I am afraid it is all we are left with. It is very meaningful to say that God is not a body, that God does not have emotions, that God has no potential. These are not analogical statements. They mean exactly what they say.

There are two points I want to make about this. First I want to make a general point about the limitations of negative theology in terms of what qualifies as a negative proposition. Second I want to discuss why the whole method of negative theology rests upon a bare assumption that God is logically limited.

I accept that a claim of the form 'God has emotions' is hopelessly flawed (for the reasons I outlined in my last post). What I cannot accept that a claim of the form 'God does not have emotions' is any less flawed. Your position is that such negative claims are “very meaningful”; so let's examine that.

To simplify your claim is that while a proposition [P]is not meaningful as a description of God, the negative of the same proposition [~P] can be. So you must be proposing that there is some fundamental difference between P and ~P (at the very least in terms of meaning). What then of ~(~P)? Obviously by the rule of double negatives ~(~P) is the same as P. However that is extraordinary; the negative of a proposition [~P] can lead to a meaningful description of God, however the negative of that [~(~P)] is meaningless!

Let us take your example of 'emotions':

P: God has emotions [you say is meaningless.]
~P: God does not have emotions [you say is very meaningful.]
~(~P): It is not the case that God does not have emotions [your position entails this is meaningless.]

But what of the following set of propositions:

Q: God is emotionless
~Q: God is not emotionless
~(~Q): It is not the case that God is not emotionless.

As you will have noticed Q and ~P mean the same thing. So let us recap; you claim the following have no meaning: P, ~Q, ~(~P). The following have meaning: Q, ~P, ~(~Q)... Hence your claim is “very meaningful” to say that God does not have emotions.

So what of a counterclaim of the form that the following have no meaning: Q, ~P, ~(Q); while the following have meaning: P, ~Q, ~(~P). Hence it is “very meaningful” to say that God is not emotionless.

It seems to me that there is no way of distinguishing which of the two sets of claims best represent “negative theology”. Both reach conclusions that God is not SOMETHING. However they disagree as to what that something is (Q vs P). To demonstrate the validity of negative theology you must explain why the claim ~P is meaningful while the claim ~Q is not. (Obviously they cannot both be meaningful as ~Q is identical to P, which would entail contradiction)

The root of the problem, as I see it, is that no claim is inherently negative. You might argue that the claim 'has emotions' is positive, while 'is emotionless' is negative. However that is interpretive. 'Emotionless' may well be interpreted as negative in relation to a human being (something they lack), however 'emotionless' is interpreted as positive in relation to a lizard (telling us something positive about their neurology). The fact is whether a description like 'emotionless' is positive or negative is indisputably interpretive; and when the subject of that description is unknowable in a strict sense, as God is, the problem is hopelessly compounded.

The conclusion is that negative theology suffers just as profoundly from lack of reference as positive theology. The reason for this is that whether a proposition is positive or negative is interpretive; any positive claim can be interpreted negatively, and vice versa.

I want to be really clear on this. The problem of analogy is that without reference we cannot discern weather one particular claim about God is of any more/less value than any other. This was the point of my last post. What I have shown above (I think) is that this problem does not become any less profound just because you chose negative rather than positive descriptions. Essentially you have no way of demonstrating that your descriptions of God, be they positive or negative, are any more/less accurate than any other descriptions of God

In this sense you are absolutely wrong to say:

The best we can say is that, in some sense that we cannot penetrate, that which is in us called (say) wisdom is in some found in God in an unlimited way. This is true knowledge in that it is a true statement that we acknowledge. It is not meaningless. It is only to say that we cannot pinpoint the nature of that analogy.

It is not “only to say that we cannot pinpoint the nature of that analogy”; rather what I have shown is that we cannot ever tell if the analogy has ANY relationship to God. Thus as all statements of God are, in truth-value terms, equal. Which means that any such statements ARE meaningless.

So let's take a closer look at the methodology of negative theology:

More importantly, however, we can certainly know what He is not, and by denying Him what He is not, we remove every false picture of Him in our mind until we are left with the naked blinding light (in Gilson's words).

It seems to me that you are claiming that through a process of negative theology we can resolve a picture of God (Gilson's naked blinding light). It is actually fairly simple to show a rather surprising conclusion to this way of thinking. That conclusion is that, for negative theology to work, God must be logically finite!

The general mechanism of negative theology is that we start in a position of complete ignorance about God. We then can 'narrow down' by saying what God is not. Thus we narrow down the possible truth about God.

Let us take a problem. You are told that there is a whole number and if you guess it correctly
you will be rewarded. However you can ask for as much information as you want, but only of the form “the number is not n”. So you might be told “the number is not 3”. The question is whether this information will ever allow you to guess the number (or at least work out which numbers it could be).

The answer depends upon the nature of the problem. If the number you are having to guess is between, say 0 and 100, then information does indeed help you. If you get told that “the number is not 3”, that increases the probability of it being any other number.

On the other hand if the number you are having to guess is any whole number then the information, no matter how much you get, will never help you. This is because there are infinite numbers! Just because “the number is not 3” that does not help us at all, because there are still infinite numbers it could be.

So back to God. If negative theology of the form Gilson is promoting works then God must be logically finite. In other words there must be a limited range of possibilities to chose from for negative theology to 'resolve' the picture. If God is unlimited in possibility then negative information tells us nothing as there will always be infinite other possibilities. This renders negative theology a complete waste of time!

Moreover as we have no direct access to God (see our discussion over the last few posts), even if there was a limited range of possibilities for God, we could not know that. I am afraid the only thing I can say is that negative theology's method is ultimately bogus.

peace

[Davin]

Oh bugger, I missed you're response to my post, probably because you didn't even pretend to address it this time.

Davin, I can't make myself any clearer. You simply refuse to accept the distinction between epistemology and ontology, between statements on the second order and statements on the first order.

Yeah like these epistemological statements that you made:

"That is the reality with which we are confronted."
"we know that we attribute nothing to God"
"Sight is good because it is the intended function of the eye."

All I wanted was a clear rule for both of us to follow: remain philosophical or we use reality to show where the other is wrong, however you wanted to both make statements about reality and also prevent me from using reality to show you that you're wrong. That's very disingenuous. All I wanted to do was to make sure we're playing by the same rules and you had a heavy objection to me using reality to show you the concept wouldn't work, so by the same rule, you can't use statements about reality for your concept.

I am describing a concept.

I was fine with that, if you kept it as a concept instead of invoking reality then trying to prevent me from doing the same.

That concept is real by definition.

Depends on your definition of "real." I can certainly agree that it's a real concept, but I can't agree that what the concept represents is real.

Perhaps it is wrong, but it is the concept nonetheless.

A concept which is inconsistent just in itself.

Once that concept is defined, we can test to see if it is real in the first intention.

Don't bother, it doesn't make sense as just a concept.

Now, if you want to develop your own concept of goodness, simplicity, god, etc., then feel free. While you are at it, be sure to point out its necessary correlations as I have been doing in this thread with my position. I won't even ask you to prove that it is "real," because I'll be sure to keep in mind that you are developing a concept for future testing.

This would be a meaningless thing to do for this discussion.

If you have any issues with the concept of simplicity as stated in this thread, just point them out, and I'll be more than happy to deal with them. Until that time, there's nothing else to say.

Yeah, still these ones:

Does this version of god have control to change its rules of morality if it chose to do so?

Can this version of god violate the law of non-contradiction if it chose to?

Is darkness a thing, Davin, or is it a lack of light?

Depends on the wavelengths you're attempting to see in. Right now in some slow moving wavelengths, you can see the early universe where everything was very hot which makes the sky very bright. Really nothing lacks light, even unmoving walls eight stories underground are shedding infrared wavelengths. So which light and darkness are you talking about? Maybe you're talking about light and darkness as subjectively through a humans perception of the wavelengths through the eyes, in that case darkness is just less light. Too little light is not good because then we can't see, but too much light is worse because it can damage the eyes to never see again. So in this analogy too much light is worse than too little light because it causes much more damage to the eyes. Unless you consider a person going blind as a good thing, then this analogy shows that the more good there is the more damage it causes, while if there is much less good, then no real damage is done.

Is cold a thing, Davin, or is it a lack of heat?

Cold isn't the lack of heat, in fact we haven't found anything that lacks heat at all. We have talked about absolute zero where the particles stop moving completely, but never have we ever seen anything like that. Cold is a subjective term in that it's cold to you. In this analogy does that mean that evil is merely a subjective term to something that has less good than we find comfortable? What about things that are too hot, would that not also be applicable to this analogy that too much good is bad just as too little good?

What if hatred was the intended relationship between people? What makes that "obviously not the case."? What if something else was the intended relationship between people? What if there is no intended relationship between people? Why should I accept that kindness is the intended relationship over these other options?

How do the following analogies not apply to this divinely simple thing that can only have attributes assigned to it through analogy?:

"A frozen star is what god is."
"Contradiction is what god is."
"Purely fictional is what god is."
"Non-sentient is what god is."
"Nothing is what god is."

[Jac3510]

Jac,

Interesting reply. As you may have noticed, I am ill-fit for conversation by interwebz;  I like to take my time; so thank you for your patience. Thank you also for being so precise and clear in what you wrote; really appreciated it.

Let me just take a minute to toot your horn, not that that is your intention, but I think outstanding replies should be recognized as such. What I have genuinely appreciated above all about our conversation is the force with which you require absolute clarity. You have a very sharp mind that does an excellent job of pinpointing "mush." Whether or not we ever agree, you are refining my language, and for that, I am deeply grateful.

On a personal note, I don't know if you get the chance to discuss these kinds of things in real life (I much prefer that format myself). Unfortunately, I have precious little of that, being, as I am, surrounded by theologians. The one philosopher I do get to spend my time with specializes in ethics rather than metaphysics. In any case, again, very good discussion. On, then, to where I think we still disagree. I will line-by-line this post, because there are several major points I want to be sure are covered.

So onto content: I think your position contains some profound, possibly fatal, weaknesses.

. . .

I'm glad you accepted the central point that we cannot use analogy to gain positive knowledge about God. What puzzled me was what followed:

. . .

The problem with the above is that it begs the question. How can we know that 'our perfections' are 'united and exemplified' in God, given that you 'can have no positive knowledge' about God?

We make these statements because they are logically necessary to make, and I would propose that this is not that uncommon in terms of human knowledge. For instance, who among us (humanity in general) actually understands quantum mechanics or general relativity in the experiential sense? I would submit that none of us do. We can make accurate predictions, but the statement "rotating a spin-1/2 particle by 360 degrees does not bring it back to the same quantum state, but to the state with the opposite quantum phase; this is detectable, in principle, with interference experiments. To return the particle to its exact original state, one needs a 720 degree rotation" (from Wikipedia) is mind bending to say the least, as are concepts such as singularities and event horizons. We know these things are true in some sense, and we can make accurate mathematical predictions, but these are things that we can have no actual experience of anymore than we can any concept of being in two places at the same time (which, as you know, is also found in QM).

By "positive knowledge," as you know, I am talking about what God essentially is. Let me give you a practical example. What is existence? You can't answer that. Even when you picture it, if you try to penetrate that concept, you find there is nothing in it. But is "existence" a meaningless word? Of course not! Existence is a brute fact, and thus, it is too primal to explain. All things are explained by it.

The issue here is one of conceptualization. Just because we cannot properly conceive of something does not mean that our statements are meaningless. Again, there are many things we can't properly conceive of that we simply represent using concepts or words. Those things are true in a way we cannot comprehend, but that does not change the fact that we understand that in some sense, they are true.

So the question is simply and totally what must be logically true given what we observe around us. This is important. We don't understand God in Himself. To the extent we understand Him, it is by a study of His effects.

"Perfection" is a very telling term. Nothing we experience is perfect, however we can extend a principle to conceptual perfection. To give an obvious example: no circle ever drawn has an exact ratio of its diameter to circumference of pi; yet we understand that the perfect circle would. So in that sense I have no problem with the idea that we (being imperfect creatures) can conceive of perfection.

What you cannot establish is that God in any manner is perfect... (Trivially there is a problem here that to do so requires you make a positive claim about God. Something you concede is impossible!) More generally without the ability of making positive claims about God you cannot even grant the premise that an anthropocentric examination has any agreement at all with God; a claim you implicitly are relying upon (see passage of quote in bold). We agree anthropocentric analogies of God cannot make positive claims; but if follows for exactly the same reasons(ie lack of reference) that we cannot use theocentric analogies to make positive claims about humans!

"Perfection" is a technical term that does not mean "without flaw" in this context. It is a translation of the Greek word entelecheia, which is itself a combination of three words: en meaning "in," telos meaning "purpose," and echein meaning "to have." The idea of an entelecheia is to have within one's self its purpose or end. Aristotle's example was sight in the eye. I am sure you would agree that seeing is not the eye, and the eye is not seeing. The eye, rather, is that which sees. The act is distinguished from the thing that does the acting. Both are effects. The eye is an effect of a very complicated biological process that created it; seeing is an effect created by a very complicated biological process in the eye. As effects, they are different, but all effects are primarily caused by the First Cause or Prime Mover and thus pre-exist virtually in It.

So the perfection of the eye is seeing. One of the perfections of mankind is knowledge. If a being is not capable of knowledge (not because of physical defect), then it cannot be properly said to be human, because that is part of its essential properties. I am sure that you understand Aristotle's form/matter distinction, and as such, you know that form is that which a thing is and as such, in it are all latent powers the thing will exemplify in existence. The eye sees, for instance, because the form "eye" has the perfection "to see." Of course, such a perfection will be exemplified in a limited sense, because the eye itself is a limited being. But in God, such a perfection would be exemplified without limitation, since there can be no logical limitation on pure being (if there could, it would introduce potentiality, and thus, there would be required another cause to explain it; by this, we know that there is a First Cause that is pure act, having in it no potential).

So when we speak of God's perfection, we are stating analogically that all perfections exist in God united and unlimited. It is of the utmost importance to remember that we are not speaking equivocally and certainly not univocally. We are speaking analogically. We are making an ontological claim, not an epistemological one. We cannot know what this means, only that it is.

As before your solution to the above problems rests in the discipline of negative theology and that is what I really wanted to discuss in this post:

Negative Theology

I am not arguing that we can know what God is. I am arguing that we can know what He is not. That is not simplicity, but it is the basis from which we begin, for we can start by denying all divisions of any kind. Many people don't like negative theology. I am afraid it is all we are left with. It is very meaningful to say that God is not a body, that God does not have emotions, that God has no potential. These are not analogical statements. They mean exactly what they say.

There are two points I want to make about this. First I want to make a general point about the limitations of negative theology in terms of what qualifies as a negative proposition. Second I want to discuss why the whole method of negative theology rests upon a bare assumption that God is logically limited.

I accept that a claim of the form 'God has emotions' is hopelessly flawed (for the reasons I outlined in my last post). What I cannot accept that a claim of the form 'God does not have emotions' is any less flawed. Your position is that such negative claims are “very meaningful”; so let's examine that.

To simplify your claim is that while a proposition [P]is not meaningful as a description of God, the negative of the same proposition [~P] can be. So you must be proposing that there is some fundamental difference between P and ~P (at the very least in terms of meaning). What then of ~(~P)? Obviously by the rule of double negatives ~(~P) is the same as P. However that is extraordinary; the negative of a proposition [~P] can lead to a meaningful description of God, however the negative of that [~(~P)] is meaningless!

Let us take your example of 'emotions':

P: God has emotions [you say is meaningless.]
~P: God does not have emotions [you say is very meaningful.]
~(~P): It is not the case that God does not have emotions [your position entails this is meaningless.]

But what of the following set of propositions:

Q: God is emotionless
~Q: God is not emotionless
~(~Q): It is not the case that God is not emotionless.

As you will have noticed Q and ~P mean the same thing. So let us recap; you claim the following have no meaning: P, ~Q, ~(~P). The following have meaning: Q, ~P, ~(~Q)... Hence your claim is “very meaningful” to say that God does not have emotions.

So what of a counterclaim of the form that the following have no meaning: Q, ~P, ~(Q); while the following have meaning: P, ~Q, ~(~P). Hence it is “very meaningful” to say that God is not emotionless.

It seems to me that there is no way of distinguishing which of the two sets of claims best represent “negative theology”. Both reach conclusions that God is not SOMETHING. However they disagree as to what that something is (Q vs P). To demonstrate the validity of negative theology you must explain why the claim ~P is meaningful while the claim ~Q is not. (Obviously they cannot both be meaningful as ~Q is identical to P, which would entail contradiction)

The root of the problem, as I see it, is that no claim is inherently negative. You might argue that the claim 'has emotions' is positive, while 'is emotionless' is negative. However that is interpretive. 'Emotionless' may well be interpreted as negative in relation to a human being (something they lack), however 'emotionless' is interpreted as positive in relation to a lizard (telling us something positive about their neurology). The fact is whether a description like 'emotionless' is positive or negative is indisputably interpretive; and when the subject of that description is unknowable in a strict sense, as God is, the problem is hopelessly compounded.

The conclusion is that negative theology suffers just as profoundly from lack of reference as positive theology. The reason for this is that whether a proposition is positive or negative is interpretive; any positive claim can be interpreted negatively, and vice versa.

I want to be really clear on this. The problem of analogy is that without reference we cannot discern weather one particular claim about God is of any more/less value than any other. This was the point of my last post. What I have shown above (I think) is that this problem does not become any less profound just because you chose negative rather than positive descriptions. Essentially you have no way of demonstrating that your descriptions of God, be they positive or negative, are any more/less accurate than any other descriptions of God

In this sense you are absolutely wrong to say:

The best we can say is that, in some sense that we cannot penetrate, that which is in us called (say) wisdom is in some found in God in an unlimited way. This is true knowledge in that it is a true statement that we acknowledge. It is not meaningless. It is only to say that we cannot pinpoint the nature of that analogy.

It is not “only to say that we cannot pinpoint the nature of that analogy”; rather what I have shown is that we cannot ever tell if the analogy has ANY relationship to God. Thus as all statements of God are, in truth-value terms, equal. Which means that any such statements ARE meaningless.

As I implied above, there is a distinction between a meaningless statement and one in which we cannot comprehend the meaning. To say, "God is simple" is not meaningless. It simply gives us no positive knowledge. It is a shorthand way of denying things about God. I think that one distinction answers most of, if not all, of this objection.

When I say our statements don't yield any knowledge about God, I am making an epistemological claim. They don't let us know anything because we can't comprehend them. That doesn't make them meaningless. Further, just because we cannot comprehend them does not mean that we cannot compare them with other statements. You are perfectly correct that "God has no emotions" can be recast as "It is false that it is false that God has no emotions." So we see two major points:

1. Negative statements are negative, not because they are asserting something we know about God, but because they are denying something univocal about God. If you were to ask me in very strict philosophical language, "Does God exist?" I would say "No, because you using the word exist univocally to how you think of it with me." But obviously I believe God "exists." No statement from our side can be made about God univocally, not even negative statements. So negative theology is primarily focused on denying univocal statements.

2.  But, of course, it goes further. Negative statements valuable in that they can be compared with other statements, whether or not we comprehend their meaning. So let us take the example whether or not God has a body. Aquinas argues that God cannot have a body because bodies introduce potentiality, and yet potentiality is denied in God. Yet how can he make such a statement if nothing can be asserted of God? Plainly, because even though we cannot understand the reference to analogical language, we can understand them proportionally to one another.

Let me explain that further. In strict analogy, two is to four ans four is to eight. This is properly proportional. There are also improper proportions, as in, "Lindbergh is an eagle." Here, the property of "flying" is improportionately attributed to Lindbergh, because this statement is short for, "Lindbergh is to flying as an eagle is to flying." Now, here is the important point: when making analogical statements, whether or not we perceive the proportion, we can compare them to one another so long as we know that the proportions between such statements are proper. In other words, the way in which being exists in God is proportional to the way in which sight or wisdom do. As such, even though we cannot compare the statements against God Himself, we can compare them against one another since they are fixed, proportionately so, in the same being. As such, I can deny a body in God both univocally (I know that God does not have a body in the sense that we do) and analogically (I know that God does not have a body in any analogical sense), precisely because I can compare this to the statement that in God there is no potentiality. Certainly, that last statement is analogical, and I do not comprehend its meaning; yet I do understand that the statement "God has no body" is proportionately true or false to the statement "In God there is no potentiality," and sense I know the latter statement to be true (in some sense I cannot fathom), I know the former statement must be false in any sense I can fathom it.

So let's take a closer look at the methodology of negative theology:

More importantly, however, we can certainly know what He is not, and by denying Him what He is not, we remove every false picture of Him in our mind until we are left with the naked blinding light (in Gilson's words).

It seems to me that you are claiming that through a process of negative theology we can resolve a picture of God (Gilson's naked blinding light). It is actually fairly simple to show a rather surprising conclusion to this way of thinking. That conclusion is that, for negative theology to work, God must be logically finite!

The general mechanism of negative theology is that we start in a position of complete ignorance about God. We then can 'narrow down' by saying what God is not. Thus we narrow down the possible truth about God.

Let us take a problem. You are told that there is a whole number and if you guess it correctly
you will be rewarded. However you can ask for as much information as you want, but only of the form “the number is not n”. So you might be told “the number is not 3”. The question is whether this information will ever allow you to guess the number (or at least work out which numbers it could be).

The answer depends upon the nature of the problem. If the number you are having to guess is between, say 0 and 100, then information does indeed help you. If you get told that “the number is not 3”, that increases the probability of it being any other number.

On the other hand if the number you are having to guess is any whole number then the information, no matter how much you get, will never help you. This is because there are infinite numbers! Just because “the number is not 3” that does not help us at all, because there are still infinite numbers it could be.

So back to God. If negative theology of the form Gilson is promoting works then God must be logically finite. In other words there must be a limited range of possibilities to chose from for negative theology to 'resolve' the picture. If God is unlimited in possibility then negative information tells us nothing as there will always be infinite other possibilities. This renders negative theology a complete waste of time!

Moreover as we have no direct access to God (see our discussion over the last few posts), even if there was a limited range of possibilities for God, we could not know that. I am afraid the only thing I can say is that negative theology's method is ultimately bogus.

peace

When I say that negative theology helps us clarify our thinking on what God is, I am, of course, being a bit metaphorical. There are an infinite number of misconceptions about God. To correct a hundred million still leaves us with an infinite number of misconceptions. Here we come to a common question philosophers debate - what does an infinity mean, anyway? You can ask silly questions like "Infinity minus one equals what? Infinity! Therefore, infinity minus one equals infinity" which would seem to be logically contradictory.

This, I think, is nothing more than a recognition of the fact that we are not infinite. Let me step outside of pure philosophy a second and tell you something I just believe. I believe that we will spend an eternity "getting to know God," and for all of eternity, we will get to know Him more and more, yet for all of eternity, we will never be closer to understanding His nature than we are now. To use a number example, if you have no money and I give you five dollars, does the fact that I can give you one more for eternity mean that you don't have five dollars? And does that mean that the six, and then seven, and then eight, and so on that you have is not more than it was previously?

Again, all this rests on the distinction between a statement being meaningful and being comprehensible. Just because I learn what God is not, and thereby have a clearer picture of what He is, it does not follow that I am any closer to the infinity than I was before. And yet still less does it follow that I have the same amount of knowledge that I had before. I certainly have more knowledge about God now than I did ten years ago. Relative to God, I don't, because all things relative to infinity are infinity, but relative to myself, I know a great deal more.

Do take your time on these replies. I am enjoying this immensely as it is helping me better phrase the issues myself. Further, it helps me understand better the objections people do and will raise.

[penfold]

Jac,

Thank you for your kind words. I too have been enjoying our discussion; and (much as I hate to admit it) you have forced me into reconsidering much of my old gut reaction to philosophical realism. There is far more subtlety to it than I had previously credited. (Though I still think your theology is nuts!)

It is a great strength of this forum (from the admittedly little I've seen thus far), is that people here seem to both really read what others write and respect each other for their input. I am a refugee from another 'atheist forum' where a depressing number of the denizens poisoned the souls of all involved with their barely concealed hatred for, and outright aggression towards, those who disagreed with them. More than once I got on the wrong side of these trolls and always found it a surprisingly upsetting experience. (Though the irony of trolls calling people 'idiots' always holds a certain appeal â€" I just found it harder to see the funny side when they direct their ire at me!) So, here's to civilised discourse.

But onto more important things: [NB In the following quotes the bold is my own]

By "positive knowledge," as you know, I am talking about what God essentially is. Let me give you a practical example. What is existence? You can't answer that. Even when you picture it, if you try to penetrate that concept, you find there is nothing in it. But is "existence" a meaningless word? Of course not! Existence is a brute fact, and thus, it is too primal to explain. All things are explained by it.

There is a real danger here. On the one hand you are saying existence in itself is meaningless as a concept (see passage of quote in bold), which is uncontroversial, and, you will be unsurprised to hear, something that I too hold to be the case. On the other hand, though, you argue that existence is at some level understandable. It is this central hypothesis that I want to talk about.

Before we get into that, there is a little confusion in what you wrote: you first say 'exists' has meaning as a “word”, then you call it “brute fact”. The former is a second order, and the latter a first order, statement - just because the “word” has meaning IT DOES NOT FOLLOW that it is a “fact”. From what you have posted thus far I am assuming the latter point (the “brute fact”) is the central one.

It is a point you elaborate on in more general terms:

The issue here is one of conceptualization. Just because we cannot properly conceive of something does not mean that our statements are meaningless. Again, there are many things we can't properly conceive of that we simply represent using concepts or words. Those things are true in a way we cannot comprehend, but that does not change the fact that we understand that in some sense, they are true.

I at first want to focus in on the passage above that I've put in bold, and I will come back to the particular example of “existence”:

Truth and Meaning:

What you are proposing is a pretty radical notion of truth. To some extent what you are saying is trivially the case; as Leibniz so elegantly put it: “we can be sure that there is not nothing.” However you are going a whole lot further by arguing that even without direct reference we can “understand” truth “in some sense”. It seems to me that there is a lot of hidden depth in such a move.

To help out in what follows I will distinguish between two species of truth. Firstly there are anthropocentric truths, truths that are undeniably concomitant upon our language and out perceptions of the world. Put crudely: subjective truths (eg “I like x”, “x appears red”, “I'm happy” etc...). Second there are truths which are independent of, and external to, us. Crudely: objective truths (eg “x exists” etc...). I will designate the former by using lower case and the latter by capitalising: truth vs TRUTH.

Please hold that designation firmly in mind or else all that follows will read like nonsense!

What is important to note at the outset is that truth requires the ability to be meaningfully articulated. If we cannot meaningfully express a truth then we cannot talk about it (language requires meaning to work!) It is very important to understand that I am not saying that TRUTH is limited by meaning (though I am about truth: see para below). I am not saying that just because we cannot meaningfully talk of something it entails that it is not TRUE. [Veatch's fallacy of inverted intentionality is a point well taken].

So I'll look first at meaning and truth. Chomsky came up with a wonderful sentence to demonstrate a point about how a grammatically correct sentence can, none the less, be devoid of meaning: “Green dreams sleep furiously.” [“G.D.S.F.”]. I want to use it to make a slightly different point. While there is a poetic beauty* to that sentence it would be absurd to claim: “It is true that G.D.S.F.”. We cannot meaningfully talk of dreams as being green, or for that matter a dream which can sleep, or even that sleep could be furious. We cannot talk of such notions in terms of truth because the meaning of the words used conflict with their arrangement [NB: I don't require a particular theory of meaning to make this claim. I merely rely on the broad proposition that words have meaning, whatever the mechanism]. Put concisely the language used precludes the possibility that the statement could be true. So truth (but, note, not TRUTH) must be limited by meaning. 'Subjective' truth only exists insofar as it can be articulated and understood. If something cannot be meaningfully articulated and understood (eg “G.D.S.F”), then it cannot be true. [I hope that was clear, I fear it may not be, however it is absolutely central so please let me know if you want it elaborated]

Now I'll look at meaning and TRUTH. Your position seems to be that while it may absurd to say “It is true that G.D.S.F” it is none the less logically possible that “It is TRUE that G.D.S.F”. This is the case because, as you so neatly put it, something can be TRUE “in a way we cannot comprehend”. So far I absolutely agree.

Where I think you fall into error is your further claim that “we [can] understand that in some sense, they are true.” I think this error stems from a conflating of TRUTH and truth. The key to this is your use of the word “understand”. To understand something does require meaning.

Here is the most important part of my argument: To understand in any sense a TRUTH, we must express it as a truth. If that is the case then TRUTH, while unlimited by meaning in itself, must be limited by meaning if we wish to understand it.

It is easy to see that this is the case in the G.D.S.F example. Imagine someone came up to you and said “it is TRUE that G.D.S.F”. The question is whether you should accept or reject this proposition. To do so you would be forced to ask for explanation of meaning: “What is it for  dreams to be green?” “Are there other coloured dreams?” “What characterises sleeping as being furious?” etc... Without answers to these kinds of question it would be impossible to accept, or reject, that “it is TRUE that G.D.S.F.”. In other words you require that the TRUTH is expressed in terms of a truth (ie meaningful use of language) for you to accept or deny it. Without such a mechanism any statement of the form “it is TRUE that x” becomes meaningful which is an absurd result.

In fact this is obvious. We can understand, and so can accept or reject, that, (in your excellent example) “It is TRUE that an electron has a rotational symmetry of ½”. The reason we can accept or reject this claim is that we can show, using data and mathematical modelling, that “it is true that an electron has a rotational symmetry of ½”. In other words we can meaningfully describe an electron as having a rotational symmetry of ½. The claim is meaningful enough that using our understanding data and mathematical modelling we can accept or reject it. Thus our acceptance or rejection of the TRUTH of the rotational symmetry of an electron requires that it can be expressed as a meaningful truth.

On the other hand we can not make such a move with the statement “It is TRUE that an electron is flummoxed”. We have no understanding of what it could be for an electron to be flummoxed. Just like the G.D.S.F. example we are left with the following: “While it is possible that it may be TRUE that an electron is flummoxed, it cannot be accepted/rejected as true than an electron is flummoxed”. This is because I cannot understand what it is for an electron to be flummoxed (ie because our language cannot, as it stands, provide meaning for that pairing of words) I cannot accept or reject the claim. The claim is a nullity. [NB Though, of course, it may be TRUE that an electron is flummoxed â€" It is just impossible to understand in any sense and thus cannot be accepted/rejected as true]

So, given this analysis, let's look at your claim for 'existence'.

Existence and Meaning

You said something very astute about existence in that first quote:

Existence is a brute fact, and thus, it is too primal to explain. All things are explained by it.

This is absolutely correct. Existence must precede meaning. The question is whether that means existence is exempt from the kind of discussion of TRUTH and truth above? I think the answer is no.

What I aim to show is that, while existence indeed precedes meaning, it is still the case that any TRUTH about existence can only be accepted/rejected if it can be expressed meaningfully as a truth. From this it will follow that ontological claims are inherently limited by epistemological considerations (which, I am sure you noted, is the underlying theme of the above discussion). To put it in terms I have been using, claims about existence are as limited by meaning as any other.

The important point is to reiterate that I am talking of claims about existence, I am NOT talking about existence in itself. Existence in itself cannot be limited by meaning as it is prior to (and the foundation of) all meaning. However a claim about existence (ie a proposition) is a very different beast. Incidentally it is that distinction that lies behind the Leibniz quote “we can be sure that there is not nothing.” At the end of the day we cannot deny the “brute fact” of existence, as you put it, but this only tells us “that there is not nothing”. Any further claim about existence must be in propositional form. It is there you run into the difficulties I have been talking about.

In order to accept or reject a proposition about, or involving existence, it requires that it be expressed meaningfully. This follows from my point that a TRUTH statement must be expressed as a truth statement in order to be understandable in any sense.


Before I leave this I want to give two examples to demonstrate. One using existence as a predicate, and one using existence as the object.

So an example of existence being used as predicate; “It is TRUE that a square circle exists”. Obviously this cannot be translated into a truth statement because we cannot understand the meaning of a square circle. We cannot understand, so we cannot accept or reject the proposition.

There is a really nice parallel to your electron here. Prior to the development of quantum theory the idea that anything could have a rotational symmetry of ½ would have seemed meaningless (just like the square circle). That dear old autistic Kant would have said that “all objects have a rotational symmetry of no less than 1” was a synthetic truth. When he was alive it was; but as our language has changed to encompass quantum we can now meaningfully discuss an object with a rotational symmetry of less than 1.

That, if you think about it, is a remarkable conclusion. Prior to the development of quantum meaning no one could have accepted/rejected the statement “It is TRUE that an object has a rotational symmetry of less than 1”; precisely because the statement “it is true that an object  has a rotational symmetry of less than 1” was meaningless. The meaning of object, back then, logically implied something that had a rotational symmetry of at least 1. The proposition was as contradictory as the “square circle”. However once we developed the language of quantum behaviour suddenly “it is true that an object  has a rotational symmetry of less than 1” became meaningful BECAUSE WE HAD FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED IN OUR MEANING OF OBJECT.

So while it was always TRUE that an electron had a rotational symmetry of ½; it was only when our language changed in the late 1920's that it could become accepted as true! (Historically the paradigm shift in what we meant by an object became generally accepted at the Solvay Conference in 1927).  The reality, the TRUTH, always preceded meaning, but it was a change in our meaning that allowed us to accept that TRUTH as a true!

So too the only way I could accept/reject the proposition that “it is TRUE a square circle exists” is if our meaning of square or circle changes. Access to the TRUTH is thus constrained by meaning; despite the fact TRUTH precedes meaning!

As a side-note this kind of thinking allows “it is TRUE a cat exists” to be accepted (but only because “it is true a cat exists” is meaningful). So I will pre-emptively reject an accusation of scepticism. Moreover I can happily accept that the TRUTH of the cat's existence is totally independent of the meaningfulness of “it is true the cat exists”; so I will also pre-emptively reject an accusation of a use/mention confusion

'Existence' then is not a special predicate (apologies to Kant). Is it a special object though? Let us take an example of that form: “It is TRUE that existence is simple”.

It seems to me ANY claim of the form “it is TRUE that existence is x” will be unable to be translated into the form “it is true that existence is x”. As you pointed out existence precedes meaning, as you also pointed out (see the bold of the first quoted passage) it is an empty concept in terms of meaning. As such we can NEVER accept/reject a proposition about existence. It is a meaningless object. While there may be TRUE facts about existence; we cannot meaningfully talk of existence as an object because our meaning of 'existence' is of something that is not an object (but rather a predicate of all objects).

So “it is TRUE that existence is simple”, and all such claims can never be accepted/rejected as true. To do so requires we fundamentally reinterpret the meaning of the word “existence”. Once again I feel I should point out I am not making a claim about the TRUTH here, so as far as I am concerned there is no danger of the fallacy of inverted intentionality or use/mention confusion in this line of argument.



I'm sorry that I've focused so exclusively on this point about truth, meaning, and understanding. I did so because I think it is a really fundamental point of disagreement between us. There was a lot else of value in your post, but in the interests of space, and my over-taxed brain, I will cut it short here. For the record I concede the point regarding my misuse of perfection. On the other hand I think you really contradict yourself when you say:

So the question is simply and totally what must be logically true given what we observe around us. This is important. We don't understand God in Himself. To the extent we understand Him, it is by a study of His effects.

Well ... very briefly then: to understand a cause by its effect demands equivocal or univocal agreement. You cannot have a cause that is only analogously related to effect. Moreover the escape route of the 'effects' being analogical too is not open to you given your realist position (and such a move would be idealist). It seems to me you are forced to say that the causative relationship is itself analogical, which renders the sentiment exceptionally weak and begging of the question...

Anyhow, subject matter for the future perhaps.

As for the discussion of negative theology I will try and do a post on that over the next few days, you raised some interesting points that merit a proper reply.

peace


* 'Tis way, way, off topic but... While a sentence of the form G.D.S.F. is strictly meaningless, that is not to say it does not have value. When we hear/read it we are forced to interpret creatively, this is the root of the poetic. I am the last person who would say that speech and text have to be strictly meaningful. However the old aesthetic philosophers were wrong: beauty, while of enormous value, has no relationship to truth or meaning (which, of course, is not to say that truth and meaning can't be beautiful â€" it is just they can be equally ugly).

[Jac3510]

Pen,

As expected, a solid reply. If you don't mind too much, I will wait until you get to the issues I raised in negative theology, because while I agree the linguistic question is central, I don't want to get so far into it that we lose immediate contact with the main issue at hand, namely, the simplicity of being. Now, my classification of this central issue as linguistic, and not ontological or epistemological, is intentional - all linguistic statements presuppose epistemological positions which themselves presuppose ontological positions. The difficulty in the discussion is to always remember that I hold far more to a classical position whereas you to the analytical position, and thus, the progress is absolutely dependent on our being able to talk about positions basic to our own positions in terms that they other will find meaningful. We've been doing that thus far, but I can't help but notice (with frequent smiles, I might add), the constant care you take to be sure you are neither confusing use with mention or falling to Veatch's secret weapon! I think it is obvious that no such care would be necessary if we both held to either classical or analytical philosophy.

As you think about your next reply, I do want to offer the seeds of my initial response to this issue. Two points should be raised primarily, and I'll keep them simple as they are mostly seeking clarification than anything else at this stage.

1. On TRUTH vs truth - On one hand, I think I can accept your distinction, although I need to go back and read it again more carefully. The former seems to refer to what I might be inclined to refer to ontological facts--objective facts. In other words, reality is what it is, and TRUTH then relates to reality. "truth," on the other hand, seems to refer to those subjective facts that are only true with reference to the human mind, i.e., my preference for vanilla over chocolate. I think, however, that I've not fully grasped yet what all you are getting at with this latter view of truth. Such truths are still TRUTH, because, as you yourself note, "The reality, the TRUTH, always preceded meaning, but it was a change in our meaning that allowed us to accept that TRUTH as a true!" (Aristotle could have said it no better.) In other words, it is a part of reality that I prefer vanilla to chocolate. Yet even here, if I was not capable of expressing that truth, it would hardly follow that "it cannot be true." Perhaps you are only thinking of knowledge of truth, but in that case, the TRUTH / truth distinction seems altogether unnecessary, for the former just means truth and the latter just means knowledge.

Like I said, I need to go back and read you again on 'truth,' because I think that is where I am getting lost. Clearly, meaningfulness is central to your concept of truth (but not TRUTH), and meaning relates to concepts. So the interplay between concepts and their reflection of reality is a major issue (which is one of, if not the fundamental, points of disagreement between analytical and classical philosophy). Do you mere mean by 'truth' that 'it cannot be meaningfully expressed', and if so, how does that relate to subjective truths at all, which are in and of themselves still an objective reality?

2. On existence - just a very simple point I'd like to raise: The statements "Existence is X" and "Cats exist" are fundamentally different. In the first sentence, the state of being verb "is" is just the verbal form of the noun. Grammar aside, we mas as well say "Isness is X." That is hardly the case with the latter statement. It seems difficult, if not impossible, to define a thing by itself, which is what "isness is X" tries to do.

Again, this is why I strongly assert that positive knowledge of existence, or isness, is impossible. The very thing we use to try to understand it is itself. Truth is found in being (as Aristotle's ten categories of being well shows). How can we define a thing by itself? It would be tautological, at best. We can't get outside of existence to talk about it! I'm sure you would agree with this. Yet here is the other side of that same point: despite this fact, the sentence 'existence is x' still has a clear referent. Thus, we must distinguish between the act of being ("is") and the fact of being ("existence"). Here we start trending back into negate theology, because I'll start talking about relative meaning between analogy again, and you haven't addressed that, so I think it is best to hold off until you get a chance to get to the rest of my previous post.

Anyway, none of this require serious comment on your part. I just want you to see some of underlying seeds of my own thoughts which would be developed into a full blown reply that you may want to consider. Further, I would appreciate clarification on 'truth' as mentioned above. I'm looking forward to you take on negative theology. I expect your general take will be that the epistemic value of analogical statements is nill, given that you hold that truth statements that cannot be articulated are no truth statements at all and are thus meaningless, which you would apply to any statement about existence. But I'll let you make the case yourself and see how you relate to my point about relative meaning between properly proportioned analogies.

Thanks again.