Happy Atheist Forum

I hope you guys won't mind going through some pure philosophy for a bit. I'm going to divide this opening post into two parts, the first explaining the motivation and purpose of the thread, and the second dealing with the content of the argument. Feel free to skip the first if you aren't particularly interested in how this connects to discussions we've been having over the last few days, particularly objective morality. Otherwise, thanks for indulging me the few extra minutes for a few extra paragraphs.

I want to have a thread I can come back to repeatedly for future reference, since as long as I am here, the issue of divine simplicity will come up again and again. I see no reason to litter the forum with bits and pieces of its explanation here and there. The particular motivator was this exchange with Davin (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5630&start=30):

Quote from: "Davin"

Quote from: "Jac3510"But more to the point, most (not all, but definitely most) Christian theologians and philosophers root morality NOT in God's command, but in His nature. He commands and forbids according to what He already is. Thus, morality is just as objective as His own existence. In fact, if you want to press this further and get into the issues of the nature of being and how it relates to morality and ultimately to divine simplicity, we can show that God's existence and His morality are exactly the same thing (I know that sounds odd - feel free to do some quick Googling on divine simplicity. Full disclosure: simplicity is the basis of classical theism as most fully articulated by Thomas Aquinas; it is deeply unpopular among theologians today for reasons I won't get into here, unless asked).

I'm not sure what you're saying here. It looks as if you're saying that this god has no sentience over morality which makes attributing it to the god meaningless because it's beyond the gods control, or that god is in control over it which would make it subjective.

I had presented Euthrypho's Dilemma to explore whether morality was rooted in God's command or itself and offered one of the standard objections: this is a false dilemma, that morality is actually rooted in God's nature. Davin responds here with the objection that if it is just part of His nature of which He has no control, then it is meaningless. He doesn't say why it is meaningless, but I assume it is because you are just using the word "God" as a stopgap to explain what couldn't be explained before, which is really no explanation. The other side is still that God issues moral decrees, which still makes it subjective. In other words, he still has the theist in a dilemma!

The only way to properly answer this is to get into a discussion on the nature of God. As my quoted comment above indicates, that requires a discussion of a concept called "simplicity" in classical theism. A thread on a variant of Pascal's Wager was no place to have that discussion.

A second reason for the thread is that almost every answer to issues pertaining to God ultimately boil back down to this for the classical theist. Since I am in that school and rely heavily on that point of view, I suspect I'll fall back on it repeatedly in our discussions. I don't want to derail threads unnecessarily. I'll just take discussions that go in that direction here.

So with that, what is this simplicity idea I'm rambling on about?

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First off, I'll start by noting that simplicity is very controversial today in Christian philosophical communities. It is mostly rejected, and I am very much in the minority on this issue. Second, even though arguments themselves are more important than authority or their origin, just so you have some background, if you would like additional information beyond what I'm providing here, I recommend the following:

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica, "The Simplicity of God in Eight Articles" (http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FP/FP003.html#FPQ3OUTP1)
Thomas Aquinas: On Being and Essence (http://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/Blackwell-proofs/MP_C30.pdf)
Joseph Owens: An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Christian-Metaphysics-Philosophy-America/dp/0268009163)
Joseph Owens: An Interpretation of Existence (http://www.amazon.com/Interpretation-Existence-Joseph-Owens/dp/0268011575)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Divine Simplicity" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-simplicity/)
Wikipedia: "Divine Simplicity" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity)
William Lane Craig: "Question 111 - Subject: Divine Simplicity" (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7189&printer_friendly=1&printer_friendly=1) (note: I include this because Craig is a leading voice that rejects DS in the philosophical community)

With that said, divine simplicity (hereafter DS) is the idea that God not a composition of any kind. While any form of composition in God must be rejected, there are three broad categories into which pretty much all compositions will fall:

1. Composition of parts - as the human body is composed 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 - as in, wood has the potential to be burned, but may not yet be; as in, I have the potential to to wake up tomorrow, but I have not yet. There can be no distinction between what God has done, is doing, and will do. Such tensing when we speak of God is anthropomorphism only and serves to make Him relateable to humans who live a tensed existence. God, properly speaking, is pure act.

3. Composition of essence and existence - as in, a unicorn may exist in my mind but not in reality, meaning a concept must exist to be real. There is no distinction between God's essence and His existence. Put differently, God's essence is existence.[/list]
The practical point for us is that, if DS correctly describes God, then we cannot point to any part of Him and make such statements as "God became angry" or "God loves you." It means that God has no emotions in the strict sense of the term. Further, even when we speak analogically of God's parts (i.e., His love, His wrath, His power), 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.

What this means in practice is that we can't properly predicate any thing to God. We can't say that He is this or that, because any predication would imply parts. In God, everything is identical with no limitation. 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. 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."

Classical Greek philosophy recognized this starting (I believe) with Parmenides. He deduced from this principle that everything is, in fact, One, and became, perhaps, the first philosophical pantheist. DS differs from pantheism in this: it is evident that we are not simple beings. We are composed of many things. At best, our being participates in the Divine Being, although the word "participation" is misleading. We can discuss this in detail if anyone wants to. The point is that we get our existence from subsistent existence, and yet we ourselves are not that existence. Our existence, like everything else we can possibly predicate to ourselves, is analogous to its.

This forms the basis of any ontological discussions of absolutely any kind. As it relates to the ontology of morality, I would argue that evil is not a thing in and of itself; it is a lack of a thing, just as darkness is a lack of light and coldness is a lack of heat. Evil actions are evil because they lack the goodness, which is a thing, and thus receives its being from the subsistent existence. Goodness, in this view, is that which operates according to the natural, intended order. Evil is that which does not operate according to the intended order. Murder, for instance, is evil, since it violates that order. By intention, people are supposed to be kind, generous, loving, etc. They are supposed to be that way because that is God's own nature. Yet, again, we cannot, philosophically speaking, say "God is kind" or "God is loving." It is more accurate to say "Kind is what God is," etc. The lack of kindness is cruelty, and thus, cruelty is evil. God's moral commands are in accordance with His nature. They are grounded in God's very existence, for kindness exists insofar as it serves to define the proper relationship of ordered things in a certain respect, and where that relationship is missing, we use the word "cruel."

I'm tempted to go on to talk about the virtues and their role in the entire discussion, but I think this is more than enough--to much, probably, already. The bottom line is that morality is grounded in God's nature, because it is His nature that gives existence to the ordered world. Morality, on this view, is seen in terms of relations between beings. The "ought" is grounded in the proper intention of that relationship. The intention of that relationship is grounded in God's will (again, we see that His will is not to be distinguished from "anything else" in Him).

Please forgive the length. I just wanted to have a basis to return to for future reference. Everything here is, of course, subject to modification and even abandonment as study and discussion progresses. I'll not pretend to have read every word, or even most of them, on the matter. But this is, I believe from the extensive study I have done in this area, an accurate representation of the general concepts.

Your thoughts?

Edited for spelling

While there are several points I would take issue with in your (very well written) discourse, I think it would be nice to know why you believe this? What suggests to you that God is in fact, not a composition?

Quote from: "SSY"While there are several points I would take issue with in your (very well written) discourse, I think it would be nice to know why you believe this? What suggests to you that God is in fact, not a composition?

I believe this because it is the necessary result of the philosophical method I have adopted. Just like the scientific conclusions we reach are only valid if they properly follow the scientific method, philosophical conclusions are only valid if they follow an appropriate method. That isn't to say that conclusions reached by following wrong methods are necessary wrong. It just means that we likely have no reason to believe they are true and that they need to be properly demonstrated. To use a silly example, consider the following argument:

1. Jac has met all the women in the world;
2. All the women Jac has met are blond;
3. Therefore, all the women in the world are blond.

Now, this is a valid argument, but it clearly isn't sound, since (1) is just plain false. That doesn't mean, though that all women aren't blond! That has to be demonstrated some other way (like pointing to my wife). Likewise, if (3) is true, I need to prove it by a better argument.

The philosophical method I use is the study of being qua being. In other words, the fundamental question in philosophy is "What is reality?" Everything else flows from that. Consider the following (visually, not chronologically):

Hermeneutics - How do I understand what is communicated about what is known about what is That Which Is?
Linguistics - How do I communicate what I know what is That Which Is?
Epistemology - How do I know what is That Which Is?
Metaphysics - What is That Which Is?
Reality - That Which IS

That's the order of philosophy. If truth is defined as "that which corresponds to reality," then philosophy's greatest achievement is to define reality. 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. If, then, you start with an investigation of being and are rigorous about it, I think you necessarily find yourself at a subsistent existence (that is, existence that exists in itself rather than in anything else). Such existence cannot, by its very nature, be a composition. Things can only be different if they differ by something. But if all things have in common being, then being itself cannot be differentiated. Thus, if being can be subsistent--if it can exist as its own nature--then it must be simple.

So says classical theism, anyway. As it stands, btw, this is also why I am a theist. There are many fine arguments for God's existence, but all of them are a shadow of this one. I use the word "shadow" on purpose, because, ultimately, all such arguments eventually presuppose this kind of thinking anyway (since we are talking about being). But that's another question. I'll address it in detail if it comes up. I'd rather not bring up things on my own, because that's how we fall into mere preaching! :p

Quote from: "Jac3510"

Quote from: "Davin"I'm not sure what you're saying here. It looks as if you're saying that this god has no sentience over morality which makes attributing it to the god meaningless because it's beyond the gods control, or that god is in control over it which would make it subjective.

I had presented Euthrypho's Dilemma to explore whether morality was rooted in God's command or itself and offered one of the standard objections: this is a false dilemma, that morality is actually rooted in God's nature. Davin responds here with the objection that if it is just part of His nature of which He has no control, then it is meaningless. He doesn't say why it is meaningless, but I assume it is because you are just using the word "God" as a stopgap to explain what couldn't be explained before, which is really no explanation. The other side is still that God issues moral decrees, which still makes it subjective. In other words, he still has the theist in a dilemma!

What I said about it being meaningless was the attribution to god. Why attribute objective morality to something that is just as much a subject of objective morality as everything else?

And while this is all some decent reading, this concept essentially says that god cannot be defined, but we can attribute whatever we want to god. What if bad is god, and the lack of bad makes good? The lack of cruelty results in kindness, the lack of pain results in comfort, the lack of anger is happiness... etc. How do you test that god is good instead of bad? Given the concept that all good things are caused by the lack of gods evil presence, we should all live to disobey god and to try to live away from its presence.

My biggest problem however is how meaningless this makes god. God is so simple that calling it a god means nothing. If you're going to say that there is some basic thing that followed the laws of nature and that is where the universe came from, then I'm on board, but jump off as soon as you try to pin the god label on it. Why call that thing god? It's not sentient and no more distinguishable from anything else. Or that god is everything which equally makes calling everything a god meaningless. If you're going to say that everything that exists, exists, then I'm with you, but then to call existence god? What is the point?

Ultimately if it can't be falsified, I've no interest in it or discussing whether it's real or not, because there is no way to distinguish it from reality.

First, Jac3510, you need to explain to me where the idea of god came from.

Quote from: "Davin"What I said about it being meaningless was the attribution to god. Why attribute objective morality to something that is just as much a subject of objective morality as everything else?

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

Again, it is important to understand that in my view morality is intractably associated with order and relations. Things are supposed to operate in a certain manner. When we operate in a manner that is not intended, we bring disorder, which is what we mean by evil. Who, then, set that ordering in place? Obviously, in this view, God did. By what means did He do so? Not arbitrary commandment anymore than an engineer sets up his systems arbitrarily. Rather, He does so with reference to Himself and the way in which He, as pure existential act, operates. Thus, by way of application, to repeat for clarity what I said above, it is improper, philosophically speaking, to say, "God is good." Rather, we should say, "Good is what God is."

QuoteAnd while this is all some decent reading, this concept essentially says that god cannot be defined, but we can attribute whatever we want to god. What if bad is god, and the lack of bad makes good? The lack of cruelty results in kindness, the lack of pain results in comfort, the lack of anger is happiness... etc. How do you test that god is good instead of bad? Given the concept that all good things are caused by the lack of gods evil presence, we should all live to disobey god and to try to live away from its presence.

Strictly speaking, we don't attribute anything to God. Not goodness, not badness, not anything. We discover what God is by an exploration of His creation. Because the world is ordered in a certain way, we can know something about it. I could not care less about labels and semantics. If you want to use the word "evil" to label what we now use the word "good" to label, then fine. The important thing is the concept itself, not the word used to describe it. As it stands, though, we do have certain vocabulary, which includes words like good and bad. Good is that which in harmony with natural order. Bad is that which is not.

Blindness is the normal example used to illustrate this point. The eye is supposed to see (however perfectly or imperfectly it does isn't the issue). Blindness is an eye that is incapable of seeing. Strictly speaking, blindness is not a thing like seeing is. It is a privation. It is a lack of something. It is the lack of the ability to do what the eye is designed to do. Since blindness is not a thing, it cannot be abstracted and attributed as can perfections like "seeing" to God. In fact, since evil is philosophically defined as a privation, it cannot be logically attributed to God, because evil is actually nothing more than our conception of non-existence in certain contexts. You can't attribute non-existence to Being!

The trick is to make sure your order is correct. I said in the very first sentence of this post that we are doing pure philosophy here, not theology. We don't start with our concept of God and then take it to the real world. We don't say, "God likes this, so therefore, this is good." We don't say, "God designed this to be that way, therefore, that way must be good." That is the work of the theologian. We haven't come anywhere near that yet.

QuoteMy biggest problem however is how meaningless this makes god. God is so simple that calling it a god means nothing. If you're going to say that there is some basic thing that followed the laws of nature and that is where the universe came from, then I'm on board, but jump off as soon as you try to pin the god label on it. Why call that thing god? It's not sentient and no more distinguishable from anything else. Or that god is everything which equally makes calling everything a god meaningless. If you're going to say that everything that exists, exists, then I'm with you, but then to call existence god? What is the point?

We haven't gotten around to sentience yet or personhood yet. But briefly, those things are perfections and thus included in the concept of subsistent existence. The question is whether or not there is such a thing as subsistent existence. I only mentioned that because it ties into the concept of simplicity, which is the main point of this thread. I mean that if there is a subsistent existence, it is a simple being. Not all simple beings are necessarily subsistent existence, however. There can only be one subsistent existence, and if that subsistent existence is, then you can call it nothing less than God, for it, by its very nature, would be sentient.

QuoteUltimately if it can't be falsified, I've no interest in it or discussing whether it's real or not, because there is no way to distinguish it from reality.

This oft-repeated statement is true if it is kept in its proper place. One thing people often fail to note is that there are different kinds of facts. A scientific fact is not the same thing as a mathematical fact, which is not the same thing as a historical fact, which is not the same thing as a philosophical fact, etc. Each discipline deals with its own kinds of facts, and each discipline uses its own tools to discover the truth about its subject matter. When you apply a discipline in the wrong field, you get absurd results. For instance, can you give me a mathematical proof that George Washington existed? Of course not. You need a historical proof, and those you different kinds of facts than mathematical facts. Can you get me a historical proof of general relativity? No, you need math and science for that. We see that math and science are very closely related, but the two are not exactly the same thing. There is no scientific proof that one and one equals two, nor is any scientific issue purely mathematical (scientific issues are described mathematically, but mathematics, in and of itself, does not rely on observation in the same sense that science does).

All this holds true for philosophy as well. There are philosophical facts, the first of which is the law of non-contradiction. The great tragedy of the history of philosophy is that so many have thought they were doing philosophy when they were actually doing some other discipline. Descarte was doing math. Abailard was doing logic. Compte was doing sociology. Kant was doing Newtonian physics (for more on this, I highly recommend Etienne Gilson's The Unity of Philosophical Experience).

Going back to your statement about falsifiability, you mistake a scientific rule for a philosophical one. As it stands, there is a great deal that is falsifiable in philosophy, but that is not the means by which we judge truth value as it is in science. Philosophy is in the method. It is that which flows from our studies, one to the next. Philosophy explains what we see in its relations. If it is falsified, it is because it conflicts with other philosophical facts that are known or at least accepted to be true. The issue, then, is positive, not negative. It is whether or not a proper case can be built that would lead us to conclude that existence does, in fact, subsist in itself. If the reasoning is valid and sound, the conclusion is true. If the reasoning is shown to be invalid or unsound, then we have no reason to accept the conclusion until better reasoning is offered.

As of now, I've attempted to offer no reason why I think that existence subsists in itself. I have offered a preliminary discussion on what DS and subsistent existence are. I've offered a few reasons why I think that subsistent existence must be a simple entity. I've offered the connection of these ideas to objective morality. My goals so far have been modest. As we progress into the roots of these and I have to become more ambitious, the arguments will become more robust.

Quote from: "i_am_i"First, Jac3510, you need to explain to me where the idea of god came from.

Historically? I'm not sure what that has to do with anything in our discussion.
Logically? No, because explaining a concept does not require fully understanding its more basic concepts. If it did, then science would be impossible, because we are forever explaining things that raise new questions that we don't understand. If we can't talk about something until we understand its more basic concepts, then we would never be allowed to talk about anything.

We are perfectly capable of discussing the notion of DS in the context of classical theism without offering a historical or logical explanation as to the origin of God. Nor do we have to prove that such a being exists before we can describe Him. Again, if that were the method, we could never know anything, because things have to be described first before we can test for their existence.

Quote from: "Jac3510"

Quote from: "i_am_i"First, Jac3510, you need to explain to me where the idea of god came from.

Historically? I'm not sure what that has to do with anything in our discussion.
Logically? No, because explaining a concept does not require fully understanding its more basic concepts. If it did, then science would be impossible, because we are forever explaining things that raise new questions that we don't understand. If we can't talk about something until we understand its more basic concepts, then we would never be allowed to talk about anything.

We are perfectly capable of discussing the notion of DS in the context of classical theism without offering a historical or logical explanation as to the origin of God. Nor do we have to prove that such a being exists before we can describe Him. Again, if that were the method, we could never know anything, because things have to be described first before we can test for their existence.

Okay, but you have said: "The bottom line is that morality is grounded in God's nature, because it is His nature that gives existence to the ordered world."

What is this God? Where did you hear about this God? What was it that convinced you that morality is grounded in God's nature and that God's nature gives existence to the ordered world?

Quote from: "i_am_i"Okay, but you have said: "The bottom line is that morality is grounded in God's nature, because it is His nature that gives existence to the ordered world."

What is this God? Where did you hear about this God? What was it that convinced you that morality is grounded in God's nature and that God's nature gives existence to the ordered world?

I understand how those words easily could be taken to mean I was talking about the real world. But do keep in mind that the purpose of this whole thread is to explain a particular philosophical construct. As I said in the very first line, we are talking pure philosophy. To use the scholastic distinction I've pointed out elsewhere, the quoted statement is of the second order of intentionality. In the context of this discussion, it should be read this way:

"The bottom line is that [in this view] morality is grounded in God's nature, because it is His nature that gives existence to the ordered world."

So as not to sound like I'm writing you off, because your questions are completely fair, this God is subsistent existence (that is, His essence is existence). I heard about this God my whole life, as I'm sure you did, from various sources. I discovered this particular discussion concerning Him during my investigation of philosophy. I was convinced that morality is grounded in this God by the definition of the terms. Once it is accepted that this God exists, His nature requires Him to be the ground of morality just as the nature of bachelors requires them to be unmarried. I was convinced that God's nature gives existence to the ordered world during my study of ethics, during which I came to reject Kant's deontology and came to accept Aquinas' virtue theory.

Now, these answers are all short and don't provide the evidence I think you are looking for. We have a long time yet to do all of that. I could sit here and write a book on why I believe what I do and why I think you should believe what I do because I think the philosophical evidence favors it. But this is a discussion board, not a book club. I prefer dialogue to monologue, and we can address those issues as they arise. We have to deal with one issue at time. DS was first on the docket because it came up in the discussion on objective morality. From this subsistent existence as come up. I imagine we will be discussing it before too long. But in the meantime, I'm sure you and the mods don't want some new theist coming in and showering your board with three hundred new threads on dozens of topics at the same time. There is, after all, and order to things. :)

Quote from: "Jac3510"If, though, you have specific questions you want answered right now you can always PM me or start a specific thread.

Thanks anyway. I'll wait until you're finished here. To be perfectly honest I don't understand what it is you're talking about.

Quote from: "i_am_i"

Quote from: "Jac3510"If, though, you have specific questions you want answered right now you can always PM me or start a specific thread.

Thanks anyway. I'll wait until you're finished here. To be perfectly honest I don't understand what it is you're talking about.

That's fair. Would you mind point out which part I was unclear on? It doesn't do any of us much good if the ideas I'm presenting aren't being communicated in a way that they can be understood. Again, I think that's the point of discussion . . . to exchange ideas!

Thanks

Quote from: "Jac3510"

Quote from: "i_am_i"

Quote from: "Jac3510"If, though, you have specific questions you want answered right now you can always PM me or start a specific thread.

Thanks anyway. I'll wait until you're finished here. To be perfectly honest I don't understand what it is you're talking about.

That's fair. Would you mind point out which part I was unclear on? It doesn't do any of us much good if the ideas I'm presenting aren't being communicated in a way that they can be understood. Again, I think that's the point of discussion . . . to exchange ideas!

Thanks

No, that's okay. You carry on. Philosophy is an area I'm rather weak in, and anyway I think you're waxing intellectual about a concept that was made up by primitive human beings.

Quote from: "Jac3510"Most philosophers don't start this way, which is why most philosophers reject DS. Most start with epistemology, which I think begs the question. If, then, you start with an investigation of being and are rigorous about it, I think you necessarily find yourself at a subsistent existence (that is, existence that exists in itself rather than in anything else). Such existence cannot, by its very nature, be a composition. Things can only be different if they differ by something. But if all things have in common being, then being itself cannot be differentiated. Thus, if being can be subsistent--if it can exist as its own nature--then it must be simple.

Thank you for the time and effort you obviously put into your reply, however, I do not feel as though the matter of my original question has been fully explained. The passage I quoted comes closest, but it is still not really an explanation. Perhaps you could present argument in the form of premises and a conclusion that would suggest this DS view is the right one? You have done a good job of explaining your concept of DS, and also expounded plenty of philosophy, but not quite bridged the gap between in my view.

Again, there a few things I would disagree on, but I abandon for the sake of brevity. I look forward to your response.

Quote from: "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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"Again, it is important to understand that in my view morality is intractably associated with order and relations. Things are supposed to operate in a certain manner. When we operate in a manner that is not intended, we bring disorder, which is what we mean by evil. Who, then, set that ordering in place? Obviously, in this view, God did. By what means did He do so? Not arbitrary commandment anymore than an engineer sets up his systems arbitrarily. Rather, He does so with reference to Himself and the way in which He, as pure existential act, operates. Thus, by way of application, to repeat for clarity what I said above, it is improper, philosophically speaking, to say, "God is good." Rather, we should say, "Good is what God is."

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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"Strictly speaking, we don't attribute anything to God. Not goodness, not badness, not anything.

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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"We discover what God is by an exploration of His creation. Because the world is ordered in a certain way, we can know something about it. I could not care less about labels and semantics. If you want to use the word "evil" to label what we now use the word "good" to label, then fine. The important thing is the concept itself, not the word used to describe it. As it stands, though, we do have certain vocabulary, which includes words like good and bad. Good is that which in harmony with natural order. Bad is that which is not.

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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"The trick is to make sure your order is correct. I said in the very first sentence of this post that we are doing pure philosophy here, not theology. We don't start with our concept of God and then take it to the real world. We don't say, "God likes this, so therefore, this is good." We don't say, "God designed this to be that way, therefore, that way must be good." That is the work of the theologian. We haven't come anywhere near that yet.

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

Quote from: "Jac3510"We haven't gotten around to sentience yet or personhood yet. But briefly, those things are perfections and thus included in the concept of subsistent existence. The question is whether or not there is such a thing as subsistent existence. I only mentioned that because it ties into the concept of simplicity, which is the main point of this thread. I mean that if there is a subsistent existence, it is a simple being. Not all simple beings are necessarily subsistent existence, however. There can only be one subsistent existence, and if that subsistent existence is, then you can call it nothing less than God, for it, by its very nature, would be sentient.

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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"This oft-repeated statement is true if it is kept in its proper place. One thing people often fail to note is that there are different kinds of facts. A scientific fact is not the same thing as a mathematical fact, which is not the same thing as a historical fact, which is not the same thing as a philosophical fact, etc. Each discipline deals with its own kinds of facts, and each discipline uses its own tools to discover the truth about its subject matter. When you apply a discipline in the wrong field, you get absurd results. For instance, can you give me a mathematical proof that George Washington existed? Of course not. You need a historical proof, and those you different kinds of facts than mathematical facts. Can you get me a historical proof of general relativity? No, you need math and science for that. We see that math and science are very closely related, but the two are not exactly the same thing. There is no scientific proof that one and one equals two, nor is any scientific issue purely mathematical (scientific issues are described mathematically, but mathematics, in and of itself, does not rely on observation in the same sense that science does).

All this holds true for philosophy as well. There are philosophical facts, the first of which is the law of non-contradiction. The great tragedy of the history of philosophy is that so many have thought they were doing philosophy when they were actually doing some other discipline. Descarte was doing math. Abailard was doing logic. Compte was doing sociology. Kant was doing Newtonian physics (for more on this, I highly recommend Etienne Gilson's The Unity of Philosophical Experience).

Going back to your statement about falsifiability, you mistake a scientific rule for a philosophical one. As it stands, there is a great deal that is falsifiable in philosophy, but that is not the means by which we judge truth value as it is in science. Philosophy is in the method. It is that which flows from our studies, one to the next. Philosophy explains what we see in its relations. If it is falsified, it is because it conflicts with other philosophical facts that are known or at least accepted to be true. The issue, then, is positive, not negative. It is whether or not a proper case can be built that would lead us to conclude that existence does, in fact, subsist in itself. If the reasoning is valid and sound, the conclusion is true. If the reasoning is shown to be invalid or unsound, then we have no reason to accept the conclusion until better reasoning is offered.

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.

Davin, I only have time for one substantive reply tonight. I'll get to yours tomorrow.

Quote from: "SSY"

Quote from: "Jac3510"Most philosophers don't start this way, which is why most philosophers reject DS. Most start with epistemology, which I think begs the question. If, then, you start with an investigation of being and are rigorous about it, I think you necessarily find yourself at a subsistent existence (that is, existence that exists in itself rather than in anything else). Such existence cannot, by its very nature, be a composition. Things can only be different if they differ by something. But if all things have in common being, then being itself cannot be differentiated. Thus, if being can be subsistent--if it can exist as its own nature--then it must be simple.

Thank you for the time and effort you obviously put into your reply, however, I do not feel as though the matter of my original question has been fully explained. The passage I quoted comes closest, but it is still not really an explanation. Perhaps you could present argument in the form of premises and a conclusion that would suggest this DS view is the right one? You have done a good job of explaining your concept of DS, and also expounded plenty of philosophy, but not quite bridged the gap between in my view.

Again, there a few things I would disagree on, but I abandon for the sake of brevity. I look forward to your response.

Fair enough. For the sake of argument and to get right to your question--why should we believe God is a simple being--I will assume His existence.

The key point in the notion of simplicity is that there is no potentiality in God; He is pure act. This is shown by an examination of the Thomistic Cosmological Argument (not Kalaam, which states that which comes into existence has a cause, the universe came into existence, therefore the universe has a cause), which is also called the Argument from Contingency. It states:

1. What we observe in this universe is contingent
2. A sequence of causally related contingent things cannot be infinite
3. A sequence of causally related contingent things must be finite
Thus, there must be a First Cause in a sequence of contingent things

It is important to note what is NOT being argued here. Aquinas is not arguing that there cannot be an infinite regress of past events. Aquinas actually thinks that is impossible to prove philosophically (I agree with him). The issue here is an infinite regression of contingent beings. Aquinas' example was a rock being moved by stick being moved by hand, but the modern example is a boxcar train. If you see a boxcar moving, how do you explain its motion? You notice it is being pulled by one in front of it, and one in front of it, and so on. It is evident, though, that this cannot go on to infinite, because then there would be no first mover to explain the total causation of movement in any of the boxcars. It is extremely important to note here the difference in an infinite per se and an infinite per accidens. The latter was illustrated by Aquinas by an infinite regression of fathers. My father was the efficient cause of me as I am of my child. My father, however, was not the efficient cause of my child. That he is my child's grandfather and connected causally is per accident--it is an accidental feature of his relationship with my child. That is not the case with the boxcars. Boxcar A is pulling B is pulling C, but that means that boxcar A is the efficient cause of the movement of boxcar C. It is the efficient cause per se. Contrary to William Lane Craig, there is no philosophical reason to suppose that an infinite regression of causally related events per accidens is impossible. Yet an infinite regression of causally related events per se is impossible. It wouldn't matter if you had an infinite of boxcars. They would not move without a first mover.

This requires comment on the word "first." We are not referring to temporal primacy as is the case with a regression per accidens (my father is temporally prior to me). We are talking logical efficient causality. Again, the boxcar example is sufficient. Boxcar A is pulling C in the present. The cause is coterminous with the action. By "first," then, we are referring to the primary mover, that which gives the causally sequenced chain motion.

The point is that since nothing causes its own motion (except sentient agents, and even we are contingently related to a host of realities!), there must be a non-contingent First Mover. (I strongly recommend this paper (http://www.richardghowe.com/Infinite.pdf) by Richard G. Howe for more details on the notion of infinite in Aquinas.)

Now, whether or not you accept this argument, the point is that the First Mover, so accepted, is seen to be in act (note: even if you reject the above argument, I'm sure you will agree that if God exists, if nothing else, then by definition He would be the First Mover, being a non-contingent thing, so while I have offered Aquinas' argument for a First Mover, it does not require that we accept his reasoning to continue with a discussion on the nature of the First Mover, which all Christians regard to be God). A first mover cannot be in potency, because that which is in potency is reduced to action only by that which is already in action. "For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality" (Summa, IIA3). However, something cannot be in both potentiality and actuality in the same way at the same time, which is to say, something cannot be both the mover and the moved in the same way at the same time. Thus, something cannot move itself, which means that everything put in motion (reduced from potentiality to actuality) is done so by something else (already in action). But, of course, the First Mover cannot be moved by something else, or else it would not be the First Mover. Thus, the First Mover cannot be in potentiality, but must be pure act.

From this, everything else follows regarding simplicity. If there is no potentiality in God, He cannot have a body, for a body is potentiality. If He has no body, He must be pure form (not a composition of form and matter), which means that He cannot exist as a composition of parts. If He is pure form, He must be identical to His essence (composite beings are not identical to their essence; I am a man, but I am not "man," because there things in my definition which are not part of the definition of man, being my particular body; yet where there is no body, the thing is identical with its essence). This means there can be no distinction between His essence and His existence, because existence is that which makes an essence actual; thus, essence is comparable to potentiality and existence to act, yet we have seen that in God, there is no potency. God's essence then must also be His existence.

All of this is to take some pains to demonstrate the second premise in the following argument:

1. There can be no potential in the First Mover
2. Where there is no potential, there is no composition
3. Therefore, there is no composition in the First Mover

If God is defined as the First Mover, it is evident that in God there is no composition. Thus, God must be simple.

I hope this is sufficient to answer your question about why I believe God to be a simple being.

@ 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:

Quote from: "Jac3510"... 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:

QuoteIn 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."

Quote...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

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

Quote from: "Jac3510"I only have time for one substantive reply tonigh

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

 Just watching in the intention of learning something.

Quote from: "Tank":pop:  Just watching in the intention of learning something.

Me too.  

Quote from: "Davin"

Quote from: "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.

QuotePhilosophy 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."

QuoteJust 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 (http://www2.franciscan.edu/plee/doesgodhaveemotions.htm) 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.

QuoteI 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.

QuoteI 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).

QuotePreviously 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.

QuoteEven 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.

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.   :)

Quote from: "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.   :)

I second this.  

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?

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?

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

Quote from: "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.

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# (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=961917438060678292#)

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.

Quoteiii 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.

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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"Of course not.

Hmm.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"

QuoteJust 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 (http://www2.franciscan.edu/plee/doesgodhaveemotions.htm) 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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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?

Quote from: "Jac3510"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?

Quote from: "Jac3510"

QuoteI 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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

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

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

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).

Jac,

Enjoyed your post. You seem to be a very rare breed: a Christian realist. Kudos. I will, as before, divide my post up into sections. Though if this goes on much longer it may be better to split some of these discussions off. There are only so many bifurcations a thread can endure before it becomes unreadable. However it being your OP I will leave the decision to you.

i Nature of God (again):

Let us start with 'pure act':

Quote from: "Jac3510"[...]you make two mistakes. The first is to presume that 'act' requires change. This is not the case. Act only requires change in human bodies due to our limited nature. When we act, we change. The particular act that God is, is the act of existing. It is the act that instantiates all other acts. It is, thus, the perfect act. Your second mistake is that you are using 'act' univocally when referring to God and man. I won't hold that against you, because I had not yet made the distinction when you offered your post. It should be clear from my words to Davin, however, that nothing in man can be univocally attributed to God, but only analogically. 'Act' is no different. In any case, I think we should be in agreement that DS has no logical problem with things like the Atonement.

You agree that an act in the phenomenal universe requires change. You sidestep this by point out that that there is no univocal agreement between the nature of things in the phenomenal and the nature of God. Thus the pure act is fundamentally different from act and the only link is analogically (rather than a mere difference of degree, which would characterise an univocal relationship - cf Thomas Aquinas). The problem with the relationship being analogous is that it is consequently interpretive.

So I reiterate the question I posed in my previous post: How can I discern what is true and what is merely interpretive regarding pure act? Worse still because pure act has no 'real world' reference point we cannot even ensure our interpretations match each other, so it follows that in literal terms pure act is meaningless!

Quote[...]
...quote from Joseph Owens ...

[F]or any series of efficiently caused causes there is a first cause. It is first in the sense that it does not have its being from anything else. It has no efficient cause prior to itself. Accordingly it has no cause of its being whatsoever. It is an uncaused cause. Its being, therefore, is not prior to its nature but is simultaneous or coincident with it. Its being is not in any way accidental to its nature but is of its nature and in its nature. Its very nature is to be. The first cause, consequently, is not contained within the series of caused causes. It is extrinsic to that series, somewhat as the mathematician remains outside the mathematical series he constructs. However, in the entire series of causes, caused and uncaused together, it is first in order (

An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, p. 80-81)[/list]
The point should be clear enough. Complexity and change in nature does not require complexity and change in God because God is not a part of the causal chain itself. He is above it, animating it.[...]

While God as causal sustainer is elegant (and more than a little Hindu â€" Vishnu anyone?), it does not answer my fundamental question about complexity. What it does do is explain that, no matter how complex the phenomenal is, we can still talk of a common property of being . Which is fine, but this does not address how complexity arises.

This leads onto a further point about divine simplicity:

The phenomenal universe is, as you concede, complex. So the problem is how complexity can arise from simplicity WITHOUT change in the simple. We know from the mathematics of Chaos Theory (cf Lorenz â€" Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow) that complexity can only arise from the interaction (ie change) of no less than three simple systems.

What we have no example of in the phenomenal universe is the arising of complex behaviour from a lone simple system. It does not follow that the way the phenomenal works is mirrored in the ontological, however it does lead us to one conclusion. Divine simplicity is NOT the same as phenomenal simplicity (which cannot alone lead to complex behaviour), so as with act and cause you are using simplicity in an analogous manner. Which means it suffers from the same problems of interpretation and reference.

I want to emphasise this point because I think it is central. If you disallow univocal reference to God then all reference must be analogous. If God is only referred to by analogy then your access to God is interpretive. Interpretation without reference points is impossible to check. I know that we agree on the meaning of the word red because we can refer (look at that fire extinguisher etc...). When talking of God (one little quibble: but philosophy about God is theology) we have no reference. Couple that with your rule banning univocal descriptions of God and we have no way of checking agreement between the meaning of our analogies of God. It is possible that two people could completely agree that God is pure act while unwittingly being at complete odds over interpretation of that word!

As a side note I also think you are guilty of the very sin you accuse the analytical philosophers of. That of inverted intentionality. According to you God has all these descriptions: simple, pure act, sustaining cause etc... Moreover all of these descriptions are analogous rather than univocal (ie divine act differs qualitatively from phenomenal act). However to use a word like 'act' analogically you are making a second order move. You are using the meaning of 'act' rather than the reality of act to describe God when you say: “presume that 'act' requires change. This is not the case. Act only requires change in human bodies due to our limited nature. When we act, we change. The particular act that God is, is the act of existing.” (bold my own). In other words you are using the second intention of act over the primary intention and using that to make a claim about God.

ii Analytical Philosophy:

QuoteAnalytical 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.

I fundamentally disagree with this assessment of analytical philosophy. The fallacy of inverted intentionality is a broad critique but it does not encompass all modern analytical philosophy.

To take one example: Wittgenstein. While the Vienna set, most notably Ayer, interpreted Wittgenstein as schilling for the primacy of language over reality, Wittgenstein himself denied this (vigorously as it happened, claiming that “reality” while logically inaccessible was none the less what was “most important” - which goes some way to explaining his life-long Catholicism).

His point was that how language works provides this us with a limit to meaning. There is no inherent committing of the fallacy of inverted intentionality (or use/mention) in this move. Just because Wittgenstein has limited himself to discussion of the second intention it does not follow he is claiming language's primacy over reality, he is merely limiting the scope of meaningful conversation. The kind of statement that Ayer (or later figures like Derrida) made to the effect that language precedes reality are clearly committing the fallacy (as well as containing its own inherent paradox), but you can find no such statement in Wittgenstein.

More centrally though let us talk about the use/mention distinction.

QuoteThis presents a most serious problem for analytical philosophy, because it means that it has absolutely no way to speak about reality. In fact, analytical philosophy is only capable playing linguistic word games! None of its concepts can ever have any impact on, nor can be impacted by, reality. In fact, it is just here that we see that the entire system is built on a fallacy that Veatch calls Inverted Intentionality. Analytical philosophy cannot speak of men, only "men." This distinction in linguistics is called use and mention. Now, such philosophers commonly admit that this is the case. Their definitions do not allow them to speak of men properly. But, of course, they go on to talk, as your very own post showed, as if they really are talking about the world itself! At bare minimum, they are confusing the use with the mention, which is a fallacy that must be avoided. In response, they argue that it is not they, but we classical philosophers who are making the confusion, because we believe we are talking about men when in fact we are only speaking about "men." Yet the moment they make that claim, they fall invert intentionality. Let me give you a real example. I'm sure you agree that a thing cannot be both red and green in the same way at the same time. But is this a grammatical or real rule? In other words, is it true that things cannot be both red and green in the same way at the same time because our grammar says so, or does our grammar say so because this is true of reality? Clearly, the latter is the case, and yet, this is precisely where analytical philosophy proves useless and contradicts itself, bringing down the entire enterprise! For when they insist that they are not speaking of red or green, but only "red" and "green," they cannot say that "red" and "green" mean what they do because they describe red and green. What they have tried to do is make second order statements determine reality itself. That, however, can't be done. We have a name for people who think that their words alone can determine the nature of reality: witches and warlocks.

There is an awful lot to unpack here. I am also somewhat stymied by the fact that you seem to be dealing with both Kantian idealism and Wittgensteinian linguistic theory together; really we should separate the two but in interests of space I will follow your lead. So forgive me jumping between/ conflating the two in what follows.

The 'red'/'green' example is a nice one so I will stick with that. You are correct that there are some analytical philosophers who would say that because something cannot be both 'red' and 'green' at the same time in grammatical terms so something cannot be both red and green in reality. This is the basic position of logical positivism, and I entirely agree with Veatch that such a line of argument is fallacious.

However that is not the only route open to analytical philosophy. The other option, and one that I would say both Kant and Wittgenstein themselves ascribed to, is that the statement 'nothing can be both red and green' is logically true but does not exclude the possibility that an object is both red and green.

That requires a bit of explaining. Essentially the central point is one of reference. Kant and Wittgenstein do not 'lose the right' to talk of reality. What they does is limit what can be said about it. The reason why something cannot be red and green all over is due to lack of reference. When we talk of an object being one colour 'all over', we are excluding the possibility of it being another colour all over. As this would conflict with our usage of 'all over'. So we literally cannot understand what it means to say an object is red and green all over, without changing our understanding of an object. HOWEVER this does not entail that an object in itself cannot be red and green all over. As such the fallacy of inverted intentionality does not arise because statements about the universe do not refer to the ontological but only the phenomenal.  

Take a more basic example. The ball is red. What is important to understand is I am not making a claim about the ball in itself (the ball qua ball) rather it is a statement about my perception of the ball (the ball qua me). UNLESS I make the claim that 'the ball is red' refers to the ball qua ball I cannot be accused of prioritising the secondary intention over the first (thus I cannot be committing the fallacy of inverted intentionality nor, you will note, am I conflating use and mention).

However you will undoubtedly have noticed that the effect of this line of thinking (extended even further with a Wittgensteinian linguistic turn) reaches the position that we can never refer to things in themselves. Your second point was that this could lead to scepticism:

iii Scepticism:

I have always felt that scepticism gets a bum rap. In fact the sceptical method of Descartes and the analytical philosophers did not lead to some nihilistic stalemate where all meaning was lost. Rather it gave rise to the hugely potent scientific method. When Kant dismissed the possibility of accessing things in themselves he left a gap for rigorous examination of the phenomenal word. Released from the shackles of having to describe What-X science became free to focus completely on How-X.

In fact the sceptical solution (the possibility we are totally in error about everything) contains a lot of wisdom. It demonstrates that we can never have access to a truth which is external to us. The truth only exists as we understand it. Truth qua humanity.

iv Alternatives

So as I see it we are still left with the 'problem' of not being able to talk about things in themselves. Realists like Veatch want to be able to do just that. In order to do this it has to be shown that one can access things in themselves. Or put another way, it must be shown that we can access the ontos of things. It is hear that realism looses me. To say that philosophy should return to a What-X logical system presupposes that What-X questions are capable of answers.

Now forgive me if I am mistaken but this must require a theory of direct correspondence of our perceptions and reality. That seems to me shockingly naïve. It implies that things in themselves match in a meaningful way to our perception of them (for how else could we have access to them?)

Look at our earlier example of 'the ball is red'. The analytical philosopher uses that phrase to refer to our perception of the ball (the ball qua us). What of the realist? He is forced to say either that 'the ball is red' is true for the ball qua ball (which is absurd, just look at the same ball under pure blue light, it will appear black!) or else it is not strictly true (and that the correct statement would be “the ball appears red”)! Either way the position is absurd.

While I accept that analytical philosophy is bleak in so far as we can never discern truth qua reality (only truth qua humanity), it seems to me that to claim otherwise requires that you demonstrate that we can access reality qua reality. You need to show that we have access to objects in themselves.

peace

Again, penfold, fantastic reply. I thoroughly enjoy reading your posts. :D

Quote from: "Davin"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.

As I pointed out before, God is not under any reality, because no reality exists prior to Himself. Morality is part of His very nature. It is not subjective, because He doesn't decide to change it anymore than He decides to change the fact that He exists. Now, if you want to use the word "subject" in the statement, "God is subject to the law of non-contradiction," then fine, in that same sense, God is "subject" to His nature. I'll comment more on this below where you simply replied, "Hmm."

QuoteI 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.

If you didn't mean arbitrary, then you have not understood my argument. If God is required to do anything, then there must be a reality external to Himself under which He is required to operate. If that is the case, then He is not a simple being, because He is not pure act; He has the potential to be acted upon. Therefore, for God to be able to change morality, if He is to be God, it must be arbitrary, that is, found only with reference to Himself.

Again, God is not under any morality external to Himself. The word "morality" ultimately has its signification in the nature of God. The way He operates is the means by which we judge whether or not something is "moral."

QuoteHmm.

God is not subject to the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction is what it is because God is what He is. The fundamental point of the Law is that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time. That is, the Law is rooted in the nature of Being. If God is pure being, then the Law is what it is because of what and the way God is. God is not subject to the Law. It is defined by its relationship to Him.

QuoteIt 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.

The Law cannot be linked to reality? Your statement is too vague here. Can you restate?

QuoteHere 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.

Not under DS they aren't. To speak of what God "can" do is to assume potentiality in God. Yet there is no potentiality in God under DS. The statement "God can X" is meaningless. The question is what God does. He is, again, pure act. God does not change. It is impossible. It would violate the Law, because a changing God would not be God.

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

Ontologically, morality is judged by God. Epistemology is a different matter.

QuoteThe 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.

This thread is not on the issue of whether or not God is Simple. It is on the doctrine of simplicity. It is explaining the concept. If the concept turns out incoherent, then we reject it. But in examining it, it must be assumed. If you want to have an argument on whether or not God is simple, we first have to establish whether or not He exists. We have other threads for that.

QuoteI 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.

Again, you don't have to accept this as being the proper representation of God. What you do have to do is accept that this is the way the doctrine is formulated. You are asking me to prove something that hasn't been defined. That's logically impossible. You have the cart before the horse, my friend. Why do you think I started this thread before I started the thread on whether or not God exists?

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

I link sight to good and blindness to evil as a logical and necessary consequence of the definition of sight, blind, good, and evil. I'm not making a value statement. I'm making a logical statement. Goodness is that which is in accordance with intended reality. Evil is that which lacks intended reality. Blindness is not a thing. It is a lack of a thing, namely, sight. Sight is good because it is the intended function of the eye.

Now, if you wish to link sight with evil, be my guest. I will need to see if you are doing this as a mere value statement or if it is the necessary conclusion of your broader ontology.

QuoteNo, 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.

All you are doing is playing with labels, Davin. If you want to call evil the presence of something, then I will call God evil with no harm to my position whatsoever. "Evil" in your definition means exactly what "good" means in my definition including all that entails. The important thing is not the words. They are just conventional signs. The important thing is the ideas these signs signify.

QuoteBut 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.

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

If all you mean by "good and evil" are pure value statements, "Rape is evil because I don't like it for this or that reason," then let's find another word to talk about what I am calling good and evil. The point is that you cannot attribute non-existence to existence. You cannot attribute privations to existence. It's just a logical fact. If all you mean by good and evil is a personal value system, then neither can be attributed to God. You asked, however, how it is that morality could be rooted in God's nature. That is how this whole conversation got started. The way it is rooted in God's nature is that those words do not represent value statements. They represent ontological statements about the presence or lack of existence, which are rooted in the nature of God, that is, in Existence Itself. You can reject that scheme, but just because you reject it doesn't make it invalid. It just means that morality can be rooted objectively in God's nature. You just don't think that is actually the case. Of course, we aren't talking about what you think is actually the case. We are talking about what it would mean if this or that was the case.

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

Because that would mean that kindness is a short-hand for "the non-existence of hatred," which would in turn imply that hatred is the intended relationship between people, which is obviously not the case.

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

For two reasons.

First, because the purpose of this thread isn't to discover what is real. It is to define the concept of simplicity, which I take to properly signify God. And second, because, as I've already explained, falsification is a tool of science. We don't "falsify" philosophical positions, because philosophical positions don't make empirical predictions. We examine their implications and ask if those implications fit what we see in the world. For instance, if you decided to call hatred the lack of kindness, that position requires us to believe that hatred is the intended relationship between people, and that hatred was therefore good and kindness was therefore evil. That is obviously not the case.

There are some philosophies that lead us to solipsism. They should be rejected. There are philosophies that conclude with the idea nothing can be known. They should be rejected. It is clear that there are other entities and that some things are actually known. You are free to hold to those positions, of course, but you will be forced to live in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, on the one hand saying you are the only thing that exists and that nothing can be known, and other the other hand living as though others exist and things can be known.

Philosophy, done properly, is extremely practical. Its goal is to make sense of the world as we live in it. If your philosophy leads to to conclusions that force you to live in such dissonance, it ought to be rejected unless some very, very strong reasons for holding it can be presented.

QuoteAnalogous 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.

Give me an example of a "completely fictional" analogy.

QuoteRight, 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.

Of course it can't be falsified. I said that in the first place, remember?

That does not mean we can't reject it as impossible, absurd, or just unlikely.

QuoteSomewhat funny.

And true. Verificationism was rejected many years ago. It is self-contradictory.

QuoteBut 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.

[/quote]
You are confusing coherence with truth. Just because something is coherent doesn't make it true. A proof for truth would be as follows:

1. If God exists, He exists as described in the doctrine of simplicity (DS)
2. God exists
3. Therefore, He exists as described in DS.

The truthfulness of DS isn't proven by analogy. It's proven by proofs for God. The concept of DS, however, is perfectly meaningful. You can reject it if you like. I couldn't care less about that one way or the other. The question is whether or not it is coherent on its own merits. As of now, you've said nothing to challenge it. In fact, almost nothing in this reply had to do with DS at all, but only about what we know or can know to be true.

Ok penfold, let's go ahead and address your issues. I'll start by noting that I am a realist (a moderate-realist, to be precise; Aristotelian, not Platonic, and certainly a moral realist). I'll follow your same breakdown.

i Nature of God

A. Pure Act and Analogical Language

1. I'm afraid you might have gotten your idea of analogy and univocity a bit mixed up. Allow me to quote from Owens again here, not that authority is important, but only in that we are discussing the technical meaning of terms:

In univocal predication all the instances belong to the same species or, at least for the logician, to the same genus. Churchill and Stalin, for example, are instances of "man" . . . the definition, as signified by the word, is the same in all cases. . . . Between the two extremes [univocity and equivocation] are found various types of partial sameness and partial difference. One is analogy. The word was borrowed from Greek mathematical vocabulary. There it meant sameness of ratio or proportion . . . outside arithmetic . . . the sameness of proportion . . . is not equality but merely similarity. It is a likeness in the respective ways in which the terms are related to each other in the two pairs. But the likeness is found in a feature that differentiates the instances. . . . The one identical notion, accordingly, s partly the same and partly different. (

An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, pp. 86-87)[/list]
It seems that differences of degree are a matter of analogy and not univocity. In univocity there is no difference in degree; only difference in the individual predicated. I am a human and you are a human. 'Human' is predicated to both of us without difference in degree. There is a degreed difference in analogates, however. In fact, analogates themselves are subdivided further between properly proportionate analogates and improperly proportioned analogates. An example of the former is "Sharp is to touch as shrill is to hearing." The proper proportion is "sudden" or "intense." An example of the latter is "Lindbergh was an eagle," which you will also recognize to be metaphor. We can go still further with Owens and distinguish these from predication through reference, in which Aristotle's examples were "healthy" and "medical."

This may be a point of semantics, but if we are going to charge that analogical language, at least pertaining to God, is meaningless, we need to be very precise in our terms. If, on the other hand, you are using "degreed" in a specific sense, do tell, because while I am a Thomist, I am hardly going to pretend that I have mastered Thomistic philosophy specifically or Scholastic philosophy generally.

2. There is, then, no difficult in understanding the meaning of 'pure act.' Although you are correct that 'act' in and of itself is not univocally predicated pure being, its predication via analogy allows us to know something of its nature. We may not know precisely what it is, but that doesn't mean we don't know anything about it. In fact, even Aquinas was clear on this. He says (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q3.html), "Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not."

I would also like to comment specifically on this:

QuoteWhat we have no example of in the phenomenal universe is the arising of complex behaviour from a lone simple system. It does not follow that the way the phenomenal works is mirrored in the ontological, however it does lead us to one conclusion. Divine simplicity is NOT the same as phenomenal simplicity (which cannot alone lead to complex behaviour), so as with act and cause you are using simplicity in an analogous manner. Which means it suffers from the same problems of interpretation and reference.

You are absolutely correct here! There can be no absolutely univocal predication to God of anything found in creation. The reason, of course, is evident in the nature of a simple being. If all perfections exist as one in God, not diversified, and completely unlimited, and yet none of them exist in such a fashion in creation, then all predication is only analogical. It does not follow from this, however, that such speak is meaningless. It is extremely important here to emphasize Aquinas' point. We do not know what God is. We can, however, know what He is not. 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.

We approximate what God is by talking about what He is analogically and rigorously denying Him the rest. So I think your point about meaninglessness is overstated, although in it is a very important and true point. It is true that we do not know what God is (and I think we will never even know in eternity) in Himself. Only God knows that, and that by His nature. 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.

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.

B. God As Sustainer vs. Simplicity

God can give rise to complexity while remaining simple in view of the fact that when we say that He is pure act, we are referring specifically to efficient causality. I'm not a mathematician, so I'll just grant your point that three systems are necessary to give rise to complexity. Fine.  There is nothing that says God can't bring as many systems into existence as He so desires. 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.

Beyond that, I fail to see how it is that a simple God is fundamentally incompatible with a complex world. The very act of creation--that is, the very act of a FC causing anything--creates complexity by the shear fact that it is bringing into existence that which does not have existence in itself, and thus, the created thing must be a composite of both existence and essence.  

ii Analytical Philosophy

Quotehow language works provides this us with a limit to meaning. There is no inherent committing of the fallacy of inverted intentionality (or use/mention) in this move.

No, there isn't. However, the nature of the limitation, when extrapolated, necessarily results in the fallacy if people attempt to speak about reality. Again, look at Kant's definitions from which all this comes. All statements are either analytical or synthetic. The former are true by definition and the latter are a combination of concepts and so may or may not be true. Yet in this scheme, there is no way to break out of the linguistic word game to talk about reality. 'Bachelor' may refer to 'unmarried men,' but 'bachelor' does not refer to unmarried men. The latter cannot be addressed without confusing use and mention. Thus, absolute skepticism is the necessary result when applied to the nature of reality (a qualification I should have made earlier).

QuoteThe other option, and one that I would say both Kant and Wittgenstein themselves ascribed to, is that the statement 'nothing can be both red and green' is logically true but does not exclude the possibility that an object is both red and green.

That requires a bit of explaining. Essentially the central point is one of reference. Kant and Wittgenstein do not 'lose the right' to talk of reality. What they does is limit what can be said about it. The reason why something cannot be red and green all over is due to lack of reference. When we talk of an object being one colour 'all over', we are excluding the possibility of it being another colour all over. As this would conflict with our usage of 'all over'. So we literally cannot understand what it means to say an object is red and green all over, without changing our understanding of an object. HOWEVER this does not entail that an object in itself cannot be red and green all over. As such the fallacy of inverted intentionality does not arise because statements about the universe do not refer to the ontological but only the phenomenal.

You will have to explain this again. It cannot be that an object itself cannot be red and green all over. That violates the law of non-contradiction. It is absurd. The reason we have the grammatical rule is because the way reality itself is. We didn't invent the grammatical rule because of our psychology. If something can both be and not be in the same way at the same time in reality, there is nothing to say that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time in our thoughts, meaning the grammatical rule is baseless.

Further, through this entire discourse, you are talking about "an object in itself." If Kant is right, then even the phrase "an object in itself" has no reference to anything in reality. It is still just a statement of the second intention. Again, you can't talk about reality in an analytical scheme, and in this very paragraph, you illustrate inverted intentionality by committing it yourself. In trying to describe what we can and cannot say about objects in themselves, you are talking about objects in themselves which your philosophy will not allow. Your words "object" "in" "and" "of" "itself" are all just concepts that are tied to your perception, not reality. So when, in your mind, you apply them to objects themselves, you invert the intentionality. The only option is to not claim we are talking about reality, but we are truly only playing word games. You acknowledge this, which leads us to a discussion on skepticism.

iii Scepticism:

QuoteThe truth only exists as we understand it. Truth qua humanity.

Do you realize this is just a self-defeating statement? It is just advocating relativism. You may as well say "There is no such thing as truth," to which the obvious answer is, "Is it true that there is no such thing as truth?" You will respond, "There is truth, but we cannot know it." To which the question is returned, "Do you know that we cannot know truth?"

Anyway you turn, you contradict yourself. In your own statement, the truth only exists as you understand it. Is that just your understanding? If so, what if it is my understanding that Truth exists in and of itself? Further, your position assumes that epistemology determines ontology, which is absurd. To know reality is to discover it. It is not to determine it. Again, people who think their mere words or thoughts make up reality are called witches and warlocks. That, my dear sir, is called magic.

If you can't talk about reality in itself, you can't know anything. You can't even talk about whether or not you can talk about reality in itself, because "reality in itself" is a meaningless construct. On then, to your alternatives.

iv Alternatives

QuoteNow forgive me if I am mistaken but this must require a theory of direct correspondence of our perceptions and reality. That seems to me shockingly naïve. It implies that things in themselves match in a meaningful way to our perception of them (for how else could we have access to them?)

And here we finally come to the heart of the matter. First off, I'll beat the horse of self-contradiction again. You can't say that such an idea is naive, because you are talking about reality again, which you aren't allowed to do. In the second place, far from being naive, starting with epistemology is fundamentally self-contradictory, as I've argued before. To talk about how we know reality is to assume that there is such a thing as reality to be known. The Aristotelian structure works today just as well as it ever did. We have direct access to reality via judgment of being, apprehension of form, and abstraction of the virtual to the universal. Far from naive, the position is sophisticated and rigorous.

QuoteLook at our earlier example of 'the ball is red'. The analytical philosopher uses that phrase to refer to our perception of the ball (the ball qua us). What of the realist? He is forced to say either that 'the ball is red' is true for the ball qua ball (which is absurd, just look at the same ball under pure blue light, it will appear black!) or else it is not strictly true (and that the correct statement would be “the ball appears red”)! Either way the position is absurd.

This is just a misunderstanding of classical philosophy. When you put the ball under pure blue light, it may appear black, but it is not black. It is red. But what is red? Red is an accidental property of that particular ball. That accidental property may react different ways with different substances, and so in some cases, "appear black" (which is another accidental property). Yet again, you have confused epistemology with ontology. Just because something appears to be the case (epistemology) does not affect what it is (ontology). The position is not absurd. Denying we are talking about the ball is absurd.

QuoteYou need to show that we have access to objects in themselves.

Far from it. You need to show that we can't. It is intuitively obvious that we have access to reality. The fact that we can actually effect reality in predicable ways confirms this. It is counter-intuitive of the highest order, and borders on magic, to claim otherwise. Now, I can work out a system for how it is that we access reality directly. Aristotle and Aquinas have given us a fantastic start on that.

You, on the other hand, want us all to believe that knowledge of reality is absolutely impossible because we cannot speak of reality in and of itself. I suspect that when every atheist here talks about theists or Christianity or Barak Obama, they are pretty convinced, for good reason, that they are talking about theists, Christians, and Barak Obama, not words they just invented.

QuoteDo you realize this is just a self-defeating statement? It is just advocating relativism. You may as well say "There is no such thing as truth," to which the obvious answer is, "Is it true that there is no such thing as truth?" You will respond, "There is truth, but we cannot know it." To which the question is returned, "Do you know that we cannot know truth?"

Pardon, but as a Nihilist myself (I'm not speaking for penfold) this is one of my favorite pet peeves to correct.  ;)

Do I know any of this to be true, beyond a shadow of a doubt? Of course not! The brain is not capable of infallible knowledge but that does not mean it is is incapable of being right.

Quote from: "Jac3510"As I pointed out before, God is not under any reality, because no reality exists prior to Himself. Morality is part of His very nature. It is not subjective, because He doesn't decide to change it anymore than He decides to change the fact that He exists. Now, if you want to use the word "subject" in the statement, "God is subject to the law of non-contradiction," then fine, in that same sense, God is "subject" to His nature. I'll comment more on this below where you simply replied, "Hmm."

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

Quote from: "Jac3510"

QuoteI 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.

If you didn't mean arbitrary, then you have not understood my argument. If God is required to do anything, then there must be a reality external to Himself under which He is required to operate. If that is the case, then He is not a simple being, because He is not pure act; He has the potential to be acted upon. Therefore, for God to be able to change morality, if He is to be God, it must be arbitrary, that is, found only with reference to Himself.

Again, God is not under any morality external to Himself. The word "morality" ultimately has its signification in the nature of God. The way He operates is the means by which we judge whether or not something is "moral."

I understand your argument, these are the problems I have with your argument, where your argument doesn't make sense or where your argument is impossible.

Quote from: "Jac3510"God is not subject to the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction is what it is because God is what He is. The fundamental point of the Law is that something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time. That is, the Law is rooted in the nature of Being. If God is pure being, then the Law is what it is because of what and the way God is. God is not subject to the Law. It is defined by its relationship to Him.

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

Quote from: "Jac3510"

QuoteIt 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.

The Law cannot be linked to reality? Your statement is too vague here. Can you restate?

Sure, you said, "That is the reality with which we are confronted."

Once again I asked you to either stop telling me I can't use the philosophical tools necessary to determine what is real or not while you keep saying that the things you're saying are real. So what is it going to be? You stop dismissing my tests for reality or you stop saying things are real. Either stay purely philosophical or start providing evidence, but don't just start saying things like "That is the reality with which we are confronted" right after saying something like, "The law of non-contradiction turns out to merely be an expression of God's nature[...]" because that is not the reality we're confronted with. In fact nothing in reality even points to that direction.

Quote from: "Jac3510"Not under DS they aren't. To speak of what God "can" do is to assume potentiality in God. Yet there is no potentiality in God under DS. The statement "God can X" is meaningless. The question is what God does. He is, again, pure act. God does not change. It is impossible. It would violate the Law, because a changing God would not be God.

I'm not even going to go into this concept until the things that don't make sense are cleared up.

Quote from: "Jac3510"

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

Ontologically, morality is judged by God. Epistemology is a different matter.

Then you should retract your statement that I was replying to: "God is the standard by which morality is judged."

Quote from: "Jac3510"This thread is not on the issue of whether or not God is Simple. It is on the doctrine of simplicity. It is explaining the concept. If the concept turns out incoherent, then we reject it. But in examining it, it must be assumed. If you want to have an argument on whether or not God is simple, we first have to establish whether or not He exists. We have other threads for that.

Then stop saying things are real. My only objection is that you state that things are real then try to limit me on determining if what you said is something that can even be real. All I'm asking is for you to either remain purely in philosophy, or fulfill your burden when you say something is real.

Quote from: "Jac3510"Again, you don't have to accept this as being the proper representation of God. What you do have to do is accept that this is the way the doctrine is formulated. You are asking me to prove something that hasn't been defined. That's logically impossible. You have the cart before the horse, my friend. Why do you think I started this thread before I started the thread on whether or not God exists?

No, I don't understand how I can make this request any clearer: Don't say things are real without fulfilling the burden that it entails. If you say something is real, then provide the evidence that shows that it is real. Otherwise, just stop saying things are real.

For more clarification; I'm asking for you to stop saying the things you're saying are real or to fulfill the burden of proof. If it's logically impossible for you to fulfill the burden of proof when you say that something is real, then don't say that it's real.

Quote from: "Jac3510"I link sight to good and blindness to evil as a logical and necessary consequence of the definition of sight, blind, good, and evil. I'm not making a value statement. I'm making a logical statement. Goodness is that which is in accordance with intended reality. Evil is that which lacks intended reality. Blindness is not a thing. It is a lack of a thing, namely, sight. Sight is good because it is the intended function of the eye.

If the eye was intended at all. The function of the eye is likely not intended at all. We don't know if the eye was intended or not and if it was intended, what the eye was intended for. We can only be sure what we use the eye for.

Quote from: "Jac3510"Now, if you wish to link sight with evil, be my guest. I will need to see if you are doing this as a mere value statement or if it is the necessary conclusion of your broader ontology.

Quote from: "Jac3510"All you are doing is playing with labels, Davin. If you want to call evil the presence of something, then I will call God evil with no harm to my position whatsoever. "Evil" in your definition means exactly what "good" means in my definition including all that entails. The important thing is not the words. They are just conventional signs. The important thing is the ideas these signs signify.

What you're doing is once again misunderstanding what I said: "Evil" in my definition means exactly the opposite of "good" in your definition. The important thing is to make sure you understand the other persons position before you start telling them what they're doing.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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?

Quote from: "Jac3510"If all you mean by "good and evil" are pure value statements, "Rape is evil because I don't like it for this or that reason," then let's find another word to talk about what I am calling good and evil. The point is that you cannot attribute non-existence to existence. You cannot attribute privations to existence. It's just a logical fact. If all you mean by good and evil is a personal value system, then neither can be attributed to God. You asked, however, how it is that morality could be rooted in God's nature. That is how this whole conversation got started. The way it is rooted in God's nature is that those words do not represent value statements. They represent ontological statements about the presence or lack of existence, which are rooted in the nature of God, that is, in Existence Itself. You can reject that scheme, but just because you reject it doesn't make it invalid. It just means that morality can be rooted objectively in God's nature. You just don't think that is actually the case. Of course, we aren't talking about what you think is actually the case. We are talking about what it would mean if this or that was the case.

Aye, now if you could understand what I said without making the assumptions I clearly pointed out that you were making ans still making, we wouldn't have had to waste all this time. What I'm saying is: what if you got the intention of god wrong? What if the nature of god is the opposite of what you think it is? How would you know?

Quote from: "Jac3510"

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

Because that would mean that kindness is a short-hand for "the non-existence of hatred," which would in turn imply that hatred is the intended relationship between people, which is obviously not the case.

What if hatred was the intended relationship between people? What makes that "obviously not the case."? What if neither were 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?

Quote from: "Jac3510"

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

For two reasons.

First, because the purpose of this thread isn't to discover what is real. It is to define the concept of simplicity, which I take to properly signify God. And second, because, as I've already explained, falsification is a tool of science. We don't "falsify" philosophical positions, because philosophical positions don't make empirical predictions. We examine their implications and ask if those implications fit what we see in the world. For instance, if you decided to call hatred the lack of kindness, that position requires us to believe that hatred is the intended relationship between people, and that hatred was therefore good and kindness was therefore evil. That is obviously not the case.

If the thread isn't to determine what is real, then, once again, stop saying things are real or that "we know" this or that, which is trying to make your philosophy cross the bridge from what the mind can imagine and what is real. To me, I can stay on whichever side you want to take this discussion, but unless you're going to fulfill your burden of proof when saying a thing is real, then stop saying these things are real.

Quote from: "Jac3510"There are some philosophies that lead us to solipsism. They should be rejected. There are philosophies that conclude with the idea nothing can be known. They should be rejected. It is clear that there are other entities and that some things are actually known. You are free to hold to those positions, of course, but you will be forced to live in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, on the one hand saying you are the only thing that exists and that nothing can be known, and other the other hand living as though others exist and things can be known.

Philosophy, done properly, is extremely practical. Its goal is to make sense of the world as we live in it. If your philosophy leads to to conclusions that force you to live in such dissonance, it ought to be rejected unless some very, very strong reasons for holding it can be presented.

I agree that philosophy is can be used to make sense of the world as we live in it, part of making sense of the world is making sure that the philosophical ideas match reality. To me it doesn't matter how good or bad reality is, I'm just focused on finding out what reality is. So while I have no problem delving into the world of pure philosophy and addressing all the things the mind can imagine, I do have a problem with accepting what the imagination came up with as real without making sure it's not merely the imagination.

Quote from: "Jac3510"

QuoteAnalogous 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.

Give me an example of a "completely fictional" analogy.

A frozen star is what god is like.

Quote from: "Jac3510"

QuoteRight, 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.

Of course it can't be falsified. I said that in the first place, remember?

That does not mean we can't reject it as impossible, absurd, or just unlikely.

This concept of divine simplicity appears to be completely absurd, impossible and unlikely, which is why I'm not accepting it as true.

Quote from: "Jac3510"

QuoteSomewhat funny.

And true. Verificationism was rejected many years ago. It is self-contradictory.

That is why I also added in demonstrable and testable. Of course we'll never get to absolute surety of anything, but as long as I have a method that has shown remarkable progress in determining as close as possible what reality is, I'm going to stick with that.

Quote from: "Jac3510"

QuoteBut 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.

You are confusing coherence with truth. Just because something is coherent doesn't make it true. A proof for truth would be as follows:

1. If God exists, He exists as described in the doctrine of simplicity (DS)
2. God exists
3. Therefore, He exists as described in DS.

The truthfulness of DS isn't proven by analogy. It's proven by proofs for God. The concept of DS, however, is perfectly meaningful. You can reject it if you like. I couldn't care less about that one way or the other. The question is whether or not it is coherent on its own merits. As of now, you've said nothing to challenge it. In fact, almost nothing in this reply had to do with DS at all, but only about what we know or can know to be true.

I think having a god defined as something that is both subject and not subject to natural laws is contradictory enough to exclude the concept. I also think that a god that can only have attributes attributed to it through analogous language is enough to reject it as even having the possibility of being real.

Quote from: "Sophus"Pardon, but as a Nihilist myself (I'm not speaking for penfold) this is one of my favorite pet peeves to correct.  ;)

QuoteBy we know nothing we mean it in the fullest sense. It is not to say there is no [strike:1lc9cnhx]truth[/strike:1lc9cnhx] reality. Rather we can never possess it as knowledge with the utmost certainty.

And are you certain that you can't be certain of truth or that you aren't in possession of it?

QuoteIn simplest terms, it is always maintaining an open mind, although I would suggest we are all nihilists whether we realize it or not because our mind is capable of changing belief about anything and not capable of knowing anything. Anything that you know can be revealed to be false

Can it be revealed to be false than anything you know can be revealed to be false?

Quote... did you know Lou Gehrig may not actually have died from Lou Gehrig's disease (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/sports/18gehrig.html?_r=2)? There is no such thing as obtainable truth.

How did you obtain the truth that there is no obtainable truth?

QuoteThere are only amounts of reasonable and unreasonable doubt.

Is that true?

QuoteEven if we are right about something our brain cannot treat it any differently than an axiom (such as this) that can turn out to be false. If new evidence raises or circumstances change, facts can change

Facts can change? So today, it could be "true" (whatever that means) that George Washington was the first president of the USA, but tomorrow, it can be that he was not? Or do you just mean that our interpretation of facts can change based on evidence? If the latter, then doesn't that assume that we can come to know evidence?

QuoteSpeaking of which, historically, how many facts have changed?   ;)

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. I am describing a concept. That concept is real by definition. Perhaps it is wrong, but it is the concept nonetheless. Once that concept is defined, we can test to see if it is real in the first intention. 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.

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.

Most of you response is that "is it true that there is no truth?" I was hoping to have answered that with the last lines of my previous post, that no. Of course not. Bearing in mind that this is being extremely pedantic in Epistemological means. Naturally I am not claiming that we can know that we cannot know. What I am saying is that within reasonable doubt we can reasonably presume that we are not physically capable of knowing anything with 100% certainty regardless of the beliefs truth value. When we say "there is no truth" all that is meant is that as far as humans are concerned truth does not exist for us; we can never own it. Unless, of course you can prove otherwise. The overlooked implication of may saying that 'truth does not exist' is that the assertion is open to free inquiry, myself included. If you can prove to me that we can somehow know something, anything, I will quickly abandon my nihilistic position.

The brain and its "knowledge' is not static. Even memories, which were once thought to be locked in place, have been discovered to be subject to change each and every time we recall upon them. There is a wonderfully fascinating article on this I will dig up if you're interested in the read.

I found epistemological nihilism laughable for a long time, until I realized I was making it more complicated than it really was. Much of the attacks on it are a straw-man, that is to say that we are somehow miraculously daft enough claim to "know that which we cannot know", and "believe we have no beliefs". That's not the case at all because, as I think you are far well intelligent enough to see, language is a barrier hindering the understanding of a most pedantic topic. lol Oh no, and I said "I know!" Google that and you should see what I mean. I believe he was more like the ninth.

Here's one last example to drive home on just what level of extreme open mindedness I'm talking about:

How do you know the universe wasn't created 20 minutes ago with every memory about your life planted into your head, giving the illusion you've been alive all along? Of course you don't know. How could anyone know such a silly thing? But there's no good reason to believe in such a ridiculous thought. If it were true you wouldn't expect to find any evidence in favor for it anyway. Yet that doesn't change that you still don't know. You can never be 100% certain. 99.99999.... perhaps. But never completely certain.

Quote from: "Sophus"Most of you response is that "is it true that there is no truth?" I was hoping to have answered that with the last lines of my previous post, that no. Of course not. Bearing in mind that this is being extremely pedantic in Epistemological means. Naturally I am not claiming that we can know that we cannot know. What I am saying is that within reasonable doubt we can reasonably presume that we are not physically capable of knowing anything with 100% certainty regardless of the beliefs truth value. When we say "there is no truth" all that is meant is that as far as humans are concerned truth does not exist for us; we can never own it. Unless, of course you can prove otherwise. The overlooked implication of may saying that 'truth does not exist' is that the assertion is open to free inquiry, myself included. If you can prove to me that we can somehow know something, anything, I will quickly abandon my nihilistic position.

If it is not true that there is no truth, then it is true that there is truth. There is no middle ground on that. Likewise, if it is not true that you cannot know truth, then it is true that you can know truth. There is no middle ground on that, either. (If it is true that you cannot know truth, then you cannot know the truth that truth cannot be known.) There are, then things that you can know for certainly--both that truth exists, and that it can be known.

It does not good to appeal to certainty with these things. Some things are binary (look, another truth statement that wen can know for sure!). There are many, many things in this world that can be known with certainty. You can know that you exist. You can know that you are having experiences. You can know that your experiences are not you (because then you would not be experiencing them, you would be them). Thus, you can know that you are experiencing something other than yourself, meaning you can know that other things exist. You can know that you either understand properly what those things are or you do not. There is, again, no middle ground. We could do this all day. We can look at analytical (that is, necessary truths) such as "All unmarried men are bachelors." We can know that there contradictories are not true. There are a great deal of what can be called transcendent presuppositions that we know to be true. Therefore, we can know for sure that any system that says we can't know anything for sure is false, including Nihilism.

QuoteThe brain and its "knowledge' is not static. Even memories, which were once thought to be locked in place, have been discovered to be subject to change each and every time we recall upon them. There is a wonderfully fascinating article on this I will dig up if you're interested in the read.

No need. Notice all the truth statements in your sentence. But let's just say that memories do change (which I don't doubt at all). That doesn't mean that the reality they supposedly represent changed. Memories, as you know, are capable of being in error.

The fact that we can have certain knowledge of some things does not imply that we can have certain knowledge of all things. Indeed, it appears that there are many things that we have an imperfect knowledge of. It appears that we can be convinced we are right and turn out to be wrong. That does not, however, negate the possibility of truth or that it can be known. One does not follow from the other.

QuoteI found epistemological nihilism laughable for a long time, until I realized I was making it more complicated than it really was. Much of the attacks on it are a straw-man, that is to say that we are somehow miraculously daft enough claim to "know that which we cannot know", and "believe we have no beliefs". That's not the case at all because, as I think you are far well intelligent enough to see, language is a barrier hindering the understanding of a most pedantic topic. lol Oh no, and I said "I know!" Google that and you should see what I mean. I believe he was more like the ninth.

I hate playing rhetorical games, but sometimes, it's necessary. I figured you would pull that, which is the very reason I used the example. James Hanson was the first president, but George Washington was the first president under our adopted constitution. That doesn't change. It is a historical fact. It is what happened. Those two facts don't and won't ever change.

Facts don't change. People's interpretations of facts change. Facts themselves don't. [Notice, two more statements that we are certain are true, and a third, if you include that statement.]

QuoteHere's one last example to drive home on just what level of extreme open mindedness I'm talking about:

How do you know the universe wasn't created 20 minutes ago with every memory about your life planted into your head, giving the illusion you've been alive all along? Of course you don't know. How could anyone know such a silly thing? But there's no good reason to believe in such a ridiculous thought. If it were true you wouldn't expect to find any evidence in favor for it anyway. Yet that doesn't change that you still don't know. You can never be 100% certain. 99.99999.... perhaps. But never completely certain.

Or you could use the old "brain in a jar" routine. In any case, two points should be made:

1. Just because we can't have certain knowledge of some things doesn't mean we can't have certain knowledge of anything.
2. Even though certitude is a requirement for knowledge, there is a real since in that uncertainty doesn't mean we don't have knowledge.

Let me give you a practical example of the second. I know that my wife loves me. Yes, that is true. I know it. It is a fact that I am aware of and give assent to. You can ask, of course, how I know that I know. That, however, is a different question then the first. How I know I know is a meta-epistemological question. Put differently, it is logically possible that my wife does not love me. That does not, however, change my knowledge that she does. My knowledge of the fact is contingent on its reality. Its reality is not contingent on my knowledge. If, then, she truly does love me, then my knowledge is true and I am justified in saying as much. Acknowledging the logical possibility that the reality may be false does not change the nature of the knowledge I currently possess. If it did, there would be an infinite regress of meta-ethical questions. How could I know that I know that I know that I know . . . that my wife loves me? The question could never be answered, and that about anything. But that is absurd, because as I have shown, there are some things that we do know. Further, there is no reason to doubt my knowledge of things like the fact that I am hungry (which I am!) or that Gretchen loves me or that it is 2:18 PM. All this, of course, is based on a very specific view of what knowledge actually is. That is, it is based on the ontology of knowledge. As I said before, you can't start with epistemology. That is, always has been, and always will be a fundamental mistake. So if you want to develop a rigorous doctrine of knowledge that actually reflects the way you really do live, rather than living in the cognitive dissonance of your current view, you have to start with the question, "What is knowledge" and its related issues.

Finally, even in your silly case above, there are still things that can be known, such as the fact that reality does exist. What its nature is, is another question that can be parsed out and debated--which is, again, an ontological, not epistemological question.

There is a reason I started with the simplicity of being. It is an ontological issue. It is the fundamental ontological issue. To say that we cannot have that discussion because we don't know how we know or what we know or that we can know is to put the cart before the horse. Once we have established the meaning of being, we can move on to how we know being and look at important concepts like judgment, apprehension, conceptualization, abstraction, universals, etc. The fundamental point, however, is that you cannot answer the epistemological question in any way (either as a moderate realist like I would or as nihilist like you would) until we agree on the ontological foundations of the question, which, ultimately, leads us to a discussion of the nature of being. I contend that nature is simple, which is the purpose of this thread.

Quote from: "Jac3510"If it is not true that there is no truth, then it is true that there is truth. There is no middle ground on that.

I don't have time for much of a reply right now, but you're not considering this. This cannot be boiled down to a shallow statement.

Quote1. Just because we can't have certain knowledge of some things doesn't mean we can't have certain knowledge of anything.

The example I gave could well mean that everything you ever "knew" was a lie. And again, I am not saying that we cannot have hit reality, pinned the truth at any given time. What I am saying is we can never know that we have with the utmost certainty.

QuoteFacts don't change. People's interpretations of facts change. Facts themselves don't. [Notice, two more statements that we are certain are true, and a third, if you include that statement.]

I agree. Which is why I keep "reality" separate from "truth". All of our facts are interpretations. That is unavoidable. To be a living, breathing, thinking human is to interpret everything around us. This has been what my crux is, and I'll repeat it: It is not that there is no 'truth' (reality, facts, etc.). Merely that there is not absolute truth that is knowable by any human being.

Quote from: "Sophus"I don't have time for much of a reply right now, but you're not considering this. This cannot be boiled down to a shallow statement.

Is that true?

Sophus, you can call that shallow, but it's the nature of reality. You cannot say that we can't know some things for sure and that everything is our interpretation, because even that would just be an interpretation. It is self-contradictory

QuoteThe example I gave could well mean that everything you ever "knew" was a lie. And again, I am not saying that we cannot have hit reality, pinned the truth at any given time. What I am saying is we can never know that we have with the utmost certainty.

And I gave you lots of examples of things that can't be a lie. I also distinguished between knowing truth and knowing that you know truth.

QuoteI agree. Which is why I keep "reality" separate from "truth". All of our facts are interpretations. That is unavoidable. To be a living, breathing, thinking human is to interpret everything around us. This has been what my crux is, and I'll repeat it: It is not that there is no 'truth' (reality, facts, etc.). Merely that there is not absolute truth that is knowable by any human being.

Then there is such thing that is truth that is knowable, Sophus. You know that there is a difference in reality and truth, between reality and interpretation. That's something you know to be true about reality. Your entire position is built on a particular understanding of reality, not on a particular understanding about understanding, because understanding is also a part of reality.

Your position is just self-defeating. It is self-contradictory. You may as well deny the law of non-contradiction, which is the definition of irrational. If you want to embrace irrationality, then be my guess, but I'm willing to bet that you don't think of yourself as irrational, that most of the decision you make are not irrational, and that most of the people on this board would be offended if you said they were all irrational.

We're going in circles. I've tried explaining why it's not contradictory, at this rate, there's not much more I can do. Perhaps I've been explaining it inadequately, in which case I'm to blame.

QuoteAnd I gave you lots of examples of things that can't be a lie.

Which again, assumes too much to support itself.

Here, I will attempt one last time to explain. I can't help but think that you are not making an effort to at the least consider it with an open mind. It's not complex. It only appears contradictory and self defeating on the surface.

Let's break this down:

QuoteIf it is true that you cannot know truth, then you cannot know the truth that truth cannot be known.

Again, no one is claiming we can know "the truth that truth cannot be known". I have repeated this several times now. I am not claiming to know this (bearing in mind I mean with the highest degree of certainty). Epistemological Nihilism itself is not something some one can know; it is only a view which can be held just like any other belief. It would be enormously stupid on my part not to see such a glaringly obvious contradiction like the one you suggested if it existed. You are attacking a strawman. I am not affirming there is no truth. I am denying there is any truth. (Throughout this thread when I use the word truth I shall be speaking specifically of the absolute knowledge of it relative to human beings)

QuoteYou cannot say that we can't know some things for sure and that everything is our interpretation, because even that would just be an interpretation.

Precisely. And that's all I am claiming it to be....

To answer the question Can I know I exist? one only needs to respond with another, Can I doubt I exist? Any number of bizarre scenarios can be spat out asserting you don't; reality is a dream and you but a mere projection, we're living in a matrix or virtual reality, so on and so on. There is no evidence of any of these, yet at the same time there is no evidence we should expect to see if they were true. Thus it is impossible to prove one way or the either. The point being, like it or not, you don't know.

Science itself is nihilistic, because it is always open. As has been stated by Richard Dawkins,

Quote[P]roof is a notion that scientists have been intimidated into mistrusting.

Influential philosophers tell us we can’t prove anything in science.

I understand your position, Sophus. You are looking at your denial of truth in the same way you deny God's existence. You aren't positively asserting (in your mind) that there is no truth. You would say you have no reason to believe in truth. You would be an atruthist.

What I am trying to get you to see is that such a position is self-contradictory. You can say "I lack belief in God." You cannot say "I lack belief in truth." Let me demonstrate this two ways. We can take your statement in two ways, referring to the passive denial of the existence of truth or the passive denial of the knowledge of truth. Let me treat both.

1. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. If I say "it is raining" and it is raining outside, then the statement is true. If it is not raining, the statement is false. Some statements have no truth-value because there is no correspondence to reality: "Blargs are purple," or "Jennifer's husband is the world' must eligible bachelor." Thus, where there is reality, there is truth. Where there are statements, there is truth value (whether it can or cannot be known is another question). If you say, "I lack belief in truth," you are making a statement about reality. The reality, in this case, is your personal belief. The reality is that you don't have a positive belief in truth. Therefore, the statement properly represents reality and is truth. In other words, if you lacked belief in truth, you could not make the statement. To deny the existence of truth in this sense is tantamount to saying, "I don't believe we can make statements." You may not believe it, but you had to employ it to make the statement. Or again, you may as well say, "I don't believe I exist." Such statements are just silly.

2. Knowledge is a primitive fact of consciousness and thus cannot be properly defined, but it can be practically characterized by awareness (including assent) of truth. It may be raining outside, but I may be unaware of it. Thus, the truth may be that it is raining, but I have no knowledge of that fact. Someone may inform me that it is raining, and I deny the fact, and thus cannot be said to have knowledge of it. Again, someone may tell me that it is raining, and I may assent, but it may be that they are wrong, and thus, I still cannot be said to have knowledge. But if it is raining and I am aware of that, I can say that I have knowledge of the fact. Thus, where there is both truth and minds, there is the potential of knowledge. If, then, you say, "I lack belief in the fact that I can know truth," you are making a claim about your relationship to truth, which is to say, you are making a knowledge claim. In this case, the truth--the reality itself--is your state of belief. In making a truth claim about that reality, you are stating your awareness about that truth, and thus, your claim is a knowledge claim. You can't make a knowledge claim that we can make no knowledge claims. Put differently, you can't know that you can't know--logically, anyway. Again, you can certain lack the belief in knowledge, but the statement is self-refuting and thus should be immediately abandoned, because in stating your lack of belief, you are stating your knowledge that you lack belief about knowledge.

This is why I keep asking the silly questions to point out the self-contradiction. You accuse my questions of being shallow. I am suggesting that nihilism of any form is shallow, whether it acknowledges it or not. You said, then, that if I could give you any statements you could know certainly, you would abandon them. Or, to quote you directly:

QuoteIf you can prove to me that we can somehow know something, anything, I will quickly abandon my nihilistic position.

I've proven to you that you can know that you know you lack belief.

QuoteYou accuse my questions of being shallow.

Not your questions, your assertions and reasoning, as it has, and continues, to attack a strawman.

QuoteIf you say, "I lack belief in truth," you are making a statement about reality.

A statement which is an interpretation of reality.

QuoteIf I say "it is raining" and it is raining outside, then the statement is true. If it is not raining, the statement is false.

You again, assume knowledge, that it is raining. How do you know it is raining? Can you prove it is raining? Do human senses never lie? Does the brain always depict reality accurately; or with perfection? If so, how can it? How do you know you aren't hallucinating? Gone mad? Dreaming? In a virtual reality? Under the spell from the white witch? Or that you brain is in a jar? What if it's only something that looks like rain? What if it can be proven to be something else?

I am not an epistemological nihilist in practice. I doubt anyone is. There is no reason to believe such radically absurd notions such as these bearing no evidence, that is of course, under the assumption they all have no evidence. At the same time you cannot prove that they are not true, and that is why you don't know anything. The mind can only interpret reality. How accurate its interpretations are has no bearing on reality, or if you prefer "truth". Interpretations can never be considered absolute, and unquestionable. If you can question, you do not know. If you can question, you do not know. Only someone who "knows" is unwilling to question.

To end with another reiterated point: I am not claiming an individual cannot correctly observe reality. Yet s/he can never know (in the austere sense that I am using the word).

Quote from: "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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"

Quote from: "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:

Quote from: "Isaac Brock"We were certainly uncertain, at least I'm pretty sure I am.

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

Quote from: "Sophus"You are taking that statement (put in bold) to mean that it can be known.

Which position do you hold?

Quote from: "Jac3510"

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

Quote from: "Sophus"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.

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:

QuoteThe 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:

QuoteIt 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:

QuoteWe 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...

Quote[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:

QuoteWe 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:

Quote[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:

Quote[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?

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.

Quote from: "Sophus"

Quote from: "Jac3510"

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

Quote from: "Sophus"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.

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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"[...] ...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:

Quote[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

QuoteI 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:

QuoteThe 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:

QuoteMore 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

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

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"Perhaps it is wrong, but it is the concept nonetheless.

A concept which is inconsistent just in itself.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Jac3510"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?

Quote from: "Davin"

Quote from: "Jac3510"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.

Quote from: "Davin"

Quote from: "Jac3510"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."

Quote from: "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.

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.

QuoteSo 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.

Quote"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.

QuoteAs 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

QuoteI 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:

QuoteThe 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.

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

QuoteMore 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.

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]

QuoteBy "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:

QuoteThe 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:

QuoteExistence 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:

QuoteSo 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).

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.