Your argument is compelling, Ultra, and forces me to change my mind. Indeed, an assignment of any value, including zero, to the greatness of nonexistence is akin to assigning any value, including zero, to 1/0.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that existence is great (or terrible, or any arbitrary attribute), and nonexistence isn’t. (It isn’t great, nor is it anything else.) Greatness in ontology typically is a measure of ordinal extreme. Therefore, necessary existence is greater than possible existence.
So, I agree that existence is not greater than nonexistence. Nor is a thing that exists greater than a thing that doesn’t. It is important to note, however, that we cannot bend to sloppy reasoning and assert that object “x” and object “y” are equally great. In fact, the term “object ‘y’” is meaningless.
Then, why did you write the word “god” in your thread’s title instead of “necessary existence” or whatever else?
That’s the major problem with your GD thread. You * arbitraly *
called necessary existence god. Though you admitted yourself in the thread that you could use whatever else word instead, like “cblunz”, for instance (can’t remember the unexisting word you used).
You could similarily state : everybody agree that the universe exist. I decide to call the universe “god”. Therefore, everybody agree that god exists.
By choosing the word “god” to qualify what you were attempting to logically prove the existence of, you strongly twisted the consequences of your reasonning, in favor of an hypothesis which doesn’t logically follow from it. God isn’t a neuter word.
Don’t hold your breath, clairobscur, I’m still waiting on the simple answer to my question, because if my summation is correct, I just don’t understand what Libertarian thought he’d accomplish in the first place. All he’s done is proven a metaphysically undefined concept which can be defined in terms acceptable to any theistic or materialistic worldview.
I never said pantheism and materialism are the same, I said the conclusion you’ve drawn can be interpreted in a materialistic manner. Whatever definition you’re referring to can be coherent as you want, but on several occasions you refused to elaborate on “Supreme Being” other than what you feel the most basic definiton implies. However, if a materialist defines the entire universe colllectively as the greatest possible existance, your argument serves only to further their belief. So what have you done here?
inkblot
The reason why materialists who accept the argument’s soundness do so with such dramatic reluctance is that, even with a pantheistic interpretation of the tableau’s “G”, they are according to the universe such qualities as sentience, power, and knowledge. It doesn’t just imply that the universe exists, but that the universe has, for example, all possible knowledge (even more than Cecil). That’s the sort of thing the definition means.
And is there a problem with saying the universe has sentience in the same way the planet Earth has people? Looking at the universe, “G” in your equation, as a set containing the entire physical universe, with all individual pieces (and their qualities) considered as a whole ?
inkblot
In many ways, I can sympathize with that interpretation. For me, the view that man is insignificant owning to the sheer vastness of the universe is a naive view, failing to account for the significance of a sentient human brain compared to a helpless galaxy of stars that are acting out prescribed roles over which they have no knowledge or control.
Unfortunately, there is the problem that materialist consciousness is not collective. At least, there appears to be no evidence that it is. Unless you know my thoughts as intimately as your own, we are not one being. We are G[sub]a[/sub] and G[sub]b[/sub]. What no doubt disturbed Dougherty and others most was the compulsion to acknowledge a metaconsciousness for which materialism fails to account.
I wasn’t aware that materialism espoused this view, or applied any quallitative judgement based on quantity within the universe, but then I’m not a materialist myself. Still, it’s not germane…
Ah, here things are begining to make sense to me. I was not aware that elements of G must be viewed as a collective rather then elements of a set. So if G = G[sub]a[/sub] + G[sub]b[/sub] + …, then must every element of G[sub]x[/sub] contain the same attributes of every other element? In other words, must there be a metaconsciousness? I can acknowledge there may be a consciousness greater then my own. I can also see that my consciouness plus your consciousness, even if not joined, are greater than my consciousness alone.
If I may be permitted a metaphor, let us equate consciousness with a physical object, say an apple. You may have an apple greater that mine, or vice versa (it’s difficult to measure such things, and we’re not here for that), however, you can image an apple greater than either yours or mine. What I see, is that we both have apples, and maybe yours is greater, or maybe mine is, but I also think that both of our apples together are better than one apple alone. They’re still individual apples, we’re not putting them in a blender together, we can’t trade them, your apple is still yours, and mine is mine. I can imagine greater apples then my own, but I know my imagination has limits, and there might be an even greater apple I cannot imagine. Still, I know (or perhaps it’s most accurate to say “I believe”) there are only so many apples in the universe, and no matter how great any one apple is, I believe the greatest possible thing is all the apples together. I call this the greatest possible apple, because it covers every aspect of every apple there is. All the good points, all the bad points, and even better it doesn’t rely on my judgement of what is good or bad for an apple. It’s not a real apple, you can’t hold it in your hand, it’s a metaphysical concept of the perfect apple which is based on all real apples.
Now, as I understand it your proof states this perfect apple actually exists, because it’s the greatest possible and therefore necessary. But to me, it’s the greatest possible apple defined by all other apples, so now we have all other apples plus this perfect one, and now I have to redefine things and I can see this going round and round until we have nothing but apples. Instead, why can we not give a name to all apples and call this the greatest possible state of apple? True, they’re all different apples, but aren’t two better that one? If one is better than all the rest, isn’t that plus another better than the perfect apple by itself?
This is a point of view I see as valid, not necessarily one I subscribe to, nor do I expect you will either. If it’s incompatible with the modal logic you’ve applied, I’d like to know. I’ve been uncomfortable with this proof because it is attempting to deal with abstract concepts using concrete terms. I feel there is only so much weight we can give a concept through implication, because to imply something requires we all process the evidence the same way. Your proof is sound logic, but to take those variables and begin ascribing real-world values to them will only lead to complications and argument. You’ve said before you have every logician and philosopher of note in the western world in modern times on your side, but in my extracuricular reading I’ve been doing to try and understand ontology better, well I don’t know about the logicians, but I don’t think the philosophers are necessarily all on the same side. If they’re going to pick things apart, and argue just who and what God is, do you expect any different here?
inkblot
The only thing that all the logicians agree on about the proof is that it is valid — in other words, the propositions all follow one another in accordance with the rules of logic. Disagreement is not about whether it is valid, but about whether it is sound. To be sound, an argument must be valid AND its premises (or axioms) must be true. It is impossible to discredit the argument’s validity unless you discard logic as a whole (a modus ponens is a modus ponens, after all). But you can reject its soundness by rejecting the statement: “it is possible that God exists”. That’s the argument’s initial premise, and is stated without proof.
Regarding this:
Yes, there must, because every possible world is contingent upon some truth. In world A, for example, it might be impossible that the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference is anything other than pi (say, in a flat plane world). But in world B, (a saddle world) or world C, (a globe world), the same ratio must be something other than pi. And yet, in all the worlds, the definition of a circle remains the same: the points on their circumference are equidistant from their centers. The circle itself is not contingent on the rules of the worlds — it is a circle in every world that can contain circles.
Ah, thank you. Then I understand now that the materialist’s objections lie in in the soundness of the argument, something I’ve seen the undercurrent of in the various threads on this subject since you brought it up…the logic is sound, but the premises it’s built upon questionable to some. This is why many of us have said this argument doesn’t further anyone’s ends, because while the logic may be sound, the initial premises or axioms are nearly indistinguishable for most people. Even one who admits to the possibility of God without feeling confident one way or the other (agnostic, as we commonly use the term here) likely feels even the possibility of God is, itself, questionable. In other words, if they were that certain to begin with, God’s existence wouldn’t be in such doubt in the first place. Drawing out an atheist to admit to the possibility of God in order to irrefutibly prove it to them may only succeed in forcing the athiest to deny even the possibility.
Still, all ways around, it’s been an informative, if highly charged, discussion.
inkblot
