I think I’m playing Paul Samuelson to Lib’s Keynes.
I don’t think the necessity argument comes from his experiences. That’s more a first principles thing. The goodness one does, I think.
We did have a discussion about your point in the past. I asked if, given that he thought his God was existent outside his mind, you could survey other people with God experiences and see if there was a correlation. He said that he didn’t assume there would be. This makes confirmation of God’s external existence impossible and the existence of a contact unfalsifiable, which in this one case seems to be okay.
Sorry, guys, but I’m gonna have to cherry pick this stuff. I appreciate Voyager doin’ some ‘splainin’ for me, but not all of it is quite as I would put it. There’s about a half dozen of you and only one of me. I’ll try to consolidate as carefully as I can, especially where I think there’s overlap. If I miss something, it isn’t because I’m dodging anything. It’s just because there’s too much. I’ll cover what I think is most important, which is not to imply that something even intentionally left out is not important.
Well, there’s the matter of whether God exists, and the separate matter of whether you or I believe in Him. One is an ontological issue, and the other a doxastic one. Just because belief is not necessary, that does not imply that existence is not. (And I think that addresses some of your follow-up remarks and questions.)
You’re exactly right. One version of it goes like this:
[1] it is possible that God exists (put another way, it is not necessary that God does not exist) - premise; [2] it is true in all possible worlds that if God exists in actuality, then He exists necessarily - premise; [3] if God does not exist in all possible worlds, then it is true in all possible worlds that it is not necessary that God exists - application of Becker’s axiom (note that this is introduced so that we can argue by reductio); [4] If God does exist necessarily, then He exists in actuality - application of the M axiom (or Modal axiom); [5] either it is necessary that God exists, or else it is not necessary that God exists - application of the law of excluded middle; [6] either it is necessary that God exists, or else it is true in every possible world that it is not necessary that God exists - substitution on 3 and 5; [7] if it is true in every possible world that it is not necessary that God exists, then it is true in every possible world that God does not exist - application of modal modus tollens on 2; [8] either it is necessary that God exists, or else it is necessary that God does not exist - substitution on 6 and 7; [9] it is necessary that God exists - application of disjunctive syllogism on 7 and 2; [10] God exists in actuality (QED) - application of modus ponens on 4 and 9.
I realize that it is not an easy read, but I’ve provided the symbology before and people haven’t liked that either. (I often feel damned if I do and damned if I don’t.)
If you can just bring yourself to give it a careful and thorough examination, you will understand it. It isn’t that the terms are difficult; it’s that they’re strung together in syntax that you just don’t hear on a regular basis. It sounds like gibberish to people who scan over it carelessly, but minds like yours can get it. Feel free to ask me any questions. If I know the answers, I’ll share them.
(I think that also address more overlap in responses.)
No, of course not. But again, what am I to do? Not to say that I’m incapable of lying, but I’m not comfortable with lying about this, and so I can’t deny having worked all this out. I can’t just say, as Triskadecamus does, “Hey, I just have faith and who cares about logic.” I cared about logic long before I cared about God. And although it’s true that I would now believe even without any other reason than my experience, I still have to test the logic.
And I really can’t sympathize with people at this board who say that it comes across as hocus-pocus. All they have to do to understand it is to slow down and read it, absorb it, take the time to understand inference [4] before skipping to inference [8]. I’m the least smart person in the room, and I understand it just fine. I’ve revealed time and again my autodidacticism, and most of the people reading this stuff have college degrees. It really is not difficult. Tedious? Yes, sure, like any technical thing. But difficult? No. And I don’t leave anything out. Like Voyager said, I lay it all on the table. I’m willing to engage people who will examine the table, but I’m not willing to waste time on people who don’t even look at the table and say there’s nothing there.
You understand that, don’t you?
No, sorry, but that’s not true. Philosophers almost always agree on the validity (or lack thereof) of every philosophical proof. What comes into question is soundness, which means simply rejection of the premises when a proof is valid. To be valid, a proof need only follow the rules of its system. But to be sound, a proof must be valid and it’s premises must be true.
(I hear the garage door. I’ll check back in the morning. Good night, all.)
(Reminder to self on preview, prove for Voyager that necessary existence is true.)
Lib, let me rephrase - I’ve seen the Ontological Proof before (both Ansel & Descartes as well as Godel and Plantinga). I understand the chain of logic well enough. It’s the premises that are under question.
“It is possible that God exists” depends on a coherent, unambiguous definition of God.
“it is true in all possible worlds that if God exists in actuality, then He exists necessarily” - again, no indication of why you dismiss a contingent God.
Um, no, again. I rejected the premise that God was ‘possible’, which word I understand and understood to mean ‘exists in at least one possible world’. Rejecting a premise is the opposite of accepting it, and to accept a premise is to assume it is true; therefore, the rejection of a premise is the absence of a truth assumption about the given statement. If you wish to assume that a premise is false, you accept the negated version of the premise.
So, what I did was to reject the premise that God is possible (presuming that God is a thing that, if it exists, is also necessary). From this I meant I do not assume that that premise is true, and I do not accept the conclusion of any argument that uses and relies upon this premise, unless the premise is separately proven in an argument that I do accept. I take this stance since I do not feel that it has been sufficiently proven. If it were somehow sufficiently proven, then I would have no problem with accepting it.
I didn’t make up this terminology for accepting or rejecting a premise. I seriously doubt I’m alone in the world in using it.
Oh, and you are free to be confused about what I mean, and/or to ask for clarification, but please do not state your guesses as second person assertions.
Ah, the actual proof! Okay: I reject both of these premises. You have instantiated this variable ‘God’ to represent a thing that Exists (in some possible world) and has the property of being Necessary (in all possible worlds). Now, it’s not hard to find things that Exist, and it’s not hard to imagine something that is Necessary, but how can you possibly have determined that you have found an actual real Existent thing that is also Necessary?
Only if all worlds are the same; something can be necessary there and not here. For example, one world could be a world dependent on physical laws; the other could be a dream/simulation in the mind of God.
Whether or not god exists (particularly the god you believe in) doesn’t matter. There is no benefit to belief. Interesting, sure. But it doesn’t change anything.
But it doesn’t imply that existence IS necessary, either. I am proof that it is not necessary because I live without the existence of god. And that’s not to say that there’s no possibility that god exists; only that I have no reason to believe a less-than-solid philosophical argument as some sort of proof.
Even if your theory regarding the existence of god were true, what difference does it make if god doesn’t meddle, doesn’t care, and doesn’t want to be known? It simply doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t act on our world (and I have no reason to believe he does) he might as well not be there at all.
Necessary existence is true in every possible interpretation.
To prove this, we need to prove that this expression is true for every assignment function in every interpretation for every world: for every X, it is necessary that there exists a Y, such that Y = X. In other words, if X is necessary, then there must be, in every possible world some interpretation of X called Y. This is to eliminate equivocation, so that if you call it “God” (Y1) and I call it “slime mold” (Y2), though the labels differ, the referent is still X. Note that such a thing would have to be done even without all the other controversy because of linguistics. It is “God” in English, but “Dios” in Spanish, etc. Different labels, but same thing represented by both.
I’m going to show a formal proof, and then I’m going to give a link to a plain English narrative explanation. That way everything should be covered to everyone’s satisfaction.
Let A mean “for every”
Let E mean “there exists”
Let signify modal necessity
Let != mean “not equal”
Prove: AxEy(y = x)
x = x … identity axiom
Ay(y != x) -> (x != x) … application of quantifier axiom PDF file
x = x -> Not(Ay(y != x)) … contrapositive from 2
x = x -> Ey(y = x) … from 3 by definition of “E”
Ey(y = x) … application of modus ponens on 1 and 4
Ey(y = x) … application of necessitation rule (if T is a thesis in L, then T must also be a thesis in L) to 5
You are free, of course, to reject either premise. But let me make it plain just exactly what it is that you are rejecting.
Just as belief in X is not the same as the existence of X (a doxastic issue and an ontological issue respectively), so it is true that the definition of X is not the same as the proof of X (a linguistic issue and a logic issue, respectively). In other words, we cannot define things into existence. Otherwise, I could prove that pigs fly by defining “fly” to mean “wallow in mud”.
Part of the confusion I’ve seen in the modal ontological proof is that people (not logicians, but lay observers) confuse the definition of God as necessary existence with the logical inference that God exists necessarily. That’s because they are symbologically identical — G. But it is one thing to say that God is necessary existence, and quite another to say that something implies that His existence is necessary.
Definitions are not themselves logical propositions. For a proposition to be logical, it must follow by inference from some other logical proposition. (This is the K, or Kripke, rule of logic.) This rule effectively closes a logical proof off from everything but the premises and inferences. The first statement in any nontrivial proof is always a premise, which is an unproved assertion. Since it comes first, it obviously cannot have followed from something else, and so premises must be chosen carefully. A ridiculous premise will be rejected out of hand by most examiners.
Once the premises have all been stated, the proof gets underway in earnest. The only way a statement can follow the premise section is by application of the rules of logic. Introduction of a premise later is called “audiatur et altera pars” and, while not a logical fallacy per se, disrupts the flow of the proof and can even mislead interpretation. So, once you’ve had your say axiom-wise, everything that follows must follow the rules. Whenever a rule is misapplied, the proof is said to be “invalid”. But if all rules are rightly applied, then the proof is said to be “valid”. (Note that a proof may be valid even if its premises are false.)
Each step in the proof after the premises is called an “inference”, and is necessarily a logical proposition — not a definition, and not a premise. Thus, if G follows from the statement before it by some rule of logic, then G in that context is a logical proposition, and not a definition. Moreover, if the rule of logic was not misapplied, then the proposition is a valid one.
The final inference in a proof is called the “conclusion”. The conclusion should match identically what it was you were to prove. But it cannot match any of your premises, because that would make it “circulus in demonstrando”; i.e., it would be begging the question — you will have assumed your conclusion before your examination even began.
Therefore, although God is defined as necessary existence, that means nothing proof-wise. It’s fine to define something, but until a statement about the thing has followed from some other statement that is itself valid, then all you have is an unproven thing. Thus, G as a logical proposition is true, while G as a definition has no truth value of any kind, neither true nor false.
Now, with respect to the definition itself, it corresponds directly to the traditional notion of God as supreme being. Supremacy is a superlative concept — like most, or best, or X-est — implying uniqueness and greatest magnitude; otherwise, it would just be superior — more, better, or X-er. Since there can be no existence greater in magnitude than existence in every possible world (impossible worlds don’t exist), and since “being” is itself an ontological statement, it seems reasonable to characterize the supreme being as having ontological supremacy. And that’s exactly what necessary existence is. And so, supreme being maps perfectly to necessary existence. Supreme -> necessary / being -> existence.
So when you reject the first premise — it is possible that God exists — you are rejecting something quite specific. Now, it depends on what you negate with your rejection, whether it be the possibility (a negation of the modal) or the God (a negation of the term). In other words, these are two different statements: (1) it is not possible that God exists; and (2) it is possible that God does not exist. But either way, substituting the definition for the term (which obviously is reasonable) reveals that rejection of the premise is basically nonsense. Either (1) it is not possible that that which exists in every possible world exists; or (2) it is possible that that which exists in every possible world does not exist. It is tantamount to rejecting the existence of the actual world. There is nothing unreasonable about allowing for the possibility that God exists.
And when you reject the second premise — if God does exist, then He exists necessarily — you are invoking a contradiction. Again, by substitution, you are saying that if that which exists in every possible world does exist, then that which exists in every possible world does not exist in every possible world.
I do not envy the person who must defend either of those counter-premises.
That’s a good question, and I think the answer depends on how your language is interpreted. For me, your first clause sounds like a proposition or statement about God, whereas the second clause sounds like a definition. So, given my intepretation, my response to the second clause would be something like this: “Fine. I’ll accept calling the universal necessity god, but now prove that there actually IS such a thing.” Others may interpret your question differently, however.
It just seems to me that your god is god #6 from my original list: The god that used to be called “the universe” by everyone until someone used a spiritual Dymo Label Maker to rename it. Both the universe and your god exists of everything, is everywhere, and is a necessity in all possible worlds.
That’s pretty much how I read it as well. Which is meaningless whether it’s true or not. The existence of god doesn’t matter unless attributes that affect our lives are applied to it. So far, this exercise in logic has failed to do that.
I put it to you that “supreme being” is one of those nebulous concepts I was objecting to. “Supreme” at what? At existence? Then I’d say anything that exists is as good as anything else that exists - “existence” does not lend itself to superlatives, it is binary. A thing either exists or not, there is no ranking of degrees of existence.
So to sum up - what is it about God that makes him the “Supreme Being”? What properties does the Supreme Being manifest, that distinguishes it from the not-so-supreme being.
Let me rephrase that - how do you jump from “necessary in all possible worlds” to “God” without assigning any other attributes to this universal necessecity?
Do you go for the traditional sum-of-all-positives approach, which can, of course, be refuted?
Well, for me to keep up with us, you fellows are gonna have to assign a spokesperson.
The complaint about the narrowness (or broadness) of this particular aspect seems a bit misplaced to me. I attempted to branch out and discuss other attributes of God besides existence, but then was asked how they tie in to the ontology. When I started explaining that, I was asked for detail. Well, I think one said less detail and another said more. And now that I’ve given all the detail, the complaint is back to saying that His existence is irrelevant, and what about other attributes. Reconstructing these proofs time after time is a lot of work, and honestly not worth our collective time if they’re preemptively dismissed as meaningless.
I think what I’ll do is this, and I think it’s fair. Who among you has read the proof in #282 and can put it in your own words so that it conveys an understanding of what I’m saying? I’ll then continue this discussion with the first person to respond accordingly. Does everyone think that’s fair?
I’ll admit that your understanding of formal philosophy and logic is much deeper than mine, but for purposes of this discussion, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that god exists (though I’m much more comfortable with the *possibility * that god exists). So no, I don’t understand what you’re saying, but let’s say I do.
That still doesn’t create a situation where we’d care one way or another. The attributes you assign are arbitrary. Anyone could take your theory of existence and plug in negative attributes and it would still be meaningless unless those attributes can be proven to be beneficial or detrimental to those of us in the secular world. I’m interested in knowing why, if there is no tangible evidence of a “supreme being” (and that term hasn’t been defined yet, either) we would care.
For me, I think my biggest objection to the modal ontological argument is the idea that it is possible for a necessary God to exist, when “necessary” is defined as “necessary in all possible worlds.” A world consisting only of shrimp is possible, as is a world in which shrimp do not exist (to use flip examples); therefore, it is not possible that there is an entity necessary to exist in all possible worlds, since we have two possible worlds that contain no common element.
Whatever “god” might be–shrimp, an infinitely good being, an infinitely evil being, the emotion of love, a lighting-hurling philanderer, a cow who licks the world free from the ice, a tricky spider, the final judge, the creator–a world in which the entity does not exist is possible; therefore, it is not possible for a God necessary to all world’s existence to exist.
Define God differently, removing the meta-necessity quality, and its existence becomes possible; but the nature of modal logic forbids such meta-necessities, as near as I can tell.
Some years ago when I was first exposed to the modal ontology argument, I did some research, and I found that my layman’s suspicions about the argument’s weaknesses had been well-elaborated by folks who work in the field. Obviously not everyone is convinced by such refutations, but these are pretty strong refutations, not to be dismissed lightly.
Then is that a clearance to move on and discuss attributes like goodness and omnipotence and all that sort of thing? This part of the deal is done, and no backtracking? If so, specify whether the attributes of neguentropy and morality were sufficiently fleshed out. Should we get back to those? Or are we ready to move on to His power and knowledge?
