That is terrific, Apos! 
—With respect to the last step, it is merely saying that, for example, X may represent any existence in any possible world, and that is indeed the definition of necessary existence. For every X, it is necessary that there exists a Y, such that X = Y.—
That makes a great deal more sense (the bit about “for a variable” and “there is a variable equivalent to another variable” made it sound like there were three variable involved, not two). Indeed, checking back with the symbols would have resolved my confusion. Thanks.
—As for your remarks about necessity and possibility and so forth, it sounds to me like the view you take is similar to that of the actualists.—
Well, my mastery of the terms is not so good, and I can see why you might have thought that. But my primary interest in the passage in question is the equation of what is commonly understood as being something that is “supernatural” with necessary existence. I believe I specified that my use of “actual” was not the technical sense, but rather in the way people simply to describe anything that can be said to “really” exist, whether it be necessary, actual (and for this discussion it is irrelevant whether we think that possible things are said to exist or not, because we aren’t considering what to call them anyway).
If that which is indeed necessary actually exists, then why is it called supernatural? Is it, and it alone, supernatural? In what way is it by nature oir simply in practice tangibly different from things that “only” actually exist (which seems to be true for things called supernatural)
The second purpose of that passage is to ask why necessary existence is specially characterized as being anymore “outside” actual existence than any possible existence. i.e., If necessary existence is simply in every possible world, I don’t see how that makes it anymore “outside” actual existence than something that exists in this and only one other possible world.
Yeah, I was mightily impressed by these constructions: I had no idea that picking a particular perspective alone could untangle the visual paradox! They also have ‘Balcony’ and ‘Belvedere’, though they are less convincing.
Apos
Toward the first purpose:
Ah! I think I see what you’re asking. Note that the implications are not biconditional. Necessary existence implies actual existence, but actual existence does not imply necessary existence (in this particular modality: S5). If we take the discussion to ordinary usage of the terms as you suggest, it might help. I think this was attempted in the old OA thread, but maybe now there is more context to help it be more fruitful. Consider necessary existence to be a metaworld.
There are entities that exist in your actual world that do not exist in mine, and that comprise the sum total of your experience. Likewise, there are entities that exist in my actual world that do not exist in yours. You did not know my Uncle George, for example. Uncle George did not exist necessarily, since he did not exist for you. If you accept my word for it that Uncle George existed, then you allow that as a possible world.
But it can be the case that an entity that exists necessarily is not perceived in actuality. Suppose, for example, that one day in the ordinary course of your affairs, you were walking down a crowded street and Uncle George happened to be among the crowd of faces as you looked up (or not — you don’t even have to see him for him to be a part of your actual world). But you didn’t know him from Adam. If we were the only two worlds, then we could say that my Uncle George existed necessarily even if you had not recognized him.
And in general, we may say that whatever exists necessarily does indeed exist in actuality, but is not necessarily actualized by perception. That’s partly what the perceptionists argue about the actualists — that the actualists have conflated modal belief (the weak doxastic) with modal knowledge (the strong doxastic). Modal knowledge implies actuality, but modal belief does not. Still, modal belief does imply necessary belief.
Toward the second purpose:
You’re right, and we agree, if I understand you. To say that necessary existence is supernatural is not to say that all necessary existence is supernatural. Nor is it to say that all possible existence is natural. As I explained to Js_africanus in the other thread, if we were to develop a more specific case for a God with attributes (like eternal existence, for example) then we would begin to make the case that God is entirely supernatural, since temporal existence is not eternal.
The ontological proof is very specific in its application, and is interpreted by many theists as panentheistic and by almost every atheist as pantheistic.
What Js_africanus asked for in this thread was a defense for the idea of the supernatural without further qualification or particulation, and I think I provided that. The metaproof that I gave was not a proof of God’s existence, but merely a proof that there is existence beyond natural existence when material existence is defined as existence in the actual world and supernatural existence is defined as existence outside the natural world.
One way to try to understand the beginning of the universe, to discover whether it was a natural or supernatural event, is to take a random event and find out the cause of that event, then to find out the cause of the cause, and trace it back, on and on, until we reach the beginning.
The laws of physics, I understand, decree that when one billiards ball (A) sets another billiards ball (B) in motion, the momentum lost by A exactly equals the momentum gained by B. This is a Law. That is, this is the pattern to which the movement of the two billiards balls must conform. Provided, of course, that something sets ball A in motion. And here comes the snag. The law won’t set it in motion. It is usually a man with a cue who does that. But a man with a cue would complicate the discussion by bringing free-will into it, so let us assume that it was lying on a table in a ship and that what set it in motion was a lurch of the ship. In that case it was not the law which produced the movement; it was a wave. And that wave, though it certainly moved according to the laws of physics, was not moved by them. It was shoved by other waves, and by winds, and so forth. And however far you traced the story back you would never find the laws of Nature causing anything.
In the whole of history of the universe the laws of Nature have never produced a single event. They are the pattern to which every event must conform, provided only that it can be induced to happen. But how do you get it to do that? How do you get a move on? The laws of Nature can give you no help there. All events obey them, just as all operations with money obey the laws of arithmetic. But arithmetic itself won’t put one dollar in your pocket. One cannot increase ones income by doing sums about it. The laws are the pattern to which events conform: the source of events must be sought elsewhere.
Where, then, do actual events come from? In one sense the answer is easy. Each even comes from a previous event. But what happens if you trace this process backwards? To ask this is not exactly the same as to ask where things come from – how there came to be space and time and matter at all. Our present problem is not about things but about events; for example, not about particles of matter but about this particle colliding with that. The mind can perhaps acquiesce in the idea that the ‘properties’ of the universal drama somehow ‘just happen to be there’: but whence comes the play, the story?
Either the stream of events had a beginning or they did not. If they did, we are faced with something like supernatural creation. Something outside nature reached into nature and got the ball rolling. If Hamlet were to wonder if a supernatural force created his world, I’d answer that Shakespeare, a being outside Hamlet’s natural universe, reached into Hamlet’s world (which he happened to create), and initiated the course of events.
Clive
But don’t quantum fluctuations occur without cause? And couldn’t the Big Bang have been an uncaused quantum fluctuation? (Welcome to StraightDope Great Debates!)
Ok, so here’s an example. Our cat, Puddles, died and was buried in our back yard. But then we moved to a different city. One night, we heard a cat meowing in the backyard! It woke us up, just as the smoke detector went off, and we were able to put out a small fire without major problem. Now, here’s the creepy part – the cat that woke us up was NOTHING like Puddles. Puddles was small, and brown with whitish stripes, and this cat was large and all grey.
If that’s not supernatural, I dunno what is.
I actually just wanted to read and not participate, but I’d like to remark on that if I may.
If I’m thinking about a unicorn, it does not exist as a thought. The thought exists. I don’t know what the philosophers have to say about it, but there is no question that this is not a pipe. My doodlings of Doobie Keebler do not give the pot-bellied pot-headed elf existence in any sense. The idea of Doobie, or the pipe, or a unicorn exist. Images of what we imagine they look like (or what the real pipe looks like) exist.
We may all have the same mental referent of what a unicorn looks like; however that referent is not a unicorn, it is a popular image, drawn or painted or woven, to which we have been exposed.
There’s a big difference between a painting of a unicorn* and Magritte’s pipe (presuming, of course, that he had a model to paint). Magritte’s painting is of a pipe–but it is still a painting. The painting of a unicorn is the painting of an idea, so to speak. I don’t see how the idea of something not extant makes that something real. To put another way, it seems to me that there are no unicorns. There are paintings, tapestries, stories, drawings, et hoc genus omne (I love that phrase), as well as concepts and brain waves (i.e. thoughts). But no unicorns.
*Sorry, I just had to take the image from the Infidels.
I’m not trained in formal logic, as you know, but every known member of A (effects) has property B (a cause), isn’t it reasonable to assume that the As that may or may not have a cause do, until further notice?
Also, how can we prove that something is causeless, and not being affected by something we cannot percieve?
Not more, fewer. There are possible worlds where something exists, and possible worlds where it doesn’t. My argument is that this proof dispenses with the possible worlds where God does not exist, and it is this step which constitutes the “pea being removed from all three cups” IMO.
I struggle to differentiate this proof from “If God exists in all possible worlds then He exists in this one”. I further fail to see how this is different to the tautological “if God exists then He exists”.
Sentient wrote:
Sorry, friend. You’ve completely lost me. There is no such thing as a possible world where NE does not exist.
This proof? What proof? Are you sure you’re in the right thread? I haven’t offered any proof of God’s existence in this thread.
I do not see why this is so. I do not see why God must be Supreme. I cannot concur that we begin from God=Everything, since that might not be the case. I do not understand why there cannot be some universes where the supernatural, or a god, or a tooth fairy, have actual existence and some universes in which they don’t.
All of the logic presented in this thread seems tautological to me. I do not understand what it is I do not understand.
I’m not very good at skating.
Necessary -> Supreme
Existence -> Being
Why should anything necessary or Supreme exist?
ie. DO YOUR HOMEWORK. OK, fair do’s.
First impressions are again that this argument is merely a consequence of necessary existence, and that the assignment function f appears to be limited based on a definition, but I hold my counsel until I am confident that this objection is not the equivalent of falling face first through thin ice.
Some people fall on the ice and think the world has ended. The hallmark of an earnest intellect, like yours, is that it jumps up, dusts off the ice, and keeps on skating.
Thanks for the welcome. Sorry, often times it takes me a while to reply.
I must admit that I know nothing of quantum fluctuations. Robertliguori’s response was better than anything I could come up with. I was and am assuming the premise that according to the laws of nature, every effect must have a cause by definition.
Let me too extend my welcome, Clive Staples L (may I call you Jack"? And may I say that you’re looking spry for being these 40 years dead – and it’s amusing that someone who died on 11/22/1963 should be posting from Dallas! ;)).
I’m not looking to argue against the existence of God – quite the contrary! – but by this logic would not God Himself have a cause, and His Cause a further cause, and so on? Or is God defined as being “outside nature and its laws”?
I do like the Unmoved Mover concept, to be sure – but if you’re arguing His necessity out of His being the First Cause, we need to get that problem clarified.