Heh heh. You’ll recognise me easily - I’ll be the guy rapping his knuckles on things and asking where I can obtain some experimental apparatus. 
Yuh-huh. And that just begs the question of what would be the difference between a “necessary” Universe and an “unnecessary” Universe. Is that kind of like “paper or plastic?” at your local supermarket?
You ask an interesting question–“Is the Universe real?” I.e., Are we being fooled somehow? Does an evil demon rule my perceptions? Are we brains in vats? What is the Matrix?
But before someone can answer that question in an interesting direction, you “slip in a blotter” per the old Pampers commercials and say, “Real means eternal, essential, necessary, and more absorbant.”
It’s like Spinoza or Kant with all the dirty parts cut out.
To answer the interesting question, “Are we being fooled?” the answer is “No.” Let’s grant for the sake of argument that the Universe is illusory: we’re a brain in a vat. But this begs the question of by what sure authority we grant that we have been fooled. After all, if we’re being systematically hoodwinked by Reality, why can we be sure that we’re hoodwinked in the first place?
The whole concept of “unreality” or “being scammed” is based on a feeling of security in the vast majority of our beliefs. I found out my best friend is a conman (hypothetical story) because I found a passport with a different name in his jacket along with all my credit cards and that watch that was missing. This situation is in contrast to all my other friends, who at worst tell me little fibs to save face or prevent me from getting upset about something.
There is no such “compare and contrast” possible with Reality or Universe, which is the whole of all things.
But still the existential angst remains. With all our science and learning, we still don’t understand why we are conscious, why thought exists at all. We do wonder whether we are being fooled somehow, and what the nature of Reality is.
But mere words will not get us the answers, not the big ones. To say that they can is to claim that typing in MS Word will grant you access to the bios of the machine. It’s absurd.
The big answers come through spiritual exploration, not philosophy.
Well, gosh, if you’re going to be condescending, then you ought to know two things at least: (1) begging the question is the logical fallacy of presuming one’s conclusion in one’s premise, and is not a synonym for “raising the question”; and (2) necessity is a formal term in logic for a particular modality, namely the negation of possible negation. In other words, that which exists necessarily cannot possibly not exist.
Actually, I think of it as a mis-en-scene for our moral play.
I… you know, there’s just too much good stuff going on here to bother with this.
Fine and dandy. But then, of course, I must ask why the categorizations aren’t arbitrary, and why they’re more justified that other categorizations (Which, I think, you just might answer with: “…’cause I like ‘em. They work for me.”)
I wouldn’t find this answer particularly intellectually satisfying, but it is a perfectly acceptable answer.
Dandy and fine. I say the idea that we 2005 primates can accurately describe the nature of reality a billion years ago is a matter of assumption, not justification. What say you?
I’d say your abstraction might be a thing, but the billion-year-old reality is not. How could it be if you weren’t there to “thingify” it?
Aeschines, can you give me an axample of non-philosophical spiritual exploration?
If anyone can respond, I’d say an epiphany would be one example. Otherwise, please ignore.
But doesn’t this raise the same question? What is “Facilitator-of-Goodness”? How is “Facilitator-of-Goodness” simultaneously essence-and-thing?
I agree. “effing” the ineffable usually is.
I regret offering my analogy; it just muddied waters I’m trying hard to clarify.
Lib, I may have to let this go; you’re trying to explain the taste of chocolate to someone who’s never tasted chocolate. No matter how eloquent your writing, I’ll never be able to “read” my way to a taste. Thanks for your patience.
Oh, I know two things all right.
Noooo, really? Here is a link that says the matter is open for debate:
Even so, I said,
That is, the concept of “illusion” does implicitly contain a recognition of the principle of a “sure authority” by which to recognize the illusion. That is, it is an assuming of the very thing which is being denied–perhaps not question begging per se, but a related problem, smart guy.
I never dealt with the concept of “necessity” in my post, smart guy, so your slamming me here for not dealing with your hobbyist terms is way off-target. That said, I think all your modal logic fudge is about as “unreal” as it gets.
Um, Have it your way at Burger King now. Have fun with your stale arguments, about as relevent and compelling as 25-year-old ad slogans.
And I must direct you to post #186 in which I have already stated that the categories are arbitrary: that’s how minds work.
Well, then we can board the carousel for another revolution around the word “accurately”. I’m beginning to feel a little queasy and so I’d probably politely decline, if that’s OK.
So the dinosaurs weren’t real? Is the ‘unthingified’ falling tree in the forest?
From your post: 'And that just begs the question of what would be the difference between a “necessary” Universe and an “unnecessary” Universe."
Well now, wait a minute. Are we discussing the noumenal versus the phenomenal or the essential versus the existent? There is nothing to preclude a thing with essence from coming into existence unless you take existentialism as axiomatic, and I do not.
No problem. Sometimes analogies can be very helpful. Some of Jesus’ most effective teachings, in my opinion, were the parables.
That is regretable. This has been the most interesting dialog I’ve had. Your approach was a good one. Small moves in logical chunks. You made patience unnecessary.
The epiphany would be an example of a spiritual discovery. I’m asking about the skills, equipment and maps useful for the journey of exploration.
Sorry, I didn’t get that from the statement “…it’s all just a matter of opinion”, although from the context, I obviously should have. My bad.
I dunno, Sentient, isn’t accuracy what’s at stake here? I mean, I understand that your worldview is useful and, to you, satisfactory. But you also seem to be presenting it as more accurate than the alternatives. I’m having a hard time seeing the justification for this, and apparently, eris, Lib and others are as well.
Now I’m on the carousel (see posts #106 and #130 ).
There was, assumedly, noumena. But there was nothing around experiencing noumena as (pre-edited and pre-filtered) phenomena, to conceptualize/experience as a “dinosaur”.
Here I was using “beg the question” in the “wrong” sense you pointed out. I’ll give you a point for that, smart guy.
I wasn’t, however, dealing with “necessary” in the sense of making arguments using it, etc.; I was merely pointing it that it’s a bloodless, abstract term (one of your “hobby” terms) like that of real/unreal.
So no, I won’t score you a point for your attempted slam of my ignorance (consider it willful and enthusiastic) of your logic hobby, as my use of the term “necessary” in what I wrote did not require me to know what you purport to mean by it.
Well… maybe a little bit more.
I don’t honestly know anymore. There’s this bloody recursiveness that keeps cropping up: I’m having difficulty with it.
Phrases like “… a thing with essence” confuse me; is “thing” noumenal, phenomenal, or neither? If it’s noumenal, and we cannot know the noumenal as such, how do we know it has essence? If it’s phenonmenal, how is it any more real than a photon? If neither, what the heck is it?
Liberal, am I wrong or is** Raftpeople** the only poster who even tried disputing your OP assertion on the terms you set?
I think our problems might have erupted when we started drawing analogies and failed to realize that our usages of noumenal and phenomenal with respect to them were themselves parts of the analogy. That’s why when Gyan called her comment a nitpick, I said that it wasn’t a nitpick at all, but an important clarification. God (or love) is noumenal because He is indescribable; and he must exist because He is the Supreme Being. Before you say that SB describes G, it does not. It describes the quality of the existence of G — the bounds of existence, not the bounds of G. God (or love) is essential because, in facilitating goodness (that aesthetic which edifies) He has the same quality irrespective of whether He exists — once He is essential, He must exist because of the nature of edification. You can’t edify something that isn’t there. We exist because we are what becomes edified. Not our bodies — they are trivial. But our spirits — that which in us is in His likeness.
Going strictly on late afternoon dull memory, I believe you’re correct, although he took a stab only at its necessity. But due credit, I do believe that Other-wise is making a good faith effort at fleshing out the essence portion. He is at least making sure that we’re talking about the same thing before proceding, which is wonderful. And when it comes time (pun!) to talk about the eternal portion, I am confident that you will see Sentient coming in with guns ablazing.
Okay.
In “…the quality of the existence of G”, I’m assuming “quality” does not refer to any sort of subjective judgement. Does quality therefore refer to an extant’s phenomenalogical status? (i.e., is qualitative existence a synonym for phenomenological existence?) If so, then to paraphrase, SB describes the ultimate bounds of our phenomenological perception/conception, not the bounds of G, right?
Then we are as essential as God?
It describes the bounds of G’s ontological status. Our perceptions are another matter, but something about them does indeed follow from the ontological implications. Specifically, existing necessarily (qua Supreme Being) means only that, and nothing more — SB must exist in every possible world. But the perceptions in that world are formed according to its rules. Every world that is accessible to some other world has a relation to that world. Please see this map of some of the possible relations (along with a general theory to derive more):
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/#8
What that means is that, for example, it is not a matter that God cannot create a square circle, or that the notion is objective nonsense and therefore He is not required to. It is a matter that were He to create a square circle in our world, we could not percieve it.
Our spiritual selves are essential, yes. But keep in mind here that we’re not using essential as a synonym to necessary. Rather, essential means only that there is an essence — a quality that remains regardless of ontological status.