Aquinas
famously rejected Anselm’s argument, and Thomists have tended to follow him in doing
so. It might seem that they are thereby
committed to rejecting the possibility of reasoning to God’s existence a priori. This conclusion might seem to be reinforced
by the fact that Thomists follow Aristotle in holding that no knowledge is
possible for human beings without sensory experience, and reject the standard
alternative views (Platonic theories of knowledge as recollection, Augustinian
illumination theories, and rationalist theories of innate ideas).
But
actually, the conclusion doesn’t follow.
To see why, note first that we have to distinguish questions about the origin of the concepts we deploy when
making knowledge claims from questions about the justification of knowledge claims.
What Thomists hold is that we could not have any concepts at all without
sensory experience. But it doesn’t
follow that, even after we have the relevant concepts, we cannot ever deploy
them in a priori reasoning. Thomists would deny that we could have mathematical
concepts without sensory experience, because we cannot have any concepts without sensory
experience. But they need not deny that,
once we have the concepts, we can come to know all sorts of mathematical truths
via a priori reasoning.
Second, we
have to keep in mind the specific reason
why Thomists reject Anselm’s argument.
If Anselm is right, then the proposition that God exists is self-evident, insofar as God’s existence would follow
with necessity from his essence. Hence,
if we had a sufficient grasp of God’s essence, we would know from that alone
that he exists. Now, Aquinas agrees with
that much. The problem, in
his view, is that we lack
a grasp of God’s essence that is sufficiently firm for us to have this knowledge. Hence, though the proposition that God exists would be self-evident to a
sufficiently powerful mind, it is not self-evident to our minds.
Notice that
this does not entail that we cannot reason a
priori to God’s existence, in the relevant sense of that term. It entails only that we cannot reason a priori to God’s existence in the specific way that Anselm tries
to. This would leave it open that we
might yet reason to God’s existence in some other fashion that is plausibly
regarded as a priori – for example,
via an Augustinian argument from eternal truths (a version of which I defend in
chapter 3 of Five
Proofs of the Existence of God).
But one
might do so even in a more or less distinctively Thomistic way. Hence, consider the argument for God’s
existence that Aquinas develops in De
Ente et Essentia, which I call “the Thomistic proof” and defend in chapter
4 of Five Proofs. According to this line of argument, God’s
essence and existence are identical, and there can in principle be only one
thing of which this is true. So, for
anything other than God, its essence and existence are not identical. But for
anything whose essence and existence are not identical, it must be caused by
something whose essence and existence are
identical. So, anything other than God
must be caused by God. (Obviously, this
is extremely compressed. See chapter 4
of Five Proofs for a detailed
spelling out of the argument and defense of its premises.)
Now, the
standard way that a fully spelled out version of this sort of argument begins
is by appealing to something we know through sensory experience. For example, it might start by considering
the example of a dog; argue that, for
any dog, its essence and existence are distinct; argue next that anything whose
essence and existence are distinct requires a cause; and so on.
But there is
no reason why such an argument needs to begin with something we know in that
way. Suppose instead you were entertaining
the following proposition: There is at
least one proposition. You can know
that that is true just by thinking about it.
For what you are entertaining is itself
a proposition. Notice that you are
not relying on any evidence from the senses in judging that this proposition is
true. Hence you know it a priori. Or, if you don’t like that example, take any
other a priori proposition, such as a
claim of mathematics or logic.
Now, what is a proposition? Is it a kind of substance, perhaps an entity existing in a Platonic third realm? Is it a kind of attribute (for example, a thought that inheres in an intellect), and
thus dependent for its existence on the substance in which it inheres? Is it a material entity, such as a neural
firing pattern? However we answer these
questions, the Thomistic proof entails that, like everything else that exists other
than God, its existence ultimately depends on God. So, unless this proposition is itself somehow
identical to God (which would entail that God exists), it will depend for its existence
on God (which also entails that God exists).
That gives
us the following sketch of a theistic argument:
1. There is
at least one proposition.
2. If this
proposition is identical to God, then God exists.
3. If it is
not identical to God, then either it is a substance or an attribute.
4. If it is
an attribute, then it depends for its existence on a substance.
5. So,
either it is itself a substance or depends for its existence on a substance.
6. But for
any substance other than God, its essence and existence are distinct.
7. And anything
whose essence and existence are distinct can exist only if caused by God.
8. So, this proposition
is either itself God, or it depends either directly or indirectly on God for
its existence.
9. So, God
exists.
I call this
a “sketch” of an argument because I hardly expect it to be convincing to anyone
not already persuaded by a fully developed Thomistic proof (for that, see,
again, chapter 4 of Five Proofs). The point is that if we fleshed out this
sketch by incorporating all the relevant details of a fully developed Thomistic
proof, then it seems we would have an a
priori version of that proof. For
the starting point is a priori, and
the remaining premises are known by way of a
priori metaphysical analysis (of the natures of substances and attributes,
the essence/existence distinction, and so on).
(Again, in
this context I mean a priori in the
sense of knowable apart from sensory experience. There are other senses attached to the term “a priori” in Scholastic philosophy, such
as “reasoning from cause to effect.” I’m
not talking about a priori reasoning
in that sense.)
Related
posts:
Plantinga’s
ontological argument
Theology
and the analytic a posteriori
Frege
on what mathematics isn’t
Augustine
on divine illumination
Ed do you think the scotist formal cause would block the reasoning behind the De Ente?
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a lot of confusion around the ontological argument in thomistic circles. To my understanding the standard objection is as Feser has stated elsewhere: that one cannot grasp the essence of God. However that does not need to be false for the argument to go through. One possible solution to this objection is that being the greatest conceivable being is a property of God. Now one might argue that because we derive truths from it,
ReplyDeleteThis must not be a real property of God but instead an essence; because for all other beings we do not derive other properties from any of their properties. E.g. we do not derive properties of apples from redness. However God's simplicity allows us to derive any of his properties from any of his other properties. Thus, in order to derive properties of God we need not restrict ourselves to essences, but rather the property of being the greatest conceivable thing is enough.
Furthermore, one might argue that we do not know that being the greatest conceivable thing is a property of God. But surely that is an analytic truth. For when we say the word God we think of something that has the property of being the greatest conceivable being
DeleteThat is a pretty interesting point. It also seems to me that by one divine atribute you can deduce the others, i was thinking before about how to do it.
DeleteAnother thing that seems to generaly be ignored when this argument is discussed is that this objection is not from Aquinas, but from Gaunilo itself. St. Anselm even responded to it in his reply to the monk:
"Again, you say that when you hear of a being than which a greater is inconceivable, you cannot conceive of it in terms of any real object known to you either specifically or generally, nor have it in your understanding. For, you say, you neither know such a being in itself, nor can you form an idea of it from anything like it.
But obviously this is not true. For everything that is less good, in so far as it is good, is like the greater good. It is therefore evident to any rational mind, that by ascending from the lesser good to the greater, we can form a considerable notion of a being than which a greater is inconceivable.
For instance, who (even if he does not believe that what he conceives of exists in reality) supposing that there is some good which has a beginning and an end, does not conceive that a good is much better, which, if it begins, does not cease to be? And that as the second good is better than the first, so that good which has neither beginning nor end, though it is ever passing from the past through the present to the future, is better than the second? And that far better than this is a being -- whether any being of such a nature exists or not -- which in no wise requires change or motion, nor is compelled to undergo change or motion?
Is this inconceivable, or is some being greater than this conceivable? Or is not this to form a notion from objects than which a greater is conceivable, of the being than which a greater cannot be conceived? There is, then, a means of forming a notion of a being than which a greater is inconceivable.
So easily, then, can the fool who does not accept sacred authority be refuted, if he denies that a notion may be formed from other objects of a being than which a greater is inconceivable. But if any Catholic would deny this, let him remember that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. (Romans i. 20.)"
St. Thomas seemed to never had read Anselm reply to Gaunilo, seeing that he never commented on this answer, i guess. What do the thomists here think about this?
Bill Solomon, on what basis would you suppose that what you mean in the term "an essence" (where you said This must not be a real property of God but instead an essence; )? This does not fit what I understand of the Thomist use of the term.
DeleteFor when we say the word God we think of something that has the property of being the greatest conceivable being
I fear that we have become forgetful of what the term "god" used to mean, because all across the world, there were millions of people who used the term "god" to refer to a multitude of non-exzclusive beings, Zeus, Athena and Ares; or Moloch and Baal; or Isis and Osiris, etc. And they clearly DID NOT mean that each and every one of them was "the greatest conceivable being". It might be more true to say, perhaps, that IF there IS a real being that is in fact the greatest conceivable being, then that and that alone would be the true and only God properly so called. But that is a conditional proposition. If there is no such being after all, then some OTHER beings, not the greatest conceivable, may qualify for the term "god".
Talmid, although I am not confident I have this right, it seems to me that Anselm's comment that you quote relies on a series of equivocations on what "conceive" means. Perhaps most importantly in the mix is the issue of conceiving a concept by negation. For example, if I tell you that thing N is "that which is not repentant", do you now have a concept of N? Or do you rather now have a placeholder in the mind WAITING for a concept to fill it with some content? Or (potentially more interesting), do you have a partial but importantly incomplete concept? What would be the implications to Anselm of saying "I can only conceive it improperly" - would "that than which nothing greater can be improperly conceived" work?
It is a further question whether Anselm is trading on the mind being able (through a kind of metaphysical calculus, "delta x as x approaches infinity") to form a notional progression of a specific good, such as knowledge, to (i) recognize greater and lesser knowledge, and then extrapolate beyond any SPECIFICALLY known amount of knowledge to "more knowledge than that"; and then abstractivize that very mental process of "extrapolating a 'greater than' " and treating THAT as "a good" like knowledge is a good, from which to formulate a concept with positive content rather than a placeholder. It is not clear such a ploy works, or the mind works that way.
@Tony an essence could be understood as the form of an object, its definition, its singular description, or for material things it's substance. For all these things one can derive further properties of the object from them. I use it very similarly, in this case, to the term principle; as it is the principle of an object.
Delete@Talmid: What Anselm describes in that passage is how one reaches concepts analogically. The difficulty is that a concept understood by analogy to things in our experience is not known a priori. If we argue from the goodness of created things to the goodness of God, that's really a version of the Fourth Way, not a proof from the essence of God directly.
Delete@tony I believe Feser recently had an article about definitions in popular usage and I am not arguing from the popular definition of God but rather the concept God. Furthermore it would be silly to say of Descartes' I think therefore I am as being the conditional: If I exist then I think. The concept is prior in thought so therefore the proper form of the ontological argument is that if there were a concept defined in this way (which there is) it would not only exist but be much more than a concept
Delete@Tony
DeleteI guess that St. Anselm would agree that his method of conceiving by negation just give us incomplete knowledge. He explicity says in the Proslogion that God is not completly understood by us.
Now, is this incomplete knowledge good enough to the argument to work? He would say yes and i too. By removing limitations of what we see it seems like we can arrive at SOME knowledge of what the Being in question would have to be like to be the Being Than Nothing Greater Can Be Conceived. If i know powerful and limited things in several degrees i can reason from them to omnipotence, which the Being would need to have.
Do i know exactly what omnipotence is by this method? Nope, but it is good enough. Reason alone can't give me much more than that even using the cosmological arguments anyway.
@Michael Brazier
That is a interesting point, but the thing is that the only job that experience is doing here is point us to goodness, after we have created goodness we can remove limitation from it until we arrive at perfection. One would not know numbers if there was no physical world to experience, but the calculations after we get the numbers are a priori.
We understand the natural numbers by abstraction from the process of counting things; but once we do, we understand them univocally and completely. We are not making an analogy from "two apples" and "three oranges" to "2" and "3".
DeleteWe don't get to a univocal and complete understanding of God's essence by examining the goodness of other things, and that's the kind of understanding we need for Anselm's argument to work.
I agree that our knowledge of God essence by St. Anselm method is pretty low, as he probably did, but why would we need more to the argument to work?
DeleteIn the example that the saint used you get to the conclusion that the Being Than Nothing Greater Can Be Conceived can't have a beggining, a end or be in time, that actually does tells us a lot about Him. You could do the same with other atributes. Sure you wouls not know exactly what the Being his, but would know that He is not limited in power, knowledge, goodness, that He us nor contingent, that He did not have a beggining etc. That is true knowledge about the Being, modest knowledge, but knowledge.
I use it very similarly, in this case, to the term principle; as it is the principle of an object.
DeleteBill, do you a principle of God or a principle of our conception of God Because, of course, it you immediately run into difficulties if you mean a principle of God. And if it is merely a principle of our conception of God, I fear that this lands us exactly back at St. Thomas's objection - the process of ratiocinating about a subject cannot the principle upon which we determine that it exists or not.
I am not arguing from the popular definition of God but rather the concept God.
I was pointing out that in the ancient pagan world, the term "god" was not used in a way that was logically equivalent to "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." To THEM, the claim " 'god' means 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived' " would have been an odd claim indeed, and they would have agreed with that identification only after accepting a proof that there is such a being. It wasn't a comment about the nature or order of the proof at all.
because for all other beings we do not derive other properties from any of their properties.
I don't understand this claim at all. We derive from the nature of triangles the fact that their interior angles add up to 2 right angles. But we derive other truths from THAT latter fact. The same holds for other things, including animals and plants.
Does Anselm's proof work equally well for "that creature than which no greater creature can be conceived"?
I have yet to hear a good response to Aquinas's reply to the Anselm proof:
DeleteYet, granted that everyone understands that by this word "God" is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally.
The only sort of "exists" that logically follows for the mental construct "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" is as a being of reason.
Aquinas reply assumes than the Something-Than-Which-Nothing-Greater-Can-Be-Thought can either exist outside our minds or not. Anselm arguments shows than the Being, in order to be what is, has to be necessary, so there is not even the possibility of He not actualy existing.
DeleteIs more of a modal point. Saying that the Being can exist or not is like saying that the number one could be odd or not(Descartes says something similar). Since the Being can't be dependent on anything(or else the being it depends would be greater), them it can't be contingent. If the Being is not contingent but necessary, them there is not even the possibility of He not existing.
So Aquinas is wrong to think that one could agree with the argument and still think that the Being is but a being of reason, this is like understanding what the number one is and asking for evidence of it being a odd number. Maybe there is some flaw in the argument, but Saint Thomas just misses the point.
@tony I mean a principle of our understanding of God which is neither completely concept or completely a truth of God. Anyway Aquinas or Aristotle I can't remember which (Nich. Ethics or Secundae Secundae of the summa). Says that understanding is about principles. So we should not be surprised if principle appears wherever there is understanding
DeleteAs for deriving things we don't derive in a vacuum, e.g. interior angles of what? If we don't have the essence implicitly, i.e. triangle; we cannot derive anything
So Aquinas is wrong to think that one could agree with the argument and still think that the Being is but a being of reason, this is like understanding what the number one is and asking for evidence of it being a odd number. Maybe there is some flaw in the argument, but Saint Thomas just misses the point.
DeleteI am afraid I cannot agree. The point is that the result which follows from the concept being "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" is that it is, therefore, conceived as "existing". (For of course a thing conceived as existing would be conceived greater than the (otherwise) same thing conceived as not existing.) This is what follows from the conception's specific content.
The problem is that "conceived as existing" still does not escape the mind as the field of play, it has no bearing on extra-mental existence. If I tell my 5-year old child about something that happened to me at work today, (say, "I saw a 3-legged dog cross the street") and later that night tell him a fairy tale starting with "once upon a time, there was a 3-legged dog...", the first he conceives as existing and the second he does not. If I had told him a lie about seeing the dog, he would still have conceived it as existing, even though it had not in fact existed.
As a second layer of thought about thoughts, we can even conceive, with respect to the INTERNALS to a fictional story, a character intentionally imagining a 3-legged dog, and later on "really" seeing a 3-legged dog, and in describing our mental act, name the later act as "conceiving the dog as existing", but not the former, for the story.
Sorry, Tony, it seems that blogger eated my posts from yesterday :(
DeleteAnyway, i don't think you understood my post, or St. Anselm for that matter, and that seems because you are thinking of the wrong argument. Here, cure yourself from the bad readings of the saint: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm/#ArgPro
Read the man itself: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/anselm-gaunilo.asp#CHAPTER%201
(You just need to read the linked chapter, the first one)
St. Anselm argument is not a trick to make us conceive of the Being as exist, it is a demonstration that God non-existence is a modal impossibility. The atheist or agnostic assumes that God at least CAN not exist, but that is as false as saying that a human can not be a mammal.
DeleteI read it a great many years ago. I read it again some 15 or so years ago. But in deference to you, I read it today. I still don't think Anselm has the right of it. Let's look at a couple of his points:
DeleteFor that than which a greater is inconceivable cannot be conceived except as without beginning. But whatever can be conceived to exist, and does not exist, can be conceived to exist through a beginning. Hence what can be conceived to exist, but does not exist, is not the being than which a greater cannot be conceived. Therefore, if such a being can be conceived to exist, necessarily it does exist.
Conceive of a "fornast cat". What is that? It is defined as "a cat that has no beginning." You say "but it does not exist." I agree: but if it did exist, it would not have a beginning. Further, it cannot be conceived as having a beginning, for it is DEFINED not to have a beginning.
Don't like that one? Conceive of a material universe that exists from all eternity. Can't? Aristotle could. Or (because matter is corruptible), instead conceive God having made an angel from all eternity. It doesn't have a beginning.
Furthermore: if it can be conceived at all, it must exist. For no one who denies or doubts the existence of a being than which a greater is inconceivable, denies or doubts that if it did exist, its non-existence, either in reality or in the understanding, would be impossible. But as to whatever can be conceived, but does not exist -- if there were such a being, its non-existence, either in reality or in the understanding, would be possible.
On the contrary, the atheist is quite happy denying what Anselm says cannot be denied, saying "if it DID exist, perhaps it would be necessary and therefore it's non-existence would be impossible, but it just doesn't exist, AND it's existence is impossible." Hence he denies that the condition "if it existed it would be necessary" leads to "it must exist". Being conceived as "if it were to really exist it would be necessary" leaves the mind able to conceive it as "if it were POSSIBLE that it exists really, it would be necessary, but it is NOT possible." Anselm's thesis assumes that it is possible. The atheist need not grant it.
But let us suppose that it does not exist, even if it can be conceived. Whatever can be conceived, but does not exist, if it existed, would not be a being than which a greater is inconceivable. If, then, there were a being a greater than which is inconceivable, it would not be a being than which a greater is inconceivable: which is most absurd.
In saying "if it existed...", Anselm again relies on the possibility that the "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" may exist really, (is possible), but the atheist can deny the possibility. Anselm may have forced a stark choice - meta-reality is such that God is either "necessary" or "impossible" - but even that does not force the atheist to accept "necessary".
it is a demonstration that God non-existence is a modal impossibility.
DeleteAnd the reply is (as has been said before) modal arguments about what is "possible" are notoriously not evident because we are constantly being surprised by finding out things that we thought were possible are not, or that things we thought were impossible actually are. Anselm relies on "possible" claims that are not manifestly true, they "feel" or "seem" to be true, or they "may be" true, which can be miscued as "it is possible that they are true, but that wraps us in two different senses of possible and can undermine a modal argument.
@Tony
Delete"Conceive of a "fornast cat". What is that? It is defined as "a cat that has no beginning." You say "but it does not exist." I agree: but if it did exist, it would not have a beginning. Further, it cannot be conceived as having a beginning, for it is DEFINED not to have a beginning."
Except that i can give arguments showing that a fornast cat, or the other examples, is not possible, so you can conceive of it in the same sense you can "conceive" of a square-circle: you can say a bunch of words that don't actually refer to anything at all and say it is a real thing. I remember St. Anselm making this point in the Proslogion when he tries to explain how there are atheists if God non-existence can't be conceived: they are conceiving only in words.
If the atheist thinks he can show that God can't exist, he is welcome to try, they are trying for a long time. The thing is, we know that the atheist will fail, so we both know that your examples are not relevant to this subject.
"And the reply is (as has been said before) modal arguments about what is "possible" are notoriously not evident because we are constantly being surprised by finding out things that we thought were possible are not, or that things we thought were impossible actually are. Anselm relies on "possible" claims that are not manifestly true, they "feel" or "seem" to be true, or they "may be" true, which can be miscued as "it is possible that they are true, but that wraps us in two different senses of possible and can undermine a modal argument."
DeleteI agree that the OA will have this problem in deriving metaphysical possibility(possible in reality) from epistemical probability(possible to us) but we do have so possible ways of having what we want. Stealing from one comment of mine from below:
- one could pick created things and try to remove mentally their limitations until we arrive at a more apophatic knowledge of perfection. That was St. Anselm way, as seen in his reply to Gaunilo(that used your objection).
- One could disagree with you and argue that we have enough a priori knowledge of the relevant facts, so epistemical possibility and metaphysisical possibility are way closer that we thought. That would be Descartes rationalist way.
- One could use the traditional cosmological arguments as evidence that God creating a universe is at least possible(even if not actual to the atheist), so it is possible that God exists. I remember seeing William Lane Craig and Josh Rasmussem doing it.
Sure that there is this gap between thought and reality, but we do have some ways around that. Can we be 100% sure we are right? No, but that is aways true no matter your method.
Except that i can give arguments showing that a fornast cat, or the other examples, is not possible, so you can conceive of it in the same sense you can "conceive" of a square-circle:
DeleteI will admit (though an atheist most likely would not) that you probably can. What I wonder is whether you can do so without first establishing all those grounds that constitute the basis on which the NON-ontological arguments for the existence of God rest. That is, in doing so you will have effectively done all the heavy lifting necessary to prove God exists anyway. Which is no mean feat, but proving God exists through OA after proving he is the necessary being is a bit of overkill.
Aways good to have more options, i guess :)
DeleteIt is true that one would hardly need the argument if the essencialist metaphysics where already accepted, but the argument could still be useful. Say if one agree with most of the metaphysics but rejects the PSR or had another doubt that prevented him of accepting a cosmological argument.
Not to mention, it is useful in trying to help the other understand how diferent God is from the things we know. Perfect Being Theology and all that. Just helping the atheist understand that God existence is either 8 or 80 is very important, for most atheists probably would not be prepared to say that it is impossible that the Monotheistic God exist.
But yea, at the end of the day OA are too abstract to be useful in changing most minds, that i agree. But they, at least to me, are very interesting and seems to work, so we should not give up in them just because they are not much useful.
How does God violate the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals in differentiating between essence and existence, since the distinction is not in Him? One doesn't seem to have recourse here to omnipotence, since omnipotence rests on God being able to distinguish between them in the first place. And if the distinction is required for omnipotence, then it also follows it is required for the other two qualities of omniscience and omnipresence, which are all supposed to be identical to God. So how does the ball ever get rolling? We can't even say that the absolute identification of essence with existence in God is only an analogy, for when we begin with God first there is nothing else for comparison that would make an analogy work. So how do we get to that impossible moment where God can distinguish what can't be distinguished in Himself as the First Thing?
ReplyDeleteThe idea essencially is that God knows Himself perfectly, so He also knows every way that creation could have His perfections in a limited way. This is how Aquinas talks about it on the Summa: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm#article6
DeleteSo while in God there is no distinction between essence and existence He does know the distinction because every possible creature, being imperfect, has the distinction.
No. This presupposes distinction, since Hod can conceive of it. My argument is that even in God, He cannot so distinguish between the two, so contingency can't even be an idea He can have, much less act upon. So Aquinas is engaging in circular logic.
Delete*God, not "Hod". Stupid fat sausage fingers.
DeleteTalmid, let me ask this. Without recourse to contingency, can you describe what omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence mean?
Delete@Richard
DeleteI admit that i'am not getting you here. Are you saying that God would need a example of a contingent thing before He could know the concept?
God would need to be able to tell the difference between essence and existence in order to conceive of contingency at all. And the distinction is not in Him. The argument for Thomists seems to presume that God doesn't conceive of contingency so much as it is already in Him eternally.
DeleteI see. But are you not supposing them that God knows some concepts by reasoning from other concepts, like we do? Aquinas explicity deny this: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm#article7
DeleteSince God knows Himself perfectly and He Is in a unlimited way, He knows all the ways that Being could be limited(for instance, in the being we have or the being a piece of iron has), so even if there is no direct distinction in Him of essence and existence there is something like a virtual distinction(but not exactly like it), and i guess than that does the trick.
It is a bit weird, but as a neoplatonist i'am sure you agree that our knowledge of the divine is pretty low, so it is okay.
Richard, Your worry seems to confuse contingency with the possibility of contingency. The possibility of contingency is not contingent (that contingent things are possible is a necessary truth that requires a non-contingent power, not a contingent one), just as the possibility of a distinction is not a distinction.
Delete@Talmid: If God just is His omniscience, then God knows what He causes fully instead of discursively. If God does not cause Himself, He cannot be said to "know" Himself, as this knowledge would have to surpass omniscience, which is a perfection.
Delete@Brandon, I would agree with you that the possibility of contingency is not contingent, and disagree with you in that Thomism does not make the possibility sensible.
“If God does not cause Himself, He cannot be said to "know" Himself, as this knowledge would have to surpass omniscience”
DeleteThis makes no sense to me, unless you are treating god as a contingent “thing”. There is nothing ‘beyond’ god for him to know. The only route here I can see is a lack of knowing what it’s like to be bad, or to be weak etc, but that’s debatable and also doesn’t seem to be what you are arguing?
@Simon Adams I agree. I am not saying God knows Himself as some contingent thing. I am pointing out the discrepancy between God knowing contingency as something He causes and God existing as Himself. God's own self-cognizance isn't identical to His omniscience, as it is not an essential act, but is instead an existential act, surpassing the essential altogether.
DeleteThat sounds logical but I suspect it’s a bit like using relativity and quantum physics to understand the big bang. Maybe god ‘cognises’ things into existence :)
DeleteWe’ll have ask him sometime...
@Simon Adams Go check out The Elements of Theology by Proclus. Aquinas himself started reading it back when it was misattributed to Aristotle and he was quite taken with it. It fully and systematically lays out what I am poorly trying to convey.
DeleteI think it’s more likely my poor ability to conceive these things than anything else. I scanned a few pages of an online copy of the Elements but it really needs more time than I have now. It probably influenced Aquinas via Pseudo-Dionysius anyway I’d assume?
DeletePossibly.
Delete@Richard
Delete" If God just is His omniscience, then God knows what He causes fully instead of discursively. If God does not cause Himself, He cannot be said to "know" Himself, as this knowledge would have to surpass omniscience, which is a perfection."
Here i think that you kinda separate God intellect from Himself. Since God intellect just is His essence, them He understand Himself, as Aquinas argues: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm#article2
God is ontologically diferent from the creation, so He understand it because He knows Himself as its cause. Since He is equal to His essence, there is no ontological diference, so He does not need to be His own cause(which, of course, would be incoherent) to understand Himself.
Note the use again and again of essence, Talmid. Also note that despite essence and existence being united in God, it's always essence that is referred to when a given act of God is discussed. This is because essence is relational, its a reference to a things activity. So here through essence God knows Himself, He relates to Himself as a secondary subject. But why isn't existence ever used as equally an explanatory medium in the argument unless the two terms aren't commensurate with one another?
DeleteWell, i suppose that there is not much explanatory work that the existence can do. Remember that in Aquinas Absolute Divine Simplicity while God is absolutely one we see Him as having several distinctions thanks to our limitations. So while we talk of essence and existence as separate in God, this is just a mental distinction.
DeleteHi Prof. Feser,
ReplyDeleteConcerning contemporary defenses of non-trivial a priori reasoning, would you say you're sympathetic to defenses from philosophers like Laurence BonJour, George Bealer, etc?
John
@John
DeleteBonJour is fabulous.
Sure, the existence of composite beings can only be explained by the existence of a simple being whose existence is self-explanatory. That is the proof for the existence of God. (All other sound philosophical proofs are ultimately reducible to this.)
ReplyDeleteBut the ontological argument claims we can arrive at proof for the existence of a simple being WITHOUT acknowledgment of the existence of composite beings. And even in its best form (modal ontological argument), it has to conflate epistemic (i.e. "for all we know") with ontological ("real") possibility. Sure, if we could know a priori the existence of God is possible, then we can conclude He exists. But we just can't get there, because finite minds simply cannot comprehend the infinite.
Substitute "Nature" for "God" and the proof still holds.
ReplyDeleteHow? Isn't there a distinction between nature's essence and its existence?
DeleteNo.
DeleteDear wrf3: In order to respond "No" to Mister Geocon's question, you would have to maintain that the essence of nature includes the attribute of necessary existence--which seems clearly false.
DeleteWhat says that the attribute of "necessary existence" is necessary? That idea seems clearly constructed as a post hoc way to get God in through the side door.
Delete"That idea seems clearly constructed as a post hoc way to get God in through the side door."
Deletehttps://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10733a.htm
"The different beings which we observe in our daily experience are subject to beginning, to change, to perfection, and to destruction; existence is not essential to them and they have not in themselves the reason of their existence; they are contingent. Their existence comes to them from an external efficient cause. It is from the real existence of contingent beings that we arrive at the notion and prove the existence of a necessary being-one that produces them but is not produced, one whose existence is its own essence and nature, that is at the same time eternal, all-perfect, infinite, viz., God (see CONTINGENCY)."
I don't see the sense in calling this explanation a 'side door'.
Pl0: I don't see the sense in calling this explanation a 'side door'.
DeleteThere are (at least) two problems with this explanation. The first is that teleology is snuck in the side door by the use of the word "perfection." "Perfection" implies ideals and growth toward perfection implies change from a non-ideal state toward an ideal one. It has to be shown that these really exist in nature as nature, as opposed our anthropomorphizing nature. After all, where does the idea of a non-ideal state of nature come from? Is it found anywhere in nature except inside our heads?
Second, this explanation is an example of selective citing. Everything is just ripples in a quantum pond. For the explanation to hold, you would have to show that the quantum fields behave like everything else. And we know that quantum things behave like nothing else.
Dr. Feser,
ReplyDeleteAs many know, Anselm changes his description of God into the following Proslogion ch.2 formula: “something than which nothing greater can be thought.” I will refer to this formula as “X” for the following three reasons (my overall point is the third reason).
First, Anselm himself switches from directly addressing God to his formula, X. Hence, the chapter’s title, “That God truly exists”, is misleading, since Anselm will later argue in Proslogion 3 that X is identical with God.
Second, it is worth emphasizing here that Anselm introduces X as a basic middle term in his argument, instead of the term “God,” in order to avoid certain disputes with the atheist who, already knowing that X refers to God at the outset, may claim not to understand what Anselm means by “God.” This is why Anselm is stressing his formula at this point, X, and not the object of though under consideration.
Third - and this is the reason for my post - the logic of Anselm’s argument can lose its force here if we were to change his formula (as many commentators do) to, say, “the most perfect being,” or “the greatest conceivable being,” or "a necessary being,” and so on. Switching Anselm’s negative description of X (“something than which nothing greater can be thought”) for a positive one (e.g., “the greatest conceivable being”) runs the risk of misunderstanding X as a being with intrinsic limitations, thus disqualifying X’s uniqueness and limitless properties qua God. Gaunilo’s Lost Island objection makes precisely this mistake by lumping God in with all other beings, as one who merely exceeds them all in greatness. Again, Gaunilo ascribes a "positive" description, while Anselm offers a "negative" one. Gaunilo's argument fails on its own merits. Anselm's argument stands on its own legs. My overall point is that if we read his formula as offering a positive definition of God, then we're misunderstanding him. Aquinas, from what I know, accessed Anselm through Bonaventure, and I'm not sure if Bonaventure misinterpreted Anselm like Gaunilo did.
The island objection is really kind of stupid, but that doesn't make Anselm's argument sound. Just because one can conceive of an infinite being (which is a being beyond which nothing greater can be thought) doesn't make such a being really possible. I can also conceive of a Hilbert's Hotel. Doesn't make it possible in reality.
Delete@GF
DeleteIf we can't see any contradiction on the concept, why should we not assume it is possible? Sure we could be wrong, but that is aways a possibility.
There is no contradiction in "the greatest possible being is possible", but it doesn't lead to anything interesting unless we actually know what is possible and what isn't.
DeleteIf the question is whether we should assume possible a being who is ultimately simple while also being a trinity, who is absolutely immutable but manages to start and stop doing lots of things, who can create things from nothing while at the same time "ex nihilo nihil fit" is true, etc., the answer is a clear "no".
In fact, nobody, not even Feser or Aquinas, can actually conceive of such being. it's not because you can contsruct a grammatically correct sentence using a string of words, that the concept becomes conceivable.
"There is a circle that is also a square" is a grammatically correct sentence, but the concept of a square circle is not conceivable.
The whole point is whether an "infinite being" is coherent or not; IOW, whether the terms are inherently self-contradictory or not. We do not know a priori just from the meaning of the terms themselves, unlike a "square circle". If in fact the category of "being" is finitely bounded, then yes the terms would be contradictory. But this is just something we cannot know. EVERY ontological argument just has to assume that it is, and then argues because an infinite being is possible, it exists. Thus the argument is valid, but not sound.
DeleteBy analogy, how do you prove an "infinite set" is not contradictory? You have to go and show that there are sets with an infinite number of members (e.g. the set of all integers). You can't get there simply from the definition of "set" alone.
GoneFishing says I can also conceive of a Hilbert's Hotel. Doesn't make it possible in reality.
DeleteWalter says There is no contradiction in "the greatest possible being is possible", but it doesn't lead to anything interesting unless we actually know what is possible and what isn't.
I agree with both, more or less, but more with Walter. There are things that are true and proven that are not at all evident at first, and so it SEEMS at first that the opposite is "possible". It seems possible, to the beginning geometry student, that in a triangle on the Euclidean plane, its angles might add up to various sums. But we later find out it is NOT possible. No human would say it is "self-evident" to us, though angels (who don't reason discursively) might say it is evident upon grasping the principles. It is a non-trivial determination to decide whether X is possible, and (especially) possible in the relevant sense.
Conceivability gives us *defeasible* evidence of possibility. Abandoning this idea would be very costly for most people; in fact, conceivability seems to be standard way we use for establishing possibility in a multitude of cases both in ordinary living and in philosophical matters.
DeleteIt doesn't demonstrate possibility, but it does seem to give us defeasible evidence at least. Personally, I can't bring myself to abandon this.
I think what you are really suggesting, Atno, is that the appearance of conceivability constitutes defeasible evidence of possibility. I would say that this may be so, but it would be evidence of an extremely low order, perhaps only just barely above "no evidence whatsoever". Here's why I say that: in math (such as the geometry I mentioned), by far the VAST bulk of proven truths are proven only by a series of SEVERAL steps. Most proofs coming after the elementary ones in any science require a great MANY steps beyond the first principles. This implies that for the vast majority of propositions in those disciplines of which we have sufficient certainty, the contradictory proposition (to the correct theorem) is NOT "self-evidently false", i.e. not manifestly impossible.
DeleteThat is to say, to the extent of the scientific knowledge we have, MOST definitely false propositions of which we have scientific knowledge are not of such a nature that they are "obviously impossible". Hence saying of a proposition that it is "not manifestly impossible" is only SLIGHTLY enlightening as to whether it is actually possible.
I doubt that "it may be possible, but we are not actually sure if it is possible or not" is much of a help in the ontological proof arena.
I find the idea of an a priori concept to be suspect, particularly because of its modern baggage. A similar concept in Thomistic thought might be per se nota ideas - i.e,. ideas known through themselves. Aquinas, following Aristotle's "Posterior Analytics", discusses this in his Expositio Posterium Analyticorum, bk.I, lec. 2, 10, & 13. There, Aquinas discusses how a preciate term of a per se nota proposition is contained within the ratio of the subject term in four different ways. I haven't thought too much about the connection between a priori and per se nota propositions, but I'm not sure exactly how this would modify your argument - for better or worse.
ReplyDeleteReason is a mechanical operation, since logic is a mechanical operation. Building something out of reason is no different than building something out of brick and mortar. There's a famous story about what happens when you try to build a tower to heaven.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny that an atheist is resorting to a cautionary tale about being too ambitious with human reason?
DeleteAizen,
DeleteIsn't it funny that an atheist is resorting to a cautionary tale about being too ambitious with human reason?
Not at all. Many atheists accept that we humans have limited tools at our disposal.
Isn't it funny how your reason failed you? I'm not an atheist. Jesus Christ is Lord and risen from the dead.
DeleteGod is known by the experience of Himself. An experience that only He can give. Trying to reason your way to God is like trying to reason your way to an orgasm. And mental masturbation (which is what all of this philosophy amounts to) doesn't count.
"Building something out of reason is no different than building something out of brick and mortar."
DeleteThis seems highly controversial. I'm not sure how you could demonstrate it to be true.
The demonstration is easy. Tedious, but easy.
DeleteGetting to Logic
Getting to Truth
Logic and Reason
Thanks for the links.
DeleteAs far as I understand your posts, you suggest:
"Because it is the same logical form, it is also always logically true, but I still remember my father's face over 50 years ago when I replaced the sugar in the sugar bowl with salt and he put it in his coffee.
So we now have the case where something can be objectively logically true yet false to experience!4"
You seem to be misusing the word 'objective' (or at least using it a way I'm unfamiliar with), and I'm not sure why you think that just because a statement is formally valid that there is any indication of it's being 'true'.
I'm using "objective" in the way you are familiar with. I suspect that the real issue is in the way you and I would define "true". For something to be "formally valid" is has to be the case that each of the inputs the statement are either "true" or "false" and that the resulting output of the statement is "true". So, whatever "true" is, it has to be the case that things can be logically true but empirically false.
Delete@wrf3:
Delete"For something to be "formally valid" is has to be the case that each of the inputs the statement are either "true" or "false" and that the resulting output of the statement is "true"."
This is not what "formally valid" means -- in fact this does not even make sense. What you probably have in mind -- although I admit this is a guess -- are well-formed formulas in propositional calculus, which indeed are in bijection with (multivariable) functions on the Boolean algebra of truth values, but this has very little to do with what PI0 said. But I suppose you *can* use words in whichever way you fancy, just do not pretend that it has any semblance with how the word is used in mathematical logic, say.
And by the way:
Delete"God is known by the experience of Himself."
That God can be known as He Himself chooses to reveal to someone, no Christian can deny. That he can *only* be known in such a way -- which is what you want for your mental wankery to make sense -- namely that He exists, is the creator, etc. is denied by the Christian tradition right down to St. Paul, in a rather fairly explicit way.
grodrigues: This is not what "formally valid" means.
DeleteWhat, specifically, is your problem with it? That I didn't explicitly state that the expression has to follow the rules of syntax?
This site says: An argument is formally valid just in case there is no argument with the same logical form that has all (actually) true premises and a(n actually) false conclusion.
The only difference between what this says and what I said is that I allowed inputs to be a mixture of true and false. E.g.:
((A → B) ∩ (B → C)) → (A → C)
is true for all values of A, B, and C.
grodrigues: ... is denied by the Christian tradition right down to St. Paul, in a rather fairly explicit way.
DeleteSure. The question is whether or not this is known by reason or experience. Agency detection is a consequence of the way our brains are wired to acquire and share meaning. Since we can't read minds, we can only share meaning by mapping another person's behavior (both what they say and do) onto the maps of meaning in our brains. This ties into our ability to detect sentience - we map the behavior of another onto our behavior. That's why the Turing test works; that's why my dog is partly sentient, while a rock is not.
So God has made Himself known through the way He wired our brains; most of us detect agency behind the behavior of the universe.
You can see how humans differ in this ability with the Heider-Simmel animation. Agency detection, unlike the Pythagorean Theorem, doesn't give guaranteed results.
Now, one might argue that pattern matching falls under the reason category; but in this case the matching is between experience and experience.
"which indeed are in bijection with (multivariable) functions on the Boolean algebra of truth values"
DeleteObviously, this is wrong, the map sending a wff to the function on the Boolean algebra of truth values is not a bijection. Apologies, my bad.
@wrf3:
Delete"What, specifically, is your problem with it?"
What was unclear about what I said?
"E.g.:
((A → B) ∩ (B → C)) → (A → C)
is true for all values of A, B, and C."
So my guess was right. What you wrote is not an argument but a wff in propositional calculus.
But in hindsight, this was the wrong fight to pick, so I will bow out.
Thanks wrf, I wrote a bit carelessly and didn't express my object well. This being the case, my concern with your posts remains, but my point has run away from me and I unfortunately don't have time to chase it down. Thanks again for the links.
DeleteI don’t think I would have found any of these arguments convincing when I was an atheist. I didn’t know the argument from contingency very well, but I suspect most atheists essentially think of god as a ‘thing’, so the whole idea of a being versus the ‘ground of being’ is in some ways an intangible difference to them.
ReplyDeleteAlso there was always something in the Anselm type arguments that sounded as if it was along the lines “imagine the greatest conceivable cat ... therefore the great Sphinx-god must exist”.
If I really think about the root of my atheism, it was firstly the “God can’t be good and omnipotent if there is such suffering, so even if he does exist, I’m no fan”. Secondly it was simply an inherited physicalist mindset that seemed to explain close to everything. Both of these are fundamental misunderstandings, and so if anyone wants to remove the rational barriers to people believing in god, I would argue that these would be the areas to focus on. In reality, because each of them involve multiple distinct ‘boxed up’ conclusions, it’s very rare that a person will ever be able to re-examine all these boxed up conclusions at the same time, and as they all refer back to each other, this is why logical arguments rarely result in an actual ‘change of mind’. Only when someone is ‘at the end of their tether’ for some reason (through trauma or grief maybe), or spending a lot of time in silent contemplation, are they able to step back and look at all these boxed preconceptions at the same time.
I’m also not a fan at all of the idea that we only learn through sensory experience. I’m far closer to Augustine, Bonaventure etc. The physical world seems to me to be a representation of a foundation closer to mind or spirit - not as some kind of dualism but as in matter being like the shadows in Plato’s cave. I feel like I see hints of this in both Aristotle and Aquinas, but certainly not in modern Thomism. However it’s possible I’m just projecting this and it’s not really there...
You tell me anything that is ultimately physical? It seems to me from our best scientific descriptions of nature that 'the physical' is just a representation of something closer to mind (or spirit) than anything objectively local or 'solid'. As best we can tell, particles are excitations of a field (using QFT), but what is that field? If you look at the most probable Quantum Interpretations - say Qbism or RQB - then matter only has properties as part of an interaction between an observer and what Kant would call the "thing in itself". The physical element doesn't have any objective properties at all until you average these observations out onto a larger scale.
DeleteIf you want to be an extreme empiricist, then the only thing you can know for sure is your own mind - everything else could be a delusion of some form (e.g. "The Matrix" film). When you use critical reasoning to then add all the other evidence, it's reasonable to see consciousness or mind as far more fundamental to nature than anything we call "matter", and of course there is nothing in any science that contradicts this (including neuroscience - e.g. see here https://youtu.be/fOFGKhvWQ4M )
I don't expect you to change your worldview from this, I'm not sure what exactly it needs to flip people's perspective 180 degrees. I was searching for 'truth' at the time (which led me to become an atheist) and had people praying for me (which was itself annoying at the time). Also we have a lot of evolutionary pressure to react to the world as a task of survival, with the key information we instinctively focus on being the need to fight/flight/secure food/reproduce etc. It's not much help when a lion appears outside your cave to be evaluating the ontological nature of lion-ness. This is one of the reasons why spiritual practices involve exercises that detach you from the instincts, such as time in silence, fasting etc.
So maybe try something like that, as it's more likely to "change your mind" (i.e. the literal meaning of "repent") than any reasoned argument.
Simon Adams: If you want to be an extreme empiricist, then the only thing you can know for sure is your own mind - everything else could be a delusion of some form
DeleteHow do you know that the surety of your mind isn't also a delusion? After all, self-referential things are tricky to reason about.
Your mind is caused by the motion of electrons through the neurons of the brain. You sense the effect, but you don't see the cause. With others, you infer the effect through their external behavior. With Nature, you see the motion by may (or may not) sense the effect (it depends on the sensitivity of the "agency detector" in your brain).
But if our minds are just localized motions of quantum fields then they are part of the motion of the universal quantum fields. Our minds are just (apparently disconnected) parts of a universal mind.
YMMV.
"How do you know that the surety of your mind isn't also a delusion? After all, self-referential things are tricky to reason about."
DeleteAnything in the contents of my mind could be an illusion, but the fact that I experience cannot be.
"Your mind is caused by the motion of electrons through the neurons of the brain. "
You realise that this pure speculation that makes no sense? No one has anything close to a description of how this could possibly happen. Even ex physicalist like Koch have found that they have needed to invoke things like panpsychism into models like Integrated Information Theory, and even then there is a huge explanatory gap.
If what you are saying is correct, then we could think of the brain as a series of pipes, with the electrons being water and the neurone being taps. What you are suggesting, is that if you have enough pipes and water, that you would be able to reproduce consciousness. Does that seem in any way at all feasible to you? What you are doing is invoking magic - 'we don't quite know what happens, but you have electrons moving about, then there is some magic we don't have a clue about, then there is conscious experience'.
"But if our minds are just localized motions of quantum fields then they are part of the motion of the universal quantum fields. Our minds are just (apparently disconnected) parts of a universal mind."
I think there is far more to the story (i.e. not "just"), but at some level this is at least feasible.
Simon Adams: but the fact that I experience cannot be.
DeleteThe fact of the experience cannot be denied, but the interpretation of the experience can. That "you" are just the dream of quantum fields is one interpretation.
You realise that this pure speculation that makes no sense?
It isn't speculation at all. We have a universal theory of computation. This universal theory shows us how to get from meaningless symbols to truth, logic, reason, math, ... It's a simple thing to substitute physical atoms for the meaningless symbols of the lambda calculus.
For your consideration: the behavior of charge is equivalent to the laws of thought.
Does that seem in any way at all feasible to you?
Sure. It's just a matter of complexity of behavior. It won't be much longer until our machines pass Turing tests of ever increasing difficulty.
"The fact of the experience cannot be denied, but the interpretation of the experience can. That "you" are just the dream of quantum fields is one interpretation."
DeleteYes but any possible explanation involves perceiving, experiencing, even your "dreaming". For it to be the "dream of a quantum field" then necessitates that the quantum field is self aware. The leap of logic I was trying to address is the physicalist one where conscious experience "emerges" from dead matter.
"It isn't speculation at all. We have a universal theory of computation. This universal theory shows us how to get from meaningless symbols to truth, logic, reason, math, ... It's a simple thing to substitute physical atoms for the meaningless symbols of the lambda calculus."
There are two things a computer will never be able to reproduce, and that is will and experience. A computer - even a quantum computer - is effectively the same as my water and pipes analogy above. There is no reason at all to assume that you can get from code and logic gates to experience or volition, no matter what level of complexity it has.
"For your consideration: the behavior of charge is equivalent to the laws of thought."
I'm not sure I see this. However if you take the many words quantum interpretation, then you can turn this on it's head and say that what it is describing is a thought process. At first it has a 'raw intuition quality', like the wave packet in QM. Then as you focus on it, it becomes clearly defined. This is obviously wild speculation, but it's the closest to your comment I can imagine.
"Sure. It's just a matter of complexity of behavior. It won't be much longer until our machines pass Turing tests of ever increasing difficulty."
But that's a categorical error surely. No matter what kind of dynamic neural algorithms you use, there is no reason to believe that that a computer will ever be self aware, no matter how sophisticated the code and the hardware are. Bernardo Kastrup worked on creating artificial intelligence to support the LHC at CERN, and he has the same view I have always had (I'm in IT but have never worked on AI). Eg see here - https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2015/04/cognitive-short-circuit-of-artificial-consciousness.html
PS: If a computer does ever pass the Turing test - and I accept that's possible - it will be emulating consciousness. In other words it will need to have code deliberately designed to responds as if it is self aware, as if it had volition etc. This is a huge categorical gulf between this and actual experience and will.
DeleteSimon Adams: The leap of logic I was trying to address is the physicalist one where conscious experience "emerges" from dead matter.
DeleteIt's likewise a leap of logic to say that consciousness can't "emerge" from dead matter. We reach a point where logic can't go (hence my opposition to the idea that man can build a tower of reason up to heaven).
There are two things a computer will never be able to reproduce, and that is will and experience
That's simply not true. All sorts of autonomous devices demonstrate will and experience.
There is no reason at all to assume that you can get from code and logic gates to experience or volition...
Except, of course, by observation of human anatomy and how neural nets operate. A neuron is just one way of combining multiple inputs to one output, which is no different from a logic gate except for the number of inputs and the range of outputs. All computation is based on combining multiple inputs to an output through a complex net.
I'm not sure I see this.
The laws of thought vs. electric charge:
1. the law of contradiction <=> positive charge is not negative charge
2. the law of the excluded middle <=> charge is either positive or negative.
3. the principle of identity <=> like charges repel, unlike charges attract.
But that's a categorical error surely.
Surely it isn't. Be happy to argue it, but this post is getting long enough.
Simon Adams: If a computer does ever pass the Turing test ... it will be emulating consciousness.
DeleteThe emulation of consciousness is conscious.
After all, in a computer as well as in a brain, the wiring is the code.
Here's one reason why Kastroup is wrong:
DeleteHe wrote, "A simulation of the phenomenon isn't the phenomenon."
For intelligence, that's wrong. The simulation of intelligence is intelligence. That's why the Turing Test works.
That depends on your definition of intelligence, but without self awareness intelligence becomes a meaningless series of logical operations. Yes they can become very sophisticated and can be used to solve intelligent problems autonomously, but even ignoring Godel’s Incompleteness, they require awareness for any meaningful understanding.
DeleteWeather computers simulate rain and storms all the time, but the floor around them never gets wet. The way science is done is by creating an abstraction, and then testing and reformulating the abstraction to make predictions. The way this is taught within a physicalist ontology has lead to people confusing the abstraction for the thing itself, which is a massive epistemological misalignment that forms a thread through all your replies.
Likewise with your claim that machines have will is meaningless. Machines are fully deterministic. You may think humans are deterministic, in which case your views and opinions are purely the result of chemical and electrical reactions in your brain. In effect all your views and all you say has been programmed by nature, by a series of causes going back to the big bang. You had no choice but to believe that there is no fundamental difference between the substrate of your conscious experience and the substrate of a series of logic gates that respond in fixed predetermined ways. Fortunately we have a legal system that doesn’t agree with this.
Simon Adams
DeletePicking apart your reply would take more time than I care to spend and would likely try Dr. Feser's patience.
Let me, however, point out three fundamental mistakes.
First, the λ calculus shows how you get meaning out of meaningless symbols. And self-awareness is built on top of the behavior of charge, which is the one force of Nature that recognizes itself.
Second, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems simply aren't applicable. We aren't formal systems. Neither are our computers.
Third, machines need not be fully deterministic. See "Non-deterministic Turing machines".
If you want me to further rebut your argument, just let me know. It's target rich.
1) You’re expecting the abstraction to understand itself, and you don’t have to refer back to unreproducible qualia to refute that understanding is different from computability. See Roger Penrose for one demonstration of this.
Delete2. If you have a conscious programmer updating the code all the time to adapt to unforeseen scenarios, then it’s not applicable. Real consciousness does this by default.
3. This is a farce imitation of volition. In many ways it’s the equivalent of writing code that choses pseudo random answers to a multiple choice exam, and claiming the answers were consciously chosen. It also lives in the world of ‘theoretical magic’ at present as far as I’m aware.
1) The whole point of a self-referential abstraction is that it can understand itself. I don't have to refer to "qualia" because "qualia" is vacuously, circularly, defined concept which excludes a material implementation by definition. It's mental moonshine. I'll be happy to go through Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" point by point to show where, while he understands physics, he makes elementary mistakes with respect to computation.
Delete2. You don't have to have a conscious programmer updating the code all the time. We already have code that can modify itself as needed depending on circumstances. This is particularly so in systems coded in Lisp, since Lisp is homoiconic.
3. Since you have no idea whatsoever how the mind implements volition, your objection rings hollow. It's also clear that you have a limited understanding of how computers implement volition. Volition is simply a goal-seeking process of which there are many techniques.
“The whole point of a self-referential abstraction is that it can understand itself”
DeleteYou have a completely different understanding of ‘understanding’. You also have a completely different understanding of what free will is.
You have abstracted what we do, and decided that what we do is the abstraction. It’s clear that you can’t get passed that, so we’re just talking past each other.
Simon Adams: You have abstracted what we do, and decided that what we do is the abstraction.
DeleteI wouldn't summarize my position that way at all. Granted, it's a completely different way of looking at how the mind works than that of the typical Aristotelian, but I also know that Aristotelian's have constructed a Gordion knot of theory that can be hard to unravel. It too me two months of back and forth with one on the notion of "qualia" to get him to finally admit that he defined "qualia" in a way to purposely exclude a material interpretation.
It can be hard to replace 2500 years of philosophical musings with knowledge that's only 100 years old.
My view is closer to Plato than Aristotle. The shadows on the wall of his cave are matter, a representation of what is fundamental (what Augustine called ideas). We then abstract the representation, forming a re-representation that is twice removed from the “thing in itself”.
DeleteThis is why you get people like Sean Carroll saying that physics has proven that it’s impossible for there to be anything after death, and people think machines can be conscious. If the shadows are all there is, this would be reasonable. But anyone who observes their own first person reality should be able to work out that it doesn’t reduce to shadows...
Why are ideas more fundamental than matter? I know that one side wants to hold that ideas are fundamental and matter is emergent; another side wants to hold that matter is fundamental and ideas are emergent. Some hold to a dualism (which I think is untenable). I happen to think that the question is undecidable.
DeleteThere is no way anyone has ever proposed for mind to appear from matter. You get arguments that it’s an emergent property, but they all involve literal magic happening at some point. Fundamental problems like the “hard problem” of consciousness, or the measurement problem of quantum physics, essentially vanish when your foundation is in the ideas of Plato and Augustine. There is a real sense in which the artificial division between the soul (theology) and an objective physical world (science) created by the likes of Galileo has run it’s course such that it’s now a barrier to advancing our holistic understanding.
DeleteThe German idealists like Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer etc understood this, but as they more and more rejected god, that caused a separate problem that was recognised by Nietzsche.
“Inspiring Philosophy” has some very basic videos that demonstrate some of this quite well, such as
This on QM (from 7 years ago, but the case has only become stronger since recent “no go” experiments etc -> https://youtu.be/4C5pq7W5yRM
This series of five videos on the irreducible mind -> https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TUjEbz4zD0i_rfGiyB4AGQa
Simon Adams: There is no way anyone has ever proposed for mind to appear from matter.
DeleteVon Neumann (The Computer and the Brain), Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach), Armstrong (A Materialist Theory of the Mind)...
... but they all involve literal magic happening at some point
As everyone knows, advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But actually, neither is needed. After all, a Saturn V might have appeared to be magical to Sir Isaac Newton, but it still got man to the moon and back using the theory he developed.
Easy answers are often wrong answers. It's the hard problems that lead to important insights. Just because a philosophical answer makes a problem go away doesn't make the philosophical answer right.
The Inspiring Philosophy video on QM contains numerous problems. The author doesn't understand QM. (Here's a hint: the future ☞ does not exist ☜ until it is encountered (i.e. measured). The future only exists as probabilities until you, the individual, meet it, and that's when the probabilities go away). So QM doesn't debunk materialism. It debunks a "local real" version of materialism, but not "local unreal". (You could opt for "non-local real" but Relativity rules that out).
Furthermore, subatomic particles are not "continuous waves of energy". First, energy is quantized. Second, they exist as "continuous waves of ☞ probability amplitudes ☜" until they are measured, at which point you get a "lump" (as Feynman puts it) of energy.
"electron decided to act differently"
Electrons don't "decide" anything. They always act quantumly. You just don't know anything specific about them as long as they are in your future. And they are in your future until you measure them.
"caused the wavefunction to collapse".
This is not a physical wave, like an electromagnetic wave. It's a wave of probability amplitudes. It's just a description of expected behavior.
"The results in for was that matter didn't exist independent of observation or measurement, flipping materialism up on its head."
Well, no. The observation/measurement is also based on materialism. The universe is self-describing.
I could go on, but this should be enough.
I'll look at some the irreducible mind stuff, but I suspect it commits the same kinds of basic errors.
Something I am really struggling to understand is that there seem to be two ways god can be present to us. One is as the ground of the being of all things. The other is the holy spirit, which comes and goes, and in the sacraments (notably the eucharist). My theology is poor but this does seem difficult to understand, especially with god as “simple”. I guess the answer is that only the father is ‘simple’, with us at all times and all places in a kind of ‘containing’ role. When the Holy Spirit is present, then god is present to us in two different ways, with the latter being specific to that ‘physical’ place and time. The only way I can reconcile this is as a kind of panentheism, with the universe being an organism, created by god but not god, but in which god can become present in a similar way that he becomes present within us. Even though god no longer lives in a physical temple on earth, there are definitely old churches you can visit where you can feel a tangible presence that you don’t either outside or inside the building next door.
ReplyDeleteAnyway enough of my internal ramblings for today :)
In thomism, is not the second way just God being present by His effects? In the sacraments or in us He is there but by using His power to cause a effect, since God can't be in a place or another.
DeleteIn the first or "normal" way, God is present by His primary casuality. In the second or "miraculous" way God is present by a kinda of secundary casuality. Palamists would say that this means that we don't know God at all in this life, but i still need to study the debate, so i dunno.
Yes I think I need to study some of this more.
DeleteTalmid, I don't think you have fully captured the second sort of presence of God. Certainly the Thomistic understanding of God present by sanctifying grace is more than that "present by his effects" or by a kind of secondary causality. That is: the sacrament of baptism or the Eucharist is indeed a secondary layer of causality, but WHAT IT BRINGS ABOUT is not "God present by his effects", it God present more concretely - it is a creaturely participation in God's own life, which is a participation in God himself. Not, though, as panentheists would have it, for it is an inherently supernatural act of free gift on God's part and is contingent on our part - we can lose this participation through free moral fault.
DeleteWell, i admit that i don't understand this subject very well, but i'am under the impression that in Thomism grace is not a third substance between we and God that change us or a "piece" of God that enters us, but is more of a direct change on the soul caused by God, so what happens is sorta like secundary casuality. I remember a episode of the Classical Theism Podcast about Jacques Maritan where i believe this is explicity said.
DeleteThis can be a straw-man that i got from Palamists or something, of course, but i have a hard time understanding how could God be closer to us than that in this life. The Eucharistic is diferent, of course, for there Our Lord is in front of us with His human nature, which can be in places and all that.
Interesting description. Assuming that we are talking strictly of sanctifying grace, I would have said that God's acting to change us is not secondary causality (e.g. it is not some second agent acting, it is God himself acting, directly and without any intermediary agent) to alter our souls. The result of God's so acting can be described from 2 aspects, one under the aspect of "it is I who have been changed", and the second under the aspect of "what I now enjoy as a result of the change". Under the first, St. Paul's state of grace is individual to him, and St. Joan's is individual to her, so that there are many graces, or many "acts of" grace. But under the second aspect, what Paul and Joan enjoy is God Himself (and not some created intermediary), so that there is but one "activity" of grace. And under the second aspect, most assuredly we would not speak of secondary causality in any way: it is God and God alone acting, without mediation. I don't see room for any secondary causality.
DeleteIt seems that we are agreeing here. I agree that it is God alone that directly change our souls. Maybe my use of "secundary casuality" that screwed things up. What i mean by the terms:
DeletePrimary casuality: God keeping us in being
Secundary casuality: the normal form of casuality we see.
On the way i'am using the term, God doing a miracle, for instance, would be a example of secundary casuality, for He is doing more that keeping things in being, He is also changing something directly in a way more similar that the way we change things.
I probably failed to use the term right. Sorry for that, really need to take the time to read more about the theme someday. The important part seems that we agree that God is not using a third thing to change us or that He is becoming one with us in a panentheistic sense.
I don’t know Thomism well enough to claim to understand that framing of the question, but I agree with you Tony. Even more I think scripture supports my view that god can be tangibly present, such as in eucharistic adoration sometimes. As Jesus says, “The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going”. This is the wind that came in at pentecost. That wasn’t a one off event, with the holy spirit going back home permanently afterwards!
DeleteI guess this is the difference between existence and essence, although I don’t understand why Palamites also need energies. If there is a reason why essence can’t be present to us, then I’m a Palamite :)
Talmid, thanks for clearing up your sense of secondary causality. We were saying much the same thing.
DeleteThe way I see it, the weakness of a priori arguments in general is that sometimes a priori intuitions are inconsistent with each other, and when this happens the best we can do is weigh the plausibility of these intuitions against each other. When this happens, it's legitimate to just run the argument in reverse as a reductio argument. For example, the premises of your argument sketch (and the assumptions involved in background metaphysics, for example, the metaphysics of propositions, essences, acts, potencies, etc. and how these all relate) seem a priori *fine*. But they entail the coherence (indeed, the existence) of a being whose essence and existence are identical, which a priori *does not* seem coherent. We have two options: stick with our guns, accept the conclusion and label it a mystery. Or, reject the conclusion as a priori impossible/incoherent, and conclude that one of our premises or background metaphysical assumptions was wrong. Though I am a theist, I am (and I suspect a lot of people would be) more confident in the incoherence of a being whose essence is identical with its existence (and other ways of stating divine simplicity), than I am in the *entire conjunction* of assumptions needed to run the argument.
ReplyDeleteHey Adam. I'm a bit confused by your comment.
Delete1. Why should one think that the plausibility of any premise of Ed's argument depends on intuitions?
2. Also, what to you seems 'incoherent' about the notion of God as He in whom essence and existence are identical? Granted such a notion may be beyond what is strictly speaking *imaginable, but why for all of that would one think it incoherent? To me, at least, there doesn't seem to be any logical incoherence in the notion itself.
Hi Aquino77,
DeleteI didn't mean anything by too sneaky by the word "intuition". I guess I meant strongly held or supposedly obvious beliefs (or whatever). It just didn't seem right calling them "knowledge" since in my next breath I stated that they (whatever they are) can be inconsistent with each other.
I talked about my *confidence* in the incoherence of divine simplicity, not the demonstrable incoherence. (I think even most defenders of divine simplicity acknowledge it at least seems weird, prima facie.) I doubt I can *demonstrate* that divine simplicity is logically incoherent, but I also doubt that I can demonstrate the logical incoherence of the affirmation or denial of the PSR, essentialism, realism about propositions etc. either. (I'd become a famous philosopher if I could settle these issues!) So, demonstration aside, I am just less *confident* in the conjunction of the assumptions in professor Feser's argument above, than I am in the negation of the conclusion. By my own lights, the modus tollens move of denying the conclusion and running the argument in reverse seems justified.
Hey Adam. Thanks for your reply.
DeleteI guess my problem is that I don't see how any of these things can be inconsistent with each other by what was stated in your first comment.
I would also note that Ed has shown the incoherence of the denial of PSR in a few different writings (for instance, in "Scholastic Metaphysics" at page 144, Ed shows how the denial of PSR is self-undermining.)
I think similar arguments could be given to show the incoherence of anti-essentialism and anti-realism about propositions as well.
Hi, this is not the most on-topic question in the world, but I would much appreciate an answer to this.
ReplyDeleteOn the Aristotlelian analysis, the parts of a substance exist within the substance virtually or potentially rather than actually. However, in some cases this seems quite strange. For example, it would seem bizzare to claim that the heart or kidneys of a human being exist within it only virtually or potentially; it seems that the parts actually exist within in. But maybe I'm missing something.
Hey BenG - Ed's books Scholastic Metaphysics covers this topic when discussing the topics of Substance and Hylemorphism. You should check it out.
DeleteIn summary, the way I understand it is that a human being is a substance, like Oxygen is a substance. Oxygen, sort of, stops displaying its properties when it becomes part of water. Instead it displays the properties of H2O. But that doesn't mean that Oxygen is gone, it just means that it is no longer expressing the actuality of oxygen. Having said that, the potential for it to become oxygen again still exists through the process of electrolysis.
So what happens to oxygen in the human organism? Or water, for that matter? These substances get absorbed into the human substance. They still exist virtually in the body, but are better characterized by the organs they inhabit. They key is that the properties that belong to the substance cannot or can only partially express themselves. The idea is that they are now part of the one human substance and are ordered to its functions rather than the functions it would express on its own.
You wouldn't talk about human organs in the same way, because a liver or a heart is not a substantial form, but a property of the substantial form of human. Livers and hearts do not have a standalone existence appart from the human organism. Oxygen and water do have a substantial existence outside of the human organism.
It is very much an anti reductionist approach to thing, such that the comment, we are all just star dust, is just a mistake. We are much more than just the elements that make up our bodies.
As this is off topic, I don't think Ed will appreciate us cluttering up his combox with a long discussion... unless you can somehow think of a way of linking it to this topic. :)
Cheers,
Daniel
Could someone please explain what it means for the parts of a substance to exist within the substance virtually or potentially, not actually, as the notion seems generally puzzling to me. The example of the organs within the human body illustrates why it is puzzling, but is no different in principle to any other situation where we have asystem made up of identifiable components, such as in a piece of electronic apparatus.
ReplyDeleteThis often misunderstood. When talking about parts, 'actual existence' and 'potential existence' had technical meanings: Parts in something potentially are only extractable as parts, like strips of paper are the parts of a paper from which they are cut. Parts in something actually are not fundamentally different in or out of their wholes, like blocks are parts of a tower of blocks. (Aggregates are made out of parts that actually existing in them.) These are obviously not exhaustive; there are cases where the parts only have their particular character as parts within the whole -- extract them and they are no longer the same, but they are not merely potential in the above sense. This is what it means for parts to exist virtually. Organs are paradigmatic cases of virtual existence: they can be identified as actually defined within the system (you can identify them in a non-arbitrary way, unlike, for instance, the regions that are parts of the paper, which can be arbitrarily any regions of the paper), but their character as functional parts means that their behavior and features are very different depending on whether they are in the body or simply removed from it and not put in another similar system. Oxygen and hydrogen in water molecules are also a good example, because atoms in compounds have features and behaviors that come wholly from their being parts of a whole (sharing electrons with other atoms, etc.), features and behaviors that they do not have outside that whole. If the hydrogen and oxygen were just like balls stuck to each other, they would actually exist in the molecule; if the molecule itself were homogenous but dissolvable into oxygen and hydrogen, they would potentially exist in the molecule.
DeletePeople have a tendency to read 'virtual existence' in this context as if it said that the parts were somehow not really there, but that's not the point, and comes from reading the terms colloquially rather than as just technical terms of art. There's nothing weird or spooky about the distinction itself; it's just a distinction among different kinds of parts that we can say something has, based on *how* they are parts. Actual, virtual, and potential parts are all actually parts, they just differ on the way they 'exist in' the whole as parts.
Thanks for the clarification Brandon. I did not realize that organs could be referenced as have virtual existence. Does Ed talk about this in his books? Can you tell me which book?
DeleteCheers,
Daniel
Yes, thanks for that clarification. Thomism could do with a terminological overhaul frankly , as frequently its terminology is either confusing, archaic or both, and may even stand in the way of constructive engagement with others.
DeleteMaybe Thomism could do with a terminology update, but I doubt that it would greatly help modern philosophers: for the bulk of the "specialty" terms, there ISN'T anything currently present in modern parlance that the old terms could be simply mapped onto. So we would have to make up NEW terms that are just as foreign to moderns as the old Thomist terms. There isn't anything in modern parlance that works for the Thomist "essence", and as for "form", it's not that the moderns don't have a word for it, it's that the moderns completely rejected the idea ages ago, so the idea is no longer taught clearly enough for most newly-minted philosophers to actually know what they are rejecting.
DeleteTony
DeleteMy comment was made after encountering the term 'virtual existance' ( as in the discussion above ), which certainly suggests no real existance at all ( as with the image produced by a diverging lens ), but actually carries no such implication at all. The term 'perverted' - as in the perverted faculty argument- is another good example of what I mean, as to a modern ear it is a rather archaic term of frequently prudish opprobrum generally directed towards some sexual practice or other, so using it can illicit immediate hostility and completely derail a conversation. I have encountered many other examples as I have proceeded with my novice study of Thomism.
@Unknown:
DeleteThat complaint could be applied to any field and is strictly redundant and useless. Murray Gell-Man borrowed "quarks" from Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Physicists speak about "charm" and "flavor" for properties of elementary particles that have nothing to do with the ordinary meaning of words. Mathematicians, are even worse and are among the worst kind of terminological buccaneers. For a very notable example see https://mathoverflow.net/questions/29970/what-is-the-etymology-of-the-term-perverse-sheaf
Don't fight it, learn to love it. You will be assimilated.
Grodrigues
DeleteDon't be silly with your 'strictly redundant and useless' jibe. The essence of my comment seems to have quite escaped you. Particle physics does not have an uphill struggle getting academics to take it seriously, and the sometimes whimsical terminology and nomenclature they use is hardly likely to be taken literally or cause offence, get an interlocutors hackles up and derail an exchange before it has hardly even started.
@Unknown:
Delete"The essence of my comment seems to have quite escaped you."
This is ironic.
"the sometimes whimsical terminology and nomenclature they use is hardly likely to be taken literally or cause offence, get an interlocutors hackles up and derail an exchange before it has hardly even started."
If this indeed happens then the problem it is not with thomists but with such supercilious silly interlocutors. Getting their "hackles up" over technical terms or "taking offence"? Give me a break. Everything I said stands.
You are obviously content to remain in a tiny irrelevant subculture , and no doubt enjoy the in-group, cult like exclusivity. How ridiculous that archaic, easily misunderstood and sometimes ( to moderns, who you presumably wish to engage with ) objectionable terminology, might act as a barrier to effective communication. Now, who would have thought that? Never mind though , it is all their silly, supercillious fault!
DeleteGet off your own silly, supercillious ( and frankly -as things stand - utterly irrelevant ) high horse.
Dr. Feser summarizes what is basically the Peripatetic axiom:
ReplyDelete"This conclusion might seem to be reinforced by the fact that Thomists follow Aristotle in holding that no knowledge is possible for human beings without sensory experience, and reject the standard alternative views (Platonic theories of knowledge as recollection, Augustinian illumination theories, and rationalist theories of innate ideas)."
In the Thomistic tradition, should this be construed as:
P1) No knowledge [of whatever kind and operating in whatever mode] is possible for human beings without sensory experience
or
P2) No knowledge [of a purely discursive and intellective sort] is possible for human beings without sensory experience
More simply, what is the full extent of what is conveyed by the term ‘knowledge’.
My understanding is that when the Thomist says "No knowledge is possible without sense experience", it is meant that not only is sense experience a pre-condition for any embodied, rational agent to acquire knowledge, but that sense data, once coordinated into a given experience (which would seem to presuppose certain universal conceptual categories that reduce the “manifold of sensuous impressions” to unity), provides the source or “raw” content necessary for the mind’s abstraction of concepts (forms) which are the basis of knowledge. Forgive the run-on sentence.
Is this a correct gloss?
Thanks,
Gregory
I believe it is. The primary sense of the proposition finds its validation in the A-T position that the mind is a blank slate until it has concepts to work on, and it ONLY GETS concepts through the activity of sense input and then mental work on that input via the agent intellect. No sensory input, nothing for the intellect to work on to generate concepts. All other discursive forms of intellectual activity depend upon concepts (such as: synthesis of propositions, and production of syllogisms). (Arguably, even the forms of mental activity that seem to supercede concrete concepts as occurs in mystical prayer may STILL not be normally possible without the prior development of the mind via sense and then conceptualization.)
DeleteAs I understand it, this is fundamentally different from the position Plato puts into Socrates' mouth of people being born with pre-existing forms in the mind.
Obviously, God is not a proposition, so...
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing myself.
DeleteI would be very interested in hearing anyone's opinion on Robert Maydole's Ontological Argument that he defends in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. I'll admit that the copious use of symbolic logic in the essay renders it somewhat over my head.
ReplyDeleteNot long after the book was released I remember hearing William Lane Craig say that Quentin Smith actually admitted the argument appears to be sound. Is anyone here familiar with the essay?
I think once you accept the act-potency distinction theism is pretty unavoidable.
ReplyDeleteBen. Yes,See Miller, "The Irrefutability of Metaphysical Truths." 1973 Georgetown University. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. You can obtain it from a college library via interlibrary loan. But it takes some effort.
Delete
ReplyDeleteI am very happy to read from this blog that after we have discovered/formed ideas/concepts via our sensory experience, it is possible for us to use these ideas/concepts to design a-priori arguments to argue that God exists.
I propose this as another example of a-priori argument (it would be one version of ontological arguments):
A: Every idea of an entity that Unconditionally possesses only one feature is impossible to have any intrinsic contradiction because it takes at least two features for there to be any possibility of intrinsic contradiction.
(ie it takes an entity to have two features such that one feature is X and the other feature is not X, in order for there to be an intrinsic contradiction)
B. Hence, the idea of an Unconditionally Triangular Entity would be impossible to have intrinsic contradiction, and hence such an idea would be a STRICT/NARROW logical possibility (the only way for something to be a STRICT logical impossibility would be for it to be X and not X at the same time in the same respect).
C. It is logically possible that an Unconditionally Triangular Entity does not exist extra-mentally, because Its feature of being unconditionally triangular does not contradict it not having any extra-mental existence.
D. However, it would be a logical contradiction for an Unconditionally Triangular Entity not to be triangular, because that would mean this entity is both triangular and not triangular at the same time in the same respect.
C. Similarly, the idea of an “Unconditionally Existing Entity” would be a STRICT logical possibility due to it having only one feature.
D. It would be a logical contradiction for an “Unconditionally Existing Entity” to be not existing extra-mentally, because that would mean this entity would be having the feature of (i) Unconditional Existence and (ii) not Unconditional Existence at the same time in the same respect.
E. Therefore it is a logical necessity for the idea of an Unconditionally Existing Entity to exist extra-mentally.
F. An entity that exists by logically necessity due to sound premises would entail that this entity exists by metaphysically necessity, because logical necessity is the strongest form of necessity
[note these relationships:
(a) what is logically possible may not be metaphysically possible,
(b) what is logically necessary would be metaphysically necessary,
(c) what is metaphysically necessary may not be logically necessary.]
G. Given Premises E and F, an Unconditionally Existing Entity exists extra-mentally.
Is any of the premises false?
If not, then by further analyzing the idea of an Unconditionally Existing Entity, we can discover that it corresponds to “what all Classical Theists understand to be God”. (adapting Aquinas’ words)
[Hi Tony, in case u read this: At the most recent Open Thread, I have responded to your critique of my previous P0. Sorry for my late response. But it may not appear until/unless it is approved.]
:)
Cheers!
johannes y k hui
Nett effect of my previous comment:
DeleteIf an entity (eg the mental entity “Triangularity”) is logically possible to be necessarily triangular, then this entity is necessarily triangular. If an entity (eg the mental entity “Existence per se”) is logically possible to be necessarily existing, then this entity is necessarily existing.
In modal logic:
possibly necessary entails necessary
:)
Cheers!
johannes, I don't expect to revisit that thread to make comments. The details of the arguments have gotten sufficiently misty to me that I would have to repeat all the prior thought-process to pick up where we left off.
DeleteAaron
ReplyDeleteQuentin Smith said in an email to me years ago that theists like Craic were doing the best work in the philosophy of religion. Nevertheless, he remained an atheist until he died.
"The problem, in his view, is that we lack a grasp of God’s essence that is sufficiently firm for us to have this knowledge. Hence, though the proposition that God exists would be self-evident to a sufficiently powerful mind, it is not self-evident to our minds."
ReplyDeleteThat seems to me to beg the question against ontological arguments in their attempt to get our minds to seeing that a greatest possible being exists.
In particular it would be a terrible response to modal ontological arguments in which we know the entailment from possibility to necessity is true and the only controversial premise is the possibility one - and though the possibility would then entail the actuality, we can certainly become a priori convinced of the possibility of a MGB. Aquinas's objection always struck me as pretty weak.
It is weak, for it assumes that:
Delete1) The OA argues that God is "self-evident" whereas this is hardly the case; it only argues that the existence of God is a logical necessity. Many logically necessary truths are hardly self-evident but require many steps of reasoning; and
2) the only way to arrive at "God exists" being self-evident or even logically necessary is to have a direct knowledge of God's essence. Whereas this is not true at all, it only requires knowledge of what is entailed by "God" and "existence".
But there's the problem and why there is a much stronger objection to the MOA. The basic question is a "necessary being" logically contradictory and therefore modally impossible? And we don't understand "being" enough a priori to be able to answer the question.
We can only prove the existence of God by looking at contingent beings (which is a posteriori), seeing they are composite, arguing that proves the existence of an absolutely simple being, and that showing that an absolutely simple being exists necessarily if it exists at all.
I don't think that the OA argues that God existence is self-evident to us on the usual meaning of the term. Remember that St. Anselm only started the path that ended up in the OA because he wanted to convince people that God can't fail to exist, so it was obvious to him that it can be denied. When you look to more technical versions of the argument like Plantinga or Goddel, it is quite clear that they have no problem with the OA requiring many steps of reasoning to work.
Delete"The basic question is a "necessary being" logically contradictory and therefore modally impossible? And we don't understand "being" enough a priori to be able to answer the question."
To be fair, we don't need to reason only from words. There are some ways to argue for the possibility premise:
- one could pick created things and try to remove mentally their limitations until we arrive at a more apophatic knowledge of perfection. That was St. Anselm way, as seen in his reply to Gaunilo(that used your objection).
- One could disagree with you and argue that we have enough a priori knowledge of the relevant facts. Descartes used his "clear and distinct ideas" to argue that we did know God essence enough a priori, no?
- One could use the traditional cosmolgical arguments as evidence that God creating a universe is at least possible(even if not actual to the atheist), so it is possible that God exists. I remember seeing William Lane Craig and Josh Rasmussem doing it.
Maybe these ways are more that what you allows to be called "a priori", but the focus is more in if they work.
In addition to what Atno said:
ReplyDeleteAnselm could defend his ontological reasonings against the objection that we are unable to grasp God’s essence by pointing out that his “being than which no greater can be conceived” is a negative/apophatic reference to God; it is not claiming that we have a full grasp of what God’s essence is. So one of Anselm’s ontological reasonings does not require us to have full knowledge of what God’s essence is. It only requires us to have some relevant knowledge of what God is not.
Regarding the possibility premise:
If you are referring to the common objection that a logical possible idea/concept that directly or indirectly refers to God may not be metaphysically possible, then I propose that this objection is not relevant because:
(1) Many ontological arguments do not argue that the logical possibility of a certain idea/concept that indirectly or directly refers to God entails that it is metaphysically possible,
(2) Many ontological arguments argue along the line that the logical possibility of a certain idea that indirectly/directly refers to God entails (via tight logical steps) that it is a logical necessity.
Once it is proven to be a logical necessity, then it must also be a metaphysical necessity, because logical necessity is the strongest type of necessity among all types of necessities.
The relationship between logical necessity and metaphysical necessity:
(a) what is metaphysically necessary may not be logically necessary
(b) what is logically necessary is always metaphysically necessary
:)
Cheers!
johannes y k hui
Well if ideas don't determine the reality, it's a miracle that they can decide that issue itself.
ReplyDeleteTo adjudicate ontology assumes an even greater ontological authority than any ontological argument for God, but somehow always gets a pass. Return to tv and wonder at the great mystery.
It would be great if Feser could respond to Joe Schmid's "aloneness argument" against classical theism.
ReplyDeleteDr. Feser makes the claim: Notice that you are not relying on any evidence from the senses in judging that this proposition is true.
ReplyDeleteThat assumes that aren't sensing the activity of your brain, which is a strange position to take.
You are, in fact, relying on the way your brain is wired to know that this proposition is true.
That assumes that aren't sensing the activity of your brain, which is a strange position to take.
DeleteNot at all. Even if your thoughts are reducible to nothing more than neurons firing, or electric signals causing biochemical reactions, YOU DON'T SENSE "neurons firing" or the biochemical reactions as such. Instead, you experience "the proposition..." Nothing about that experience explicitly is perceived in terms of "there's another neuron firing..."
You are, in fact, relying on the way your brain is wired to know that this proposition is true.
True, but you are not INSPECTING the wiring in your brain to evaluate it and then decide "this sort of wiring properly deals with the input in order to render a true and valid conclusion." You don't actually advert to the wiring in forming the conclusion or the judgment that it is true.
Tony wrote: YOU DON'T SENSE "neurons firing...
DeleteYou also don't sense photons impacting the rods and cones in your eyes, or the signals from the retina to the brain. That is, you don't sense the activity of your vision system, yet we call vision a sense.
You don't actually advert to the wiring in forming the conclusion or the judgment that it is true.
You also don't inspect the wiring in your visual cortex to understand whether what you're seeing is real or not, unless you have reason to consult a specialist.
So I don't see how your reply helps you.
I think that what Dr. Feser is saying is that you are not using observations or anything that needs you to go look things up in the real world.
DeleteThink of mathematics. When you are doing a big calculation you will not know the answer by doing experiments or something, you will calculate, your work is with the numbers, with the ideal.
Now, could you do that if you had no experience or had no brain at all? Nope, but not even Leibniz would disagree and the dude was as rationalistic(in the epistemical sense) as possible. The important part is that you are looking to the ideal and not to the world of experience, no one meant more than that when using the term "a priori".
First, the "go look things up in the real world" imposes what is clearly a false dichotomy. Your brain is just as much a part of the "real world" as anything external to you. From Nature's viewpoint, there is no "external". It's all just interacting quantum fields.
DeleteSecond, the dichotomy is continued by not understanding what calculations are. All calculations are based on repeated physical combination/selection operations through a complicated network. Numbers are nothing more than labels for collections of physical objects. "Non-physicality" comes in when we manipulate labels for things we can't physically do. If addition is "add a rock to a bucket" then subtraction is "remove a rock from a bucket". We can't remove a rock from an empty bucket, but we pretend we can. And so on for complex numbers, etc...
The "problem" is that we have to "pretend" to describe reality. -(e^i��) = 1. And one can argue that descriptions of reality are real.
Dude, no one is talking about metaphysics, is more of a method thing. I don't think i ever saw a philosophy reader fail in understand the distinction before. Even philosophers that agree with your positions would have no problem with the distinction.
DeletePicture "a priori" as someone in a armchair thinking and "a posteriori" as someone outside observing stuff and making experiments, it probably would make things easier to understand. This is not a rigorous definition, btw.
I know what "a priori" and "a posteriori" mean. And that's why the answer to Dr. Feser's question is a resounding "no!". The best you can do sitting in an armchair is to observe, by self-reflection: self-awareness, endlessness, truth, and goodness (even if those aren't yet rigorously defined). Then you can then suppose that those parts combine into an actual being with those properties. But that's no different than taking the parts of various animals and combining them into, say, a unicorn. The only way you'll then show that a unicorn exists is by finding one. One might walk by your armchair, but that does no good to everyone else in their La-Z-Boy's.
DeleteAnd if you're going to try to take the route of speculating about the existence of God through the existence of things, then you'll fall into the trap that Nature confounds our intuitions. That we have to use negative probabilities to describe Nature is bizarre. After all, what's a -30% chance of rain? But that's exactly what we are forced to do. But that's not something that armchair scientists would choose. They'd stick with the much more comfortable notion of probability being strictly positive.
Finally, while sitting in your chair and trying to reason to God, you also have to answer the related question: "can man find God or does God find man?"
The Christian tradition says that man cannot find God through reason (1 Cor 1:21). It also says that man cannot find God through experience (John 3:3).
If you succeed in either of these ways then we'll have to abandon Christianity or, at least, our current understanding of it.
Alright, lets play....
Delete@wrf3
"But that's no different than taking the parts of various animals and combining them into, say, a unicorn. The only way you'll then show that a unicorn exists is by finding one."
Lol. That is because a unicorn is a contingent being, it can be or not be. The OA, the most famous "a priori" argument for God, entire point is that God is not like that, either He exists necessarily or He can't exist at all.
You can defend that the arguments fail, but failing in a mistake like that does puts your understanding of the arguments into doubt.
"'can man find God or does God find man?'"
It depends. Do you mean "find" in the sense of knowing Christ as Lord and Savior and being adopted by Our Lord? The salvific path that He opened for us by the cross? Of course not.
But no one is saying that. What the christian tradition aways afirmed since at least St. Paul( Romans 1:
18-23) is that the fallen human intellect can arrive at a pretty limited knowledge of God, not even close to what revelation and the Holy Spirit give, sure, but it is something, at least enough to know He is there. Do you remember any Church Father that would disagree?
There where monotheistic tribes(like the Guarani and the Yoruba, citing the ones i remember the name) and there where monotheistic philosophers(like Madhva), so the idea that reason can point to God is not a thomistic invention. In fact, fideism is probably the actual modern view...
Talmid: You can defend that the arguments fail...
DeleteThat's kinda the point. The only way to defeat logic is to a) deny a premise or b) find a mistake in one of the steps in the argument.
The problem with these "arguments" is that they entail steps based on coin-flips in the middle of the argument. The only place where coin-flips are allowed in logic is in the selection of the premises. So if there's a coin-flip in the middle of an argument, it's because a premise hasn't been made explicit. And premises have to be made explicit. For example, one Scholastic premise is "common sense is a reliable way to form explanations." But, given Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, we know this isn't true.
How many coin flips are in the ontological argument? I can see at least four, and I'm not really trying. If these coin flips are independent of each other, that gives the ontological argument no better than a 1 in 16 chance of being right.
Euclid's brilliance what that he made his premises explicit. If only Scholasticism would do the same.
Talmid: is that the fallen human intellect can arrive at a pretty limited knowledge of God
DeleteThat's not under contention, at least, not with me. The argument is over the "how".
so the idea that reason can point to God is not a thomistic invention
Sure. The Church imported Greek philosophy wholesale.
See my respose to grodrigues here.
I see, while i think that the premises in some versions of the OA(like, St. Anselm original version), are all sound, the arguments do have some pretty polemical premises and pressupositions, so i get the reservations one could have with they.
DeleteAbout natural knowledge of God, yea, i agree that the way we usually detect agency behind this world is more intuitive that a conclusion based on silogisms.
@wrf3 "The Christian tradition says that man cannot find God through reason (1 Cor 1:21)."
ReplyDeleteTotal misinterpretation. Paul plainly says that idolaters originally knew God through reason before rejecting him, in
Romans 1:21 (NIV) "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."
Now your verse is saying something different, i.e. 1 Cor 1:21 (NIV) "For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." In other words, God in his wisdom allowed people to throw away knowledge of him so that he could through Jesus restore it.
On this topic, I have a quick question about the Aristotelian proof. On p. 26 of five proofs, Feser writes:
ReplyDelete"The potential of the coffee to exist here and now is actualized, in part, by the existence of the water"
Does this not conflict with the principle of causality, since the water exists only virtually or potentially in the coffee, and therefore can't actualises the coffee (only what is actual can actualises anything). Am I missing something here?
Ben.
Well, given that the coffee in a cup of coffee is probably only a mixture, rather than a specific substance, I suspect that the water exists actually in it rather than virtually. You can have stronger or weaker coffee, and weaker still,... until eventually it is rather coffee-like water or something. There doesn't seem to be a substantial form making it to be a distinct substance at just one concentration level.
DeleteOk, fair enough. But I was mainly getting the series that is drawn after that:
Delete"the existence of the water, which in tern exists only because a certain potential of the atoms is being actualised, where these atoms themselves exist only because a certain potential of the subatomic particles is being actualised."
Neither the atoms or the subatomic particles can count as actualising causes, since they exist virtually/potentially, no? If not, then this series cannot be viewed as a per se existence actualising series.