How do I know that I can't comprehend God?
God is often understood as something human mind can't comprehend. But how can someone know that he or she can't comprehend this or that? By saying "I can't comprehend X" I already say something about X, that X is incomprehensible.
Someone may notice, that we can't even say that "God is incomprehensible" because we couldn't say anything about God himself ("can't say anything about things-in-themselves"). But aren't we then admiting that "God is something we can't say anything about". That's still something said if not about God himself then about our conception of God, isn't it? But by saying "X is incomprehensible", "X is something we can't say anything about" etc., I'm already using and/or creating a conception of X and if that's the case, then how I was able to use/create a conception of something I can't understand?
How do I know that I can't comprehend God?
Someone may notice, that we can't even say that "God is incomprehensible" because we couldn't say anything about God himself ("can't say anything about things-in-themselves"). But aren't we then admiting that "God is something we can't say anything about". That's still something said if not about God himself then about our conception of God, isn't it? But by saying "X is incomprehensible", "X is something we can't say anything about" etc., I'm already using and/or creating a conception of X and if that's the case, then how I was able to use/create a conception of something I can't understand?
How do I know that I can't comprehend God?
Comments (148)
And yet there is no end to those who 'f' the ineffable
Other people tell you so, and you're supposed to believe them.
Welcome to the forum.
A warning. There are a lot of anti-religion bigots here on the forum who often give believers a hard time. People here, including the moderators, are not sympathetic to people who want to discuss religion from a theist perspective. Good luck.
This is exactly how I feel about myself. J/k, heh.
:smile:
I agree with that. What bothers me is if God isn't a part of the known universe, how do I know that? For me to be able to say that "Michael is not in the kitchen" shouldn't I have some sort of notion what Michael is?
I guess our question requires us to provide a criteria of allowing something to be a part of the known universe. If I take perception and/or body senses as such criteria ("to be known is to be perceived") then how can I know that I never perceive God if I assume that I have never perceived him before and therefore don't know what God is. And if we take some sort of abstract thought as a criteria to be known, then how I was able to make such abstraction "God" if I can't know what "God" is?
In the first case it seems that it is said that God is not perceived just because we took such assumption (that God is something not perceived). And in the second case shouldn't we admit at the end that something is known what is not known?
you seem to be pretty sure about this. What's your source?
My take on it is that god is a psychological archetype, present in all humans. Atheists, too. You never have to explain to a human what a god thing is. But when it comes to detailing it.... that's a different cat of worms.
Suppose god did not create this word, but another god did?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7848/about-this-word-agnosticism-and-its-derivatives-agnostic-agnost-agnosta-etc-
It's possible for him to have created Himself. He be omnipotent, ain't He?
You can take this in various directions. Not being able to comprehend God does not mean you can't talk about God, it just means that when you are, you are fumbling around using human categories and definitions which will always be inadequate or wrong. God is ineffable.
Consider this - God has no explanatory power. People use God as a way to explain all manner of things - creation, meaning, morality. But what precisely is explained with an appeal to God? Precisely nothing. It is, for instance, incomprehensible to us how God might have initiated creation. To say we can explain creation using God is to use a mystery to explain a mystery.
Cute.
Have you ever noticed how folk will say god is incomprehensible, then proceed to tell you exactly what ti is that god wants you to do?
How's that supposed to work?
If god is incomprehensible, then silence.
Then God can be ignored. For all intents and purposes, God doesn't exist.
How can we interact with anything outside the universe? What relationship can there be? If God can reach back in to meddle in our affairs, then God is (at that point) part of the universe God created.
And if God doesn't reach back in, what use is the concept?
IMO "God" is an anxiety (like death), not an entity.
Re: negative theology (which inspires my own decades-old position ).
Quoting T Clark
Do we scare you? :sweat:
Pascal's wager?
:clap: :fire:
For x to create y, x must precede y in existence.
If x creates x, x must exist before x exists. :chin:
:confused:
Are you suggesting that Pascal’s wager is a good reason why God should NOT be ignored? Hmmm…I’m just not that scared of the consequences.
I was just trying to follow your claim that God is outside the universe. I still want to know what relationship we can have with an entity we cannot interact with. Either we or God must be able to cross the boundary between universe and non-universe. Both possibilities pose problems.
You should be! E-T-E-R-N-A-L T-O-R-M-E-N-T!
But I don't believe in hell (or the sort of theistic heaven people talk about). It's something ... ineffable. Interesting stuff, as always.
Whether one believes or does not believe in gravity, one falls if one trips.
This is true only if "x creates" presupposes that "x" is already "in existence" and ontically separate from "y".
Causa sui – "x creates x" – merely denotes "x" is not the effect of any external causes (i.e. random) and that it's only "x"'s continuity, or perdurance, which "x creates".
So I ask how we can have a relationship with an entity not of this universe, and you come back with PASCAL’S WAGER? Um, hate to burst your bubble, but you know those presents under the tree each Xmas? That was your parents - not Santa Claus.
I get it if you don’t want to answer my first question, so let’s try another: so God exists, just not in this universe. Are you proposing a multiverse? Or a metaverse? Which of course begs the question, who created the multiverse/metaverse? A bigger God?
And infinite regress sets in, and we run screaming out of the house with our hair on fire. I’m just trying to save you from madness, friend.
Yes, time to bounce something off you and those interested.
What's the difference betwixt self-caused and uncaused?
Religion is strong testimony that people look at life/existence as a gamble: The expected value if the entry fee is a finite life and if the gain is eternal happiness is off the charts. They say one bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Scale up the number of birds in the bush and suddenly, the bird in the hand is not quite as satisfying as the million in the bush.
Both are random – using physical analogues, IME, the latter is ephemeral (e.g. fluctuations) and the former perdurant (e.g. vacuum).
Also: :roll:
I guess I just find it difficult to accept that an adult - especially one who has obviously spent some time thinking about these things - can believe in such a petty, cruel god that Pascal’s wager seems reasonable. Don’t you realize that Pascal’s wager suggests that most humans are morally superior to God? Think about it : Eternal torment just for not swallowing the party line. Kind of negates free will, don’t ya think?
Pascal’s wager posits a ridiculous Santa-god. Actually an evil Santa-god, because worse than Santa, The god of Pascal’s wager doesn’t just give toys to the “good” girls and boys (eternal bliss for believers), but takes the toys away from the “bad” ones (eternal torment for the non-believers).
Why does God care whether we believe or not? Shouldn’t God be bigger than all that? Doesn’t God have anything better to do?
And you are still dodging my original question : How can we have a relationship with an entity that essentially doesn’t exist (not in our universe anyway)?
How can you have a relationship with your dead grandmother? The fact that the named entity does not presently exist in your universe does not deny your relationship with that thing. It only means that you have to expand you concept of what "relationship" means, to include other things. This is the nature of the cause/effect relationship. By the time that the effect exists in the universe, the cause no longer exists in the universe.
The relationship with you grandmother already existed. The same cannot be said about god. The relationship with god doesnt have a previous existence upon which to base it like dear old grandma does. Thats the key, that you cannot have a relationship with something that never existed in the first place.
I can't. She's dead. And thanks for reminding me. Now I have to relive that trauma.
Haha. Not really. She was an abusive alcoholic. Good riddance, you old crone.
The initial claim was, "God created the universe but is not part of it." You may or may not agree (it wasn't your claim). My question then was : If God is not a part of our universe, then God does not exist for us. So why can't we just ignore God?
Possible answers may include : God somehow enters the universe at a later date. Or, God left clues as to what was expected of us at the moment of creation. Or, God is watching us like some cosmic Santa Claus, just waiting for some doubt to creep in. Or, something else. But its not up to me to fill in the blanks. It's not my claim either.
But just to be clear, whatever answer is given, it needs to be supported. This is a philosophy forum, not a theology forum.
And the question of why-can't-we-just-ignore-God raises another question : Why does God care? Apparently, there is some danger of God getting into a snit and dropping this poor unbeliever into a lake of fire for all eternity (Agent Smith keeps throwing Pascal's wager at me). Would you do that? I know I wouldn't do it to anyone else. Nor do either of us (I presume) require worship or evidence-free belief in the existence of our persons. So you and I must be morally (or at least, emotionally) superior to God!
Pascals wager is a trolls device, asking people to accept a bargain while assuming bargains don't lead to Hell
Shall we just use 'X' instead?
Quoting Tom Storm
"X is ineffable". How were you able to assign a predicate "ineffable" to X if you assume that X is ineffable?
Ok, we might say that if X is actually ineffable then by saying "X is ineffable" we are not talking about X, but, let's say, about a conception or an image (or our own fantasy if you wish) of X. Let's call that conception/image/fantasy/thought a fantasy-X. So we are saying something about fantasy-X and therefore fantasy-X is not ineffable. But if we are having in mind fantasy-X as we say X then to say "X is ineffable" is the same as to say that "fantasy-X is ineffable" which is not true.
But I must admit that I haven't properly separated predicates "incomprehensible" and "ineffable". Let's allow X to be comprehensible but ineffable. Then someone can actually think about X. We shall even allow to name that X. So someone can have X in mind and even say 'X' (as long as 'X' remains just a name and is not used as or accompanied by a predicate).
Even if this is the case, how can someone use predicate "ineffable" to an ineffable X? Once again, X is not ineffable if someone can at least say that "X is ineffable". So it seems to me that If X is truly ineffable then we even lack a proper predicate to name X's "ineffableness".
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." (L. W., Tractatus §7). Or should we say in this case - "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one always remains silent".
How could your finite mind truly grasp the infinite love of the Creator? Impossible.
I can formally manipulate 'infinity' mathematically all day long. But truly wrap my head around it? Impossible. Poor analogy, but still...
I don't see the basis for your claim. If God is the creator, then God had real existence, prior to your existence, just like your grandmother had real existence prior to your existence.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
You could ignore God if you want, just like you can ignore the fact that you had a grandmother. But if you want to understand the reality of your existence, then if God is real, understanding that there is a God is essential to understanding that reality, regardless of whether God is here now. Just like your grandmother who is no longer existing, you can ignore the reality that you had a grandmother, but this is not conducive toward understanding the reality of your existence.
Sure, “if”. You would have to show the previous existence of god or a creator. Not so with dear grandma, whose previous existence is not in question.
Since you havent shown god to have previous existence then its fallacious to use this grandma analogy to make your point/case.
But I've met my grandmother, so it's hard to ignore the fact of her existence. Agent Smith makes the claim that God is not in this universe. So his God is not real. His God is speculation, nothing more. And if you agree with him (a position you dance around and don't seem to commit to), then I guess God can be anything you want.
How is a made-up God essential to understanding reality? Even if you need God to be your Prime Mover, a god-that-is-not-present adds nothing to the understanding of reality. Only things in the universe can give us information about the universe.
It's simple really. We do it all the time - we look at nature and find the impact it has on us ineffable. As soon as you try to use words to describe it you are reduced to cliché and banality. Even Wittgenstein (when discussing morality) said “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words.” (TLP 6.522)
Quoting Zebeden
Wittgenstein said a lot of things and I don't think he is widely recognised as resolving the question of God.
[quote]Journal entry (11 June 1916), p. 72e and 73e 1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916
Contexte: What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning. This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it. That life is the world. That my will penetrates the world. That my will is good or evil. Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world. The meaning of life, i. e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father. To pray is to think about the meaning of life./quote]
I hear ya, I hear ya. Butt!! In Hindi, the Hindu religion, the main gud inspired his parents to move to some city or area where they should give birth to him.
This Hindi Gud certainly existed before he himself existed.
If he can do it, any other Gud can do it.
I'm sorry I don't follow. It's alright, I'm not running for president (I don't have to know everything! :wink: )
As for Pascal's wager being a false dichotomy, how?
Quoting Gregory
I see wagers/gambles as an adult's game (risky, dangerous) and I'm sure God wants us to treat him as a mature person would.
Vide supra (my reply to Gregory)
As for how we might have a relationship with a being (God) who's not of this universe, causally of course. God can intervene/interfere (your choice) in/with our lives. If He is what people say He is that is and so necessarily we must placate Him/win his favor. Too He decides our fate post-death.
There isn't any factual information or evidence (contra Christian dogma used to frame (force) the "Wager") which establishes any g/G or "afterlife" whatsoever and, therefore, the assumptions at work (simply put) are more than Pascal's two:
1. if bG, then "heaven" (?)
2. if ~bG, then "hell" (?)
[b]3. if bG, then death
4. if ~bG, then death[/b]
So (simply put again) whether or not "there is" a g/G (btw, which g/G?) and whether or not "there is" an afterlife, "hell" is less likely (1 out of 4); therefore, all one can do rationally is live one's life doing one's best (i.e. following e.g. Hillel the Elder's maxim "What you find hateful (harmful), do not do to anyone" with as much courage & integrity (i.e. aret?) as possible). Pascal's "Christian faith" adds nothing to – first, do no harm; etc – "good works" (pace Pascal).
Other defects in "Pascal's Wager":
https://whistlinginthewind.org/2012/05/06/the-flaws-of-pascals-wager/
1. if G, if bG, then "heaven"; if G, if ~bG, then "hell";
ergo bG (theism)
2. if ~G, if bG, then death; if ~G, if ~bG, then death;
ergo ~bG (atheism)
3. If G, if bG, then death; if G, if ~bG, then death;
ergo ~bG (deism)
And just for shitz-n-giggles:
4. if G, if bG, then "hell"; if G, if ~bG, then "heaven";
ergo ~bG (gnosticism)
Etcetera.
Hmm…you applaud 180’s take down of Pascal’s wager…
So all this time your insistence on the validity of Pascal’s wager has been a sham? Just toying with the rubes. Well I guess I’ve been clowned.
I had been wondering why anyone over the age of 15 believed in that nonsense. Now I see it was all a joke.
180 Proof offers a different perspective. The :clap: was for that.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
It is valid if, for example,there were only one religion. That's understood.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Read Blaise Pascal's biography. In a nutshell, Pascal was a genius!
Yeah, and like that Biblical-alchemist Sir Isaac Newton (an even greater genius!), it just goes to show how scientific-mathematical reasoning has to be completely compartmentalized in order to function from (i.e. quarantined from being contaminated by) religious faith. To wit:
[quote=Freddy Zarathustra]A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.[/quote]
I was going on Real Gone's interpretation of what you said, that God is outside the universe. Under that proposal there is no question as to whether God is real or not, it is stated that God is outside the universe. The existence of God is taken for granted, but Real Gone could not understand how a person could have a relationship with something outside the universe. So I explained how a cause is outside the universe by the time the effect occurs.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
The point of the example is that the premise "X is not in this universe" does not lead to the conclusion "X is not real". You've met your grandmother, so you know she's real, yet she's outside this universe, being no longer in existence. Agent Smith's assumption that since God is not in this universe, God is therefore pure speculation, is unjustified. Therefore I clearly do not agree with Agent Smith.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
So this question, and the conclusion are completely wrong. That God is not in the universe does not necessitate the conclusion that God is "made-up". And, we can learn stuff from things which are outside the universe, as I explained. A cause, being prior to its effect, is always outside the universe by the time the effect occurs, and the effect is always outside the universe when the cause occurs. So knowing the relationship between things within the universe, and things outside the universe is a very important part of understanding the universe.
:up:
To be fair though, we have more experience with religion than science, the former being somewhat of a neglected wife and the latter a brand-new mistress. What if, down the line, after about 2k years, our mistress, science, starts to show us her dark side so to speak? Would we go running back to religion? Science has already begun to let us down: global warming is a case in point.
Anyway, I'm going to stick with science...till the bitter end, come hell or high water! Some of us are probably saying exactly the same thing about religion. Time, like always, will tell!
Moreso, I think: religion seems to me more like early childhood (nursery, fairytales, kindergarden) and science like late adolescence (sex, cars, junior college) – the latter never completely outgrows the developmental vestiges (defects, biases) of the former.
The rub in this lies in philosophy's need to, possess the world, so to speak. The essence of apophatic thinking lies here: "God" (if we have to think like this) is an actuality that cannot be "said"; but many things are actualities, like this sore ankle or this amazing work by Brahms. So if we want to understand the ineffability of God, we should first look (as we should have done in the beginning) at the ineffability of perfectly accessible actualities. Here, philosophy looks for the Real to step forward AS a concept (just as with God) and it does not do this. A pen is a pen, but the reality of the pen doesn't work like this.
this is the beginning of the philosophical "apophatic" work, for it is the apophatic approach to give analysis to something and abstract from what is there, dismiss all that is NOT what you are looking for, and discover what is remaining.
This is phenomenology.
But this is all just psychoanalytic that doesn't even qualify as philosophy. Fails to look at what underlies all of this. Prior to being a fantasy of childhood, there is the analysis of what is there is out of which fantasies are fashioned.
I don't see the talk about unsublimated early childhood fairytales having anything to do with a philosophical analysis of religion and God. There may be some truth in it, but truth lies everywhere. If you think religion boils down to just as you put it, then you haven't really encountered the core meaning of religion.
Faith is not a gamble, it's a choice of the heart based on love, not phony logic of a Jansenist
Suppose you find a tribe that says you will have infinite pain if you don't follow their religion. Do you cease to be Christian and join their religion because the odds are greater? It makes no sense. We follow logic in life and love in religion. There is no room for gambles in religion if you want true religion. If you had proof God wants us to follow a gamble why not give it
That's what I'd call hitting the nail on the head. Bravo!
Adults smugly claim that they outgrew Santa, but some never seem to be able to let go of God. What's the difference one might ask. Aren't they both imaginary (friends)? Neoteny/juvenilazation/Peter Pan syndrome in a way. That said, the way God's defined does reflect a certain degree of maturity that, for better or worse, is diluted by the infantile nature of the way the belief is clung to despite zero evidentiary support.
The only ending variables involved (according to Pascal) are eternal reward, eternal punishment or neither.
The only options Pascal allows are to believe or not to believe.
What seems odd here is:
To assume nothing is lost if you believe in a god and it ends up that god isn't real is a bit hasty on the part of Pascal, as to believe in a god does require some significant time and changes in one's life, so the question that also needs to be address is:
Are the necessary investments of time and the changes that one must endure (for the sake of belief) in one's life worth it if the god turns out not to exist, meaning if there is no god did one just waste the only life they had with this belief?
False. Salvation is not a gamble. Where's your argument? Life is a gamble but not salvation. To gamble like that is to lose yourself and go to he'll. You have no argument and it was up to you to provide one
And since you can't prove there is a God, there is no infinite to contrast with the finite in the gamble
Pascal's opinion was the believing in God was, at most, a minor inconvenience! Thereby hangs a tale: Pascal was already a religious person and there would've been little change in the way he lived Pascal's wager or not!
Quoting Agent Smith
If there is no proof of infinite pleasure or pain there is nothing to gamble on.
So then, the question would be is the life of Pascal the standard of measure for everyone's life or could it be him pleading a special case or something else?
Good point! However, what does religion ask of us? To be good, that's all. Are you saying, we'd rather be bad?
To be good according to a religion is to comply with a religion's definition of what is good.
Does any religion have a standard of measure for what is good for everyone all the time in all cases?
et al.
Sure, what no longer exists (causes, dead grandmas) is no longer in the universe. But does that mean it then moves to an existence outside the universe? A junkyard for spent causes? Or does it cease to exist anywhere? (And no, I do not have relationships - or interaction - with dead relatives. I have never seen a ghost. I did have relationships with them while they were IN the universe.)
These once-in-the-universe-but-now-no-longer-existing things are very different from things that somehow exist on the outside.
By the way, it was my assumption that God is pure speculation, not Agent Smith. How can it be otherwise? How can you tell when causes from the outside have generated effects on the inside? Its like trying to use quale to discern things-in-themselves. You can't do it. At best, you can only say of an unexplained event that you fail to know the cause. In simpler times, unexplained events were called miracles and attributed to gods, because people didn't know any better.
It seems to me that claiming knowledge of the outside is theology, not philosophy.
I disagree. Assuming you do not want to experience eternal torment, the moment you consider Pascal's wager to be a valid argument, it becomes your primary reason for believing in God. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it can't be stuffed back in.
Pascal's wager immediately takes away your free will. If you want to avoid the lake of fire, you can't choose to believe in God, you have to!
Of course you don't because you're reading an aside out of context which I made in reply to another aside made in reply to earlier comments in the context of me addressing "Pascal's Wager" . It helps to pay attention, Astro, in order to avoid making irrelevant bird-droppings. Btw, my reply to the OP and "philosophical analysis" linked therein is here
:up:
It's a lovely rationalization, common amount those who don't know how to respond to an idea they never thought of. What better way to deflect than heap the shortcoming with all that is outside what is clearly placed before one. You are faced with a question, if I have to spell it out for you: on the matter of God and religion, have you not gone astray in reducing the argument to a stalled childhood fantasy?
Look and note that, and you there, calling foul. No mention was made at all to previous posting. All that was taken issue with was the idea you put into play. So play it, if you can.
We cannot deny these things, which were in the past but no longer are now, and which might be, in the future, from reality. Clearly they are in some sense real.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I don't see this difference. To me that's what outside the universe is, external to the confines of our temporal understanding, which produces our conception of what is real. I think you are asking for an unwarranted separation, for the purpose of placing God in a separate category. In reality, things in the past are just as "unreal" as the cause of the universe is, because we don't understand what being in the past is, nor do we understand what being the cause of the universe is.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Why not? Isn't this exactly what we do? We use our sensations, which occur inside of us, to find out about the things which are outside of us, the things we sense. We figure things out about the outside things by applying logic to our observations. That's how we got to know about molecules, and atoms, and stuff like that, which are not actually a part of our sensations. If we had the attitude that we couldn't know about these things because they are outside of our sensations, science wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
It's when things are not well understood that people start to appeal to things like magic and miracles. Obviously the cause of the universe is not well understood. But we do have a name for it, God.
That's another story. All we need to look at is the simple fact that religion requires us to be good. That's the meat and potatoes of all "faiths". Pascal's status of being a representative sample of one is validated on that score. We're being asked/told to be moral. What "moral" and "good" are vary with religion of course, but that's missing the point, oui?
As for free will, realizing this life vis-à-vis God is a gamble, a game of chance, is actually a ticket to freedom, oui?
You should look at that again. I mean, take a methodical approach to this. You find that most arguments against the existence of God are made of straw. The substantive defense of God requires something other that a naïve description of what God is. Assuming God is an old man in a cloud or an infantile fantasy makes it easy to dismiss. But a philosophical approach is much sturdier that this.
In my experience, Astro, this is backwards: it's the fact that all extant arguments for the existence of "God" (i.e. theism is true) are "made of straw" which itself constitutes a sound argument for the nonexistence of "God" (i.e. theism is not true).
[quote=Rebecca Goldstein]36 Arguments For The Existence of God: Appendix (a novel)
1. The Cosmological Argument
2. The Ontological Argument
3. The Argument from Design
A. The Classical Teleological Argument
B. The Argument from Irreducible Complexity
C. The Argument from the Paucity of Benign Mutations
D. The Argument from the Original Replicator
4. The Argument from the Big Bang
5. The Argument from the Fine-Tuning of Physical Constants
6. The Argument from the Beauty of Physical Laws
7. The Argument from Cosmic Coincidences
8. The Argument from Personal Coincidences
9. The Argument from Answered Prayers
10. The Argument from a Wonderful Life
11. The Argument from Miracles
12. The Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness
13. The Argument from the Improbable Self
14. The Argument from Survival After Death
15. The Argument from the Inconceivability of Personal Annihilation
16. The Argument from Moral Truth
17. The Argument from Altruism
18. The Argument from Free Will
19. The Argument from Personal Purpose
20. The Argument from the Intolerability of Insignificance
21. The Argument from the Consensus of Humanity
22. The Argument from the Consensus of Mystics
23. The Argument from Holy Books
24. The Argument from Perfect Justice
25. The Argument from Suffering
26. The Argument from the Survival of the Jews
27. The Argument from the Upward Curve of History
28. The Argument from Prodigious Genius
29. The Argument from Human Knowledge of Infinity
30. The Argument from Mathematical Reality
31. The Argument from Decision Theory (Pascal's Wager)
32. The Argument from Pragmatism (William James's Leap of Faith)
33. The Argument from the Unreasonableness of Reason
34. The Argument from Sublimity
35. The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe (Spinoza's God)
36. The Argument from the Abundance of Arguments[/quote]
:pray: :halo:
The question then is only this: Can you in a sustained dialog argue this position? Keep in mind that none of the above takes the matter to its core phenomenological basis. Only in a phenomenological reduction can God be properly explained. What this means is really quite simple: suspend the popular narratives and the Christian Platonism, all of which possess assailable metaphysics. Look rather to the world as it presents the essential conditions that are the material basis for God coming into culture at all.
Who cares that we can successfully argue that some Disney character doesn't exist? It is seriously philosophically naïve. The issue goes to ethical nihilism; it goes to epistemic analyses and the place of science in philosophy. There is a reason why Wittgenstein said. "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics."
The argument for the existence of "God" is essentially a meta-value/metaethical argument.
Alright, let me see if I understand your position (correct me if I’m wrong) : there are many (an infinite number of) universes, each containing all that exists at one moment in time. So Dead Grandma exists in the universes in which she was alive, just not in the current universe, where she is dead. Universes are stacked up like pancakes.
I can kind of get on board with this, it’s a version of the multi-verse idea. A few questions, though :
How do we access the past? I mean, you claim I have a relationship with Dead Grandma. How? Through memory? Not only is memory faulty, but the memory of a thing is not the thing being remembered. Is it?
And where is God in all this? Even if I can access past universes through memory, that would not seem to be possible with God.
A somewhat unrelated question : How do you know that an effect is due to an outside cause? That’s a unique skill.
Certainly. Click on the link in my previous post and start that "dialogue" at any point or subtopic therein you have issues with or that, in your opinion, needs clarification. I'm not a phenomenologist (or Platonist-Aristotlean (essentialist) or dualist/idealist-of-any-flavor) so, if that's a deal-breaker for you, then good luck with that. The vacuity of every one of the "36 arguments" listed above, nonetheless, stands unrefuted.
(NB: I'm open to engaging you (or any member) in a formal debate defending my oft-stated theism is not true position. We can arrange this with the Mods on the dedicated subforum – just say when.)
Provide one!
:up:
OK, I'll go with that description. The first thing to come to grips with, is that there is no such thing as "the universe", "our universe", or "my universe". As you'll see from the description, each living being, living at the present, does not occupy a line of division between a past universe and a future universe. A person has one foot in the past and one foot in the future (so to speak), and therefore exists as a bridge between a multitude of universes. This is important, the present, which we know as our lived experience, is not itself a single universe, but it is a conglomeration of universes. In other words, by the terms of your description, my lived experience of the present, is not a single moment in time, but a number of moments, united together as my presence.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I agree, memory is faulty. This is one reason why we apply logic, to confirm our memories, and help to determine which are faulty. Consider memory as the part of you which is in a past universe. We only have true access to past universes which are very close at hand. But at the same time, anticipation and prediction represent a part of us which is in a future universe (or universes), like memories represent a part of us in a past universe (or universes).
Now, you'll see how a person's being at the present occupies a time period in which future universes (anticipations) are becoming past universes (memories), so there is a process which is occurring, which constitutes the lived experience. This process is the manifestation of the relationship between universes. By understanding this relationship between universes, which is actually occurring in our lived present, we can extrapolate and apply this to the distant past, as in memory, and to the distant future, as in prediction, thus extending the range of our understanding into universes within which we are not actually present. Fundamental to this idea is that there are a number of universes (or moments in time) which are present at any given time. This extrapolation process is not without its problems hence our memories and predictions are not infallible.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I would say that God is needed to substantiate the relationship between universes, providing for an actual truth. We could say that God is the cause of temporal order. Suppose it appears to you like there is an infinite number of moments in time. However, we still want to say that there is a real, determined order: a moment yesterday must be prior to a moment today. Therefore, as time passes in our lived experience we cannot change the order of universes, though through freedom of will we might alter what comes to be, or is and is not, within particular universes (through our presence spanning multiple universes). So the order of universes itself is the fundamentally determined thing which limits our freedom of will. But any order must be based on a principle, higher or lower, prior or posterior, or something like that. So the decision as to what kind of order that order is, is attributed to the will of God.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Isn't this just a version of Cartesian skepticism? We have sensations which appear to be caused by an external world, but how do we know that it's really an external world? The knowledge that it really is an external world is not a unique skill, but a fundamental assumption based on an apprehended necessity. It is necessary that we assume an external world so that we avoid deception. That is why I said above, "God is needed to substantiate the relationship between universes". If there is no objective relationship between moments in time, an objective order, then we might put a moment of time from far in the future beside one from far in the past, or establish any random order to moments in time, making absolutely anything possible. But this idea would be self-deception.
Okay, but this is a process, not banter.. And it gets a little involved.
It begins with the concept 'god'. I should add, obviously. The trouble with metaphysics is basic terms are never clearly defined. Philosophical arguments are apriori arguments, and definitions are everything.
So first, things begin with house cleaning. God has to be divested of its trivial assailable properties. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence are mere anthropomorphic extensions. Greatest possible being (Anselm) the same. Rejected here is the Augustinian Platonism, Aquinas arguments and notions of first cause and teleological arguments. In short, we reject bad metaphysics. And really to the point, God is not a metaphysical concept, indeed, metaphysical concepts are really not metaphysical at all, fashioned out the very accessible conditions of their conception. Their "is" no metaphysics, just errant imaginative notions. We can say (remember Thomas Kuhn, the Kantian) science is problematic in the same way, can we not? Hundreds of years hence, will we still be entertaining the same paradigms? Not likely. How about a thousand years? Note how long the Christian ideas have been playing out. Metaphysics is just bad theory, not known to be bad at the time. Before Einstein, light was considered to travel through an ether and space was Euclidean. Bad theories, but not metaphysical because they were grounded in observations and theories about those observations. Is religious metaphysics any different?
You may be inclined to say they are very different, but this is because the metaphysics of science is about empirical matters and these are presented, solidly and mathematically, if you will, before us. But science moves with very different thematic purposes than those of religion.Religion is, essentially, a metaethical enterprise. It is essentially about redemption, addressing suffering and the open endedness of our ethical and valuative lives. Science can never go here, for, as Hume and Wittgenstein and others have made clear, value is not observable.
To be continued pending your approval, etc.
thank you for that. But I do not hold orthodox views. See, if you have a mind to, the way this is handled in my discussion with Agent Smith. Comment as you please.
And you still follow this statement up with 4 paragraphs. Shouldn't you have called it quits?
Quoting Astrophel
So all this ([math]\uparrow[/math]) was just you practising essay writing.
Quoting Astrophel
Ok, I get that, but when people say "God" they usually mean a being, like you and me, only greater, much, much greater!
But it is an argument with details. Do you think religion is reducible to a metaethical issue? You have to follow the reasoning. This is a beginning. If you don't have the patience for this kind of thing, just say so. If, having read this "essay" all the springs to mind "just practicing essay writing" then we'll just call it a day.
Because "God", the word, hasn't been defined in a consistent and objective way. Many people use the scribble, "God", to point to many different things. When the way one comprehends "God" is dependent primarily upon how and where you were raised, then asking others that were raised differently to comprehend "God" the way you do would be a futile endeavor. You might as well just keep it to yourself or join a group (religion) that comprehends "God" the way you do (preach to the choir).
Forgive me, but I'm not a philosophy major : Is this your idea or someone else's? Is there a source you can cite? I must admit I find it needlessly complicated.
You acknowledge a distinction between past universes, future universes, and (presumably) the present. So you do recognize time as a dividing line between universes. Like temporal universe-pancakes.
And God as temporal organizer seems like an explanation that has gone looking for a problem. Why do you assume that God, and only God, provides an objective relationship between moments in time? Does something suggest to you that a world absent of God would suddenly go haywire? Water flowing uphill? Cats living with dogs? I think you need to show that God is necessary for temporal order.
And finally, when I asked how do you know that certain effects have an outside cause, I meant, what is it about them that reveals this? (Of course, other than your speculation that God is needed to provide temporal order.) What can you point to about them that will convince skeptics?
That's the way I find reality, complicated. If you think my description of reality is needlessly complicated then you probably do not share my opinion that reality is complicated.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Not that a world without God would suddenly go haywire, but that it wouldn't have any order in the first place. The existence of order implies something which has caused that order, because order means that things have been put into the right place. That's what order is, things being in their correct place, and things do not just get up and go to the right place on their own. So we might conclude that there is a cause of temporal order, no?
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I guess I don't understand your question. A cause is distinct from its effect, the two are not the same thing. The cause is temporally prior to the effect. So wouldn't you agree that a cause is "outside" its effect, as distinct from it? If we say that the cause is inside the effect, then it is a part of the effect, as internal to it, an internal part of it, and we no longer have a separation between cause and effect.
"All consciousness is propositional in that it transcends in order to reach an object, and it exhausts itself in this same positing."
That's weird to say, when such a claim is clearly an objective statement about God. With such a claim I have, objectively, been relegated to not understanding, which is the extent of my understanding now. How about this: I reject the claim and assert that humans clearly understand gods, as we have been creating them for thousands of years. No one better in the known universe.
All this talk about ineffability and things in themselves creates a problematic division that leads away from the substantive issue. One has to first deliver the matter from metaphysics, and think of metaphysical themes to be something that something grounded in things before our very eyes, simply ignored. Ask, the question about God, what is it material basis? By material I mean in the world available to experience. Of course, the answer is joy and suffering. these drive our ethics as well as our religion as well as our pragmatic lives...let's face, value-in-the-world is what gives meaning to everything, especially God. We fall in love, get scorched by fire...well, heaven and hell!
But then all of this grand human drama is played out against eternity, and I mean this is our reality: we do not have a foundational generative account of all we experience. It is simply given, the presentation and its depths unseen. Our world IS eternal--what else? finite? Where does finitude begins and infinity end? But this mystery is immanent, not remote and metaphysical.
Our finitude is the illusion, if such a concept has meaning here, for no event can ever be divided from eternity, no imagined possibility can conceive of this. It is an apodictic truth. Talking about Kant's noumena? Where can noumena possibly have its epistemic prohibitive border laid? Does the concept at all allow for that-which-is-not-noumena? Ask, what is the thing in itself? and I add: what is the appearance/representation in itself? Noumena follows ontologies everywhere.
This means out affairs ARE eternal. The implications of this are what God is all about.
Not sure why you think this true. Again, it seems like theology. And you realize that its impossible to refute because its untestable, yes?
I might add this though. Of course the universe appears ordered to us. Because we are in this universe, we believe it to have order. Humans see order because our evolution occurred in this universe. We evolved to survive and understand this universe. If we came from somewhere else, then this universe might not appear ordered.
Of course a cause is outside its effect. The question was : How do you know the cause came from outside the universe? Your initial response was that causes and effects do not share the same universe. Which was why I suggested you see temporally separate universe-pancakes. (I happen to disagree, by the way.) By your view, every cause is outside the universe that contains its effect. But since causes were once effects themselves, they must have been inside some earlier universe.
The suggestion that God must be outside because God is the creator implies that God is outside all universes - the universe of the cause and the universe of the effect. That's the nut you must crack.
You've lost track of the premise. There is a succession of universes, one every moment, stacked like pancakes. The "order" is the relation between these universes, not within "the universe". Each one of us human beings has a being which spans a number of universes. It is necessary that there is order between the universes or else none of us could have a being. The "order" is not simply an appearance of order, it is necessarily the case, because without that order we could not exist.
If you really believe that an order could come into existence without being created, I'd like to hear your explanation. You'd have to start with a description of what a pure, absolute, lack of order would be like, then explain how an order could spontaneously occur.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Yes, I don't see why you think that this is a problem. God is necessarily outside all the universes, as that which puts them in order. Where's the problem? Each cause is in a universe outside the universe of its effect, being at a different moment in time. But something must validate the relationship between cause and effect, i.e. the relation between one universe and another. That's God, like the hand that deals the cards, puts one universe after the other. How is this a problem?
I disagree with the premise that there is a succession of universes, one every moment, stacked like pancakes. This leads to Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow. The only way out is to make the boundaries between adjacent universes vanishingly small - which essentially collapses the distinct universes into one temporally continuous universe.
To me the universe is everything that has ever existed, from the Big Bang to the Big Fade-Out. All causes and all effects exist in one universe. To continue our pancake analogy, you see infinite universes stacked like pancakes, I see one universe consisting of the entire stack.
It all comes down to our conception of time - you see time linking the multiple universes in a particular order, I see time as a component of the one universe.
First, I repeat that "order" is a human interpretation of the universe. Second, assuming order to exist, why do I have to start with absolute lack of order? If cause-and-effect is true of the universe then it provides a mechanism for instances to follow one after another. There is no need to insert God.
In fact, requiring God to provide temporal order seems to me to endanger free will. If God is directing the action, then what is my role?
You should have said this right away, when I said things in the past are not in the universe. That would have saved some time, and unnecessary back and forth.
How do you differentiate between future and past then? Surely you'll agree with me that the past is radically different from the future. What has already happened cannot be undone, but when looking toward the future, we can act to cause things which we like, and also prevent things we do not like. If all future and past are together as one big universe, how do you account for this substantial difference between things of the past and things of the future?
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I don't see how there could be time, if all future and past are one universe. Time is that changing boundary between future and past. If all is one, then there is no such boundary and no time.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Mechanisms, machines, are artificial. They are created. There is no sense to the idea of an uncreated mechanism.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Well I explained this. God just orders the universes themselves, which one comes after the last, that is the necessity of time. But God does not necessitate everything which will be within any particular universe. And since your existence spans a number of universes, you can act as a cause in one universe to get what you want in a later universe. But now you reject the multiple universe scenario anyway so that was rather pointless.
You're correct. I apologize. I should have been upfront from the beginning.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Same as you do. Given your view, how do you avoid Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow? Even if instances butt up against each other, they are still disjoint.
And, also by your view, what holds an instance together? If smacking a pool ball creates a new universe what happens to the dart that has been thrown on the opposite end of the bar? We don't experience instances as separate universes, so (trying not to offend) it seems like speculation.
We've gotten far from my original question though. Let me try it this way : Presumably there are effects that are generated by mundane causes (the hot pan burns my hand). But the premise was that there are effects that are caused by God. How can we tell the difference? Is there something about the effect that gives it away?
Would you say claiming that past and future do not exists is related to the parts of an object not existing on their own? I say that parts and past and future exist as one
As far as I know, no one has demonstrated an acceptable resolution to the arrow paradox. What it demonstrates is that a moment in time is incoherent in relation to the way that we understand the motion of an object as continuous. So we might just say that there is no such thing as a moment in time, and keep on claiming that motion is continuous. But that would render the measurement of a period of time as impossible, a measured period requiring a start and end moment. So as much as people might say there is no such thing as a moment in time, they act as if there is, by measuring time periods. What quantum mechanics seems to indicate is that the other alternative, that motion of an object is not really continuous, is the true solution. So that's how I avoid the paradox, by saying that the idea that the motion of an object is continuous, is a faulty idea.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
A new universe is created at every moment as time passes, regardless of any pool balls or darts. If you take seriously the nature of free will, you'll come to see that it is necessary that the entire physical universe is created anew at each passing moment. If the will has the power to change anything, at any moment of time, then anything can be annihilated at any moment, so we cannot say that there is anything on the other side of the present (in the future). What will be, at the next moment in time, is created at that moment. This is the only way to account for the reality of free will, because the will must be free to decide at one moment, what will be at the next moment. This means that there cannot be anything there already, at the next moment. Of course then we need something like God to account for the observed continuity from one moment to the next.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
We do not experience things as molecules, atoms, photons, or anything like that either, so that point is really irrelevant.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
What you call "mundane causes" is just a very primitive understanding of temporality, what we might more accurately call a misunderstanding. The real scenario, is much more complicated than "the hot pan burns my hand". Sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics show show that this is just a primitive description of what is really happening in that situation. Likewise, when you start to get a true understanding of the way that temporality must be, to account for the way that we experience things, you will begin to see that science has a very primitive understanding (misunderstanding) of temporality and causation.
Quoting Gregory
Do you mean that if you divide the parts of an object, the object no longer exists, and if you separate past and future, time as the whole no longer exists?
I visualize the y axis as time and the x as space. Motion is a bit of both and they all cover the same territory. The singularity is space, time, and motion as something discrete while it seems to me reality is continuous after the Big Bang
Yeah, like one's present-self IS a future-self of one's past-self (re: temporal mereology) ...
Was Albert Einstein a determinist?
[quote=A. Einstein]God does not play dice.[/quote]
Great answer!
I believe this is the mistaken simplicity which modern conceptions of space and time have fallen into. This is the result of placing pragmatic convenience as a higher principle than truth.
In reality, space and time cannot be modeled as two facets of the same thing. Space, as we understand it, is a feature of the past, it is not a feature of the future. What the reality of free will demonstrates to us is that there is no determinate spatial existence on that other side of the present (the future). The determinateness which we know as spatial position is produced only at the moment of the present. Evidence of this is manifest in quantum physics. Since one part of time, the past consists of determinate spatial existence, and the other part of time, the future, consists of indeterminate non-spatial existence, time must be modeled as the division between spatial and non-spatial, or two radically different conceptions of "space".
I agree free will is real yet I think time and space act together through motion. In the sense that God is said to know the future, time knows the future and that includes all our choices. You feel, or rather think, that a divine person must be behind the mechanics of the world, but most physicists believe time started at the big bang with motion and everything else.
If it makes sense with regard to physics to speak of causality inbedded in and coming from the singularity, it seems to me to be hand wavy to say divine causality is still needed in the background. The continuous part has to do with reality having a unity of causality and the singularity itself will have its own causality in it as it goes from pointsize to infinite points. The universe is one unified whole (Einstein's block universe)
Please forgive this primitive naif. I have been enjoying our exchange, but now I see that it has been an annoyance to you. Still, I cannot help myself : I feel that I must continue to put my prattle before the public. So please deign to consider this poor bumpkin's thoughts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If time is taken as continuous, the Arrow Paradox is resolved. Calculus helps. From the IEP :
Now a few questions to help me better understand :
1. Is your theory of time-instants-being-distinct-universes widely held in philosophy? Can you cite sources that I might peruse? (Full disclosure : I do know of one somewhat prominent thinker who shares a similar outlook, but I'll hold off until you tell me who you read.)
2. Do you think time is continuous or discrete? I.e., do instants have duration?
3. Are all, some, or no causes do to God? In the burnt hand example, what is the causal chain? Does God play a role?
Looking forward to your insights. I have follow up ideas to questions 2 and 3 based on your answers.
I'd like to add that continous means infinitely divisible while discrete are the points themselves (indivisible). At least that is my definition. I think we should all agree on a definition. Atoms were once considered discrete. Now it seems discreteness is the limit of infinite extension of points
How do you know you can't comprehend? Try to, and see what happens.
It is not necessarily true that God knows the future. This problem was investigated by Augustine at some length. If God can know the future, it appears like the possibility of free will is denied. And if the human being definitely does have free will, then God cannot know the future. The indeterminacy of the future, which is required for free will, denies the possibility that anyone, even God, could know the future. God knows all that is, but the future does not exist yet, so that is not necessarily included within "what is".
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I wouldn't say it's an annoyance to me, or I wouldn't participate. I enjoy it, so don't worry about that.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I am familiar with this so-called resolution, and I would call it an illusion of a resolution, rather than a true resolution. I believe it's based in a principle which rounds off the infinitely small to zero, and calls this "approaching zero", or something like that, while treating it as zero. This is the same sort of principle which treats .999... as 1. It's not a real resolution, it's just saying that we can get on with our calculations very well, without resolving the issue.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
No I don't think it is a widely held solution to the problems with "time". In fact I don't even hold it myself. I just rolled with it, because it was how you characterized the point I was making. I was saying that things in the past could be characterized as not existing in the universe. You proposed that they must be in a different universe then, not wanting to allow that they were completely "outside" any universe, as this was the point of discussion, things outside the universe. So I went along with that proposal of yours, that things outside one universe would be in another universe.
Then, I tried to explain how this doesn't relieve us of the need for something which is fundamentally out side of any, and every universe. Consider, as I explained, that the human being, would necessarily staddle a multitude of universes. Since this "being" comprises a relationship between a number of universes, it has some aspect which is necessarily outside of all of them, to account for its unity independent of any particular universe. That was the point, that by proposing a multitude of universes we do not avoid the need to assume something outside of all these universes.
To summarize then, I've been insisting on the need to assume something, or things, outside the universe. You proposed that the things outside the universe would be within other universes. I then argued that we still need to assume something outside of all universes.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Personally, I believe in a two dimensional time. I believe that the time line which we understand as duration of time, and as a continuity, is actually composed of discrete "instants", which appear to us as a continuity, like that produced from a movie of still frames. However, each still frame, or "instant" is not itself still, or a static point, but consists of a second type of temporal passage, which is very distinct from the one we understand, hence the second dimension. The second dimension of time passing, we have not even recognized so much as to posit principles toward understanding it. But it is required to assume the second dimension, in order to understand how moments of time overlap, or the relationship between the "universes" described above. The second dimension of time cannot be described as anything within this universe, or in any universe, when distinct universes are defined as moments on the continuous time line.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Referring to the above description of two dimensional time, causation as we know it, in the sense of efficient cause, is a simple relationship along the timeline of instances. But when each instant has a duration, and activity, proper to that distinct dimension of time, and the possibility of parallel timelines, and other timelines which are diagonal, then we have to consider different sorts of causation. For instance, consider a moment just prior to another moment on the standard timeline. If each of these moments are given breadth, then one side of the prior moment might end up being posterior to the other side of the posterior moment through a diagonal timeline. So that diagonal, or cross relationship between the two moments, would put the prior moment as posterior, in that diagonal timeline.
As for the causes which are due to God, as I said before, that is the relationship between moments. God created time (as the cause of it) in such and such a way, so as to have the relationships between moments which are the true ones.
Hmmm, just to let you know, I'm a math professor at a medium-sized college in upstate New York, so I know a little about this stuff (been teaching classes from Calculus I through Differential Equations for almost 30 years). Actually, there is no ambiguity here. The limit concept has been well understood since the middle of the 19th Century (Cauchy, Weierstrass, et al.). True, its rather abstract and difficult to master - Newton and Leibniz didn't know it. In fact, it was almost the last idea defined in the development of Calculus (only the definition of number followed it). But it stands on solid ground. The concept of "approaching zero" is just an informal definition to help the newbs get some idea.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's fine. I just wondered if I was missing out on some secret cabal of universe-pancake conspiracy folks. :wink:
I said I knew someone who held this position - check out Stephen Wolfram's book A New Kind of Science.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
OK, you give me something to think about. Discrete instants would mean Zeno's Arrow is back in play. But continuity would suggest something else : if time is continuous and universe are instants of time, then universes also form a continuity. This means not many universes, but one (long, continuous) universe. But your answer is more nuanced than that. I'll have to chew on it a bit.
With respect to your last answer (about causes and God), I wonder if you could give an example. Maybe the burnt hand situation? Your idea is new to me and I'm having trouble following it.
I'm not saying that it's not well understood, nor am I saying that it's at all ambiguous. I'm just saying that it does not provide a real solution to the issues which cause the paradox. I might say that it provides a "work around". Consider for example, the concept of instantaneous velocity. Velocity is a concept which is time dependent, meaning that a thing could only have a velocity if it exists over a period of time. So what could velocity at an instant mean? It must mean that an instant consists of a very small period of time. That's fine, but now what about the instant that divides one period of time from another, when we perform a measurement of a period of time. If the instant contains a duration of time then the measurement is necessarily imprecise, ambiguous. The result of the "work around" is the acceptance of imprecise measurement
So it doesn't resolve Zeno's paradox, because all it does is assume that we cannot determine the precise location of a moving object, because it is moving, therefore it doesn't have a precise location, all it has is a velocity therefore it is necessarily in a multitude of places at an instant in time. If we accept this as the reality of physical existence then we accept as reality that there is no objective position of any object, (all objects being in some form of motion). Therefore we have a measurement problem and an uncertainty principle in quantum physics. The uncertainty principle is not necessarily a feature of reality, it is a product of the way that we choose to look at reality, through our mathematical principles, and what is implied by those principles; that nothing has a precise location because it is moving. The issue which creates the paradox is not resolved, it is just deferred, to create a different problem.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
This is the same problem as saying that a line is composed of points. If a point has no spatial dimension, then no matter how many points you stack up, you do not get a line which has spatial dimension. We can either say that the line is what exists between points, or we can assume that there is some sort of dimension within points, so that we might put a bunch together and have a line. What I suggested for time, synthesizes both of these. The dimension of time which we know and understand is what exists between points, Within a point in time, there is no temporal extension in that sense of duration. However, within a point in time there is another dimension of time, a type of "time" which is completely different from the temporal duration which we know because it involves a different sort of activity. But we have absolutely no understanding of this dimension of time until we posit the possibility of its reality, look for the evidence of it, and establish a way of relating the dimension which we know, to the other dimension which we do not.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
OK, I'll give it a try. Let's start with Newton's first law of motion, inertia. Look at that law this way, as saying that whatever has been going on in the past, will continue to go on indefinitely into the future, as time passes, unless something causes that to change. Notice the role of "cause" here. It is assumed that things will remain the same, therefore a "cause" is required to produce change. But Newton stated that his first law was dependent on the will of God. So the theological way of looking at this is that inertia, i.e. the tendency for things to stay the same, what Newton took for granted, actually is caused. And when we consider the position of free will, as I explained already, we see that it is necessary for this cause to act at every moment of passing time. So the mystical way of understanding this is that God creates the entire universe anew at each passing moment of time.
To take your example then, of the burnt hand, consider that God must recreate your hand, (as well as your entire body, even the universe), at each moment of passing time, to maintain the continuous existence of that hand. That is how we account for the inertia of that mass. If you burn your hand, something interferes with that cause of existence of your hand, its being recreated as it was in the past, at each moment of passing time. See how the role of "cause" is reversed? Instead of saying something caused your hand to be damaged, we can say that something interfered with the cause of continued existence of your hand.
Yours is the classical interpretation of velocity (pre-calculus), not the modern one (post-calculus). In fact, your definition is what we now call the average velocity over the interval. To point out a problem with your definition, imagine a moving object that is accelerating over the small period of time. Clearly its velocity at the beginning of that period of time is less than its velocity at the end (no matter how short the period is). So how can we assign a single value to its velocity?
So why does the classical view of velocity exist? Zeno, Archimedes, et al., were doing the best they could with the limited math of the day. The classical view works perfectly well for objects moving with constant velocity. Which was all they could handle. Think of Newtonian physics being replaced by Einsteinian. Newtonian worked fine for the simpler problems, but not so well as the 20th Century dawned.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But that's looking at it backwards. Sure, stacking up dimensionless points gets us nowhere, but when we draw a line we say it contains an infinite number of points. And nowhere on the line is a place "between" points.
One thing to remember is that there are two types of infinities : countable infinities and uncountable infinities. Your notion of stacking up points creates a countable infinity. But the continuum (the set of real numbers that are one-to-one with points on a line) is uncountable.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ooh, this really smacks of speculation (sorry). You mention looking for evidence - do you have any? This would really shake up the scientific community, if true.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Couple questions :
1. If God is creating the universe at each moment in time, how is free will possible? Let's say I wish to reach out for the hot pan. By your argument, God is the one creating the moment of contact, not me. In fact, God created the moment when I decided to reach out. Through infinite regress, God creates all causes. It sounds like your arguing for determinism.
2. Does God ever withhold temporal ordering? ("I'm gonna mess with you sinners and make every day Monday!") If the claim is that God has been creating temporal order at every instant since the beginning of time, how would we know? Is the claim testable? Is there any evidence?
3. Does God actively order other continuums (the line, the set of reals, etc.)? Could 37 suddenly be less than 2?
The problem with positing God is that you have to find something for God to do.
You missed the point. Velocity, no matter how you interpret it, classically or in the modern way, implies motion. Motion implies that the thing moving has no definitive location. That's the real outcome of Zeno's paradox, we cannot say that a moving thing has a definite location. And since all things are moving, relatively speaking, nothing has a true location. In the modern interpretation, this creates problems like the uncertainty principle. So Zeno's paradox is not resolved, it has just taken another form.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Yes that's exactly the point. Think about it. An infinite number of points cannot make a line, as you say yourself, stacking up points will not get us anywhere. Therefore your claim that a line consists of an infinite number of points with nothing between them is an invalid conclusion from the two premises, 1) a point has no dimension, and 2) a line has dimension. Your statement "when we draw a line we say it contains an infinite number of points. And nowhere on the line is a place 'between' points" is self-contradicting under the accepted definitions of points and lines. It is "what we say", but it's easy to say things that are contradictory.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
It's all good, there's nothing wrong with speculation, so long as it is presented as such, and it's somewhat reasonable. I speak metaphysics, so that it's speculation should be taken for granted.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I thought I explained my resolution to this issue in the succession of universes analogy. It is a question which many theologians have given considerable thought to. That God puts one moment of time after the last, does not necessitate that God determines everything within each moment. In fact, it is this break, between one moment and the next which allows for free will. If God wanted to determine everything, there would be no such break, just one continuous existence. It is this proposal, that the universe is recreated at each moment, which allows that we can act, and produce something which wasn't there in the last moment, so this is actually God's way of providing us with the possibility of free will.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I haven't seen it, have you? This in general, is the problem of induction. So all the laws of physics are based in induction, and we assume that because things have been in such and such a way for so long, they will continue to be that way (eg, the sun will rise tomorrow). That's why Newton said his first law of motion depends on the will of God. God fearing creatures will be worried that God could pull out his support at any moment.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
This is a more complex subject, because we have the issue of the human imagination intermingling with the issue of God's will. Many people like to insist that human orders, numerology are actually divine orders, or the same as, but I think it is necessary to maintain a separation, to account for the fallibility of human orders. So I propose that mathematical orders are really the product of the free willing human mind, and not determined by God. We produce these orders (sometimes with the intent of understanding the divine order), but since we are only human and fallible, so are the principles of order we produce. Sometimes they are faulty and lead us astray.
This fallibility is evident in your proposal that a line consists of an infinite number of points and nothing else, which under analysis is actually illogical. Points have no dimension, so even an infinite number of them could not produce the dimensionality required for a line. So it's examples like this which lead me to propose a distinction between true order (divine order) and orders created by the minds of human beings.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
God doesn't have to do anything. As "creator", everything is already done by the time we are present.
This is simply not the modern view of motion. The modern theory of motion is sometimes call "at-at" :
Motion is : being at different places at different times.
Math helps. A graph representing an object's motion can be drawn as position vs. time. Each point on the curve is a location the object is at, at a given moment in time. Then velocity is defined as the slope of the tangent through that point.
But the early philosophers and mathematicians had no access to these ideas. So the classical theory of motion was the best the early thinkers could do before the development of the Cartesian coordinate system and (most importantly) calculus. And the classical theory works fine for linear motion (constant velocity), because then the slope of the tangent and the slope of the graph of position are equal. But it fails utterly for more complicated cases. In fact, it was this problem - amongst others - which spurred the development of calculus.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, you need to differentiate between countable infinities (stacking up points) and uncountable infinities (a line). The integers are a countable infinity, but the real numbers are not. Stacked points can be put into a one-to-one relationship with the integers (you can count them as you stack). But the points on a line have a one-to-one relationship with the reals. Now the integers are a subset of the reals. So this implies that your stacked points - even though infinite - are a subset of the line.
(Again, math. Kinda my thing.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Two points :
1. But I thought you said God creates the universe at each instant of time. So either God is determining all that exists in that instant, or God is being directed by us (i.e., told what to do).
2. The breaks you posit between one moment and the next means that time is not continuous, and Zeno's Arrow pops back up. You can't have continuous time consisting of discrete instants anymore than you can have a married bachelor.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The problem here is that you are positing a solution to a problem that doesn't seem to exist. You have to first assume that time could potentially go haywire under a lack of divine intervention (based on what I don't know), then insert God to fix it. This is what I meant by, "The problem with positing God is that you have to find something for God to do."
And why would God "pull his support"? Is God whimsical? Easily angered? Cruel? Such a God would be petty and beneath contempt.
This is not true, that's the problem. This is not what the math represents. It's just like your claim that a line is composed of an infinite number of points. There is a disjunct between what you claim is represented, and what the mathematics actually represents. If your statement here was true, you could not claim to have resolved Zeno's arrow paradox, because that paradox is the direct result of representing motion as "being at different places at different times". Each different "place" can be represented as a point in space, and each different time is a point in time. From this, we have the Zeno problem of how the arrow gets from one point to the next. Representing motion as "being at different places at different times" does not represent the actual "motion" which is the activity that occurs between the different places and different times, how the arrow gets from one place to another.
But this is not how calculus is used to represent motion. In calculus the point is a limit, and what is represented by the function is what is between the points, hence the use of "approaching the limit" in common descriptions. Therefore the object is never represented as being at a place, it is always represented as approaching a place. And your statement above ought to read "Motion is: being at an indefinite place during an indefinite period of time". The concept of "approaching the limit" produces the illusion of definition, when clearly "approaching" is not a well defined spatial temporal position.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Sorry, but a "countable infinity" is blatant contradiction to me, so you might try to justify this distinction you're talking about, but I think you'd rapidly discover that you'll only be wasting your time.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Discrediting common mathematical axioms is kinda my thing, so you have fair warning now. I hope you don't have emotional attachment to your principles, as some on this forum display.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
This is just a strawman. To create something, does not mean to determine all within. When an artist creates a work of art, there is much (the features of the medium for example) which is not determine by the artist. So God simply has to intentionally allow for freedom of will, in what He creates, intentionally creating indeterminacy, as we see in the nature of "the future", and there is no such problem. You seem to be assuming that when someone, or God, creates something, every aspect of the thing created must be determined by the creator, when this is simply not the true nature of creating.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I think I addressed this already. I claim that continuity is an illusion. Continuous time is not true, just like a continuous line created from an infinity of points is not true. So, we have a number of points in time, and we might claim that the arrow has true existence at each place, and each point in time. This produces the Zeno paradox, how does the arrow get from point A to point B. Instead of going the calculus route, to say that the arrow never is at point A or point B, these are simply limits which it approaches, I say that the arrow really is at point A and point B, but these "points" have a completely different type of existence from what we understand.
This is the requirement for the second dimension of time I referred to. So within the point itself, there is time, which is completely different from the time between points. And it is completely different from the time between points, because the spatial activity within the point is completely different from "motion", which is a description of what the arrow does between points. For example, consider the concept of spatial expansion. This is an "activity" which is understood as completely distinct from "motion". The activity which happens because of spatial expansion cannot be understood by the principles of "motion", so this is said to be not motion. Now place this type of activity as within the point, as only being able to be understood through a second dimension of time.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Obviously there is a very real problem, which God is posited as the fix of, but you just don't understand it yet. Look, you think that calculus portrays motion as being at different places at different times, when really it portrays motion as being at an indefinite place at an indefinite time. That my description is true, rather than yours, is justified by the evidence of this model's manifestation, the uncertainty principle.
Holy cow. You need to talk to some mathematicians. I'm not kidding. Where did you get this? I have to read that source. This upends every geometry class being taught in US high schools.
I took this from Math Insight, but you can find these ideas in any elementary description of infinity :
The points on a line are an uncountable infinite set. Thus they "fill" the line. There is NO space between points. Much of your misunderstanding of calculus (and time as a continuum) starts here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Same as above. Its climate-change-denial, flat-earth talk. ANY elementary text on infinite sets will explain this.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I guess so.
I'm going to leave it here.
If I go half a distance, then I have to go half that otherwise there is no space let. And half that otherwise there is no space left. This goes to infinity, so nothing is discrete in the world. This is not a trick but instead logic
I have, there is a number of them in my family. Also, I've had numerous, (some very lengthy), discussions with mathematicians in this forum, some concerning these same issues. You don't seem to understand what I wrote. You just dismissed it as inconsistent with what you believe, therefore wrong.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Why do mathematicians always seem to get so emotional when their principles are subjected to skepticism, and alternative belief systems? It appears to me like they are somehow trained to believe that what they are taught is the absolute truth. Doesn't this seem like dogmatism to you?
Quoting Gregory
If motion is not as you think it is (i.e. continuous), then this is not true. Think about how you walk, one foot on the ground here, then the next one a yard or so away. Your feet only cover the ground in those spots where they land, all the ground in between is not covered. Yet to measure how far you walked, we'd measure the ground. That's the way motion is, it doesn't necessarily cover all the spatial points by which it is measured, that's just an assumption made by the measurer.
So Aristotle was wrong to say that matter is infinitely divisible? If it's infinitely divisible the infinite infinitesimal are there. But how can matter find in itself something that is space but is indivisible? Space we know of always is divisible.
I can't make sense of your post. "Matter" and "space", though related, are distinct conceptions. I don't know what you mean by matter finding space within itself. Matter is potential, for Aristotle, space is formal, therefore actual. The two are categorically distinct.
Whether matter has two principle, form and prime matter, or one it still is spatial. You are saying it's made of discrete parts yet you say infinite points don't make a line. Contradiction?
I don't see your point. The concept of "matter" is not compatible with the concept of a "line", in any conceptual scheme that I'm aware of. Simply put, a line is not spatial because it has only one dimension, and no conception of space which I'm aware of describes space as one dimensional. Nor is a point a spatial concept.
:smirk:
Lines in three dimensions make extension, which is the first attribute of matter. And you didn't explicate how something discrete can be partless and yet be spatial
My apologies for being a bit harsh - I was tired and lacking sleep.
Not everyone has math concepts at the forefront of their mind. I think about math a lot because its my job.
I will caution this however : If you don't understand a concept, you don't get to make up your own interpretations and expect everyone else to agree. And your ideas about infinite sets (and lines, etc.) are not consistent with any text, course at university, or discussion on this subject.
An analogy : I am not a philosophy major. In fact, I have never taken a philosophy course. When discussions on TPF get too esoteric, I know to back off and not add my two cents. If I find the thread interesting but beyond my immediate understanding, I'll either look up the sources, or I'll sit back and read the exchange of comments.
It's OK to talk about math if you're not a math major. Just make sure you're on solid ground with your ideas.
I'm not going to teach a lesson in set theory - there are innumerable easily-understood texts on the subject. I'll just say this : countable does not mean finite. I went to Youtube, and one of the first videos I found was this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRhdpyaOhEo
We actually do not teach this to most high school geometry students in the US (they're just told a line consists of points - they simply don't have the background to understand the explanation). But the notion that the points of a line form an uncountable infinite set underpins geometry, calculus, topology, and every topic more complicated than arithmetic.
Here's a weird fact : Because the points on a line are uncountable, if a number line consisted only of rational numbers (a countable infinite set), you would not even see the line. Countable infinite sets are that much smaller than uncountable ones.
Once you wrap your mind around it, you might want to re-think your ideas of time and motion (time being represented by a line and thus an uncountable infinite set of instants). Or you can dig your heels in and keep inventing your own version of math.
You can say that a line is extension, but a line only has one dimension. You can define space to be three dimensional, described by three lines in relation two each other, but then the three lines are the extensions of space, not of matter.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I only state things that I believe I understand. And you haven't shown that I misunderstand. You started talking about things not relevant to what I said. I wrote about the concept of approaching a limit, and I explained how I understood this concept. You simply asserted that I have no understanding of infinity without even explaining how your concept of infinity is related to what I was talking about, approaching a limit. And you imply that you believe that this relationship between approaching a point, and infinity, somehow resolves Zeno's paradox, when clearly the application of the concept "infinity" could in no way resolve the paradox. "Infinity doesn't resolve anything because it doesn't resolve
Quoting Real Gone Cat
All you are attesting to, is that an incoherent, illogical concept, (that non-dimensional points could somehow form a dimensional line), underpins a vast part of modern mathematics. What does that say about the mathematics which is underpinned by this incoherent concept? The fact that it underpins all this mathematics doesn't make the concept any less incoherent, it just says that much mathematics is underpinned by an incoherent concept.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Actually, you are the one who needs to reconsider. Once you recognize that much mathematics is underpinned by an incoherent concept, you might want to rethink your ideas of time and motion, perhaps come up with something more logical like my ideas. Or, you could dig in, and keep insisting that this idea is not incoherent, without any justification.
How much mathematics so you know?
Actually, I have. But I fear that you will refuse to accept any explanation that counters the ideas you have invented for yourself. That is the way of all true-believers : the more they are shown reason, the harder they cling to the irrational. (That's why so many still support Trump.)
Pick up any set theory textbook. Search Youtube. The explanations are not that difficult to understand. And they are certainly not open to speculation. (In fact, the "weirdness" of the infinite might appeal to you.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And again you fail to bother to learn about the difference between countable and uncountable. Your initial notion of stacking points is dealing with a countable infinite set, but the points on a line are an uncountable infinite set. Both sets are infinite, but they're not the same size.
Your claim of an "incoherent, illogical concept" underpinning math is like knowing half the alphabet and then claiming the dictionary is faulty. And refusing to learn otherwise.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Alright, try again. Admittedly, I've lost the thread of some of your ideas. On second thought, don't bother. If you won't accept that a line is made up of an uncountable infinite set of points, your definition of limit will be your own invention.
I will ask again : Where do you come by your ideas? Who else believes them?
No you haven't explained. And that you say you fear I will refuse to accept your explanation, is admittance that you haven't explained, because you are afraid to.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
We were very explicitly talking about calculus, and your claim that it has resolved Zeno's arrow paradox. Then you jumped to infinity, and now you've jumped to set theory. Clearly it's you who is incapable of following the conversation, and needs to do a google search on "calculus".
Quoting Real Gone Cat
As I told you, "infinite", whether countable or uncountable, is irrelevant. Neither is the size of a set relevant. We were not talking about infinities, nor were we talking about sets. We were talking about points, and lines. A point has no dimension, a line has dimension. There is no number of points which could be added together to make a dimensional line. Nor is there any number of times you could divide a line and be left with just points. Those are obviously incoherent ideas. Where would the dimension all of a sudden come from when adding up points? Alternatively, when dividing a line, at what point would you suddenly have no dimensionality left to the parts created through that division, just dimensionless points left? Where could the dimensionality have gone? If the whole line which was divided exists within the parts, going nowhere else, then the parts must always have dimensionality, no matter how many divisions you make. If you cannot see how obviously it is incoherent nonsense, what you propose, then provide for me a demonstration. Show me how a dimensional line can be divided, such that you would produce parts, all of which have no dimension. Show me where the dimension, which was the line, ends up after the division takes place?
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I look at what other people say, and judge whether what has been said has logical consistency or not. If so, then I am prone to accepting it. If not, I reject it. Your claim that "a line is made up of an uncountable infinite set of points" is simply illogical. A point has zero dimension. A line has one dimension. No matter how many zeros you put together, you do not get one. Likewise, no matter how many times you divide one, you do not get zero. Therefore I reject your principle. You seem to have a very unreliable understanding of the relationship between "zero" and "one".
I concede the floor. I am no match for your brilliance. But I beg of you one thing - please do not deny the math community access to these ideas. Believe me when I tell you that they are ground-breaking. No one has seen their like before. I implore - on bended knee - write them up and send them off to prestigious math journals. They will fight to be the first to publish your insights.
And I'll be able to say, I was there. I was the first to doubt, but be brought into the light.
In particular, mention that the line does not contain an uncountable infinite set of points, then explain the limit concept. We've been languishing under the epsilon-delta definition for far too long.
Is it proper to say that I know/grasp/comprehend x if all I "know" is what x is not? Have you, for instance, come across a book on Mars that goes "Mars is neither an apple nor a dog. Mars is not green. Mars is not 3 million cubic meters in volume, etc."?
The reason I keep pressing you to name a source for your ideas is that I intend on Tuesday (Monday's a holiday) to reveal to my students that lines do not consist of points. When I inevitably get called in by my chairperson, I would like to be able to defend myself.
You're not the first, if you check my history on this site, I've already been engaged in fulfilling your wishes. In mathematics we are taught to take the principles for granted, and move along. There is a vast amount of material to cover, and have not the time to understand the principles of each axiom. But that's why I didn't do well in math, I wanted to clearly understand each step of the way, and the class left me behind.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Right, and I can tell you what the issue is. Within the mathematical community there is a field which many call "pure mathematics". Within that disciplined, it is allowed that mathematical axioma are formulated completely and absolutely, independent from reference to physical reality. They are what many call "abstract". I discussed this to some length with a member of this forum, named fishfry. He admitted that axioms of pure math are completely imaginary, and argued that mathematicians ought not be constrained by the reality of the physical world in creating their axioms.
So you can see, that unlike science, within which we hold the theories to rigid standards of empirical verification, the theories of mathematics are not held to such standards. Further, we cannot hold mathematics to any standards of empirical verification because they extend to principles which are fundamentally not empirical themselves, as the means by which we understand empirical observations. Therefore to ensure the veracity of mathematical axioms we have nothing to employ except rigorous logic. In the case of the line and the point, what I've explained is that there is a fundamental incoherency in the relation between zero and one, which inheres within your principle. You do not allow for a true zero point. The zero is allowed to always contain some part of the one.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Isn't the logic clear to you? We take a line with dimension, and divide it. we end up with two lines, each with dimension. We divide those lines, and end up with more lines, each with dimension. No matter how many times we do these divisions, we will always end up with more and more, shorter and shorter lines, always with dimension.
Are you familiar with the concept of "infinitesimal"? This concept was fundamental in the development of calculus. By this concept we might say that the line is composed of infinitesimals. Then it's no longer zero dimensional points which composed the line, but infinitesimal lines. But if we define the point as infinitesimal then we cannot claim it to be zero dimensions. This produces a requirement to determine the shape and size of a point, because we've removed the point from the status of being purely abstract.
I think you actually have to take courses in calculus to understand this. You failed, btw, to give an alternative picture except by saying every object is discrete (lol). That's all for me