"Whatever begins to exist has a cause"?
In the first premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument Dr Craig boldly asserts that "whatever begins to exists has a cause". What does he mean? What does he mean by "begins to exists"? And what does it mean to cause something to begin to exist? People don't usually talk about things in terms of "begins to exist.", and I never heard somebody say "x caused y to begin to exist". Let's look at an example:
When did you begin to exist? (You mean when was I born?) I was born April 30th 1994. What caused you to begin to exist? (You mean what brought me into being?) My parents had sex.
How about instead of "whatever begins to exist has a cause", "everything that I'm aware of has been brought into being by something else". The only problem with that change of premise (if it's true) is that you can't argue from me being aware of things having a cause of its coming to be, to there being a God.
What are your thoughts on this first premise? Do you see anything weird or suspicious in how it's phrased?
When did you begin to exist? (You mean when was I born?) I was born April 30th 1994. What caused you to begin to exist? (You mean what brought me into being?) My parents had sex.
How about instead of "whatever begins to exist has a cause", "everything that I'm aware of has been brought into being by something else". The only problem with that change of premise (if it's true) is that you can't argue from me being aware of things having a cause of its coming to be, to there being a God.
What are your thoughts on this first premise? Do you see anything weird or suspicious in how it's phrased?
Comments (67)
I don't believe actual paradoxes can exist and the most likely reason why the origin of the universe appears paradoxical is simply that there is a piece of the puzzle missing.
I think it is a waste of time - and rather silly - to imagine that the puzzle of the orgin of space and time can be solved by playing around with words, as if reality is governed by idioms of the English language.
The solution, when (or perhaps if) it gets revealed, will come from a discovery of some fact about the world that shows that some assumption we are making is invalid.
I expect it will be some asssumption we barely think of as an assumption - it will seem axiomatic today, much as what was axiomatic in the classical pictire the world was overthrown by the discoveried of quantum physics and relativity, ie that things can be in twp places at once, a cat can be both alive and dead and time doesn't always 'flow' at the same rate. Only a madman would have believed those things just over a hundred years ago. I believe there is something we take for granted that just isn't true. Our grandchildren will wonder how it was we could have believed whatever it is - but what 'whatever it is' is, I don't care to guess!
More positively, I think it might get clearer if we ever resolve quantum physics and general relativity, but I expect that will only result in even having deeper and more difficult problems - that is what science tends to do, which is why (and how) I like it!
Otherwise we might just replace it with, well, whatever.
What about causation then, all causes and effects, or just some past causal chains?
The kalam/cosmological argument alleges to prove one unique 1[sup]st[/sup] cause, which hence was supposedly how it all began, including causation (in fact, all causal chains, and time too).
Therefore causation has a cause of its existence?
Anyway, going by contemporary cosmology, spacetime is an aspect of the universe.
And causation is temporal, causation is another aspect of the universe, not somehow "not of the universe" (which, again, would require it's own justification).
Did "time begin to exist" as well?
I don't think it makes much sense that "time has a cause of its existence", unless "causation" is somehow extended to mean something more, something invented for the occasion.
Phrases like "a cause of causation" and "before time" seems incoherent.
In short, before applying these premises, the applicability have to be delineated.
I think I can clarify this. Instead of saying "whatever begins to exist has a cause", we can say "all that is not eternal has a cause". As you point out, "causation has a cause" is nonsensical. It follows that causation does not have a cause, and therefore causation is eternal. Does that sound surprising? Not so; it is part of what is called "eternal truths". Such eternal truths include:
- laws of logic: if p is true, then not p is false,
- laws of mathematics: 2+2=4
- laws of morality: charity is good, killing is bad. (Though this one is controversial).
I am not sure I understand your argument against the phrase "begins to exist". Even though the exact moment for the beginning of your existence is not clear, we can definitely deduce a beginning:
You exist today, and you did not exist 100 years ago; therefore your existence has a beginning.
I think you can. Sure, your awareness is not the cause of the existence of God, but it means that we can deduce the existence of God from our awareness that all temporary things have a cause. In other words, we can reason backwards, from observation to effect to cause, even though in reality things occur from cause to effect to our observations. When Descartes says "I think therefore I am", he does not mean that his thinking is the cause of his existence, but that his existence is necessary for him to think.
I don't see where you're going with this. To exist, at the bare minimum, means to be not-nothing. Demonstrations like the cosmological argument are typically not based in the sort of Humean empiricism you are advocating here, where reality is a disconnected disunity with only contingent repetitions.
If we take your Humean empiricist route, we can ask, why shouldn't what we aren't aware of have a cause? Or, alternatively, we can make our way back in history and find the moments in time which things we were not aware of come into our awareness. And we'll see there were causes for these.
Going all the way back, then, brings us to the hypothesis of God. You can say "this does not prove God exists" but this is basically akin to saying "there is rain, but this doesn't mean clouds exist above me". It's this sort of thing that makes me acknowledge that it's not entirely proven that God exists (just as the "rain" could just be a sprinkler) but I think the evidence favors the existence of some sort of uncaused, prime mover. Without any reason to believe it's a sprinkler, I'm going to believe it's clouds.
The phrasing of the Kalaam Cosmological Argument's first premise is worded as such to avoid criticism from infinite regress issues in the extremely basic versions of the cosmological argument (such as the issue raised by the rephrasing offered). It is allowed to do define its conditions for causation and I do not think saying, "it is odd" is going to cut it.
The only criticism about the first premise is this: the argument might beg the question and close out the possibilities by restricting explanations to what we observe in the current universe. For example, I see tables being made and coming into existence. However, there is an important difference between the creation of tables and the beginning of the universe. The table is being made by rearranging matter. The table is not "beginning to exist" in the same way the universe is supposed to begin to exist (assuming there was not preexisting matter before the universe that forms the current universe). The argument wants to conflate common events with an event we have never seen before and know relatively little about: the emergence of time and space. In short, the beginning of the universe is a special event and we have no reason to believe the commonly observed rules of causation apply- we may require a special explanation. This is, in fact, what the argument wants to try to do with God, but it ignores a bigger issue: we are talking about a state of affairs we know nothing about and that one can reasonably argue we can never know about. We would be talking about a time before time, a notion that does not even make much sense. As such, we have no reason to believe the special explanation must conform to the first premise, so the first premise might be false.
Of course, the argument faces several other issues, but are beyond the scope of the thread.
You seem to understand the premise (vague as it is) just fine. The only thing your reformulation does is it adds to the original premise an odd dependency on your awareness - an unexpected move that you did not motivate in your preceding discussion. The conclusion of the paragraph does not follow at all, since this is the first time you even mention God.
OK, I'm over it. Now someone else tells me that God doesn't exist and to get over it. OK, so now I'm over that, too. So I'm over both. Now what? I'm not sure that getting over a question is quite the same as answering it.
"whatever begins to exist has a cause."
I don't think it's particularly weird. But it's an assumption, not a necessary truth. It's not self-contradictory to suppose that something begins to exist and yet has no cause. It's perhaps a sign that the person making that supposition has a rather unenquiring mind but it's not necessarily a false supposition. One slightly weird thing about the statement and also about its contradictory, is that nothing could ever be found either falsify or to confirm such a statement. Maybe there's some event going on right now that has no cause but I happen to know nothing about it. Maybe there never has been and never will be such an event. Any candidate 'uncaused' event may turn out to have a cause after all - just a cause that I failed to identify.
This has to do with the way that we individuate things in the world, and refer to them as individual objects, separate from other individual objects. That there are separate unities which can be counted, 1, 2, 3, 4, is fundamental to mathematics, and that the separate entities can be identified and described, is fundamental to deductive logic. So within the fundamental assumptions, or premises, of these logical systems, as a foundational principle, is the belief that there are individual objects within the world.
However, experience and observation tell us that the existence of individual physical objects is temporary. They all have temporal existence, which means that they come into existence, and go out of existence with the passing of time. Because every object is generated and corrupted in time, we must assume that each object has a beginning and an ending in time. Further, we have observed that there are causes of coming into existence and ceasing to exist.
Does that help to explain the issue?
Quoting Purple Pond
I don't see how that change gets rid of the need for God. We still have all physical things having temporal existence. And if every physical thing is brought into existence by "something else", then we need to assume something like God to account for the first physical thing.
Of course if there is no God, then there is no reason why the principle of sufficient reasons holds. The world is just the way it is, the causal argument crumbles leaving only contingency & the law of noncontradiction. There is (ultimately) no causal reason for anything.
It's commonly said that Platonics are inert:
Suppose x is (defined as) atemporal, "outside of time". Then there can be no time at which x exists. And x cannot change, or be subject to change, but would be inert. Interaction with x could not occur.
If we suppose otherwise for a moment, then there's the question of sufficient reason (of which Craig's 1[sup]st[/sup] premise seems a special case). Is there a sufficient reason then, that the universe is exactly 14 billion years old, and not some other age, any other age...?
It's all rather odd.
There's also a bit of oddness when speaking of time in tensed language, or at least that's how it seems to me. I guess we might suppose that we can speak of time (itself), where we implicitly mean (all of) time untensed. This suggests a block-universe, something like that. Regardless, you'd derive that "time had a cause of its existence", thus having "causation" be atemporal (in part at least).
Can we exemplify atemporal causation, in a way that matters?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I'd narrow them down in this context:
Anyway, for this sort of thing to have much ontological import, I'd say more (or something else) is needed.
This all depends on how one defines "time". If time is defined by physical change, then physical change is essential to time, physical change is necessary for time to be passing, and there is no such thing as time passing when no physical change is occurring. But if physical change is defined by time, then we invert this model, and we allow for the possibility of time passing when no physical change is occurring.
Now we have two distinct definitions of time, the former and the latter. We can assume something "outside of time", in reference to the former definition, which is "inside of time" in reference to the latter definition. This assumed "thing", could cause physical change, and it would appear to be outside of time according to the former definition, because it is not itself a physical change. However, if we adopt the latter definition of 'time", which allows for time to be passing when no physical change is occurring, then we allow this to be a "cause", inside of time. That cause is properly a "cause", but it has no physical existence. It is outside of time when "time" is defined as it commonly is in physics, but it is not outside of time if we adopt a different definition of "time". The idea that there is a thing outside of time, and that it is necessarily "inert", is produced by the idea that time is defined by physical change, and that this is the correct model of time.
And yet you say:
Quoting Cavacava
You seem so sure. :-} Surely there is a logic behind St. Anselm' “that than which no greater can be conceived.”
If you are implying about the lack of certainty for the afterlife or whatever customs that people have created to prompt moral behaviour through such variable influences, then sure.
But if your existence is about the correlation between a number of variables that consists of a timeline of causal events until you authentically become conscious a priori of your own existence and separateness, you then have a purpose. That moment you become 'aware' is the beginning of existence and to Kalam whatever begins to exist has a cause. There is existing in the physical, which is vanity at best (for a majority of people who are not authentically aware but follow the herd are those I would consider non-existent), but there is existence in the Kantian transcendental, which constitutes cognition or becoming a rational, autonomous being. We then become capable of creating a good and virtuous life and experiencing genuine love and happiness (heaven).
The existence of something and our capacity to conceive it are logically independent. We can conceive things that don't exist and equally things that do; and we probably fail to conceive things that do or alternatively don't exist. So to consider what we can or cannot conceive will tell us nothing about what exists.
There are two other concepts that deal with the same issue. The first is Dependent Arising and the other is Münchhausen trilemma
Dependent Arising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da
Münchhausen trilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma
I'm sorry I don't have time to put it in my own words but here is some of what is said in "Münchhausen trilemma" on Wiki:
"In epistemology, the Münchhausen trilemma is a thought experiment used to demonstrate the impossibility of proving any truth, even in the fields of logic and mathematics. If it is asked how any knowledge is known to be true, proof may be provided. Yet that same question can be asked of the proof, and any subsequent proof. The Münchhausen trilemma is that there are only three options when providing proof in this situation:
The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other
The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad infinitum
The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts
The trilemma, then, is the decision among the three equally unsatisfying options.
The name Münchhausen-Trilemma was coined by the German philosopher Hans Albert in 1968 in reference to a trilemma of "dogmatism versus infinite regress versus psychologism" used by Karl Popper.[1] It is a reference to the problem of "bootstrapping", based on the story of Baron Munchausen (in German, "Münchhausen") pulling himself and the horse on which he was sitting out of a mire by his own hair.
....
In contemporary epistemology, advocates of coherentism are supposed to accept the "circular" horn of the trilemma; foundationalists rely on the axiomatic argument. The view that accepts infinite regress is called infinitism. Advocates of fallibilism, though, point out that while it is indeed correct that a theory cannot be proven universally true, it can be proven false (test method) or it can be deemed unnecessary (Occam's razor). Thus, conjectural theories can be held as long as they have not been refuted." -Wikki
I am agnostic, so my "if" is meaningful, because I am not sure if there is a God or not, however I am sure that a 'logical' God it is a fantasy, perhaps a necessary one but still if your conception of the divine is some sort of logical magician, happy trails. Logic is fine, it is important for knowledge, but it is not in my opinion extensive with experience, it can't explain experience. All the logical conundrums fall flat in the face of experience, and life goes on.
The only necessity is contingency...show me otherwise :-O
Yes, it does in the sense that some concepts must be eternal. To think otherwise yields to a self-contradiction: One thing is eternally true, that nothing is eternally true.
Quoting jorndoe
I agree that x could not change, but why could x not change other things, that is, act as their cause? E.g. the eternal law of logic is one of the causes to me thinking logically. The Formal Cause is one of Aristotle's four causes of things.
Oi, since when is Anselm a god? I said that surely Anslem' ontological argument on the existence of God has a logic, namely "...that than which no greater can be conceived," and not that God is logical. But wait, you say:
Quoting Cavacava
Hmm.. and you also say:
Quoting Cavacava
Anselm' formula that we are unable to conceive by understanding alone of a perfect being or God which - by being an agnostic - you must agree with this contingent proposition since the nature of the divine beyond which nothing greater can be posited is neither true nor false.
My my, how logical of you.
Think of the cosmological singularity - how did the universe come to existence? No one is able to posit the very nature and the ultimate beginning of this reality and yet we assume the necessity of the singularity' existence since the universe exists. Unless, you believe that the universe is a contingent proposition?
I have freckles. Just thought I would mention that since you appreciate the obvious. :-|
Quoting Cuthbert
You will fall into an infinite regress, the point of Anslem' ontology is that which is ultimately a perfect being cannot be thought that it cannot even be thought of as not existing.
I think I more or less agree. :D
I kind of both agnostic and atheist on certain things since I know I can't prove there is a is or isn't a "God", but I'm also pretty sure that many theist go about such beliefs the wrong way. I guess I look at the issue this way Abrahamic religions "claim" they both know "God" enough to be able say both what he is about and what his will is, however it is a given that anyone that believes they know such things is a real secret squirrel if you know what I mean. Even C. S. Lewis admits that if Christ thought he was talking to "God" and he wasn't he would be "a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg". Even worst than Christ is Abraham who was willing to kill his son in order to appease a "God" that he wasn't even completely sure to exist.
The problem is that neither Christ, or Abraham, or any theist can have complete confidence in their invisible God that they worship. They only know that after a certain point they either have to reject that God exists or deal with the issues if he doesn't exist (and they are often indoctrinated to believe if he doesn't exist there is no point to anything anyways), so they choices they have are either continue believing in God one way or another or to try to understand what the world is like if there isn't a God.
Even though I'm partial to nihilism, I believe the reasons we do what we do are more or less still about as valid if one is atheist/agnostic as when one is a theist ( and in some ways even more so since we have to create a kind of "salvation" by ourselves instead of expecting God to give it to us) and the future of what may be could depend on what happens to the human race instead of everything being predetermined as they are if "God" existed.
In a nutshell if "God" exists, things are kind of simple and the outcome of world/universe is more depend on "God" than on us. However if it is only us things are much more complex and perhaps there is a lot more riding on our shoulders; of course this is also dependent on how many other sentient beings are also out there..
You have it all figured out. :-|
Nifty reasoning, @Samuel Lacrampe.
Well, of course Platonism implies Platonism.
It looks like the term "eternal" is hitching a ride with propositional consistency here, though.
The most ontological import you can derive, is that anything that exists is self-identical, or so it seems to me anyway.
Does (abstract propositional) consistency itself exist apart from all else, is it a constraint on our thinking, or something else...?
How is it possible that something which is necessary could be a fantasy? Can this be rationalized?
Here is my take on this. Abstract concepts such as laws of logic and formulas exist in themselves and are eternal: 1+1 does not cease to equal 2 just because there are no concrete things to apply it to. But this is not the case for Platonic Forms of concrete things such as "triangle-ness" and "tree-ness": a tree does not retain its tree-ness once you remove all the matter from it. I think this is also Aristotle's position.
You are free to remove the first term "eternal". But without it, the statement is either implied to be eternally true, or not. If eternally true, then no change to the original statement. If not eternally true, then there are some instances when the statement is not true, but that is illogical: the statement "nothing is eternally true" is sometimes not true.
Note, it is possible that I misunderstood your point. If so, just ignore this comment.
In the area of that I spent over ten years studying/debating philosophy and know about it as much as anyone can the answer is "yes". However like Socrates who was the "wisest" man in Athens because he at least knew that he knew nothing at all, I know that there are both plenty of unknown knowns as well as unknown unknowns, as well as human fallibility/human condition that I can't do that much about. But at least I have some idea of where the field of play is and where things are out of bounds so to speak.
So if I look like a little girl trying swinging her fist whiling trying to run into a bunch of bullies on the playground when I debate, all I can say is that this far from the first rodeo I've been to and I'm almost thick skinned enough to handle almost any debate that someone wants to give me.
There are many people out there that surround themselves with morons who don't know the difference between their left and right hands so that if they lie and pretend to intelligence, the applaud of these people where your every word goes straight over the heads is nevertheless enough to satiate your ego and make you feel highly intelligent. You have those who are cruel or vicious and yet falsely pretend to kindness as they manipulate with precision specific actions that they can publicly demonstrate in order to show themselves as unique and kind. People play games with themselves and one another, with false prophets and prophetess' everywhere - that when they are confronted with the reality that they are not so smart and not so kind after all, when their ego is hurt because their game is exposed and their sense of delusional grandeur is shattered, they can get rather angry.
You speak as though you are humble and yet refer to yourself as the unknown known comparatively a reference to someone supposedly "wise" whereby you apparently spent ten years studying this very subject that you know more about than most people. I'm not swinging my fist at you, I am just showing you that you are not as wise as you think you are and from what you wrote, I highly doubt that the last ten years were well spent.
I'm kind of glad that none of what your saying really applies to me since their is nobody either on the forums or elsewhere who puts any effort into satiating my ego or make me feel better than any other pleb. In fact there are aspects of my life where I'm not treated any better than any other transient so the fact that I can even talk as if I'm as respectable and honorable as any other non-transient is a good thing since the alternative is worse. Personally I think of myself more like someone like Diogenes then someone like Socrates or Plato, since I'm not really sure they existed in the way they are supposed said to exist (ie. they may have wore rags and been a bit disheveled at times), but with Diogenes it isn't that hard to believe that he lived the life they claimed to live (either out of a barrel or out on the street) and it isn't that hard of a model for someone studying philosophy to model themselves after if they wish to.
Quoting TimeLine
You misread what I said, I said that I know there are known unknowns as well as unknown unknowns; this type of nomenclature was use by Rumsfeld during the Second Gulf War:
There are known knowns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
As to whether I have spent part of the last ten years of my life well, that to me sounds like something that would require for you to know more about me to make a proper assessment. Then again as someone partial to nihilism, I realize that there is a good chance that over half the people alive may not serve any purpose whatsoever (whether by choice or by other reasons), so the idea that perhaps part of the last ten years of my life studying philosophy wasn't that productive would be something to be expected and the norm then something I have done really bad on my part.
A perfect being should possess existence, but it cannot maintained that solely by virtue of this conception existence is entailed.
"Kant-- following --Hume disqualifies the ontological proof on the grounds that there is no contradiction in conceiving of a determinate entity as existing or nonexistent" Quentin Meillassousx
Kant's refutation of the ontological argument means that for any and every determinate being there can not be any absolute necessity. Dogmatism is dead and along with it metaphysics, oi vey.
This proof is intrinsically tied to the principle of sufficient reason since this thought entails that all things have causes, even the totality of causes which is god, it demonstrates that there is no absolute necessity.
So, ah-yuh even the universe is contingent, it could have been otherwise.
Hi, happy we agree here.
MU, I think that man has set reason as its 'god', the perfection we glimpse in its purity, and I it think this is an intrinsic part of modern man's psychological construction.
What was the something then? Something that be, would have to exist (implicitly), which is contrary to non-existence.
Predicate ontologization is bad language, existence is not a properly proper property, whereas, conversely, predicates/properties do exist, for what they are.
Formally, the proper expression is
where ? is a predicate, x is a variable, and S is a set.
If the ? and ? symbols were interchangeable, then you might end up with strange expressions like
I guess I side with Kant on that one, in part at least.
To say that a perfect being should possess existence would presuppose conditions corresponding to a set of properties, but existence is not a first-order property.
Quoting Cavacava
Well, yes, Kant cannot agree in non-existent objects, since if he stated that 'existence is not a real predicate' he would contradict his own argument by accepting the non-existent. To put it simply, it is impossible to prove the existence of God as much as it is impossible to deny.
But, didn't Kant agree that God is not contingent but exists necessarily? How is dogmatism dead if Kant justifies believing in God, considering that noumena is beyond our understanding that we simply use reason to regulate such a suggestion? I am an imperfect, finite being that there must necessarily be a perfect, infinite being. It is a synthetic a priori truth within the limitations of noumena and while we are responsible for shaping experience through this intrinsic principle of sufficient reason through free-will, there is still an external part of this that remains independent from us and it is not simply reason attempting to order the phenomenal.
I don't think Kant links this to a succession of causal rules that we are able to identify but rather that we are able to reason that an event has a cause even if we don't know what. Free-will is noumena that contains its own causal process of our independent choosing, so I still fail to see the demonstration of no absolute necessity.
Quoting Cavacava
Nope. You're gonna have to do better than that. :P
I think you missed the point; the only person who can satiate your ego is you, considering you choose who you interact with. For instance, the concept of the "crazy cat lady" is a reference to people who substitute human relationships with animals since a cat is not going to respond to your flaws and in your own neurotic way believe that it actually cares for you. If you like the company of people who compliment you especially when you don't deserve it, of those people who never show you your flaws or open you to your mistakes, of those who don't challenge you emotionally and intellectually, and if you associate with people that you can - and willingly - lie to or manipulate (because you have zero respect for them), you do not mirror yourself with another person as part of a genuine human relationship, but you mirror yourself to your own ego and as such you will never improve. A signal of this narcissism is almost always anger or some other self-defence mechanism to the very person who points out your flaws.
And perhaps try modelling yourself to absolutely nothing, meaning, by visualising no one either physically or intellectually to enable the real you to manifest, rather than searching for versions of possible "you" through others and simply mimicking them.
Necessity is the tool of reason. You say that what is necessary could be a fantasy, a fiction. This renders reason impotent. Now you say that mankind has set reason as its god, but you've already left this god impotent. It appears like either you misunderstand mankind, or mankind misunderstands reason.
I said
you said
and I answered
Now you want to step outside the frame, as it were, and suggest that I am rendering reason qua reason "impotent",' but what I am suggesting is that reason has taken on a 'divine' like character for modern man...in this capacity it is far from impotent it rules as a 'God'.
Thanks, great questions, but I am facing a mountain of unpacking :-* , so later slater.
I was so tired last night, I miss read your post and thought you were trying to call me 'happy', and didn't know what to make of it until I got a little more rest. I guess it is a good thing that try to pause and/or reread certain posts in order not to sound too much of an idiot. X-)
I definitely understand your reference to crazy cat lady since one of my sisters is in her 60's and has four cats of her own. To be honest, I'm not really the all knowing a-hole that I sometimes pretend to be online and I think I'll tried explaining this in the last couple posts, although perhaps not too effectively.
If your really worried about it, I can tell you that I've had more than my share of people to put me in my place and obviously my ability to sometimes act like a jerk (at least in real life), is merely a preemptive attempt to put myself at a higher position (or equal position depending on one's point of reference) in order to to keep OTHER low-life scum bags from being able to take from me whatever they want.
But on the forums it is different since there is NOTHING someone can take from me other than perhaps my online reputation, which isn't worth a rat's backside. However, I sometimes act like a jerk (although not too much of a jerk or a newbie that would get me banned) just so that someone like yourself may have the desire to to want to knock me off my soapbox. You see if someone intelligent such as yourself (and I can tell your at least sort of gifted/intelligent because your post are probably more..articulated than that of the average person on the street if they tried to post) actually wishes to put be down, they can POTENTIALLY find flaws in my beliefs. When I first started studying philosophy for the first few years I went through several paradigm shifts because I realize certain things I believe were..not the best way to perceive the world around me, and because of that I decided to change my views to conform to a new view instead of vice versa.
However this has gotten a lot more difficult to do the longer I have been doing it. Most of the stuff I either already know or merely have to re-remember it instead doing any real kind of paradigm shift that I use to have to do. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but in a nutshell one of the reasons I still study philosophy (when instead I could just move on) is either to see if there are any more paradigm shifts I need to go through and/or as a form of sanity check.
Because of this I am more than HAPPY if you can tell me what it is that I believe that is WRONG so I can fix it, but right now I don't know if there is anything I believe that is wrong or if you just think I think of myself as some kind of special snowflake or something; and even if I did think of myself as a special snowflake, over 50% of the people in the US believe the same thing so I'm unsure how it would be really that much worse for me to be doing it if everyone else is doing it as well; and/or as I have explained I do it because I have to, not because I want to.
Quoting TimeLine
After reading this a couple times I'm not sure what you are saying or even if it applies to me. As far as I can tell I have lived my life the way I think I should live and only occasionally rely on the way other people do things in order to determine how I should live my life. If either everyone around you is a failure and/or does things in way way that you can't do them you are force to be creative and often a contrarian in how you go about life, if for nothing else nobody has the time to show you how it is SUPPOSED to be done.
Quoting dclements
When I already quoted one of many problems in your argument:
Quoting dclements
But you already knew this, you just assumed and what exemplifies your rational failure was that I was insulting you rather than showing you a very clear flaw in your argument.
The beauty of being on a forum (Y)
I realize that I didn't explain that part of my post well enough, but nether did I consider it really all that important considering such things as that we (as well as anyone reading this) will most likely be dead in the next 50 to a 100 years and that very small nuances like that will never be read after that as well as forgotten by that time.
At any rate I will explain, I'm agnostic in the fact that I CAN NOT prove there is a God NOR can I prove there ISN'T a God. Also because of knowing the difficulties of proving such things I'm POSITIVE (or at least positive enough until someone that can explain it better) that NOBODY can do this either. In this regard I'm AGNOSTIC.
HOWEVER, because theism is aggressive/evangelical (and also because of certain bad personal experiences in the past) , I can not be merely idle when dealing with a religion or any other system of beliefs that potentially threatens the way I choose to live my life. That combined with the idea that they are wrong about a great number of things (such as they can know something about God's will without any possibility of knowing anything about him/her/it), makes me a bit of an ATHEIST.
Now while it is plausible for you to try to argue why a person can not be both an agnostic or an atheist (which personally I use both titles merely to deal with certain theists, who try to pigeon hole me as either and then undermine my position if I accept to ONLY be one of the two and could otherwise could care much less about it), I'm unsure as to the reason as to why it would be of much importance nor do I see any possible fruition if from some reason this becomes a debate between theism and atheism, which is the only other way I can imagine this issue going at the moment.
However since I can only speculate as to what point you are going to make, I will just leave it at that and let you explain your part.
K,
The following from here:
The 'necessity' in Kant's refutation of the necessity of an absolute being (i.e., the ontological argument) is real ontological necessity and its refutation dashes the absolute necessity which forms the ultimate culmination of metaphysics.
This proof is tied to the principle of sufficient reason, the concept that every worldly fact has a reason, an explanation, a cause, a reason why things are the way they are in fact, and reasons for those reasons, which leads to infinite regress. Every metaphysics is accented by at least one absolutely necessary real entity, which is the 'dogmatic metaphysics'. But if any such real necessary being is rejected then the principle of sufficient reason is also rejected.
The only necessity is contingency.
Well what would happen to the constitution of the universe if one digit in Planck's Constant were different?
:-O
Where I am confused is the lack of Kant' transcendental method particularly the presupposition of concepts like causality that, yes, would lead to an infinite regress since it has no synthetic function and where our 'logic' discussion was referring to because we formulate or posit potential illusions to causal sequences, but his criticism is towards a priori knowledge, no? Kant' ontology through existence is not a predicate about being itself attempts to explain contingent experience, hence:
"Accordingly, there must be something whose nonexistence would cancel all internal possibility whatsoever. This is a necessary thing."
This is to say that ultimate reality, ultimate 'being' or God is necessary, and this is followed by the moral argument.
Quoting Cavacava
Still ain't convinced!
Quoting Cavacava
Is this a trick question? >:)
Sure. We were being invited to entertain the contradictory of the obvious; so to point out the obvious was the best reply.
You wrote:"Surely there is a logic behind St. Anselm' “that than which no greater can be conceived.”"
I pointed out that this is (obviously) false, because capacity to conceive and existence are logically independent.
If we cannot conceive of something then we cannot speak about it meaningfully. Conversely, if we can speak meaningfully about something then we can have a concept of if.
If the outcome of all this is that God must exist but that we can neither speak nor think meaningfully about God, then nothing will have been proved. God drops out of the equation. He might as well be a square circle.
But of course we can speak meaningfully about God and we can think about God. And these things are quite independent of God's existence. Obviously - or perhaps not.
Quoting TimeLine
Would the answer that such questions are basically non-trivial problems (ie. basically unanswerable beyond merely speculating what may or may not be) be sufficient enough for your curiosity? Sure you can ask questions to such things but without the resources to answer them IMHO it is..more pragmatic to focus on things that can be dealt with than with such things that can not be.
I imagine that perhaps if there is a God (as well as such answers are pertinent to understanding him/her/it) , he/she/it might be angry as to not understanding his/her/their will but at the same time if God only provides me only with people to claim to know his/her/it's will instead of the real thing I (as well as others that believe as I do) have to uses whatever tools make my way through life. Whether it be hedonism, Machiavellianism,game theory, etc.etc
Just as theism some times tell us certain things are forbidden for us to worry about, so doesn't reason sometimes show us there are certain ..non-trivial issues that we are not able to resolve without some kind of additional resources at our disposal.
This a quote from "The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God". published in 1763, which SEP considers Kant's pre-critical period, it does not appear to have made the cut 18 years latter in his 1st Critique.
There is no absolute, no reason why things are the way they are, no full explanation, things are just the way they are, everything could be otherwise. The explanation that things the way they are due to an ineffable real being is superstition. This is not to say there is no God, only that describing God as a real being is "magical thinking" , but there is reason to think that "magical thinking" might be essential in man, Kant intimates as much.
The only necessity is contingency. >:O
After studying philosophy and science for a little while, I've found it harder to believe their is the possibility of real 'magic' (things spontaneously, because someone wills it or something like that) even though the possibility of things that seem like miracles (ie. scientific explainable process that appear almost like magic yet are not) are still plausible as well as processes that appear like they are 'willed' into existence without but are still the later.
I know these nuances seem kind of trivial, however for me it always seems like there is little guy behind a curtain somewhere pushing button/pulling levers and no matter what the miracles or magic show is merely a show and not that much more. Why one might be in 'awe' of such things, I think one needs to be in just as much awe of our day to day 'miracles' instead of focusing on the 'magical' or spiritual ones that may not be what they think it to be.
Maybe this is the wrong way to look at it this way, since it does take at least some talent to create a magic show or any good show for that matter, but much 'magical thinking' isn't pragmatic with dealing with many problems if what we are looking at is really just a mundane process like any other mundane process.
The magic-- at least for me, is that there is no ultimate explanation. Seeking explanations for why things are as they are and exactly how they are as they are, is in my opinion what pushed humanity forward to where it is at today. Thinking about the unimaginable scale of the universe is a wonder in itself.
I believe that people have religious experiences, that logic and reason are regulatory of thought, but do not constitute thought. Logic,reason & language cannot fully describe our experiences in life, love or death, any such attempts always leaves something out-- the magic.
And? Kant did write it, right? And what makes you think this pre-critical phase wasn't the very impetus to his first critique, and if not, did he ever admit that his former publications were flawed and openly abandon it? And did not his sufficient reason argument that you willingly discuss stem from the same period?
Quoting Cavacava
He certainly intimates these 'illusions' of reason - the whole man on a cloud, the trinity, the sun or whatever the heck - but the fact that you say (t)his is not to say there is no God is the very root of our argument, whereby since Kant cannot deny non-existence otherwise his existence is not a predicate would contradict itself that therefore concludes the necessity of God since by saying (a)ccordingly, there must be something whose nonexistence would cancel all internal possibility whatsoever. This is a necessary thing justifies my initial suggestion contingency isn't the only necessity. If your argument rests solely on some justification that Kant suggested that during his pre-critical period, ya gonna have to do better.
Quoting Cavacava
Mutterwit... >:o
Do you realise just how ridiculous that sounds? So, the futility of existence is a justification that intelligence and reasonably, well-thought out and commonsensical behaviour is pointless.
And yet you say:
Quoting dclements
What for? You will be forgotten in fifty years anyway, so lets just shut off into hedonism and die fat, old and stupid surrounded by idiots.
Quoting dclements
We are talking about Kant. And where do you think pragmatism inherited the tradition from?
Quoting dclements
You talk a lot but you never really say anything.
I can imagine it may not make any sense to you if you can not understand the context/narrative it is used in but part of the reason I said it was to see if you could UNDERSTAND the other contexts that exist other than your ow,n which apparently you can not.
Just because a person is a prisoner doesn't mean it is a given for them to dream of escape or a for them to come with reasons to do what they do even if there is little purpose for them doing other than for them to retain some resemblance of sanity.
For the evidence available to us, is highly plausible and even probable that many of actions serve no long term purpose other than allowing us to get from one day to the next and some peoples lives many not have any purpose at all. While it isn't a given that all of our lives serve no purpose whatsoever, neither is it a given that it isn't true.
Quoting TimeLine
I just wanted to give you a second chance since I just thought you had some kind of counter argument you wanted to assert other than I was wrong merely because you disagreed with what I've siad. However since you are unwilling or unable to say what it is I realize it can't be that good otherwise you would mention it.
Whether you like it ot not, you, I, and everyone else reading (as well as those who do not) WILL EVENTUALLY DIE either alone or if they are lucky surrounded by people who can do nothing about it (whether you want to call them idiots or not that is your choice) but life will go on and eventually we will be forgotten..one way or another. Even if you have a tombstone or can afford a monument in your name the name on it will fade and the rock it was made from will crumb as well in the near future. The only reasons such things are built is to give someone that remembers you something to visit while they are alive. After that such things become pretty moot.
So if one wants to clutch a bottle or a bible (or perhaps both and/or something else) , it might not be as big a deal as you think. Nobody gives a rat's backside as to whether someone that has passed did or did not do something (other than perhaps it making a difference on whether they may be able to indulge in their own vices and/or quality of life) and in the big picture of the human condition things probablely turned out how they did, because that is how they were going to turn out anyway. If you don't like the fact that I put it this way to you (instead of sugar coating it the way perhaps other people have), then that is just too bad for you.
I like some mystery as much as the next person, but sometimes it help to know how something works if you need to do something about it.
The good thing is as long as we are human beings (or something close to it) there will always be some mystery in the world around us, so the idea of having SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS about the world around us is a non-issue as far as I can tell. :D
He can deny the real being of absolutes, which he does in his critique, and I think he also denied existence is a predicate in his earlier works. The point is not that absolutes can't be, even perhaps they must be, but they cannot be known, they can only be believed in and this is how Kant makes room for faith.
This means that rationality has no legitimate claim over beliefs, and it can not judge one belief superior to another. Therefore:
"--thought no longer provides an a prior demonstration of truth of a specific content of piety; instead, it establishes how any piety whatsoever enjoys an equal and exclusive right to grasp the ultimate truth."
Q Meillassoux "After Finitude"
I agree here, but this is when the discussion of the transcendental dialectic begins, whereby is it not a compelling premise that it is a necessary condition that our existence can be reasonably concluded as having formed by a causal sequence returning back to the unknown yet substantive formation of the universe? We can conclude that God being a man on a cloud or the trinity etc are the illusions of reason as we are able to trace the source as rational, autonomous beings following a synthesis between us and consciousness of the world, and the possibility of transcendental reflection for ourselves is practically indispensable epistemologically, but I am not convinced that we simply stop at the point of being aware of our limitations but rather continue - morally - toward the ideal, making God necessary for perfecting our moral position.
What do you think of this? http://staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk/ppp/ksp1/KSP5.html
Well, without a transcendent God to tell us what to do, we merely have to reject salvation and become the homunculus we always have been. Such a process is not that different then what Abraham had to do when he found God and let God save him, which merely causes one transcendence to be replaced with another transcendence, or one salvation to be used instead of another salvation.depending on how one looks at it. God has been used as a type of magic feather to allow us to do the things that we might not think of doing or perhaps not think ourselves capable of doing without 'God' guiding us (although what we have and and haven't been able to do may not be that impressive by some peoples standards), but whether we still need to continue holding onto our magic feathers may be dependent on each individual themselves. For some the answer may be 'yes', but for others the answer could be 'no'.
Kant thought that the structure of the world does not necessarily match the structure of thought. His transcendental method attempts to find the 'necessary' presuppositions that explain what we experience. These presuppositions are believed and the results achieved by that belief enable measures such as Planck's Constant.
This belief is a faith, a conviction, a claim about what there is, it is not certitude, but it works. This is pure theoretic faith, which is similar to religious faith, only funny thing, the more skeptical the theory the greater the faith in 'actuality'.
But getting back to PP's OP, it is the refutation of the Ontological Argument that leads to the overturning of metaphysical absolutes, necessity with a big N. This coup dethrones god, which leads to the denial of the principal of sufficient reason and the affirmation of ultimate contingency of existence (and the law of noncontradiction). The uncaused cause & the noumenon, are both unknowable but not forgotten, they are still needed as necessary perspectives in our empirical faith in pure reason & our religious faith in freedom, liberty, equality, et al. They create their own 'space', I think.
Steve Palmquist's analysis, and his survey of positions is excellent. I have have some more thoughts on this topic.
Quoting Cavacava
I am somewhat confused; I understand and agree with what you are saying vis-a-vis the ontological argument, but I am not sure whether we are encircling the same point before been slingshot into opposing directions or whether we agree with one another. Is this 'space' where doth lies Kant' 'proof' of humanity' propensity to evil?
PS Congratulations! 8-)
Whoa!
Avoiding the difficult yet delicious arguments on the state of nature - though I myself take preference to Rousseau over Hobbes if you care to know - where exactly does this solid proof of evil share in your argument of contingency? If this 'space' contains an innately self-centred evil and whilst moral laws do not necessarily require a demonstration of the existence of God, reason itself vis-a-vis the reformation of character depends on the existence of God considering revolution für die denkungsart. Thus, God is necessary.
Quoting Cavacava
Ta very muchly. :-*
Well, Kant's struggle here is epistemic not ontological, it has to do with what is right or wrong and not what is or is not. In my opinion, he loses this struggle, because of his dismissal of desire, which also dismisses motivation.
Faith in God may be as necessary epistemically as all universals/absolutes are 'necessary' epistemically, but that hardly makes them necessary ontologically, which is what we are discussing...
Extremely important point that's often overlooked. Too many arguments seem to hinge on language and how we conceptualize things, and it's ridiculous that those arguments are given so much consideration.