Deflating the importance of idealism/materialism
It has been a recent contention of mine that the data of experience are the same in all metaphysical systems, whether idealistic or materialistic, to name the two major poles. Both try to give answers to the question of what objects of experience are, but neither doubts that such objects are. In light of this, it seems to me that much less rides on the answer being what the idealist or the materialist says than is often supposed. (That said, I have always leaned toward idealism and still do, primarily due to the coherency and stability of what it affirms; the matter of the materialist changes every century, which casts doubt on what exactly is being affirmed.)
The more interesting and pressing question is whether the phantasmagoria of experience exhausts the category of the real. In other words, the more important question is not what objects are, but why they are. If this question has no answer, nihilism results. If this question has an answer, but we can't know it, skepticism results. If this question has an answer, and we can know it, then something like theism results.
The more interesting and pressing question is whether the phantasmagoria of experience exhausts the category of the real. In other words, the more important question is not what objects are, but why they are. If this question has no answer, nihilism results. If this question has an answer, but we can't know it, skepticism results. If this question has an answer, and we can know it, then something like theism results.
Comments (118)
What possible answer to 'why things are' could there be that does not lead to infinite regress?
But how would you demonstrate that a being is necessary in a way that would not also allow you to demonstrate that a 'universe of things' is necessay? And that being the case, you'd still end up with "because it just is".
I have come to the conclusion that the phenomenal is reality, and the purpose of philosophy/science is to explain why what appears is as it appears. So no hidden 'reality', rather the reality we experience is all there is, and the question is why it is the way it appears.
For someone who is not even certain that the universe really exists outside your own head, you seem to know an awful lot about 'things'. They're finite, contingent and causally dependant. Where are you getting this from?
Strawman. I neither said nor suggested any such thing. In fact, if you read the OP, I said exactly the reverse of what you impute of me here.
They are expressions of the creativity of Mind. However, the Mind it's not relegated to the brain. It permeates throughout all life as waves, within, waves, within waves. One can considered matter as well as imagination as the play tools of the Mind so as to amuse itself. When our minds go unconscious, it rests and there is no time or space to play with. And then the impulse arises to awaken an create.
Frankly, I don't understand this question. Could you flesh this out please? Thanks.
The original quest of philosophy has been generally forgotten. Notice the etymological link between ‘quest’ and ‘question’; the original question of philosophy concerned the nature of reality, but reality as as lived, not as an arms-length, ‘scientific’ analysis.
I have a book called THe Shape of Ancient Thought by Thomas McEvilly, arti historian. It was published in the early 2000’s to not much notice in the academic world. McEvilly argues that there was considerably more traffic in ideas between the ancient Mediterranean and Indian cultures than is generally recognised. He documents the similarities of the philosophical preoccupations of the Greeks and Indians, with meticulous reference to many primary sources. What comes across very clearly are the parallels between Platonist. Vedantic and Buddhist accounts of philosophiical wisdom and enlightenment. Of course it is impossible to convey even the gist of the idea in a brief post, however I mention it because I think common to all of those sources, is the understanding of the illusory nature of experience of ordinary people. This is because the understanding of the ordinary person (the hoi polloi, the puttajana) is corrupted by clinging or avidya, so as to render them incapable of sound judgement concerning the nature of things. Conversely, arriving at the state which makes that judgement possible, is the very essence of wisdom, sapience or sagacity.
What happened in Western culture is that this philosophical perspective became subsumed by religion, then idenfitifed with religion, and largely abandoned because of its association with religion. This of course took place over millenia, it is not something that happened overnight. But what was lost as a consequence, was the perspective within which the illusory nature of lived existence could be understood - because there is nothing with which to compare it any more.
I think that is the context for the kind of question you’re asking.
Speaking as the aspirational hoi polloi, it seems to me that this vale of tears, or whatever it is, can only be understood - personally - as something like an educational toy. In this sense, though materialism may be false as a matter of ultimate judgement, nevertheless it is the 'correct' way to play the game - as if it were real. but perhaps I am still on level one.
What does it mean "why" objects are?
Quoting unenlightened
Level one is good, that's where the real play is at >:O
There are no Illusions in the sense we are being tricked. It is exactly as it is being perceived, but there is always more that can and will be perceived as we evolve and learn to be more perceptive.
The trouble with illusions, is that it leads to some sort of master-student relationships where the masters role is to (for money) show the student the path past the illusions. Some sort of "enlightenment" (a desire that Buddha would caution against). In other words, it is a marketing gimmick to sell services and create careers.
The Daoism is more independently minded the and as a result, traditional Daoism is very much an independent philosophical journey of observation.
(Y)
The existence of any particular thing may be contingent; but this is not the same as to say that the existence of anything at all is contingent.
I agree :)
Can you specify anything which isn't contingent? Or some category of things which aren't?
Do you think existentialist classics, like Nausea, are persuasive? I can't find anything persuasive about them. I kind of admire Sartre for his honesty and for being utterly true to himself, but I can't help but feel he was, so to speak, pretty tone deaf when it comes to questions of meaning. 'Hell is other people'?
I think you're missing the point. I was pointing out that saying that any particular thing is contingent is not the same as saying that the fact that there is something rather than nothing is contingent.
When people live their lives as if they only see themselves from the points of view of others, and the expectations and demands they imagine, or maybe even know, that others are having of, or making upon them; then hell is indeed other people. You need to have an ear for the nuance here.
Quoting Moliere
Thorongil,
Not necessarily fairly self-evident. Not until I've read Moliere's statement above did I get the direction of where your question was going (intentional or not).
Theology (or ecclesiastical doctrines, for that matter) had tackled the why question long before metaphysics and scientific investigations had widely solidified the question of 'what exists'.
Why is up to us. We get to do what we like with things.
The quest for meaning comes down to our decisions.
I don't think so.
"Find" doesn't make sense in the world you posit. Meaning must rather be created. But the meaning we can create isn't proportional to, and doesn't fit, what the desires of the heart demand.
Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me.
"... the "why" question deals with the reason for there being objects of experience at all as opposed to the question of what they are ultimately composed of."
It actually is. To create meaning, to have meaning, one must create. No one will do it for you. No one can do it for you.
I mean, it is super obvious. There are objects because someone wanted to create them.
You'd have to be a celebrity to really get it.
All of life is the result of the same creative process. There is no hierarchy. Just creation and experimentation. This is real Evolution. They are lots of names given to this creative force (yes it is a force just like any other force). God, Laws of Nature, Thermodynamic Imperative, Tychism, Dao, etc. I preferred the simple idea of Mind, since that is what is peering out the eyes seeking to create something new - such as a post on a forum.
Desire is always relative to a personally construed situation out of which it emerges. If there is no prior constructed context of meaning , there is no basis for a desire, which is our affective assessment of the sense of need in that situation. One would have no sense of what it is one needs or lacks if we didn't already construct it. To say 'I want thi' is to say that 'I lack this', which is first to experience the 'this' imaginatively, then lose it and attempt to regain in a more sustainable fashion.
The feeling of being at a loss, in a state of need, is not continual. It's part of an infinite constellation of moods and comportments, varying from relative satisfaction to despair.
I would say that humanity has the queer ability to contort its own soul to desire more than what can be found -- or created. (I don't see too much of a difference between the two, but I am an atheist, so I probably wouldn't either)
But that humanity can turn its soul against itself doesn't mean that humanity must do so. Disentangling human desire from the various butchers of the soul that the world has on offer is a process, by all means, and one which isn't the easiest to do. But we can learn to live within our means -- and our means provide a world without intrinsic meaning, yet we can live happily all the same if we choose to let go of foolish desires.
Eloquently stated, although perhaps too poetic for my tastes. I believe this to be a prevalent theme in Heidegger's obsession with Being, one of the drama kings of 20th century philosophy. Heidegger thought metaphysics begins with the question of why anything exists at all - or the question of Being. That there is a distinction between that which is, and Being as such, is what I feel is what makes it so powerful to me when Leibniz wrote:
"...[concerning knowledge] of the necessary and eternal truths, above all those which are the most comprehensive and which have the most relation to the sovereign being ... this knowledge alone is good in itself ... all the rest is mercenary."
This comprehensive understanding of everything is the aim of metaphysics. And I think it to be true that Heidegger and many of his contemporaries represented a movement in philosophy that attempted to deflate the importance of metaphysics - at least a certain kind of metaphysics. No more should we approach metaphysics with the confidence that we know what Being is. No more should we consider existence as a substance.
"Metaphysics is a dualism," Heidegger once wrote, and his and others' work reflect a desire to mitigate this reoccurring split. The mind is not separate from the world, it is in the world. Theoretical knowledge is not the primary form of understanding. That something like eliminative materialism is seen as even remotely plausible speaks volumes about what I see to be a deficiency and prejudice in the epistemology and metaphysics of many today.
When you say:
Quoting Thorongil
I agree in some sense but not entirely. I reject the notion that the divine, if it exists, would be something that we can come to "know" in such a way that we can express it using the vocabulary of the everyday. Aquinas' insistence on the analogical nature of theological language is important here. And Levinas takes this to a whole new level. We encounter without understanding the Other, grasping its trace (its existence confirmed by its non-existence) without its essence. The modern notion of theism (and one in which atheism is almost overwhelmingly dependent on) that God is a being-amongst-beings, differing only by quantitative magnitudes and suspiciously anthropomorphic characteristics, stands opposite to both Scholastic and post-modern conceptions of God which explicitly resist describing God as if describing an ordinary object.
And this is what I see to be the seductive aspect of metaphysics: the drive for the extraordinary. All around us are the mundane, the repetitive, the ordinary. If only there could be some better dimension, perfect, stable and transcendent to this boring and violent place! Obviously this is a Nietzschean view of things.
In my opinion, I think metaphysical theorizing is primarily motivated by a strong desire to find reasons to believe in what is not experienced. Yet a religious belief based on rationalist proofs is hardly religious at all, because it lacks the risk of faith. Before the modern era, demonstrations of God's existence were meant to get people on the path of faith, not establish without a doubt that God exists, because that would jeopardize faith and ran contrary to the epistemology of the time which held that only God, and not reason, could establish a connection between the object (man) and the subject (God), which was later reversed in the modern Enlightenment as man became the subject and God became the object which was to be known.
But even Aquinas' analogical language and his insistence on the limitations of human reason make me queesy. I prefer the idea that we must lose God in order to come closer to him. I have lost God, I cannot find him but have not stopped trying to listen. These attempted proofs strike me as ways humans try to accelerate their relationship with God, and put God under the totality.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Point being, I agree that if there is a reason for the world being, then this engenders some form of theism, but I think if this is indeed the case then we can never know much more than pale imitations and metaphors. We may know but only so much, to perhaps such a minimal degree that we might even wonder if it is even knowledge and not simply an encounter with something which exceeds ourselves.
Do you mean your personal experience?
Do you mean human experience?
Or are you willing to make experience a broader feature of reality in general?
I was caricaturing the idealist position you prefer for rhetorical effect, you'll see it has no influence whatsoever on my line of argument, which you've ignored in favour of the easier target.
How do you avoid the infinite regress? Whatever you claim to 'know' about 'things' you must have derived somehow. That necessitates a belief in the existence of at least some facts a priori, and the authenticity of whatever mental process you used to derive these new facts about things from the ones you take to be true a priori.
If you are prepared to accept a priori facts simply on the grounds that they are self-evidently true, then why not the apparent 'fact' that a universe appears to exist?
If you wish to ask why a universe exists, then why are you not asking why logic exists and why your a priori truths exist, both of which you require in order to assign any properties at all to the set 'all things'?
I don't think either of the questions make sense to me. On the one hand, "what are they ultimately composed of" makes no sense because I don't see what import (if any) this has. What does it even mean for an object to be "ultimately" material, or "ultimately" idea? :s This is a fictive excrescence on the real metaphysical issue of seeing how things hang together in the most general sense.
On the other hand, the question of "why objects of experience at all" is formed of a category error. Namely, objects within experience have a "why" that can be asked of them - you can ask why this table, why that chair, etc. and the answer will always be with reference to some other object in existence. But when you ask the question why of everything (presuming now that such a totalization is even possible) you presuppose that there exists something outside of this "everything" that can be pointed to as an answer to the why question. But of course, this just means that the "everything" isn't really everything - if it was everything, the question you're asking would be incoherent.
No. Theism relies on faith. If this question has an answer, and we can't know it, then something like theism results. If this question has an answer, and we can know it, then something like science results.
If an idealist believes the external world is made of the same stuff as the mind, then how is that any different from saying that the mind is made of the same stuff as the external world? It seems to me that the dichotomy is false and idealists and materialists are arguing over nothing. The fact is that I experience causation - of me willing my legs to move and I walk, of me preparing for a math exam and then taking one, of me relaying an idea on a philosophy forum and others reading and responding to it, etc. If there is a causal relationship between the mind and the external world then there is no need to make distinctions between mind and body, or mental vs. physical.
Quoting Cavacava
The bigger question would be why does it appear as an experience of an external world if there isn't one?
The distinction should be between that which is living and that which is dead. The former bring that which is creating and organizing and the later being that which is used to create. I have always found the comparisons of humans to computers, or any dead matter, a bit distasteful.
How could the why not be up to us? Are you in personal contact with God or aliens? What sort of BS have they been feeding you?
I think @Thorongil meant "the more important question is not what objects are, but why they exist." We are not responsible for the reason of a thing's existence (excluding the obvious man-made stuff).
Oh well, why ask why? What reason do we have to suppose things have a reason for existing? We can explain the mechanics for how they came to exist (to a point), but not give a reason in terms of purpose.
I didn't mean "reason" in these sense of "purpose". I meant it in the sense of "cause"/"explanation".
Right, okay then no disagreement here. I think Banno was talking about meaning/purpose, not causality.
Of course. As I've been saying, it can't be proved that Materialism's world doesn't exist as a brute-fact and an unverifiable, unfalsifiable proposition.
Of course there are things in metaphysics that can't be proved. There are also definite things that can be uncontroversially said.
But let's not imply that all metaphysicses are equal. Brute facts and unverifiable, unfalsifiable propositions are considered unaesthetic, unappealing and unconvincing.
Michael Ossipoff
So you admit to strawmanning my position. Besides being thoroughly unnecessary, you ought also to have expected my disinclination to address whatever line of argument you think you've presented thereafter.
Quoting Pseudonym
With respect to what? A necessary being by definition avoids it, a point you seem incapable of acknowledging for whatever reason.
I mean this.
My dear friend, this was effectively the point I was making.
Quoting Agustino
I presuppose no such thing. The question could be meaningless, in which case there is no such thing.
Quoting Thorongil
I don't know about that, but Reality is unknowable, undiscussable, un-describable. Metaphysics doesn't cover or describe Reality.
Of course. Metaphysics is the discussion of explanation and origin. But it's also about the matter of what is. (...though that part of course is also called "Ontology" too). In this usage "what is" needn't refer only to physical objects (except of course for Materialists).
If you ask someone that question, and they say that it's unknowable, undiscussable and un-describable, that could be called an answer, or not, depending on what you mean by "answer".
You're referring to something more ultimate than metaphysics. Idealism and Materialism are only metaphysicses.
I think most of us would agree that that's not so.
Maybe some Theisms. But many Theists, including those in some of the official church denominations with the largest membership;, don't believe in that knowability.
Correct.
Oh no, I've already passed that stage of development. My subtlety is so immense, I often need a crane to hoist it.
Some forms of it might, but not all. Fideism has never been theism's most common expression, at least among philosophers and theologians.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, I tend to agree, as this was the point I tried making.
So, how else does the question make sense in the absence of that presupposition?
Quoting Thorongil
Fair enough, I did get that impression from part of your post.
A caricature and a strawman are two entirely different things. One is a summary of a position that is deliberately facetious but still based on real features, the other is the construction of a position similar to the one a person holds, but deliberately different in one or more respects such the it can be easily rejected. As I have not rejected, or even argued against, Idealism, it could not possibly have been a strawman.
Quoting Thorongil
Your argument was that "... the more important question is not what objects are, but why they are."
If you conclude that a being is 'necessary' (not that I believe such a thing is possible), then you require also the existence of logic (which you presumably used to reach your conclusion) and a least one fact (on which your logic acts). So you still have not answered the question, "why should logic work and why is fact 1 is a fact".
In other words why is the necessary being necessary?
You can't simply pluck an argument out of thin air (though God knows enough people try) so you still have to explain why the elements of your argument are necessarily the case. If you can't explain that, then you cannot demonstrate that your conclusion is truly necessary.
I'm not sure I agree. The starting point of idealism and materialism could be the same and yet not be neutral, so I'm not sure why "neutrality" is the problem. I would, of course, agree that one's epistemology tends to inform one's metaphysic, but it need not. An epistemological idealist need not be committed to ontological idealism, for example.
In any case, I suppose I would be of the opinion that the fault line with respect to experience is not as deep as both sides like to make it out to be. The primary reason for this, again, is that neither side objects to the existence of the content of experience. They disagree about how it is supplied and how it ought to be described.
But they do disagree fundamentally about what an experience is. For direct realists, perception is awareness of external objects, and not anything more. So they would disagree that perception involves any sort of representation or idea in the mind. As such, perception differs fundamentally from dreams or imagination. Where hallucination fits in that is debatable.
So they are, but I took your admission to be a polite way of describing your attempt to strawman my position, which you did in fact do.
Quoting Pseudonym
I do not conclude this. You asked what one possible answer to my question could be. I gave you one.
Quoting Pseudonym
The question is incoherent.
Right, that's why I said, in the last sentence you neglected to quote, "They disagree about how it is supplied and how it ought to be described."
I don't understand the question.
Quoting Agustino
You might also have gotten it from its title.
No, that's not the point. Direct realists disagree about the nature of experience itself. That's crucially important for making the direct realist case.
What I'm asking is what form would your argument for the necessary existence of a creator or the universe actually take?
It can't take the form - if... then... Because we have no 'ifs' that we can establish as being necessarily the case (if we did we'd have solved our problem already).
It cannot take the form - X therefore y, because again we have no 'x' that is necessarily the case.
It cannot be a tautology because that would not be explicatory.
I admit logic is not really my field (I'm an ethicist), but I'm struggling to see any form that the argument showing 'why the universe is' could possibly take that doesn't rely on some existing facts that we have yet to establish are necessarily the case.
I do think this is a bit 'apples and oranges' - if Sartre's fictions don't persuade you of something, I'm not clear that that diminishes Moliere's claims about the philosophical approach of existentialism and 'finding' (or whatever the right word is) meaning in the face of the absurd.
Of course, I quite see that the notion involved, of existence preceding essence (to sloganise it) is not how you see things, but that's a different matter.
In 'Totality and Infinity' Levinas eloquently argues that the first-person encounter with the Other, the subjective experience, always exceeds mere (scientific) description from the 'totalising' system of explanations. There's always a remainder, excess, more, an overflowing.
This leads him personally to an immanent god in a practice of Judaism, but that's not the claim the book is making.
I agree with Streetlight about your 'grammar': as soon as you speak of 'data' you seem not to be in the same part of discourse as the 'metaphysical'. Berkeleyans and physicalists can talk the same sort of methodological talk about objects, but that doesn't mean the ways they underpin their talk of objects in the metaphysics bear any mutual resemblance.
All that shows is that you are mistaken about what you possess being subtlety. Subtlety cannot be heavy; its character is the very opposite of heaviness.
His subtle wit was so enormous that it sucked the mood of the room into a slowly forming vortex of chuckling, collapsing into outright laughter, swallowing all seriousness in a black hole of guffaws.
I'm not too familiar with Heidegger, but what you attribute to him here accords well with my position. Leibniz lurks in the background of my thoughts on the question you're responding to, as I've come to sense that his version of the principle of sufficient reason might be superior to Schopenhauer's, and Leibniz's version, of course, leads pretty straight forwardly to theism.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I concur. But recall that the pre-modern philosophers you speak of made a distinction between knowing what and knowing that something is. We cannot know God's essence but we can know that he exists, they would say.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I'm not sure I agree here. Another Scholastic distinction is between the preambles of the faith and the articles of the faith. The existence of God was thought to be a preamble of the faith, and so capable of rational demonstration. The articles of faith, however, do require faith, for they are revealed truths, that is, truths that do not contradict reason but cannot be arrived at by reason, such as the Trinity.
Then we're responding to different points.
That's funny...and even a tad subtle! You have demonstrated that the heavy may be influenced by the light.
The problem with this is that there are no "rational demonstrations" which are capable of demonstrating the axiomatic assumptions upon which they are founded.
I don't see the problem. One cannot demonstrate the principles of logic, but then neither can one reject them, for in order to reject them, one must employ them. Thus, you cannot reject a rational demonstration of God's existence, for example, by appealing to the fact that the logical axioms upon which the demonstration depends cannot be demonstrated. Your only option is to remain silent.
That is what I, and I think Janus, have been trying to say. That you must remain silent. That no logical argument can be brought forth for the existence of everything without using (within that argument) something which you must first presume to exist.
I wasn't trying to prove "the existence of everything."
For example, here are two frequent objections to my metaphysics:
1. "What makes you think that abstract facts exist?"
I don't claim that they "exist", whatever that would mean. Obviously the if-thens in an inter-referreing system of if-thens have relation to eachother, whether they "exist" or not. Their "existence" has nothing to do with what I've been saying. That's something that I've been emphasizing all along. That's all my metaphysics is about.
2. "How do those hypothetical facts give rise to an actual, concretely real, world?"
They don't. I don't claim that our world is "actual" or "concretely real", whatever that would mean.
...unless "actual" has the more limited meaning that some others have expressed:
"of, consisting of, or part of the world in which the speaker resides."
Of course it goes without saying, with respect to this discussion, that our physical world is actual in that limited, but operationally-meaningful, sense.
Michael Ossipoff
The principles of logic are mostly concerned with the validity of arguments; that conclusions do follow from premises. Put another way, a valid argument is such that if the premises are true then the conclusion must also be true. Soundness of arguments are something else; an argument is sound only if its premises are true. The truth of premises is not demonstrated by logical arguments; and must be assumed or evidenced by something other than mere logic.
...only if you think that the truth of the premises and conclusions is necessary.
The truth of an if-then fact is quite independent of whether its premise is true. I've been talking about a metaphysical world consisting of the if-then facts themselves, and not the truth of their conclusions or premises.
Michael Ossipoff
An "if-then" proposition is true if the "if" is true and the "then" is valid.
Its truth doesn't require that.
Neither the "if" premise nor the "then" conclusion need be true.
An if-then proposition is true, and therefore is a fact--an if-then fact--if what it says is true, viz:
...that the truth of the "if" premise would mean the truth of the "then" conclusion
I'll quote an example that I've been using:
"If all Slitheytoves are (or were) brillig, and all Jaberwockekys are (or were) Slitheyitoves, then all Jaberwockeys are (or would be) brilllig."
That remains true even if there aren't any Slitheytoves or Jaberwockeys.
And it would remain true if there were Slitheytoves and Jaberwockeys, but none of the Slitheytoves were brillig, &/or none of the Jaberwockeys were Slitheytoves.
Michael Ossipoff
No, it remains valid, not true. You need to brush up on your terminology. I suggest you take a course in elementary logic.
I'll look up the definitions. I've read something about "sound" being different from "true". But "true" has an obvious meaning that I thought everyone agreed on.
If the truth of a certain "if" premise would always make a certain "then" conclusion true, then It's certainly true to say that the truth of that premise would always make that conclusion true. ...and that's all an if-then proposition says.
I'll look up the definitions but I doubt very much that they'll support your bizarre re-definition of "true".
Michael Ossipoff
I did try to study existentialism as an undergraduate (having studied The Plague at high school). Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' stumped me - I literally couldn't understand the first page, although subsequently I have come to understand a little more of him; readings from No Exit, Nausea, and other of his writings were included in the course.
The aspect of existentialism that I think is positive, is the emphasis on 'self-creating' and not living out of a rule-book. But the sense of generating 'out of oneself' a sense of meaning or purpose - I am dubious about that. What I have learned/am learning from my study of spiritual traditions and meditation, is the importance of having a sense of relatedness. I think it is one aspect of what is called in Buddhism bodhicitta and that it's the same quality as the Christian 'agáp?'. I don't associate it with formal religion, but it is a spiritual quality, and I think it's lacking in existentialism generally. (Although there are some spiritually-inclined existentialists.)
One of 2017's philosophy books I've been reading is Defragmenting Modernity, Paul Tyson:
I think you would find it congenial.
Too subtle? >:O
You wrote "logical axioms"; the point is that axioms are not logical, in the sense that they can be logically demonstrated, but are the intuitions, assumptions or beliefs which constitute the premises of logical (deductively valid) arguments.
Well my understanding of the debate is pretty limited, but I think it was a major point of difference between Sartre and Levinas. They are both students of Heidegger in one way or another but Levinas goes in a different spiritual direction in the existential affirmation. As you can tell I'm pretty impressed by him, when I have more space in my reading schedule (i'm in college again at the mo) I'm going to get back to 'Otherwise than being'.
(...even if A, or B, or both, are false.)
...and is therefore an if-then fact.
A mathematical theorem is an if-then proposition whose "if " premise includes, but needn't be limited to, some mathematical axioms. When it's been shown that that theorem's conclusion follows from its premise, then that theorem is said to be true,
No one says that the axioms must be proven to be true, in order for the theorem to be accepted as true.
I've begun checking sources on the Internet, and I haven;t yet found one that supports Janus's unusual definition of "true"
Michael Ossipoff
I have all along being taking about premises which may, but need not be, taken as axiomatic such as for example that there must be a first cause. I have not been talking about general logical principles such as the LNC or the PSR, which may or may not be ineliminable, but the question of whose dispensability would certainly be more controversial than the premise that, to return to the example, there must be a first cause.
All deductive arguments are based on premises which cannot themselves be deductively derived.
Definitely read Heidegger, but I also recommend Levinas. Both are critical of historical philosophy. Heidegger critiques what he sees to be a diminution of Being to beings, especially in light of the modern technological-industrial revolution. I think he even identifies Scholastic "metaphysics" christened as a science in itself as the beginning of the decline of philosophy proper. Levinas critiques what he sees to be an "egology" behind most metaphysical systems, where everything Other is attempted to be assimilated into one grand totality that the mind can understand. There are things we encounter without understanding, and the dominant tradition has been to either ignore or reduce away these things. Though he points out certain times in which philosophers have recognized the Other, such as Descartes' attempt to use our knowledge of infinity as an argument for God. Anyway.
Quoting Thorongil
Yeah, I agree. Though it's sort of difficult for me to wrap my head around the notion that we can know that something exists without knowing hardly anything (if anything) about that which is said to exist. Seems to me that we need at least some basic understanding of what it is we are talking about if we are to say that something "exists".
But this could also be a modern influence to equivocate God's existence with the existence of ordinary objects. I'm not sure what exactly it means when we say God exists if we are not talking about something in space-time with definite qualities, but this is just what Heidegger means when he says the question of Being is not a question of beings, and seems to also be what Levinas tries to get at when he says the Other is beyond the totality. The encounter before understanding. The mind cannot grasp God, because God is beyond the totality.
Quoting Thorongil
I was not aware of this distinction, thanks. I thought it was that demonstrations only led the path to God for non-believers and did not establish his existence as some kind of indubitable fact, only as possible and perhaps even likely. I thought Aquinas did not think reason alone could establish that the universe did not extend temporally ad infinitum, for example, and that it's creation by a necessary being was a metaphysically coherent notion that was nevertheless taken on by faith.
The LNC cannot be denied without affirming it, but I'm not sure you can say the same about the PSR. There are many who have (coherently) denied the PSR, at least in its applicability beyond our language.
However, even the LNC can be denied in a way. Nobody can deny that our phenomenal experience obeys it or at the very least that we need it in order to communicate. But it can be denied that the LNC applies to reality. For example, someone can appeal to quantum mechanics and say that science reveals that, contrary to what our phenomenal experience at the macro-scale tells us, at the quantum scale reality does not behave according to the LNC. Our language and conceptual thought is simply inadequate in describing this kind of reality.
How so?
I actually tried reading Being and Time many years ago and found it utterly impenetrable. My thought recently has been that some of his shorter essays might be more approachable. I have a Basic Works of Heidegger on my list as well as the Safranski biography, so I do hope to have at least a baseline knowledge of him. I know nothing about Levinas, but he's another continental figure, so I'm a little wary of him, too. If I get into a PhD program, I'll be focusing on Schopenhauer, so my planned reading list won't be tackled for some time.
I will say that there is a continental philosopher I have liked, from what little I've read of him thus far, namely, Peter Sloterdijk. He has a knowledge of Schopenhauer and his prose is actually pretty readable, at least in comparison with other continental philosophers. He takes aim at scientism and the New Atheists.
Quoting darthbarracuda
It seems to be how physicists currently treat dark matter, for example. And it seems to me that I can know that I exist without knowing what I am. With God, I think the Scholastics would say that we can make true statements about what God is (e.g. God is being-itself) without fully understanding what they mean.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Well, they are presented as deductive, not inductive, arguments, so if the conclusion follows from the premises and the premises are true, then they would be indubitable in the way, 1) all men are mortal, 2) Socrates is a man, 3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal is indubitable.
Quoting darthbarracuda
It is true he thought that it could not be demonstrated either way that the world had a temporal beginning, unlike Bonaventure, for example, but this doesn't affect the doctrine of creation. Here is what Boethius says on the subject:
Here is the original exchange:
Quoting Janus
So, the point was that valid logical arguments are such that conclusions are inherent in premises. If the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true if an argument is to be counted as valid. So, following that, if any logical argument which purports to prove the existence of God must already assume it, then no deductive proof of the existence of God is possible.
God's existence must always be assumed as axiomatic in any such argument; that is it must be assumed to be given by experience, intuition, feeling or faith. It cannot be derived by pure reason. In fact this was exactly what Kant's project was all about; refuting the idea behind scholastic metaphysics, an idea that is still lurking in the metaphysics of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, that the existence of God could be demonstrated by pure (i.e. disinterested) reason.
They don't, though. That's what the arguments are attempting to establish, that God exists.
If the existence of God is the conclusion then God's existence must be, explicitly or implicitly, contained in the premises; otherwise the argument cannot be valid.
I'd said:
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Janus replied:
Quoting Janus
Actually, a check of various university sources shows that, as implication is conventionally defined, it's unanimous that A => B is true unless A is true and B is false.
By that definition, if it could be shown , for some A and B, that the truth of A would always mean that B is true, then A => B can never not be true.
Perhaps an elementary course in logic would be helpful for Janus.
Michael Ossipoff
Great contributions to this discussion, especially concerning the relevance of Heidegger's thinking to the subject.
I'd suggest tracking down a copy of his Introduction to Metaphysics. Much more readable than Being and Time and it's largely an extended reflection on the issue you raised here.
There are quite a few political and cultural asides thrown in throughout the work that you may find off-putting (or maybe not if you're not a big fan of modernity) and, if I recall correctly, the book is based off a series of lectures that were delivered in 1935, which was shortly after Heidegger had become disillusioned with the Nazi movement.
Anyhow that's the backdrop and IMO it's no exaggeration to say that he felt that the only hope of saving the West from nihilism involved bringing back the question of Being.
As history repeats today.
If you thought Being and Time was impenetrable then I don't know what you'll think of Levinas, haha. Well, that's not entirely true, some of Levinas' texts are easier and digestible. Time and the Other as well as Otherwise Than Being are tough, but some of his shorter works are easier.
Two of my favorite texts by Heidegger are, The Question Concerning Technology and The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, the latter being where he mentions Scholasticism as the decline of philosophizing proper.
Then for Levinas, shorter texts are Useless Suffering, and On Escape. A longer text, but one of my favorites, is Time and the Other.
Quoting Thorongil
It is interesting you bring up the point about knowing that I am without knowing who or what I am. But I have to wonder, how is it that I know that I am without knowing any essence of myself? What is knowledge without essence?
Just based on my own thinking on things, I have to agree with something along the lines of the Schopenhauerian Will. I know I exist, because I am striving. I suffer. This is the primal apodicticity - I suffer, therefore I am.
Another angle to approach this by would be to go a Thomistic / Wittgensteinian route and argue that not everything can be articulated with words. That we may understand without being able to communicate means that at least some knowledge is esoteric and cannot be communicated to a population with an increasingly narrow attention span.
Quoting Thorongil
Sure, but I would say that the premises of these arguments are inductive. That change happens is an empirical observation, for instance. That things depend on each other for their mode of existence is not an a priori deduction. That there may seem to be some kind of design to the world is certainly an empirical observation. Theological arguments like this start from everyday, common experiences and abstract from there.
The point I suppose I was trying to make was that it is not only implausible (in my opinion), but also not preferable, to hold the existence of God as "just another fact", alongside the truth of evolutionary theory, or the orbital trajectory of Saturn. God should not be an entity to be "studied". If we were to "prove" that God exists beyond any reason of doubt, would we need any faith? Would there be any difference between science and religion?
In my mind, the fact is that theological arguments will never reach the level of sophistication and universal acceptance as the more ordinary scientific theories. And that may just be well. Part of the seduction of religious belief is the mystery behind it, and the breathtaking risk associated with believing in something that is not the product of reason (but is not contradictory to reason, of course). As soon as we think these arguments are perfect, I think that might be the end of religion. God would become ordinary. I don't think I want to actively pursue God like this.
So, in valid arguments that conclude that God exists, his existence is assumed in the premises. This is common to all logical arguments; they simply cannot demonstrate the existence of anything because if the existence of anything is a conclusion then the assumption of that existence is an undemonstrated premise. Your saying that logical arguments could demonstrate the existence of God was the erroneous point I initially took issue with, but you seem to be very slow to see that for some reason.
No, not assumed. Contained.
What you are doing is arguing against deductive arguments per se, every syllogism. Of course, some philosophers have regarded the syllogism as question begging, like J.S. Mill, but I don't agree with them. Are you aware of the position you have taken here or you do not realize that your objection is actually an objection to syllogistic reasoning as a whole? I don't think there's much use arguing with someone who would reject that, so this may be my last post to you.
I'll see if the compilation I mentioned includes them.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I think I've read Useless Suffering before. Sounds very familiar.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yes, but even with Schopenhauer, the subject of willing is identical with the subject of knowing.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Or that not everything can be articulated fully accurately with words: the via analogia.
Quoting darthbarracuda
This sounds Humean. I don't think the Scholastic or Kantian would agree.
Quoting darthbarracuda
If you had such proof, then you wouldn't need faith to believe only in the proposition that God exists. That's just bare theism. You would need faith to be a Christian in addition to a theist. That's what the distinction between the preambles of the faith and the articles of faith amounts to. The Scholastics thought Plato, Aristotle, and others, for example, who never heard of Christ, believed in God. See Acts 17:22-23 as well. God's existence doesn't or need not require faith. Believing in something like the Resurrection, however, does (even if, as some think, the Resurrection can be shown not to be unreasonable).
Quoting darthbarracuda
It's the reverse, in my mind. But notice you've shifted from the specific claim about arguments for the existence of God to the much more general and vague "theological arguments."
Syllogistic reasoning is just the form of valid reasoning. The content of any syllogistic reasoning cannot be proven. What is the distinction between assumed and contained?
Take for example the argument from first causes:
1.Everything that exists/begins to exist has a cause of its existence
2.The universe exists/began to exist
3.The universe has a cause of its existence ( from 1. & 2.)
4.The cause of the existence of the universe cannot itself have a cause
5. God is the only being that does not have a cause
C. Therefore God is the cause of the universe
Now, look at the assumptions which are not demonstrated by the argument but are inherent in the argument:
1. Nothing exists/ begins without a cause
2. The universe had a beginning
4. That the cause of the universe cannot itself have a cause is actually not really a further assumption but a logical entailment of the argument that must obtain in order to avoid the infinite regress which the first two premises already assume to be impossible.
5, That God is the sole uncaused being. One could argue that this is matter of definition, but it has not been shown that there could not be multiple uncaused beings, or that even if there is only one uncaused being, that that being must be God as he is conceived according to Christian theology.