The Platonic explanation for the existence of God. Why not?
We can agree that normatively almost everyone is aware of the concept of God. So too are people aware of the concept of the 'perfect circle' or the number '2', which by all means have no real world representation.
So, under this elegantly simplistic and Platonic interpretation of God as an abstract concept that might as well have no real world 'representation' apart from everything that is the case, which kind of leaves out nothing really, then what's the problem with your understanding of God under this interpretation?
However, there are concepts like a 'square-circle', which have no real world representation either, nor are even Platonically possible. Then, is God an illogical concept, in that Meinongian sense?
So, under this elegantly simplistic and Platonic interpretation of God as an abstract concept that might as well have no real world 'representation' apart from everything that is the case, which kind of leaves out nothing really, then what's the problem with your understanding of God under this interpretation?
However, there are concepts like a 'square-circle', which have no real world representation either, nor are even Platonically possible. Then, is God an illogical concept, in that Meinongian sense?
Comments (40)
A different take on God, whether that be an ancient, Scholastic or post-modern view (if we are limiting ourselves to Western philosophy) would say that God exists but not as something that can be referred to using exact and precise propositions. God is transcendent upon Being, the ground for existence that can only be analogically described as being "outside" of existence. From this perspective, God can hardly be described in any "scientific" sort of way, as if God were qualitatively similar to concrete objects.
This is partly an explanation and justification for the "mystery" surrounding divinity. If God cannot be described using precise propositional language, but rather can only be grasped negatively and analogically (or through revelation), then there will always be a gap between human reason and God. (This may help bolster religion's status but simultaneously throws into doubt the legitimacy of dogmatic, organized religion - if the divine is mysterious, and revelation personal, what could be right about proselytizing?)
Abstracts aren't sentient or causal, for example, but kind of inert.
Religious believers typically envision deities as active, alive.
God, in the Catholic tradition, building on the Greeks and several forms of Judaism, and some Persian sources, is the answer to the question about the first cause or prime mover in the sense that if someone knows how to tie their shoes, and they tie them, they unfold the possibility of shoe tying, god is thought, as it were, as the actuality of the possibilities of all that is. In other words, as the "not nothing" of nothing. Pure potentiality. As the "nothing can come of nothing", ergo, god must be, and must sustain what is perpetually. Basically, Laws of Nature, only, inclusive of morality. Remember the saying of Hawking: Where does the fire behind the equations come from?
The point in Plato isn't the "perect circle", rather that, interpreted in a Scholastic way, that circles always can be, they are ideas in the mind of god, even when none exist. The perfect circle simply names the mode of episteme or mathimatikos for the Greeks, not the Platonic issue of the 7th letter.
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How do they do the "?Posty McPostface" link?
[quote=Wittgenstein]6.371
At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
6.372
So people stop short at natural laws as something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.
And they are both right and wrong. but the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained.[/quote]
Mathematical proofs and geometric forms are the basis of explanation - they themselves are not among what is explained. That is because they are epistemologically prior to the phenomena that are explained by them; but this priority is something that has been forgotten by empiricism.
Regarding the nature of concepts:
[quote=Ed Feser]First, the concepts that are the constituents of intellectual activity are universal while mental images and sensations are always essentially particular. Any mental image I can form of a man is always going to be of a man of a particular sort -- tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, redheaded, bald, or what have you. It will fit at most many men, but not all. But the concept "man" applies to every single man without exception. Or to use a stock example, any mental image I can form of a triangle will be an image of an isosceles , scalene, or equilateral triangle, of a black, blue, or green triangle, etc. But the abstract concept triangularity applies to all triangles without exception. And so forth.
Second, mental images are always to some extent vague or indeterminate, while concepts are at least often precise and determinate. To use Descartes’ famous example, a mental image of a chiliagon (a 1,000-sided figure) cannot be clearly distinguished from a mental image of a 1,002-sided figure, or even from a mental image of a circle. But the concept of a chiliagon is clearly distinct from the concept of a 1,002-sided figure or the concept of a circle. I cannot clearly differentiate a mental image of a crowd of one million people from a mental image of a crowd of 900,000 people. But the intellect easily understands the difference between the concept of a crowd of one million people and the concept of a crowd of 900,000 people. And so on. 1 [/quote]
"Mathematical proofs and geometric forms are the basis of explanation"
For whom? I would say physics doesn't explain at all, it describes what happens, and so treats math as part of the method. It has no ontological status. It is part of hypothesis understood as working assumption, if this then that. It is wholly indifferent to questions of ontological status of maths, and essentially indifferent to explanations. Theorems and mathematical works are applied as are levers. The idiosyncratic views of a Penrose, or some particular physicist are not forcible here.
I appreciate this citation of Descartes', it is clarifying here. Plato assigned the eidos to neither intellect nor imagination, ergo, it was no concept and no mental image. The same split is presupposed in Aquinas, and broken down by Berkeley, who is radically misunderstood due to the utter lack of education about philosophy that is now regnant.
"but this priority is something that has been forgotten by empiricism."
Its removal was celebrated as Positivism (metaphysically neutral physics). Just what is visible. I would say the deeper problem isn't that logic has no basis outside psychology, rather that the positive success has no part in reason. It is a rough empirical result.
The whole thing hangs on imputing concepts to the ancients. This is the common view, "Plato hypostasized the concepts". Hypothesis, in the older scholastic sense means throwing something under through imagination. The "hypostasis" the place beyond the senses, accessible to the imagination and intellect. But Plato was not speaking of concepts, but of the direct experience of seeing things under a genus. Each tree is a tree. He doesn't assign the genus to some region by dogma, he investigates them (or, the dialogues written by Plato show investigations of them, since he didn't write treatises or prescriptive essays).
I don't agree with Wittgenstein here: "And they are both right and wrong. but the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained."
Heidegger shows the openness of Plato very clearly in his analysis of the Symposium. Since the range of the idea or species of love is given from lower to best, or aristos, but the whole range is said about the eidos or species (in Latin). Plato was no scholastic formalist.
There is no forcible power in argument or doctrine placing the empirical experience of species in a specific region of reality, say, a brain.
Well, within limits, for anyone. When Galileo said 'the book of nature is written in mathematics' he wasn't whistling Dixie.
But more broadly, it is a response to the rather oddly-worded question 'where does the fire in the equations come from?' (Actually I think the phrase was 'what breathes fire into the equations?'.) I take this to be a reference to what Wigner described in his well-known essay as the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences' - that Hawkings is commenting on the fact that mathematics is able to make predictions and reveal deep discoveries about nature; an example being Dirac's prediction of the existence of anti-matter purely on the basis of mathematics. How is that possible? Why is the universe like that? Is the question. And I think it's a very deep question.
But I think there is indeed a strong tendency to put natural laws into the role formerly assigned to the Divine Intelligence. But what this looses sight of, is that science doesn't explain the laws. The 'order of nature' is a given, but why it is, is a completely different kind of question to what can be discovered, given that the order exists. That is what I think Wittgenstein is commenting on.
Quoting InternetStranger
The thrust of Feser's post is that concepts are not mental images - they're what used to be understood as 'intelligible objects'.
Quoting InternetStranger
In Plato the idea of the form was first articulated but it was subsequently refined and
developed by Aristotle and later philosophers. Of course, Aristotle rejected the idea that the forms were real in any sense other than the manifest - that is the meaning of his 'moderate realism'. But much hinges on the the nature of Platonic reals. That is an unresolved issue in philosophy in my opinion (but I tend towards Platonist realism.)
@Wayfarer, thanks for the Wittgenstein quotes. I think they illustrate my affinity of treating God, as the unsayable and ineffable according to the Tractatus. If God is everything that is both the case and not the case, then we are unable to talk about those issues, IMO.
That's why I claim that W's approach is basically apophatic.
Quoting Posty McPostface
I studied a unit on Spinoza but suffice to say I found the style of the Ethics quite impenetrable. And also I completely part company with Spinoza on the question of determinism.
You might find these two OP's of interest. Apologies if I have mentioned them to you previously as I have posted them quite a few times. They too are on the idea of apophaticism and transcendence.
God does not exist, Pierre Whalon. (The title is deceptive.)
What is the 'ground of being'? - post on Tillich's form of apophatic theology.
Also an article by Bill Vallicella on Russell's Teapot. (Caveat: I find many of Vallicella's philosophical analyses useful, but I detest his politics.)
Yes, though I've wondered if his attitude changed with the Investigations. These questions about the status of God and such seem to be left out from the majority of his philosophy. I think the closest you can get to him addressing these issues are in his On Certainty.
Thanks for the articles, just browsed them... I can't say they present anything of substance, though that's simply a given and something that the reader has to do is a certain suspension of disbelief. It seems the only attitude that can be served by those sentiments are of an agnostic one or metaphysical quietude.
Actually Vallicella's article gives a pretty reasonable summary of classical Thomistic theism, although it doesn't address the rather quirky question given in the OP. But all three of those articles are clearly of Platonic or neo-Platonic heritage, so it's interesting you don't see anything in them.
Yeah, it may be because I've always assumed the Platonic or neo-Platonic stance on the existence of God or conceptual schematic for God's existence.
Thanks anyways.
Spinoza ia not a pantheist. He's more or less the opposite: an acosmist.
For Spinoza, God is defined by the infinite nature not found in anywhere else. The necessary unity of reality which is not found as anything but is of everything. God is not found in everything. God is found nowhere but is of everything.
We might say the nature of God is not to exist because to exist amounts to a finite being. The infinity of God puts them outside such beginnings and endings. God is Real (i.e. the necessary infinite) precisely in that God doesn't exist.
What's the question? I'm easily confused.
Thanks.
Thanks for clarifying that!
Oh, it’s OK - I was just a bit nonplussed by your designation of those links as being ‘of little substance’ when I actually find them pretty profound. But, one man’s meat is another man’s poison, as the saying has it. Especially in regards to such recondite matters as these.
It was just me asserting that what they say in those links, I assume as a given being an agnostic and subscribing to quietism.
Yes, the unsayable and all that. Aggravates the condition so to speak, hehe. :sweat:
At times it almost seems self defeating.
God is illogical.
Omnipotency is a stone too heavy to lift. Omnibenevolence is a just the calm before an earthquake. Omniscience makes us autmatons with no choice in our lives.
That doesn't mean he can't exist.
No, God is a solipsist.
:up:
Quoting Posty McPostface
It's not, really, but has to tap into compassion. Otherwise it would be. In Buddhist parlance, 'awakening requires the two wings of compassion and emptiness'. One wing, and you go around in circles.
Yeah, it's one of those things that are so simple and elegant on paper, but the reality of undertaking the task is much much harder. I say this because of my Stoic attitude, which actually seems closer to Cynicism as of late.
I have a hard time being compassionate due to feelings of sadness and such...
Oh, ok.
Perhaps I should've said our conception of God is illogical and not God himself.
The God that fits into our world - a sloppy designer, not so powerful and maybe a little spiteful - just isn't great enough for us. The problem, it seems, is with us and not God. He never claimed to be omnibenevolent or omnipotent or omniscient. It's us or, more correctly, 3 people (Moses, Jesus and Mohammad) who made that claim. I guess one has to take the word of people who can part an ocean, walk on water and fly off to heaven on a horse.
What Galileo said, if I’m not wrong, was something more like, mechanics is the language in which god wrote nature. Anyway, he said it in scholastic Latin intelligible to his dear friend the Pope. Math didn’t mean quite the same thing in the medieval world, remember, music was “math in time”. By the way, the reason for Galileo's difficulty was that vacuums are outliers, no one wanted to let in the doctrine of inertia because it was outrageously illogical! It played the outlier, a claim to a pure vacuum, against all experience of human beings at all times. You will admit, I’m sure, that still plays a role, since there is no real vacuum, but the ‘paradigm’ is still the model for thinking.
One needs to ask, what does Newton mean by hypothesis non fingo? This is prefigured by Galileo's thought experiment. And, empirically, it is the result of the telescope seeing the falsehood of the view that the perfect circle moves on the vault or ceiling of the heaven, which was not a metaphor.
“The 'order of nature' is a given, but why it is, is a completely different kind of question to what can be discovered, given that the order exists. That is what I think Wittgenstein is commenting on.”
He doesn't know how to distinguish between the Scholastics and the ancients. The medievals gave the Why, in god’s intellect. This is impossible in ancient thought, because phusis is said in contradistinction to nomos or law. The Greek, and now universally powerful idea of nature was modified by the Christians, and now has become Positivism.Phusis, also, is said in contradistinction to art, in the sense of not blind phusis, but knowingly making shoes. God’s art is a third step here.
“role formerly assigned to the Divine Intelligence”
This wouldn’t be intelligence. Thomas speaks of God’s sapientiae, wisdom, science skill. Phusis is wholly blind, man has art, e.g., shoemaking, God is sapient: he brings forward the good telos. Nature is blind for the medievals, it is that which is, but not that by which it is. Only the “person” has intelligence. It is removal of the intelligence or person. Persona Dei Verbi = logos! Math has no logos, no Word. No Christ = persona verbi! Ergo, this “intelligence”, as ‘rational’ ordering, is not properly rational ordering. It’s not Good, but blind.
“Aristotle rejected the idea that the forms were real in any sense other than the manifest -”
This is misleading. What Aristotle does is say, I see the accidents, the counters of the pink fingernails, the fingers, the hand, these belong to the man. He rejects the view that the man, substance, or idea in the abstract doctrinal sense is prior, he denies the changes are first, i.e., the long and short finger nail point to the fingernail as the place where the change happens. He says, there must be a ground for both, the hule, hyle, material! It is not at all what horribly silly people like Russel think. Wittgenstein was forced to kiss up to Russell you know, by imitating his trashy work at first. There’s no reality in Aristotle, there is ousia (as material, as true and false, as being and not being, etc.) which becomes hypostasis or foundation as “suppositum” in the medievals, and when it is qualified, it can be intelligent and “free” as person of god.
“ Platonic interpretation of God as an abstract concept”
I think you place too much emphases on one part of Plato's "teaching". Was it teaching or open investigation? This latter is the only thing that makes sense, since who would want to merely "contemplate" concepts? How could that be a highest telos? No, living eidoi, which were open to thought! Eidos and idea refer to ordinary experience (still too, in modern Greek, if I am not mistaken), I see a Plane tree, and another, then a third. A pattern! This is direct experience.Idea ( ????) means, literally, straightforwardly: species (and not understood as mere taxonomic formalism). That is the Latin for idea. It's as though one would say tigers are “abstract”, but, tell it to someone who sees a tiger put its head and shoulders silently above the thick jungle!!! Species does not mean primarily the “tigerlyness”, instead of the tiger. That’s the subject of science, or knowledge. Reread the 7th letter without presupposing the “more-perfect” circle interpretation. He means, rather, the knowledge too, the tigerness, is through the idea. As is the tiger.
"God is illogical.
Omnipotency is a stone too heavy to lift. Omnibenevolence is a just the calm before an earthquake. Omniscience makes us autmatons with no choice in our lives.
That doesn't mean he can't exist."
You're making a burlesque. Consider, perfect, perfectio, means for the Scholastics, e.g., the ripe apple. Omnipotence for Thomas = god can not make a triangle whose angles do not add up to those of two right angles. Limited by the potentia ordinata. etc... Don't add unnecessary fancifulness.
By which I mean, not in order to read the Scholastics properly, but in order to investigate the matter oneself, their model is useful for preparing. Since it is not naive at all, but deep and large with experience in life, heart, ears & thought!
That quote I gave is well-known and verbatim. But, very interesting post, and I thank you for it, although there are points I would take issue with, time permitting.
Maybe it is verbatim, but the meaning is lost. He's not speaking of maths as such, but about maths of motion: mechanics. His whole philosophy (physics) was based on the inertial frame of reference thought experiment. Based on projecting it onto the book of the universe. Newton follows this protective style, leading to the claim that there is nothing beyond the senses in question in the foundation of the new, thereby assumed to be non-metaphysical, physics.
Quoting InternetStranger
The meaning is crystal clear and fundamental to the modern scientific conception of nature. Furthermore it was clearly grounded in his conception of Plato's dianoia, which he accepted provided the kind of certainty higher than sensory perception. It was very much a consequence of the rediscovery of Plato in the Italian Renaissance. (A basic text on this is E A Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.)
This doesn't persuade me at all. I'm with what I've already stated.
Math is not usually about motion. So, one must say mechanics. This prepares for the calculus. Galileo made a thought experiment, about the vacuum where things meeting no resistance will keep going. This is like in Plato where one thinks of the genus, say of a tree. They simply say, it's not in the senses, cant be. Mathimatikos doesn't mean the same thing in ancient Greek as math does in current usage. It includes the ideas, reliable for-knowledge. What Galileo did is superimpose it on the world totality. The ancients never did that.
Your authority is incompetent.
So - what does your speedometer display?
The speed.
God by nature of recorded history and still largely followed by masses has always been either a termed “being” or a “state of being” that relates to an inherent connection to stimulate the human mind towards a direction of “wanting” and this forces retrospection as this would be the destination of the library of references to form understanding for the self that makes sense. The reference to “God” is the very scapegoat vehicle human psychology is using to bring “deeper understanding and meaning to the ever drive to search enlightenment to make sense” in terms of delving deeper to the highest and deepest rooted frames of references to which definition can be allocated just to make some sense. Questioning towards the idea of believe, relevance and religion is to challenge the limits of the internal frames of reference that makes up the existence of consciousness. Thus the definition of “God” is the internal limitations in the interpersonal frames of reference that makes sense, even if any concepts of “Omni-“be applied or adopted. The very existence of the Omni- concepts in your frames of reference make it part of the existent limitations in frames of reference own to your consciousness.