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Talk:Ontological argument (view source)
Revision as of 14:45, September 18, 2011
, 14:45, September 18, 2011→problems of presupposing necessity
What might it mean to say that no kind of thing exists necessarily? It seems to me that this question is the tacit root of the Ontological Argument. It was the reason I had added the things that comprised the now-deleted Counter-criticism section. I think most people assume that there is something which is unchanging and which underlies all the physical world. For atheists, this would be a Unified Field Theory, String Theory, or etc. [[User:PatternOfPersona|PatternOfPersona]] 12:29, 16 September 2011 (EDT)
What might it mean to say that no kind of thing exists necessarily? It seems to me that this question is the tacit root of the Ontological Argument. It was the reason I had added the things that comprised the now-deleted Counter-criticism section. I think most people assume that there is something which is unchanging and which underlies all the physical world. For atheists, this would be a Unified Field Theory, String Theory, or etc. [[User:PatternOfPersona|PatternOfPersona]] 12:29, 16 September 2011 (EDT)
Three quarters down the page at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ontological/ it says:
::Kant observes that there is no intrinsic difference between the concept of a hundred real thalers (coins common in Kant's time) and the concept of a hundred possible thalers. Whenever we think of anything, we regard it as existing, even if the thing in question does not actually exist. Thus, existence does not add anything to the concept of a thing.
I say yes-and-no to that final statement, since the statement is a formal version of a logical oversimplification regarding 'things' (some things are necessary fictions, such as that '2+2=5', and, unless God is a necessary fiction, then there is, in fact, some intellectual traction in the substance of the ontological argument). First, the ideas both of ‘existence’ and of ‘necessary existence’ do add to the material, effectual concept of ‘God’, in that the idea of existence and necessary existence must be subtracted---and arbitrarily so---from any one or more of the material, effectual attributes of the concept of ‘God’. For example, while the existence of power does not add to the effectual nature of power, in that power, rather than power’s existence, is that which effects other material things, power cannot not exist without requiring that any other material thing not exist (whatever exists has some power, and whatever necessarily exists has/is a necessary power). Second, actual existence does not pertain necessarily to an arbitrary fiction such as a half-elephant-half-mouse. Third, actual existence necessarily does not pertain to a necessary fiction such as a ‘purple verb’ or the equation of ‘2+2=5’.
The concept of God is unique in that: a) it is not a necessary fiction, b) it is not an arbitrary fiction, c) it is not an arbitrary possibility like things that are already known to exist, such as a hundred-thalers-currently-in-your-purse. In other words, if God does NOT actually exist as a material object, but is merely an idea of the mind, then the problem is from what does that idea come?
Is the concept of God a contingency of some more basic concepts? If not, and, if, according to atheists, God (nevertheless) is a necessary fiction...
Speaking for myself, it seems to me that the concept which I call ‘God’ is that idea which, without regard to my knowledge of the world, I hold to be the ‘logically best thing’. In other words, I think of God immediately as all that which is logically best, despite how the various parts of the concept might seem not to logically cohere either with one another or with what I know or believe about the world. I see neither possibility nor desirability to rid myself of the concept, though it is possible for a human person not to be used to thinking at a given complex level about it. Hence, while a person may have only a most vague and primitive conscious knowledge of it, I assume it nevertheless is there in everyone, in every necessary complex detail, in the human subconscious. For, if it were not there to begin with, in most implicit form, then I don’t see how it could ever be developed consciously to the least degree, nor that anyone---theist or atheist---could think themselves palpably right in what they feel must be the definitions of some of its parts. But, I find curious that any one of its parts is held to easily be coherent both with itself and with the potential or actual state of the world: that, despite this ease, there is a certain difficulty in finding how its parts might all be coherent with respect to one another, since the human individual must ever refer to a directly personal, conscious knowledge of the world.
As one example, the concept of [[omnipresence]] is palpably known, and thus agreed to prior to any exhaustive attempt to define it: Some one kind of thing, or else every kind of thing put together, must be everywhere. [[User:PatternOfPersona|PatternOfPersona]] 10:45, 18 September 2011 (EDT)