@@NeverTalkToCops1 I don't believe the argument is meant to do so, nor such a Beings particular identity; only necessary attributes and existence. The rest is our homework! ;-)
@@NeverTalkToCops1 No, the argument demonstrates the existence of at least one such entity. At this point, one may simply appeal to Occam's razor which states that one ought not multiply entities beyond necessity.
As a Muslim I loved the ending. The final discussion about "Maximal Nature Of God" translates very nicely to the concept of "Allah-u-Akbar" (God is Greater) in Islam.
According to his wife Adele, "Gödel, although he did not go to church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning", while of Islam, he said, "I like Islam: it is a consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded."
Professor Bonevac, your channel is a lantern in the darkness. A flower growing in a garbage pile. Glad I found it all those years ago, and thank you for making your videos.
@@PhiloofAlexandria Wow, you're very welcome and thanks for the reply! Your classes have been life-changing for me. I consider you one of the great philosophy teachers, and I've listened to many others, including Hubert Dreyfus when he was still alive.
@@Vanadeo Not smart. Without human minds to conceive it, where is the idea of the Sun? Go argue with Goedel (and Berkeley, and Augustine, and Aquinas, and Merton, and Aristotle, and all those other ignorant people).
Read my statement again carefully; I said explicitly; 'The idea of' because that is all we currently have in regards to a God. It does not exist outside of our thought. The sun is very different , it is a measurable, quantifiable object, not an idea. Until proof can be provided that god exists, it exists only as an idea and as far as we currently know, an idea conceived of only by human minds. The universe preceded consciousness, so this is not my argument and besides the point. So, I ask again; Without human minds to conceive of it, where is the idea of God?
@@Vanadeo I know quite well that you said "idea of," which is why all of the thinkers I listed take positions related to idealism. We experience the world through our senses and intellect, and develop ideas. From (among other things) the light and the shape of something in the sky we form an idea of the Sun. From (among other things) the contingency of being, the intelligibility of nature, and the facts of consciousness, we develop the idea of God. Our ideas may be more or less accurate vis-a-vis the "real thing" (we may think the Sun turned about us in the sky each day, for example, which turns out to be wrong) but, trivially, there there would be no ideas about any of them, God or Sun or anything else, without minds.
The same objection to Anselm's argument applies: Existence and nonexistence cannot be properties of a thing, because a thing by definition exists and cannot not exist (or it would not be a thing, indeed it would not BE).
No it doesn’t. There’s a difference between virtual existence and mental existence Quine On What there Is). Pegasus exists mentally but not virtually. He still exists though. Something has existence if it is a member of a set.
@@tim2muntu954 If we take your definition of property: an essential or distinctive attribute or quality of a thing, then replace the word thing with a definition that includes the necessity for existence then Kant's criticism becomes more clear. "An essential or distinctive attribute or quality of a concept with existence" or "An essential or distinctive attribute or quality of an entity that exists." The problem stems less from assigning existence to things but rather that non-existence would disallow the addition of a property to an object. We can reimagine this conversation with a unicorn. Person A can say they are imagining a unicorn with a red horn while person B says that no unicorns have a red horn. Person A then comes back with a painting of their red horned unicorn to showcase that at least one unicorn has a red horn. Now is where Kant's criticism comes in, person B states (in true surrealism fashion) that what Person A is holding is actually a painting not a unicorn, thus does not have a red horn. Neither Person A nor Person B deny the existence of unicorns (and Person B heavily implies a shift in the burden of proof), but Person B will not accept the addition of an attribute unless it is not a painting. That is to say, Kant expresses that existence is a perquisite for all other attributes to be applied and that attributes that are applied to things seeming to be non-existent are rather applied to the object that carries its existence (The painting of the unicorn or the human mind thinking of god). So the ontological argument would boil down to "The mind can hold the thought of god therefor the mind exists." To specifically look at Gödel's proof most either criticize the axioms by applying David Hilbert's remark about the interchangeability of the primitives' names, where one can replace "positive" and "God-Like" to create an entity that one wishes without changing how the conclusion follows from the axioms, or one points to Jordan Howard Sobel's work showcasing an implication of modal collapse that would not only remove our understanding of free will but also remove any possibility of a "sovereign god," that is to say the being stated in the proof would themselves lack any discernable method of choice (All actions that are taken must have been taken and could have been the only actions taken).
@@25chrishall To be a "thing" is to exist. And to be existing is to be a "thing". The use of the verb "to be" is always an assertion of existence. There is no such thing as a nonexistent thing. Existence is not a property that a thing may or may not possess. It is rather the essence of "thingness".
How do you define a “thing”? Existence proofs are fundamental to mathematics. For example we can prove that there exists infinitely many primes. We can take “infinitely many primes” as the “thing”. It is an intuitive concept that can be grasped and understood from definitions (what constitutes a thing), but its existence is not guaranteed at face value and must be demonstrated from more fundamental (intuitive) principles. So a “thing” does not by definition exists necessarily.
The problem with this and many other ontological style arguments is that they treat "existence" as a property. Strictly speaking it isn't, at least not in the way that we typically use it linguistically. If I say that an apple exists, I'm treating "exists" as a property of the apple, and linguistically as a predicate. But technically I've got it backwards when I do that. What I'm _actually_ saying with that statement is "In the reality in which I occupy, there exists an apple." The apple existing is a property of the context (in this case "the reality I occupy") in which it is invoked. In other words, existence isn't a property of the apple, it's a property of the reality in which I occupy. To look at it another way, the concept of an apple isn't changed if I specify that it exists, or that it doesn't exist. It's fundamentally still the same concept. To say an apple exists (in reality) is like saying that an apple is a fruit eaten by man. It's confusing the nature of the relationship between the two. That apples are eaten by man isn't a property of the apple, it's a property of man. An apple would still be an apple, totally absent the concept of eating, or man. The concept of an apple is the same whether you tack on existence, or you don't. So when we start talking about existence as a perfection, it's just begging the question. As already demonstrated, existence doesn't change the concept of an apple, so it's not coherent to say that the concept is improved by the addition of "existence." If we're not talking about the concept then that just leaves us with discussing an _actual_ (extant) apple, but that's just a tautology. To say that an existent apple that exists is better than an existent apple that doesn't exist, is silly. One option is simply incoherent and self contradictory, and the other is tautological. Don't get me wrong. I love me some Kurt Gödel, but I think he was a little out of his wheelhouse when making this argument.
This ontological argument seems to have the same problems as the other ontological arguments. Namely, it's completely formal and therefore tells us very little about the properties this "god" must have necessarily. The common objection, which you will find here in the comments, is that the concept of positive is subjective. This objection comes from the fact that the argument is formal and in order to give it any content whatsoever, human ideas of what is good and bad must enter into it, thereby introducing subjectivity. I have a slightly more original objection, which is that the content of the argument can point in the exact opposite direction because the argument is purely formal, it doesn't dictate what kind of content goes into it. For instance, if we talk about _negative_ properties rather than positive properties, we can arrive at a very startling and worrying conclusion. Consider things like doing harm, being evil, being hateful. These are negative properties. But in order to do harm, for instance, you must be powerful enough to do harm. Therefore, being powerful is a negative property (our version of Axiom 2). And furthermore existence is a negative property, and necessary existence as well. Following Godel's argument to its conclusion we find that a being which contains every negative property must necessarily exist, and of course it has these properties to the maximal degree. It is all-powerful so that it can do as much harm as logically possible. I doubt Godel (or any christian) would accept this argument for a god of pure evil.
At either extreme it argues for the existence of both God and Satan. But that leaves people where they began, with unclear questions. Since people are divorced from the old dialogical methods, and barely aware of the congealing new dialectics, this ontological argument is only helpful for those seeking the strongest arguments for and against faith. And only after significant hours invested in the training of logic, inquisitiveness, and fallacy spotting. But going at it all by oneself is a recipe for self-congratulation and circular reasoning, so it takes two people *at minimum.*
Negative properties don't exist, is what any theologian would respond to your inversion of the ontological argument. Classical and medieval philosophy doesn't view evil as having any properties, but rather as being made of a lack, as being defined as deficiency of properties. Any given thing's existence is considered good, and evil is a disturbance of the order by which something exists. A rotten apple is bad, not because of any specific property of the apple, but rather because the rot takes away from the apple's existence, and deprives it from it's properties of being edible and tasty.
@@rubeng9092 Well, I think that's a pretty bad argument, for a lot of reasons. The main reason is that it goes against our everyday experience of negative things. Pain is not merely the lack of pleasure, bitterness is not merely the lack of sweetness, and so on. And of course if you want to push the argument that far, I can easily go that far in the opposite direction (positive properties don't exist, they are merely a lack), so I don't really see how it solves anything.
@@APaleDot Isn't it that when we encounter something bad we seek it's remedy? Whereas when we encounter something positive we cherish it for what it is? Pain on it's own isn't bad, many people wake up after day of intense exercise, with muscles feeling quite sore, yet they are content and happy about it, since they know their muscles are growing and their capability is increasing. Whereas someone having a serious injury has to put up with not being able to move without crutches or having his arm not function properly, which objectively entails a decrease in that arm's ability to be an arm - which is bad, because it's a negation, and that's where the word negative get's its meaning.
@@APaleDot Pain and bitterness aren't evil. Pain is a necessary signal for survival, but those who enjoy inflicting it are evil. Bitterness is a taste enjoyed by many.
Please pray for me. I want to give up! I have been put down and called names all because of my poor financial situation even by my own family. I lost my job because I refused the vaccine. I refused due to my already failing health. Heart disease and lupus. I get so much hate on UA-cam simply for asking for prayers it’s horrifying. As christian’s we should be able to cry out to one another and ask for prayers or just a shoulder to cry on. I have been struggling to provide for myself and my two autistic children both are non verbal. Taking care of my boys is my life but it’s overwhelming because they are special needs. My husband passed away three years ago so I’m all alone. I’m so overwhelmed! My situation already has me down, and depressed. We are facing eviction. We have nowhere to go! But I have so much faith that God will provide for me and my children. I know God loves us all. FAITH OVER FEAR!
Whoa, I'll pray right away and share with others! If you haven't already, consider consecrating yourself to St Joseph and Mary. His feast day (anniversary) celebrating his espousal to Mary is coming up March 19th and lots of people consecrate themselves to him. He was the man whom God the Father empowered and entrusted to take care of His Son Jesus on earth when He was a helpless baby, and Mary the Mother of God who conceived Him. There has never been any greater treasure on earth than that. If God unplifted and trusted Joseph to take care of His own Son incarnate in flesh, then how much more can he help take care of us from Heaven now that He is glorified by God and in the continual presence of God Himself. Believe me, I speak from experience, he and our Blessed Mother can help. May God have mercy upon you and bless you quickly, I am amazed by your faith, sacrificial dedication, and strength. You are behaving heroically, and a heroic mother! I am sorry that the west has become so evil and our culture and government is so corrupt, resulting in your job loss because of your refusal to take such an unnecessary, ineffective, and dangerous vaccine. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. May Jesus come to your aid. I hope you find a new job soon. I will pray to St Joseph that you find one, since that is one his specialities since it was him whom God chose to teach Jesus carpentry/masonry and work along side him for years. He is the patron of all workers. Keep the faith and don't give up!!!
The Lord Almighty Jesus is Alive. I am a Hindu Convert. The Devil will bring many troubles. But the Lord has already made it very clear that He has overcome the World. I will be prying for you. Please Read Hebrews 10: 32-39.
This is an important argument. It leads directly to the question of what is and isn't in the domain of human determinability. The lack of facts or lack of logical formulation, that this argument brings up, should be directly looked at. In this way new facts or new relations of ideas will be inferred. This realm of inference could then be confronted. In this way light will be shed on the abyss of ignorance. No? The reasons and evidence, or lack thereof, why we can or can't "explain" God should all have inverse suppositions. We would gain knowledge were we to extrapolate these inverse suppositions to their inverse logical relations wouldn't we?
Gödel was not merely ONE OF THE greatest logicians of the Twentieth Century, nor even THE greatest logician of the Twentieth Century. Gödel was the greatest logician of ALL TIME.
I actually enjoyed this presentation. It’s a nice argument, with a clear structure. As someone interested in mathematics and formal logic, I’m pleasantly surprised to see an argument in the language of modal logic. It was nice to research and find out that this axiomatic system is consistent. However, it seem to not be applicable in the real world, as this system implies a modal collapse. Also, since “positive” property is not defined constructively, we can not infer any real-world properties of this maximal object, so it might as well be referring to a rabbit in my back yard. Due to the same limitations, we don’t get a strategy to find out which properties are positive, or a way to find or determine if any given object is maximal in this regard.
I used Anderson’s reconstruction to avoid the modal collapse problem. I also agree with Koons that “is self-identical and such that the cat is on the mat” is not a real property.
@@TeaParty-qh1py I would suggest that the "facts of reality without contradiction" of which logic can help derive and describe, does not exclude the metaphysical.
As the video demonstrates the power of Godel’s argument hangs on the meaning of modal language. The only way I can make sense of modal language in the context of metaphysical philosophy is this: There is the actual reality in which we live and which has a particular nature. Given that nature there are many ways reality could have been but isn’t (or in other words many facts of the actual reality are contingent). Let us call the set of all realities that could have been the “set of metaphysically possible worlds”. Then we define that “X is metaphysically possible” iff X obtains in at least one element of the set of metaphysically possible worlds”, and we define that “X is metaphysically necessary” iff X obtains in all elements of the set of metaphysically possible worlds. But then the expression “X is necessarily possible” (or, to be precise, “it is metaphysically necessary that X is metaphysically possible” turns out to be meaningless, for there are no different kinds of metaphysical possibility. Either X does obtain in some element of the set of metaphysically possible worlds or it doesn’t. If it does then in it is metaphysically possible simpliciter. If it doesn’t then it is not metaphysically possible. Thus to speak of “necessary possibility” as if it were something distinct is to speak nonsense, and to use that non-existing distinction in an argument is to build on thin air. I suspect that Godel’s error is to uncritically apply modal logic to metaphysical reasoning. In the realm of logic perhaps it makes sense to speak of X being necessarily possible, but that’s irrelevant to the practical business of metaphysical philosophy. After all it is not like one can map the set of all logically possible worlds to the set of all metaphysically possible worlds. So, for example, the set of all logically possible worlds (that is in the set of all internally logically consistent realities) there are some worlds which are theistic and some that aren’t. For example a by definition logically possible world is the empty world in which nothing exists, which is a non theistic world. But it is easy to prove (see Plantinga) that if it is metaphysically possible that theism is true then it it metaphysically necessary that it is true. Or, applying my meaning of modal language, if theism is true in one metaphysically possible world then it is true in all of them. One can see why this is so without actually following Plantinga’s proof: Theism is a claim about the very nature of reality. If the nature of reality is theistic then all ways reality could have been will be theistic also (it’s not like the nature of reality is a contingent fact or that God might remove himself from reality). Incidentally for the same reason Plantinga’s result can be turned on its head: If it is metaphysically possible that theism is false then it it metaphysically necessary that it is false.
This is very good, but it depends on how God is defined. If God is defined as the set of all metaphysical possibilities, then it is not possible to remove this from the sets, because all such sets depend on this by definition. As to your point, the reason I agree is that I'd go another step and say that because there is no way to prove that anything can be metaphysically impossible, including even basics like logic itself, any technical talk of such is incoherent. For me, this means the problem reduces to what God is in respect to existence. If there is a truth about this (which there is no reason to be particularly skeptical about that I can see), then the focus must be on finding the true answer to this question, which will, in my view, require some kind of empiricism (including the subjective kind in this special case where existence can only be experienced subjectively in the final analysis.. in other words, this is not a pragmatic empirical issue that can be tested and verified locally).
@@konberner170 The definition of God that everybody accepts is that God is the greatest conceivable thing. This is a clear definition as proven by the fact that even atheists can engage in intelligent and indeed sophisticated theological argumentation. Now the greatest conceivable being will certainly be prior to everything. That is, God will not need to stand on something else, or conform to something else. Therefore God is what philosophers call the "metaphysical ultimate", the ground on which everything else stands. (Incidentally metaphysical naturalism - which is the worldview of most atheists - also entails a metaphysical ultimate, namely mechanical nature.) But the metaphysical ultimate is the same in all metaphysically possible worlds. Therefore if it is possible that some metaphysical theory (whether theism or naturalism) is true then it is necessarily true. As for what God is in respect to existence, the answer is pretty straightforward: Existence itself is not prior to God, thus God does not only make what exists (or may exist) but makes existence itself. Theists commonly say that "God exists", but this is a linguistic shortcut which is misleading when understood literally. Strictly speaking "God exists" is an incoherent proposition. Theism's claim is *not* that among the many things that exist God also exists. Theism's claim is rather that existence itself is created by God. As for other existents, both theists and atheists agree with the proposition "apples exist" but mean something different, because atheists and theists understand differently what it is for something to exist. The understand differently what existence itself is. So naturalists believe that the existence of, say, elementary particles and their mechanical nature is implicit and autonomous. Theists believe that their existence is not autonomous but depends on God's will; they are created and remain around as long as God wills it.
@@DianelosGeorgoudis Atheists don't all agree with that. Theists don't all agree with that. And "great" is substantially subjective. Who decides what is greater than something else? Maybe start over?
@@DianelosGeorgoudis 🕉 सर्वं खल्विदं ब्रह्म 🕉 Chandogya Upanishad 3.14 (‘sarvam khalvidam brahma’ teaches that ‘All this is indeed Brahman’. “Brahman” is a Sanskrit word referring to the TOTALITY of existence. There is nothing but Eternal Being, Consciousness, Bliss!).
Thank you! I’ve been looking for a video explaining Godel’s Ontological Argument for over a year! I’m still not sure I get it, but I’ll watch it a few more times. I just wish you’d also explained the symbols used. But this is a great help!
Thank you so very much for your videos. I’m a 65 year old photographer with a love for philosophy because I have a love for God. I’ve always liked the Ontological Argument as a starting point - followed by Contingency and on to cosmological and morals arguments. I’ve been working on an argument from beauty (as an artist) which seems to me to be somewhat like the moral argument but is also a design argument. Anyway, thank you. I greatly enjoyed your presentation and appreciate Godel’s model ontological argument.
Interesting comment. I want to hear more about this design from beauty argument (from artists pov). I'm a lover of the beauty of nature. I always think mountains/forests, fields and oceans untouched by mankind has beauty. Once arrange and rearrange, we make it ugly.
l second that request, that you expand on this idea of beauty if you feel like sharing. As l child growing up on the edge of a grimy industrial landscape, with factories, coal mines, hundreds of smoke stacks across the horizon, the ugliness overwhelmed me and l would squint and minimise my visual field until l could fixate on something beautiful like a tiny patch of cloud in the sky or reflections in puddle. These moments literally gave a crushing childhood meaning and uplift, it was the nearest thing to numinous for me. l detest the axiom "that beauty is truth" however beauty is definitely some kind of harbinger,and reprieve, for sure.
@@veronica_._._._ I plan on posting later this week. Both my parents were born and raised in West Virginia so coal mining was very much part of my family. To me, just as darkness is the absence of light, so ugliness is the absence of beauty. In art we know that art/beauty has properties. The same is true with the beauty we find in nature. And, just as art needs an artist - so the beauty we find in nature needs an artist (Psalms 19). Van Gogh used paint and canvas to re-create a Starry Night, but God does it ever night.
Essentially, this and Anselm's argument are very precise formulations of the intuitive concept that humanity's conception of God must flow from His will.
Thank you for this video that sharpens the arguments of Anselm and Descartes using the powerful logic of Godel. I would greatly appreciate if you can comment on Nagarjuna's Tetralemma and whether that is a refutation of the logic of Anselm/Dscartes/Godel.
Strange argument. For starters, it is based on questionable axioms. It leaves undefined which properties are necessarily positive, other than the property of existence and the property of being God-like, which is also not very clear. If I understand correctly, to be "God-like" is to possess all positive properties? (All necessarily positive properties, not those that are contingent on circumstances). But we don't know what those properties are, other than the property of existence. So if the logic holds and the axioms are in fact valid, we still don't know the nature of this being we call "God"?
If you look into eastern Theosophy, similar conclusions have been reached : the existence of Divinity/ a Divine Being, can be inferred from the existence of it's attributes ( omniscience, omnipotence, etc ) but not fully known, by any part of it's creation : nature, cosmos, humans. Peace
Gödel's ontological proof is just a formalization of a pre-existing ontological argument. He just "translated" to the mathematical language - using modal first-order logic - the argument, with no merit of the validity of the axioms of whether the conclusion really means the existence of God. I think Gödel himself didn't intend to "prove God's existence".
For all of us that are taken by the beauty of saint Anselm's ontological argument, Gottfried Leibniz' phrase sums it up best: "if God is possible then God is (exists)". Incidentally, the syllogism is correct, pursuant to classical Aristotelian logic.
It reminds me of something I heard recently (I don't remember who said it) about physics. "Anything not prohibited is mandatory." Some people assume that magnetic monopoles and cosmic strings must exist unless there is a still-undiscovered reason they don't exist. It is at odds with Occam's razor and the concept of "burden of proof." This probably explains why they can't agree whether negative energy or sterile neutrinos are real despite some good circumstantial evidence.
I could never feel the strength of Axiom 5 (Necessary existence is positive / existence is a perfection / existence is an improving quality). There's just nothing compelling me to accept it. Why is existence necessarily "better" than non-existence? Why do so many accept it without any justification as something obvious? Not only do I not find it obvious, it sounds to me like a category mistake. Is there something I don't see? Note that this isn't the same as Kant's critique, who would deny that existence is a predicate. I'm fine with it being a predicate (at least for the sake of argument). I claim that these are two different predicates that aren't related the way that the axiom states.
It being stronger doesn't mean it's more compelling, it simply means it's a more substantial claim. "All swans are white" is stronger than "Some swans are white".
@@cynicviper You're not wrong, but that doesn't make my choice of words a mistake. Note that we also call compelling arguments "strong" and we conceptualize arguments as resting on "strong" or "weak" foundations. "Strong(1) claims require strong(2) evidence". When we say that a self-evident axiom is "strong", do we mean (1) or (2)? Does it even make sense for self-evident axioms to be stronger(1) or weaker?
@@luszczi It absolutely doesn't make you wrong, I apologize if that is how it came across. Without wanting to sound pretentious, I was merely trying to explain what I thought was a misunderstanding. You are certainly right, and I as well, don't agree with the Axiom. To Gödel, who perhaps cared about logical rigor this whole endeavor matters, but to me, it is still nonsensical to Analytically grant existence to anything.
"Meaningfulness" is the why. An existing thing affects the state of reality; a non-existent thing does not. Being effects things. Non-being does not. Being is therefore greater than non-being.
@@ansaz14 pen > sword sometimes. Sometimes the concept of god is all thats needed to change the world. Since all that needs is a concept to change, then being real doesnt matter
If one is Omnipotent, then one is capable of doing good (as well as everything else). If one is Good, then one intends to do good. If one intends to good and one is capable of doing good, then one does good. The only thing left is: Is it good to eliminate evil?
I don't know if it's true and the source is questionable but funny but I like Norm Macdonald's thought on this matter. He thinks if God made everything good he would simply be expanding himself. He wants a family therefore he had to make not good who now in a cool turn of events has the capability to do good and join in him
The very idea of 'positive properties' is totally subjective; there is no way to test a property to see if it is positive or negative, it is open to the interpretation of the speculator. Gödel' should have realized this when he had to revise it to 'some properties are positive'. As an attempted argument for an objective god, this doesn't cut it. Excellent presentation in the video though!
I'm excited to learn you have a background in mathematics. We are all familiar with the idea of using different axioms concerning accessibility relations for possible worlds models to model different kinds of modality. But have you heard that a better way to do so is to use topology (at least for the case of S4 and beyond)? Consider the axioms of S4 modal logic. A proposition is possible if and only if it is possible it is possible. If P implies Q, then P is possible implies Q is possible. If P is true, then P is possible. “P or Q” is possible, if and only if either P is possible or Q is possible. Now consider the closure axioms for a topological space. The closure of the closure of a set equals the closure of the set. If P is a subset of Q, then closure of P is a subset of the closure of Q. P is a subset of the closure of P. The closure of the union of A and B is equal to the union of the closure of A with the closure of B. The axioms of the possibility operator of modal logic in S4 coincide precisely with the axioms for the closure operator of a topological space! In the same way, the axioms of the necessity operator of modal logic in S4 coincide precisely with the axioms of the interior operator in a topological space! I’m still astonished by this. So we can model a system of S4 modal logic using a topological space. The points of the topological space represent possible worlds. Propositions are represented by sets of possible world (sets in which the proposition is true). If a proposition P is represented by a set of possible worlds S, then possibly P is represented by the closure of S (it makes sense that the set of worlds in which P is possibly true is a superset of the worlds in which P is true). Necessarily P is represented by the interior of S (it makes sense that the set of worlds in which necessarily P is true is a subset of the set of worlds in which P is true). A proposition P is represented by an open set if and only if "P is true" implies that "P is necessarily true." A proposition P is represented by a closed set if and only if "possibly P is true" implies that "P is true." For example, since a MGB is defined in part to be a being that exists necessarily, if the proposition "A MGB exists" is true, the proposition "It is necessarily true a MGB exists" is true. So "A MGB exists" is represented by an open set. Furthermore "No MGB exists" is represented by a closed set. If it is possible no MGB exists, then no MGB exists. What would an S5 topological space be? It would be one where every open set was a closed set, and vice versa. An S5 space could be represented as a discrete union of closed-open set, where any set was closed-open if and only it was a union of a sub-collection of these discrete sets. The interior of a set would be the largest closed-open subset of that set, and the closure of a set would be the smallest closed-open set containing that set. Above we noted that "A MGB exists" is represented by an open set. Working in S5, the set representing “a MGB exists” must be a closed set as well, so if it is possible a MGB exists then a MGB exists. Given any topology T on a set, we can take the minimal refinement of T that satisfies the conditions of S5 in the obvious way (show the intersection of any collection of S5 topologies is S5, etc.). Therefore, it would seem given any S4 modal logic, there is in a sense a minimal extension of that logic to an S5 modal logic. Perhaps this is what Richard Swinburne was referring to when he talked about metaphysical necessity being a sort of idealized version of epistemic necessity.
That is really nice. Contemporary philosophers underutilize topological concepts; they're often very illuminating as well as elegant. One of my regrets is that, in my last semester of graduate school, I didn't at least audit a course being offered on topological logic. I feared it would distract me from finishing my dissertation. But it was an opportunity I haven't had since to study the links.
@@PhiloofAlexandria Let’s define a Goldbach number to be an even integer greater than 2 that cannot be written as the sum of two primes. Then the Goldbach conjecture asserts that there is no Goldbach number. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the Goldbach conjecture is undecidable; that it is true there is no Goldbach number, but it is impossible to prove that. In an S4 logic modelling provability, it’s possible a Goldbach number exists (because we cannot prove no such number exists). But in a metaphysical modality, it is impossible a Goldbach number exists (because in reality no such number exists). Now given any positive integer, it is in principle possible to verify through a finite process that that integer is not a Goldbach number. So in the modality of provability modelled by S4, it is not possible 4 is a Goldbach number, it is not possible 6 is a Goldbach number, it is not possible 8 is a Goldbach number, etc. Yet at the same time it is possible there exists a positive even Goldbach number. It’s not clear how we would model this situation using possible worlds with a transitive reflexive accessibility relation. There would have to be a world accessible from the actual world in which 4 was not a Goldbach number, 6 was not a Goldbach number, and so on, but there was a Goldbach integer. That’s not helpful. But we can model this using topology as follows. We assume there exist possible worlds, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc., in which 4 is a Goldbach number in 4, 6 is a Goldbach number in 6, and so on. Since all of these assertions are demonstrably impossible, they are not possible in the actual world. What that means is, topologically speaking, there is an open neighbourhood of the actual world that excludes world 2, another open neighbourhood that excludes world 4, another open neighbourhood that excludes world 6, and so on. Since open sets are closed under finite intersection, there is an open neighbourhood containing the actual world that excludes any given finite set of these worlds. This reflects the fact that given any finite set of positive even integers, we can in principle verify they are not Goldbach numbers in a finite amount of time. Now however, imagine that the actual world is a limit point of the set {2,4,6,8,. . .}. This reflects the fact that while no particular such world is possible from the perspective of the actual world, the collection of all of these worlds is possible. This reflects the fact that while we can prove any finite subset of the positive even integers contains no Goldbach numbers, we cannot prove the set of all positive even integers does not contain a Goldbach integer. Now let’s go to the S5-topology generated by this S4 topology. This topology includes all the open and closed sets from the S4-topology. In this topology, open sets are closed sets and vice versa. So in this S5 topology, open sets are now closed under arbitrary intersections. So in this topology, the intersection of the open sets containing the actual world and excluding 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. is an open set. And so it is metaphysically impossible a Goldbach number exists.
So, basically, positive means that it's better off, thus its opposite cannot also be better off. God is the sum of all positive things, existence is a positive thing, therefore God has to exist. Is this an accurate summary?
But how are we determining that it is better to exist than to not exist, surely there’s not much evidence for that. I’m thinking of some eastern philosophy or Schopenhauer or someone saying existence is pain and bad, not necessarily agreeing with that just wondering how to resolve this
If you are a barber, a positive property is to shave men. But shaving a man who already shaves himself would be a negative. Therefore, shaving all men who do not shave themselves would be maximally positive. Does the maximally positive barber shave himself? Allowing statements of universal comprehension, such as something being maximally positive in all respects, is bound to result in inconsistencies. Of all people, Gödel should have known better.
I think a bit more work is needed for an objective definition of “positive”. The definition here is very dependent on things we value as a species, like being alive vs. being dead, or “it’s preferable to be God than to not be God”. Of course a living species would value living over not, but this is an ontological argument so it needs to be ontologically positive. “Positive” needs to be something defined by its presence, & negated by its absence, like heat or strength vs. cold or weakness. Knowledge should be positive, not because we prefer to have it than to not have it, but because it is something that can be had, while ignorance is merely the lack of having knowledge. The thing is, we may conceive of a possible world where the creatures evolved to prefer ignorance to knowledge, but there should be no possible world where ignorance is ontologically “positive” even if it is valued or preferred.
Those are similar to my thoughts...it seems those dependencies without adequate definitions indicate assumptions aka implied yet unacknowledged axioms.
🐟 03. CONCEPTS Vs THE TRUTH: The term “TRUTH” is a grossly misused word. Anything which has ever been written or spoken, by even the greatest sage or Avatar (incarnation of Divinity), including every single postulation within this Holy Scripture, is merely a CONCEPT and not “The Truth”, as defined further down. A concept is either accurate or inaccurate. Virtually all concepts are inaccurate to a degree. However, some concepts are far more accurate than others. A belief is an unhealthy and somewhat problematic relationship one has with a certain concept, due to misapprehension of life as it is, objectively-speaking. Attachment to beliefs, particularly in the presumption of individual free-will, is the cause of psychological suffering. For example, the personal conception of the Ultimate Reality (God or The Goddess) is inaccurate to a large extent (see Chapter 07). The concept of Ultimate Reality being singular (“All is One”) is far more accurate. The transcendence of BOTH the above concepts (non-duality) is excruciatingly accurate. However, none of these concepts is “The Truth” as such, since all ideas are relative, whilst The Truth is absolute. It is VITALLY important to distinguish between relative truth and Absolute Truth. Relative truth is temporal, mutable, subjective, dependent, immanent, differentiated, conditioned, finite, complex, reducible, imperfect, and contingent, whilst Absolute Truth is eternal, immutable, objective, independent, transcendent, undifferentiated, unconditional, infinite, non-dual (i.e. simple), irreducible, perfect, and non-contingent. Absolute Truth is the ground of all being (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit), and is prior to any mind, matter, name, form, intent, thought, word, or deed. Good and bad are RELATIVE - what may be good or bad can vary according to temporal circumstances and according to personal preferences. For example, there is absolutely no doubt that citrus fruits are a good source of nutrients for human beings. However, it may be bad to consume such beneficial foods when one is experiencing certain illnesses, such as chronic dysentery. 'One man's food is another man's poison.' Because of the relative nature of goodness, anything which is considered to be good must also be bad to a certain degree, since the extent of goodness is determined by the purpose of the object in question. As demonstrated, citrus fruits can be either good or bad, depending on its use. Is drinking arsenic good or bad? Well, if one wishes to remain alive, it is obviously bad, but for one who wishes to die, it is obviously good. However, beyond the dichotomy of good and bad, is the Eternal Truth, which transcends mundane relativism. Therefore, the goal of life is to rise above the subjective “good” and “bad”, and abide in the transcendental sphere. A qualified spiritual preceptor is able to guide one in the intricacies of such transcendence. Such a person, who has transcended mundane relative truth, is said to be an ENLIGHTENED soul. When making moral judgments, it is more appropriate to use the terms “holy/evil” or “righteous/unrighteous”, rather than “good/bad” or “right/wrong”. As the Bard of Avon so rightly declared in the script for one of his plays, there is nothing which is intrinsically either good or bad but “thinking makes it so”. At the time of writing (early twenty-first century), especially in the Anglosphere, most persons seem to use the dichotomy of “good/evil” rather than “good/bad” and “holy/evil”, most probably because they consider that “holiness” is exclusively a religious term. However, the terms “holy” and “righteous” are fundamentally synonymous, for they refer to a person or an act which is fully in accordance with pure, holy, and righteous principles (“dharma”, in Sanskrit). So a holy person is one who obeys the law of “non-harm” (“ahiṃsā”, in Sanskrit), and as the ancient Sanskrit axiom states: “ahiṃsa paramo dharma” (non-violence is the highest moral virtue or law). The ONLY real (Absolute) Truth in the phenomenal manifestation is the impersonal sense of “I am” (“ahaṃ”, in Sanskrit). Everything else is merely transient and unreal (“unreal” for that very reason - because it is ever-mutating, lacking permanence and stability). This sense of quiddity is otherwise called “Infinite Awareness”, “Spirit”, “God”, “The Ground of Being”, “Necessary Existence“, “The Higher Self”, as well as various other epithets, for it is the very essence of one's being. Chapters 06 and 10 deal more fully with this subject matter. Of course, for one who is fully self-realized and enlightened, the subject-object duality has collapsed. Therefore, a fully-awakened individual does not perceive any REAL difference between himself and the external world, and so, sees everything in himself, and himself in everything. If it is true that there are none so blind as those who don’t WANT to see, and none so deaf as those who don’t WANT to hear, then surely, there are none so ignorant as those who don’t WANT to learn the truth. OBVIOUSLY, in the previous paragraph, and in most other references to the word “truth” within this booklet, it is meant “the most accurate concept possible”, or at least “an extremely accurate fact”. For example, as clearly demonstrated in Chapters 21 and 22, it is undoubtedly “true” that a divinely-instituted monarchy is the most beneficial form of national governance, but that is not the Absolute Truth, which is the impersonal, never-changing ground of all being. So, to put it succinctly, all “truths” are relative concepts (even if they are very accurate) but the Universal Self alone is REAL (Absolute) Truth. “In the absence of both the belief 'I am the body' and in the absence of the belief that 'I am not the body', what is left is what we really are. We don't need to define what we really are. We don't need to create a thought to tell us what we are. What we are is what TRUTH is." ************* “God is not something 'out-there', 'looking-in', but God (or Source) has BECOME all of This. So, God is the Underlying Principle of all of this - the Energy or the Consciousness. The (psycho-physical) manifestation has arisen within Consciousness as an imagination in the mind of Source.” Roger Castillo, Australian Spiritual Teacher, 15/07/2015. “I am the TRUTH...” “...and the TRUTH shall set you free”. Lord Jesus Christ, John 14:16 and 8:32.
@@ReverendDr.Thomas Seriously, are you a bot?? A giant wall of unreadable text that's completely irrelevant to the comment thread...I'm not going to read that. It's apparently copypasted from a (I imagine _much_) larger text. If you value your own ideas (and are not a bot) why not take some effort and actually contribute to the conversation?
exactly my thoughts, positive is relative and completely inseparable from negative aspects. How can there be anything positive without negative? both of which are human constructs. For example as a thought experiment you could say death is a negative so lets keep everything that is "alive" and discard everything that is "dead". Well, people, plants, puppies, lemurs, trees are all alive so they can stay, but rocks, mountains, stars, black holes and dead people are all "dead" so let's get rid of those. So you'd end up with people, plants, puppies etc just floating in empty space, which is ridiculous. Death as a thing is jsut a state of matter; it it necessary for things to become or turn into a state of matter of being alive. It's the same thing. We as humans provide the property of positive and negative, so to me there really isn't such a things as Positive or a being that is only positive; it would be impossible to percieve it because it wouldn't have a contrast.
Wonderful video, thank you! I love the "round square" example at 15:30 that segues into Leibnitz's approach. The explanation of Leibnitz's approach appears to share similarities to showing that a space is complete. If it is, then it is spanned by a linearly independent set of basis (or "properties", in this context) which must be consistent with each other because they are independent (or "primitive", in this context). Properties of all objects in this space must therefore be consistent too. Thanks for the video!
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Existence is not a property of the subject. It is a property of the concept. "My spaceship" is not a thing that exists, but it's not the spaceship that has this negated property, because, well, it doesn't exist. Instead, the concept "my spaceship" has a negation of a reifying property. Can't believe how much people trip on this simple language pitfall.
I can imagine a Flying Spaghetti Monster that created the universe. But it would not be perfect without existing, because existence is a positive property. And nobody is more positive than him! Therefore the Monster exists.
Again, I very much appreciate your explanation of essences. A is an essence of x if and only if it is a property of x and entails the necessary properties of x and only the necessary properties of x. That makes sense. But when I read Godel's original proof, it seems to say something different. It seems to say A is an essence of x if and only if it is a property of x and entails all the properties of x. Am I misreading Godel's argument? Or does this reflect a change in Anthony Anderson's revision of the argument? If it is a change, I'd say it is an improvement. I don't see why an essence of x should imply non-necessary properties of x.
Thank you for your video. One thing that comes to mind to me when reading Axiom 5 is the myth of Sibyl, of which you talked about at the beginning of your T.S. Eliot and The Wasteland lecture. Can we say that for old Sibyl, existence is still a positive property?
What if a society existed that sacrificed it’s most intellectual person every year? Is intellect itself a negative in that society or is it the society that’s a negative?
Around 300 BC, the Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote: “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” Yet again, this is taking God from a religious perspective and not a spiritual one. God = unconditional love = no judgment = pure silence. The last statement means each and every religion is wrong. The Bible has 5 errors in the very 1st paragraph plus it has been edited and mistranslated so much and so often and books have been taken out etc etc etc.......
Isn’t calling things “positive property” just a human construct? As arbitrary as dividing vistas into beautiful or unappealing-possibly an interesting exercise, but having no impact or implication for the world in itself
Loving and teaching one's children is a positive thing, whether animals are aware of it or not. Humanity didn't *invent* the existence of positive and negative. We've simply observed. Don't mistake ontology for epistemology.
@@WisdomThumbs no it isn't. We merely called one set of actions of human behaviour "loving" and one particular set of communication between two of more humans belonging to certain arbitrary classes "teaching". There's nothing special or specific about both
@@shahsadsaadu5817 "Loving" acts just so happen to be the acts that produce the most resilient and self-sustaining future generations, which keeps the species alive and leaves the fondest memories. It appears you've descended into the trap of contrarianism, verging on solipsistic philosophy.
I think consciousness or the ability to be conscious alive and or capable to observe demonstrates a creator . Also the limits put on the ability to imagine think and or consider a idea shows how vast our creators sandbox is
Am I the only one who thinks Godel's whole endeavor reeks of desperation? i mean, substitute the world god for the word smurf, as in the magical little blue men, then argue that in order for a smurf to be a smurf it needs to have the qualities that would justify its existence, and you can see just how f-ing ridiculous the whole thing is. I mean, just how many fallacies does one needs to overlook for one not to shut this whole thing down immediately? special pleading? begging the question? circular argument? equivocation? how is this even logic? first Godel assumes the existence of a being who, in order for it to be what he chooses that being to be, has to have certain qualities, in order for the imagined qualities of the imagined being to be evidence of the being itself. Now, i am by no means an expert on Godel, hell im not even a fan, but maybe that's why he never published this. I wanna believe that the argument is just Godel f-king around, seeing how far he could take things on a ridiculously flaw foundation. Does anybody know if he has a believer?
@cmfox there are a few things you not taking into consideration. First as Gaunilo demonstrated, because the argument can be applied to an endless number of fantastic things, like a smurf or a "definitely not a god thing", the argument itself cannot be taken a proof of god. Second, that, like Kant demonstrated, because existence is not a predicate, it cannot be part of the concept of something, which means that it cannot be part of an analytical proposition. For it requires of evidence to be affirmed and is therefore a posteriori, which invalidates the point of the argument. Which take us back to my original argument, that because the argument can be applied to an endless number of fantastic things and therefore cannot be said to be naturally conducing to the concept of god, and because existence is not a predicate, that is, because it is a posteriori, Godel's argument necessitates the concept of god to exist to be conducing to the concept of god, which makes the whole thing fallacious.
@cmfox Your point is valid. the reason why I focus much more on Anselm's argument is because I find contemporary ontological arguments to suffers of the same fatal flaws. I'm not trying to be a philistine, I just don't understand how anybody can not see it, honestly. The way I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, all contemporary ontological arguments revolve around the notion that the concept of god postulates the greatest possible being, that no greater being can be conceived and that therefore god's existence most be either impossible or necessary. That if god did not exist it can never come into existence, or be cause to come into existence, cause that would imply a greater being, et cetera, et cetera. there's no need to go any further. for the argument implies that we, hairless monkeys with our silly little brains are somehow able to define what the greatest possible being is, which is ridiculous. For such an assumption would imply that we have valid knowledge of god, which makes the argument circular and beg the question. or how do we know what a god is? and if we cannot reasonably define what a god is ( just take of the problems of omnipotence for example ), how can we presume to know whether god can be created or not? and why does it needs to be created? what possible justification can there be for the idea that if god comes to be is because it was created? why can't it just come to be? how can we possible argue that we know enough of divine mechanics as to presume that the greatest possible being cannot just come to be? wouldn't that make god some sort catholic god? ( as in the first thing that is) and isn't the catholic god proven impossible by the second law of thermodynamics? See, no matter how you slice it, the contemporary or reformulated ontological argument presupposes god to make god be, which is a fallacy. and we haven't even considered Peter Van Inwagen's knowno!
@cmfox yes but that's exactly my point. We do not know, which implies that our only possible recourse is to return to the null hypothesis: until we know we most restrain from making assumptions. we cannot possibly know, so we cannot possibly justify making any assumptions as to the possible qualities of an unsubstantiated being. and that includes its powers, capacities and rules of existence. Remember, neither the ontological argument nor the reformulated ontological argument apply exclusively to the concept of god. Anselm famously destroyed the argument by applying it to an island and Peter van Inwagen chocked the life out of the reformulated argument by imagining the knowmo ( A knowno is a being that knows that there is no perfect being. there is no reason to believe that the knowno is a contradiction, and the concept of a being that has the qualities that make it a knowno is not logically absurd. if we then accept that a knowno is not intrinsically impossible, as in such a thing would require the fallacy of special pleading, then we most accept that there is a possible world where a knowno exists. and by accepting that there is a possible world where a knowno exists one accepts that there is a possible world where there is no perfect being. yet a perfect being, at least according to the unjustifiable assumptions of the reformulated ontological argument, most have necessary existence, it most exist in all possible worlds. and by lacking existence in the knowno's world it does not have necessary existence, which means that it cannot possibly be a perfect being ). thus my tendency to always use Gaunilo's and Kant's answer. The way I see it, the reformulated ontological argument is Anselm's argument with a couple of extra steps. for both versions require the reader to make assumptions it cannot possible justify, and they both depend on special pleading to make their case. or how is god more likely than a smurf? how is god more likely than a knowno? yet I don't see you arguing for the existence of a smurf. and if god is as likely as a smurf then the concept of god is idiocy, and you most accept it.
@cmfox my argument is that it is impossible to know that there is a perfect being, and that therefore belief if unwarranted. that the argument used to ascertain the existence of such a being can be applied to an endless amount of fantastic beings, and that the fact that those fantastic beings are as likely as god is evidence of the silliness of the argument itself.
Presumably God's existence is free of the troubles that afflict us. But that doesn't remove the worry. Whether necessary existence limits God's power is a deep and rather puzzling question. Also, if we take 'positive' as meaning something strictly logical, definable without negation, it's not clear that necessary existence is positive; it seems to mean something like 'invulnerable' or 'indestructible' or 'contingent on nothing,' all of which contain negation. So, I think you're right to think that this is a potential trouble spot.
@@PhiloofAlexandria It wouldn't be as much of an issue if it wasn't an axiom that didn't need to be an axiom if it was explicitly true thanks to the other axioms. creates a bit of a logic loop by using it as an independent factor whereas any other positive trait is proven by the other axioms. I would love to see someone tackle the problem without that. I'm open to it, because of definition 3. You could argue that something with suffering is not God. I don't think Christians would like that definition very much, though - they may argue that the ability to withstand suffering is positive and necessary as suffering is innate? that might be another loop actually.
Godel was a brilliant man. He said he had found a secret interpretation in Leibniz’s writings and that is why someone was trying to poison him. I suspect he was right.
Assuming a ranking of any sort automatically implies the ultimate rank beyond which there is no other. This sort of proof assumes its own truth from the outset, to gainsay it requires only that one doubt the ranking.
Gödel’s work is out of my grasp. If I understood it, I’d be a step ahead of those who applaud, “A brilliant man has an ontological argument for the existence of God.” I hope I don’t disappoint the mathies here. I am going to guess that I don’t need to worry about Gödel’s argument for two reasons. First, there are lots of excellent mathies out there; they do not seem to be standing on street corners with sandwich boards, proclaiming God Exists: Kurt Proved Him! Second, I can’t think of a serious* biologist yet who says that life was created by any god. (*sorry, Flood biologists don’t count; I have read a little of their stuff: it’s silly.)
Wow makes my head spin. I am not sure how this work out through the whole argument, but in Eastern philosophy, a positive condition like existence cannot be preferred to non-existence and labeled a "positive" because its opposite is absolutely necessary to consider existence "positive". In simple terms, you can't have the one without the other. Intuitively, all the argument would get you in the end would be that it is necessary for God to exist and not exist simultaneously (I am not sure of this, I am open to correction). It always seemed rational that because I can imagine a being possessing all God-like characteristics that one MAY exist. But I never thought it MUST exist. But I'm open to feedback.
If I understood the video correctly, it is not that God himself (herself? itself?) would both exist and not exist, only that something must not exist for existence to have meaning for everything else. To determine "positivity" one need only ask if one thing is better than another. It assumes a value system or moral structure. Is it better for you to exist or not exist?
Not existing is so much better: it creates zero complications. It's the simplest and most elegant solution to all problems: nothing exists. Existence is negative, not positive. Godel is exactly wrong.
This proof is saying nothing more than simply: "good things exist in the universe, therefore good things exist." And it defines "good things" as God. I believe this is what's called a bias.
Godel's whole thesis was an exercise as to how Modal Logic ( possibility> necessity) might be applied to Anselm's ontological proof. Here, it's important to understand that ML as such was created during Godel's active years; he seemed to have had a lot of fun with it--much like his famous argument during his citizenship Q&A about contradictions in the Constitution...my dream is to have been a fly on the wall during his conversations with einstein at Princeton... which is to say that theologians shouldn't take his 'proofs' so seriously!
While being a fan of Gödel, I found a way to make his proof fall apart. 1) Being a Sacrifice is Not a Positive thing; whereas NOT a Sacrifice is. 2) Christ has the God Property. 3) God Properties are Exclusively Positive Properties. 4) Christ is a Sacrifice. Therefore: 1) Christ has a Negative Property. 2) Ergo, 3) is False and 2) is False. . . . and the Proof unravels. Nevertheless, since God is the Most Self-Referential Thing in the Universe, these Contradictions are really Paradoxes. not Contradictions.
the logic that existence is preferable to nonexistence is the logic of survival, which is the game all biological minds were made to play. without some context, there's no reason to say any quality is better to have than not. if that context is explicit then it's fine. so, if your goal is to stay alive, then it's better for you to exist than not. if there isn't any such goal then it isn't better to exist than not. if somethingis better, it's better *for* something. but anyway, existence isn't a trait. what would it mean to say you have a tumor in your brain that doesn't exist? and now is existence a positive trait still?
I agree with everything here except for the "existence isn't a trait", it obviously is, the thing is that such existence is undeterminate because of the gap between noumenon and phenomenon and because of the problem of universals
Doesn't "positive" in this logical proof context only exist as part of a human construct within human kind and it's ability to create and use language, logic, etcetera? As some others have questioned, something like a snowflake exists as a positive, with each expression being uniquely perfect. Historically, there were many human beings who existed in geographically isolated communities and never saw an ocean in their respective lifetimes or snow but a small number could imagine it given enough accumulated knowledge and experience over generations. Can not 'Creative-like' be substituted for 'God-like' and come to the same logical outcome? Human creativity is unique among Earthly creatures, as is Meta-thinking for example. Please clarify as I am failing to see why this particular proof is special or unique. This is not an anti-religious question.
Gödel doesn't define 'positive,' except to say that he means it in either a moral/aesthetic sense or a logical sense-definable without the use of negation-but the only real characterization of its meaning is in the axioms: If P is positive, then (a) not-P is not positive; (b) it is necessary that P is positive; (c) necessarily-P is positive. Being God-like (having as essential properties all and only the positive properties) and necessary existence are positive. And the set of positive properties is logically closed: if P is positive and P entails Q, Q is positive. One can put any interpretation of 'positive' and 'God-like' on the argument as long as it makes these axioms true. That's not as easy as you might think, however. The requirement that if P is positive, P is necessarily positive means that 'positive' means something like "positive, no matter what." Nothing that is positive merely contingently will make that true.
Inherently positive is something that can help us and negative is something detrimental to us , it will change from person to person dependent on various factors ,some hate things that others do love . Someone's best time is during war while others enjoy peace , something positive is derived from someone's ability to thrive in given conditions .Someone thinking like God would see the perseverance of life on earth the way we see it as a positive thing , others will want to change that . If evil is a real force on earth all calculations are dependent on its given influence as positive for one is negative for other . Positive is a human construct just like a straight line that is not observed in nature ,it helps us organize a perceived chaotic world we live in .
@@roxynoz8245 At its heart, the clause "I am" ("I exist", iow) just says that there is (at least) one thing that possesses my identity. "There is" is just a logical quantifier. It is not a property. If Descartes had said "I think, therefore I am thinking", then "thinking" is a property. It distinguishes things that are thinking from things that aren't thinking.
@@rsm3t In reflection, I belive his approach had purpose for examing what it would mean to be self-conscious as a human. His conclusion was that the activity of thinking is the matter of self-consciousness.
A proof about logical systems is not a proof of metaphysical prejudices. Godel was a great mathematician but that doesn’t mean he was right in everything else.
This is an excellent detailed explanation of Godel’s argument. I especially appreciate your explanation of essences, which is a difficult idea. Even so, the argument doesn’t work. The problem with the argument is that the first two axioms, negations of positive properties are not positive properties, and a positive property may not entail a negative property, together assume that a positive property must not entail its own negation. Since we are working in S5, this is stronger than requiring a positive property to be logically consistent. We are saying that a positive property is required to be one that is metaphysically possibly instantiated. In other words, a requirement for a property to be positive is that it must be metaphysically possible a being with this property exists. This is a reasonable requirement. After all, how could a property that made it impossible for a being to exist be positive? Furthermore, we need this principle to reply to the question, “Why isn’t being able to make a stone so big one cannot lift it a positive property?” Clearly it would be metaphysically impossible for a being to have that property, along with the other properties of a MGB (maximally great being), and so being able to make a stone one cannot lift is not a positive property. But there is a price for making this requirement. Before we may grant any property is positive, we must now show that property is metaphysically possibly instantiated. So before we may grant axiom 3, the property of being God-like is positive, we must confirm the property of being God-like is possibly instantiated. In other words, we must confirm it is metaphysically possible a God-like being exists. A God-like being is assumed to have all positive properties, which includes necessary existence, and presumably includes omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect goodness. These are the properties of a MGB (maximally great being), as defined by Plantinga. So before we may grant axiom 3, we must show it is possible a MGB exists. But if we could do that, we would not need Godel’s argument; we could go straight to confirming the main premise of Plantinga’s argument. And so Godel’s argument, while very interesting, is useless as an actual argument for the existence of God. Fundamentally, this argument conflates two different ideas of positivity. We can call them actual-positivity and conceptual-positivity. A property is conceptually-positive if we conceive of it as positive, ignoring whether it is metaphysically possible for any entity to possess that property or not. A property is actually-positive if it is positive within the world (or at least how the world might have metaphysically been). As an example of how this works, consider the following argument: Premise 1. Sherlock Holmes was the greatest detective. Premise 2. Only a detective that exists could be the greatest detective. Conclusion. Sherlock Holmes exists. Both premises can be defended. Premise 1 can be defended if we think of greatness as conceptual-greatness. Premise 2 can be defended if we think of greatness as actual-greatness. But simultaneously defending premise 1 using an idea of conceptual greatness and premise 2 using an ideal of actual-greatness commits the fallacy of equivocation. We can boil down Godel’s argument to Premise 1. Only possibly instantiated properties can be positive. Premise 2. Being a MGB is a positive property. Conclusion. The property of being a MGB is possibly instantiated. We might grant premise 1 using an idea of actual-positivity. Bear in mind we are working in S5 which assumes metaphysical possibility, so when we say it is possible a MGB exists, we’re not just saying it is conceptually possible, we’re saying in reality there is a way this world could have been such that if the world would have turned out that way, then a MGB would have existed. On the other hand, we can defend premise 2 by interpreting positivity as conceptual positivity. If we ignore the issue of whether it is metaphysically possible the property of being a MGB is instantiated, it certainly sounds like a good property to have! So both premises can be defended by using different ideas of positivity. But to do so is to commit the fallacy of equivocation.
your reply, though overly wordy, is correct. The three types of beings are necessary, contingent, and impossible. This argument presented in the video ignores the idea that a god or god-like being is impossible. That the first 2 premises make the assumption of conceptual goodness is how the argument skirts this notion.
Actually, God _is_ evident, that's why every civilization in human history believed in (at least one) deity. Atheism emerged in the 16th century only and it's still the absolute minority of people in the world. The existence of the universe itself makes God evident.
I don’t understand how existence (whether necessary or not) can be declared a positive property. Nothing but human feeling may provoke that assumption, and the only reason that non-existence has negative implications is because the living fear it. But isn’t the one as positive or negative or indeed meaningless as the other?
Do we need a deeper understanding of reality to have this argument? Positive and negative charge is an innate part of all matter, all objects. A sphere has one perfect surface the same positive curvature everywhere. If the Universe is based on a process of spherical symmetry forming and breaking, then we would be the imperfect broken symmetry. You explained this difficult subject very well!!!
This is besides the point but Moldbug and NRX are kinda old school these days bro. Moldbugs ideas are pretty useful but their kinda outdated a bit. I recommend that you look into more traditionalist thinkers like Guenon, Evola, or Spengler.
@@Jareers-ef8hp Rabbit holes ain’t so bad. As interesting as I find their ideas. I do have significant points of difference with Guenon and Evola on certain points of axiology. And in deviation to Spengler’s theory I think the phase of civilization can be shifted by an aggregation of the consequences of will and action of the people within towards the kingdom of God. I agree with Evola that if race is real it would be a metaphysical thing rather than biological in essence. The end of ridding the Tiger is to embody the kingdom of God on earth in the process of individuating. So the Age we are in is a judgment on those who birth it. The phases don’t follow each other necessarily. As so while I am definitely a Reactionary of some type, and favor monarchism contra democracy. I am in many respectable a Post- Moldburgian reactionary.
@@ansaz14 Thanks for the reply bro.I agree with just about everything you said regarding race, religion, and democracy (however I favor virtuous aristocracy rather then monarchy but that’s neither here nor there). However I disagree with your criticism of Spengler, I believe that his assessment of culture is more accurate then Moldbugs is. I think he hits the nail when he says that a decline is basically inevitable no matter how aggressive the right is in pushing back against the left. I think the only thing we can really do is wait out the storm and wait till China and Russia invade the west and destroy western civilization, and then we can probably build back from the ground up something more transcendental and religious and high culture. That’s what I’m convinced of, but I’d really like to hear you out more.
@@Jareers-ef8hp I think what Spengler noted is a pattern rather than a law. I think he rightly shows us that "rises" and "falls" look the same; "stagnation" looks the same. What differs, I think, is the choices the people make within the phases. In my thinking Kali Yuga can last 1000 years or year; A golden age can last 1 year or 1000 years. A civilization can shift back and forth between stages. Constantine breathes new life to the Roman civilization project, sets it to the path of glory, Commodus hastens the fall, sets it on the path of decay. More recently, compare the National Socialists with the Wiemar republic. Same generation. Different leadership. Different political formulas. Different Choices made by the people and their leaders. The Wiemar are weak, degenerate and under the thumb of the League of nations. The National Socialists on the other hand are motivated, they raise the status and standing of their nation and breathe new life into a broken, defeated people angry at the state foreign powers have reduced them to. Yet they are children of the same Generation. Born in the same era. Shaped by WW1. So for as long as Westerners are content with the current order, they will continue to slide into depravity and decay. They will find themselves unworthy of empire, and find themselves being pale shadows of their former selves. Just as Athens and Sparta fell and the new center of power became Rome. Just as the Spartans diminished and the Macedonians rose. America's strategy of containing Nations preventing them from becoming great powers will break. A new global order emerges with new regional hegemonic powers with their won imperial ambitions. So I don't think the West will be conquered. Rather their ambition, ingenuity and industry will fall behind others more valiant and find themselves like Sparta. Once great people living off an old reputation, but in truth a small player in the quest for greatness.
Well said. It was Kant who won the argument of why "existence cannot be a predicate" for the reasons @cvdevol 2 yrs ago cited--but sometimes I wonder... "Existence and nonexistence cannot be properties of a thing, because a thing by definition exists and cannot not exist for it would not be a thing, indeed it would not BE." How persuasive is that, really? If Bernardo Kastrup is right in that experience is what truly is, said experience being qualia of mentation, such that measurable quanta of experience is also mentation, then it makes sense to think of that which is experienced to have the property of existence by virtue of being thought--since mentation is for us what it is. Kant's argument presupposes the veridical experience of 'matter' to be there as phenomena such that it is a mere tautology of sorts to say ofcan existing thing it exists: or not, since if it does not one could not predicate as property anything about it since it is not there. But how could one even do that WITHOUT first giving the thought of the inexistent thing the salient feature of nonexistence as an intrinsic property. Therefore if X exists it, X, must have the property of being actual, i.e., existing.
Spinoza in the 17th century showed that every attempt of proving the existence of God is inconsistent. The arguments of Gödel seem to me those of a lawyer who is able to convince you of anything
That's quite an odd reading of Spinoza; he argued for a Pan-theism; God as the Universe; God as the Cosmos; God as the Fundamental Substance. Where do you get the idea from Spinoza that the existence of God is inconsistent
As an analogy, let's think about all the positive counting numbers less than 10 as our "cosmos": 1, 2, ..., 9. In this cosmos (or we could just call it the universal set), only 9 numbers exist and nothing more. Given this, it is indeed not possible to demonstrate, from within the universe, that the universe exists. I am guessing that this was the sense in which our dear Spinoza suggested an inconsistency in proving the existence of God. Yet, when we transcend the universe, (and we do transcend the 9 numbers in the sense that we can, from a distance, be aware of those numbers and imagine them to compose a set, a mental construct), then we can know the reality of the universal set and God, at least Spinoza's God. The practical question then becomes, at least for me, am I (are we) limited to being in the universe (my body is), or is that ontology transcending (but not separating from) the universe?
Thank you very much for explaining this clearly. I'm saddened by the fact that Kurt Godel in his dotage fell victim to such a horrible rationalization to protect himself from the fear of death. He was an important man and I think he struggled to be good but many great thinkers fall apart in their last days. I think this is clearly a case of it. At least five of the seven axioms are clearly wrong on close examination so they all seem speciously true.
@@PhiloofAlexandria Interesting, but that kind of makes me sadder. I had heard rumors that he was extraordinarily terrified of death and that fear haunted him all his life. I wonder why he never published it, perhaps he was afraid people would show its flaws.
What is sadder is the preconceived bias that a man of logic and science who makes a case for God's existence must be giving into some inner human weakness. Though, I must admit it is a rather futile exercise, given that there is no consistent definition of God, and "perfection" which is used here is always relative to the object.
@@charlesellis7638 s5 it's not a horrid rationalization. Like most forms of logic it can be used for cringe worthy rationalizations if 1) it's assumptions are faulty 2) there are hidden assumptions in the steps. You can't define something into existence no matter how flawless the steps of the logic are. For this kind of logical argument to work first he would have to establish that the Universe we are in actually contains perfect things. There are so many things wrong with the different assumptions and the inappropriate use of logic to try to discover the physical reality that I didn't go into the details, but this really is a big exercise in hidden circular reasoning To paraphrase Eliezer yudkowsky when logic is true in all possible universes that logic cannot distinguish which Universe you are in.
@@hugoclarke3284 the inconsistency of definitions of God is one of the big reasons why I seldom if ever bother with these debates anymore. I call myself and ignostic I cannot reasonably discuss a definition of God until somebody gives me a tight and self-consistent definition
There is also another controversial thing that's not mentioned in any of the ontological arguments that involve modal logic; namely, in modal logic necessity or possibility are operators, not properties. Treating them as properties (and thus making use of sentential logic) at one step of the argument and then as operators to switch to modal logic is misleading and very similar to what we call "categorical errors". Existence is also a logical operator, not a predicate and as a consequence it cannot be treated at some step as a predicate (property) and in the next as an operator. As a consequence this ontological argument is just as misleading as the others before it.
@@davidtrindle6473 suppose there is this thing called unicorn, which i define as an all loving being which has all the positive properties, As its shown in the video existence is preferable over non existence, cause i mean duhh. So existance is a positive property. But my unicorn has all the positive properties, including the property of existence. Thus making my unicorn exist!
Was Hitler's existence positive much less a perfection? What about a virus' existence ? and he says "better" , better for who?.... this is just a clever play on words.
@@mattbailey8599 Ah, well I don't know exactly what your personal view is but I take issue with the world 'nosedive'. It is true that there are challenges to reframing humanity's place in the universe... but if you are ok with electricity and the internet then IMHO you have signed up for that ride... or instead maybe God has signed you up for it because of the time you were born into.
I believe we usually eliminate things out using those rules. In some world atleast Hitler was bad. In some world virus was bad. But in no world having more love is bad. In no world wisdom is bad. It kinda syncs with the categorical imperatives by kant on steroids with you doing a full factorial of all the possible states of worlds and doing a fitness function check to weed out bad properties
Alright. Here's two issues I, and every other person who has actually critically viewed this "proof," have recognized. First, Gödel's argument depends on a set of unproven axioms. Without universal agreement on these axioms, the argument lacks a compulsory conclusion, as it relies on subjective acceptance rather than objective evidence. And second, existence as a concept does not equate to existence in reality. Gödel's argument may persuasively define a supreme being, but this does not necessitate its actual existence outside of our conceptual understanding, a distinction emphasized by philosophers like Kant. Basically, a whole lot of begging the question and brutishly insists upon itself and axioms without careful scrutiny.
@@apophenic_This seems odd; there's no universally recognized set of axioms. For example, the law of non-contradiction or the excluded middle is rejected by paraconsistent logic. On the second point, Kant's objection is overestimated. First, while it's true that existence simpliciter isn't a predicate, it's much less clear whether existence as a concrete being outside the mind isn't. Even if one disagrees, the notion of existence implied by the axioms is necessary existence, which certainly is a predicate. Given the notion of necessary existence, all one needs to prove is that the existence of the being provided by the axioms is possible (in a modal sense). If we establish this, it logically follows, via modal logic, that such a being exists.
@@magno1177 I've never understood this logic "if such a being can exist-then it does exist". What? How? Why? There is no reason to believe that just because we can prove the possibility of a thing in our minds, that it must exist or does exist. I think you're vastly overstating the importance and power of our own minds, then again I know very little about Logic as a field of study.
I would like to add another important notion: if something exists that is maximum, then it must necessarily contain all that exists and not be separate from it, for that implies restriction.
Axiom 2... If you can't feel pain and its positive as a super hero yet you can't feel the touch of a lover... that is a duality both negative and positive. Surely I'm missing something.
If the property 'maximal' or 'perfect' is positive then what requirement decides whether 'maximal good or 'maximal evil is ''God-like'' (if not arbitrarily by definition)?
I know next nothing about logic, but am I right in suspecting that Gödel’s proof of God’s existence is essentialist in its metaphysics as opposed to relationalist?
This has made me question the existence of Gödel.
Godel exists. Proof:
We established that God exists and is good.
Godel entails God (phonetically). By axiom 2, Godel exists and is good.
@@yonimaor1005every proof for god ever
@@yonimaor1005sounds like Alex o' Connor lmao
Thank you, and God Bless you, I needed that light through dark times.
Beautiful. Gödel's elegant and simple ontological argument is really underrated. Thank you professor.
You're very welcome!
And yet, it demonstrates how many gods? One, two? OH...EXACTLY ZERO.
@@NeverTalkToCops1 *tips fedora respectfully towards you*
@@NeverTalkToCops1 I don't believe the argument is meant to do so, nor such a Beings particular identity; only necessary attributes and existence. The rest is our homework! ;-)
@@NeverTalkToCops1 No, the argument demonstrates the existence of at least one such entity. At this point, one may simply appeal to Occam's razor which states that one ought not multiply entities beyond necessity.
As a Muslim I loved the ending. The final discussion about "Maximal Nature Of God" translates very nicely to the concept of "Allah-u-Akbar" (God is Greater) in Islam.
According to his wife Adele, "Gödel, although he did not go to church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning", while of Islam, he said, "I like Islam: it is a consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded."
thank you, daniel. I've been researching this recently and your video cleared up some confusion I was having! cheers, friend.
Glad it was helpful!
Professor Bonevac, your channel is a lantern in the darkness. A flower growing in a garbage pile. Glad I found it all those years ago, and thank you for making your videos.
Wow, thanks!
@@PhiloofAlexandria Wow, you're very welcome and thanks for the reply! Your classes have been life-changing for me. I consider you one of the great philosophy teachers, and I've listened to many others, including Hubert Dreyfus when he was still alive.
Been looking forward to this! Thanks!
When listening to philosophers, and thinkers in general, one realizes how difficult it is to take nothing for granted,
They like the sound of their own voice too much and say too little.
🤯🧠 This is something I'm going to have to watch five times to wrap my head around.
Superbly done, especially for those of us without the topology of modern logics in our heads!
Stop speaking smart!!????$$456
Concepts like this rely on your ignorance to exist and persist. Consider, without human minds to conceive of it, where then is the idea of god?
@@Vanadeo Not smart. Without human minds to conceive it, where is the idea of the Sun? Go argue with Goedel (and Berkeley, and Augustine, and Aquinas, and Merton, and Aristotle, and all those other ignorant people).
Read my statement again carefully; I said explicitly; 'The idea of' because that is all we currently have in regards to a God. It does not exist outside of our thought. The sun is very different , it is a measurable, quantifiable object, not an idea. Until proof can be provided that god exists, it exists only as an idea and as far as we currently know, an idea conceived of only by human minds.
The universe preceded consciousness, so this is not my argument and besides the point.
So, I ask again; Without human minds to conceive of it, where is the idea of God?
@@Vanadeo I know quite well that you said "idea of," which is why all of the thinkers I listed take positions related to idealism. We experience the world through our senses and intellect, and develop ideas. From (among other things) the light and the shape of something in the sky we form an idea of the Sun. From (among other things) the contingency of being, the intelligibility of nature, and the facts of consciousness, we develop the idea of God. Our ideas may be more or less accurate vis-a-vis the "real thing" (we may think the Sun turned about us in the sky each day, for example, which turns out to be wrong) but, trivially, there there would be no ideas about any of them, God or Sun or anything else, without minds.
Lol I was not disappointed at all. Thank God for Gödel and also for this incredible and easy to follow video!
Beautiful! Beautifully presented, with the passion of the truth seeker and the strength and ease in conveyance of the teacher and academician.
The same objection to Anselm's argument applies: Existence and nonexistence cannot be properties of a thing, because a thing by definition exists and cannot not exist (or it would not be a thing, indeed it would not BE).
No it doesn’t. There’s a difference between virtual existence and mental existence Quine On What there Is). Pegasus exists mentally but not virtually. He still exists though. Something has existence if it is a member of a set.
@@tim2muntu954 If we take your definition of property: an essential or distinctive attribute or quality of a thing, then replace the word thing with a definition that includes the necessity for existence then Kant's criticism becomes more clear. "An essential or distinctive attribute or quality of a concept with existence" or "An essential or distinctive attribute or quality of an entity that exists." The problem stems less from assigning existence to things but rather that non-existence would disallow the addition of a property to an object. We can reimagine this conversation with a unicorn. Person A can say they are imagining a unicorn with a red horn while person B says that no unicorns have a red horn. Person A then comes back with a painting of their red horned unicorn to showcase that at least one unicorn has a red horn. Now is where Kant's criticism comes in, person B states (in true surrealism fashion) that what Person A is holding is actually a painting not a unicorn, thus does not have a red horn. Neither Person A nor Person B deny the existence of unicorns (and Person B heavily implies a shift in the burden of proof), but Person B will not accept the addition of an attribute unless it is not a painting. That is to say, Kant expresses that existence is a perquisite for all other attributes to be applied and that attributes that are applied to things seeming to be non-existent are rather applied to the object that carries its existence (The painting of the unicorn or the human mind thinking of god). So the ontological argument would boil down to "The mind can hold the thought of god therefor the mind exists." To specifically look at Gödel's proof most either criticize the axioms by applying David Hilbert's remark about the interchangeability of the primitives' names, where one can replace "positive" and "God-Like" to create an entity that one wishes without changing how the conclusion follows from the axioms, or one points to Jordan Howard Sobel's work showcasing an implication of modal collapse that would not only remove our understanding of free will but also remove any possibility of a "sovereign god," that is to say the being stated in the proof would themselves lack any discernable method of choice (All actions that are taken must have been taken and could have been the only actions taken).
@@25chrishall To be a "thing" is to exist. And to be existing is to be a "thing". The use of the verb "to be" is always an assertion of existence. There is no such thing as a nonexistent thing. Existence is not a property that a thing may or may not possess. It is rather the essence of "thingness".
How do you define a “thing”? Existence proofs are fundamental to mathematics. For example we can prove that there exists infinitely many primes. We can take “infinitely many primes” as the “thing”. It is an intuitive concept that can be grasped and understood from definitions (what constitutes a thing), but its existence is not guaranteed at face value and must be demonstrated from more fundamental (intuitive) principles. So a “thing” does not by definition exists necessarily.
@@faustianfellaheen Can you name a thing that does not exist?
The problem with this and many other ontological style arguments is that they treat "existence" as a property. Strictly speaking it isn't, at least not in the way that we typically use it linguistically. If I say that an apple exists, I'm treating "exists" as a property of the apple, and linguistically as a predicate. But technically I've got it backwards when I do that. What I'm _actually_ saying with that statement is "In the reality in which I occupy, there exists an apple." The apple existing is a property of the context (in this case "the reality I occupy") in which it is invoked. In other words, existence isn't a property of the apple, it's a property of the reality in which I occupy. To look at it another way, the concept of an apple isn't changed if I specify that it exists, or that it doesn't exist. It's fundamentally still the same concept. To say an apple exists (in reality) is like saying that an apple is a fruit eaten by man. It's confusing the nature of the relationship between the two. That apples are eaten by man isn't a property of the apple, it's a property of man. An apple would still be an apple, totally absent the concept of eating, or man. The concept of an apple is the same whether you tack on existence, or you don't.
So when we start talking about existence as a perfection, it's just begging the question. As already demonstrated, existence doesn't change the concept of an apple, so it's not coherent to say that the concept is improved by the addition of "existence." If we're not talking about the concept then that just leaves us with discussing an _actual_ (extant) apple, but that's just a tautology. To say that an existent apple that exists is better than an existent apple that doesn't exist, is silly. One option is simply incoherent and self contradictory, and the other is tautological.
Don't get me wrong. I love me some Kurt Gödel, but I think he was a little out of his wheelhouse when making this argument.
This ontological argument seems to have the same problems as the other ontological arguments. Namely, it's completely formal and therefore tells us very little about the properties this "god" must have necessarily.
The common objection, which you will find here in the comments, is that the concept of positive is subjective. This objection comes from the fact that the argument is formal and in order to give it any content whatsoever, human ideas of what is good and bad must enter into it, thereby introducing subjectivity.
I have a slightly more original objection, which is that the content of the argument can point in the exact opposite direction because the argument is purely formal, it doesn't dictate what kind of content goes into it. For instance, if we talk about _negative_ properties rather than positive properties, we can arrive at a very startling and worrying conclusion.
Consider things like doing harm, being evil, being hateful. These are negative properties. But in order to do harm, for instance, you must be powerful enough to do harm. Therefore, being powerful is a negative property (our version of Axiom 2). And furthermore existence is a negative property, and necessary existence as well.
Following Godel's argument to its conclusion we find that a being which contains every negative property must necessarily exist, and of course it has these properties to the maximal degree. It is all-powerful so that it can do as much harm as logically possible. I doubt Godel (or any christian) would accept this argument for a god of pure evil.
At either extreme it argues for the existence of both God and Satan. But that leaves people where they began, with unclear questions.
Since people are divorced from the old dialogical methods, and barely aware of the congealing new dialectics, this ontological argument is only helpful for those seeking the strongest arguments for and against faith. And only after significant hours invested in the training of logic, inquisitiveness, and fallacy spotting. But going at it all by oneself is a recipe for self-congratulation and circular reasoning, so it takes two people *at minimum.*
Negative properties don't exist, is what any theologian would respond to your inversion of the ontological argument. Classical and medieval philosophy doesn't view evil as having any properties, but rather as being made of a lack, as being defined as deficiency of properties. Any given thing's existence is considered good, and evil is a disturbance of the order by which something exists. A rotten apple is bad, not because of any specific property of the apple, but rather because the rot takes away from the apple's existence, and deprives it from it's properties of being edible and tasty.
@@rubeng9092
Well, I think that's a pretty bad argument, for a lot of reasons. The main reason is that it goes against our everyday experience of negative things. Pain is not merely the lack of pleasure, bitterness is not merely the lack of sweetness, and so on.
And of course if you want to push the argument that far, I can easily go that far in the opposite direction (positive properties don't exist, they are merely a lack), so I don't really see how it solves anything.
@@APaleDot Isn't it that when we encounter something bad we seek it's remedy? Whereas when we encounter something positive we cherish it for what it is? Pain on it's own isn't bad, many people wake up after day of intense exercise, with muscles feeling quite sore, yet they are content and happy about it, since they know their muscles are growing and their capability is increasing. Whereas someone having a serious injury has to put up with not being able to move without crutches or having his arm not function properly, which objectively entails a decrease in that arm's ability to be an arm - which is bad, because it's a negation, and that's where the word negative get's its meaning.
@@APaleDot Pain and bitterness aren't evil. Pain is a necessary signal for survival, but those who enjoy inflicting it are evil. Bitterness is a taste enjoyed by many.
Thank you Dr. For sharing.
Please pray for me. I want to give up! I have been put down and called names all because of my poor financial situation even by my own family. I lost my job because I refused the vaccine. I refused due to my already failing health. Heart disease and lupus. I get so much hate on UA-cam simply for asking for prayers it’s horrifying. As christian’s we should be able to cry out to one another and ask for prayers or just a shoulder to cry on. I have been struggling to provide for myself and my two autistic children both are non verbal. Taking care of my boys is my life but it’s overwhelming because they are special needs. My husband passed away three years ago so I’m all alone. I’m so overwhelmed! My situation already has me down, and depressed. We are facing eviction. We have nowhere to go! But I have so much faith that God will provide for me and my children. I know God loves us all. FAITH OVER FEAR!
I will, Miller.
Whoa, I'll pray right away and share with others! If you haven't already, consider consecrating yourself to St Joseph and Mary. His feast day (anniversary) celebrating his espousal to Mary is coming up March 19th and lots of people consecrate themselves to him. He was the man whom God the Father empowered and entrusted to take care of His Son Jesus on earth when He was a helpless baby, and Mary the Mother of God who conceived Him. There has never been any greater treasure on earth than that. If God unplifted and trusted Joseph to take care of His own Son incarnate in flesh, then how much more can he help take care of us from Heaven now that He is glorified by God and in the continual presence of God Himself. Believe me, I speak from experience, he and our Blessed Mother can help. May God have mercy upon you and bless you quickly, I am amazed by your faith, sacrificial dedication, and strength. You are behaving heroically, and a heroic mother! I am sorry that the west has become so evil and our culture and government is so corrupt, resulting in your job loss because of your refusal to take such an unnecessary, ineffective, and dangerous vaccine. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. May Jesus come to your aid. I hope you find a new job soon. I will pray to St Joseph that you find one, since that is one his specialities since it was him whom God chose to teach Jesus carpentry/masonry and work along side him for years. He is the patron of all workers. Keep the faith and don't give up!!!
The Lord Almighty Jesus is Alive. I am a Hindu Convert. The Devil will bring many troubles. But the Lord has already made it very clear that He has overcome the World. I will be prying for you. Please Read Hebrews 10: 32-39.
I’m terribly sorry. Praying for you! If you aren’t already part of a faith community, try to find one. It helps.
sending you love!!
I love this video. Thank you!
This is an important argument. It leads directly to the question of what is and isn't in the domain of human determinability.
The lack of facts or lack of logical formulation, that this argument brings up, should be directly looked at. In this way new facts or new relations of ideas will be inferred. This realm of inference could then be confronted. In this way light will be shed on the abyss of ignorance. No?
The reasons and evidence, or lack thereof, why we can or can't "explain" God should all have inverse suppositions. We would gain knowledge were we to extrapolate these inverse suppositions to their inverse logical relations wouldn't we?
no
@Josip Ivesic 😂
Gödel was not merely ONE OF THE greatest logicians of the Twentieth Century, nor even THE greatest logician of the Twentieth Century.
Gödel was the greatest logician of ALL TIME.
I actually enjoyed this presentation. It’s a nice argument, with a clear structure.
As someone interested in mathematics and formal logic, I’m pleasantly surprised to see an argument in the language of modal logic. It was nice to research and find out that this axiomatic system is consistent.
However, it seem to not be applicable in the real world, as this system implies a modal collapse. Also, since “positive” property is not defined constructively, we can not infer any real-world properties of this maximal object, so it might as well be referring to a rabbit in my back yard. Due to the same limitations, we don’t get a strategy to find out which properties are positive, or a way to find or determine if any given object is maximal in this regard.
I used Anderson’s reconstruction to avoid the modal collapse problem. I also agree with Koons that “is self-identical and such that the cat is on the mat” is not a real property.
Or if somethings positive it's real lol 😆
Logic is mans method of identifying the facts of reality without contradiction, not a mystical revelation.
@@TeaParty-qh1py I would suggest that the "facts of reality without contradiction" of which logic can help derive and describe, does not exclude the metaphysical.
I've been looking for this!
As the video demonstrates the power of Godel’s argument hangs on the meaning of modal language.
The only way I can make sense of modal language in the context of metaphysical philosophy is this: There is the actual reality in which we live and which has a particular nature. Given that nature there are many ways reality could have been but isn’t (or in other words many facts of the actual reality are contingent). Let us call the set of all realities that could have been the “set of metaphysically possible worlds”. Then we define that “X is metaphysically possible” iff X obtains in at least one element of the set of metaphysically possible worlds”, and we define that “X is metaphysically necessary” iff X obtains in all elements of the set of metaphysically possible worlds.
But then the expression “X is necessarily possible” (or, to be precise, “it is metaphysically necessary that X is metaphysically possible” turns out to be meaningless, for there are no different kinds of metaphysical possibility. Either X does obtain in some element of the set of metaphysically possible worlds or it doesn’t. If it does then in it is metaphysically possible simpliciter. If it doesn’t then it is not metaphysically possible. Thus to speak of “necessary possibility” as if it were something distinct is to speak nonsense, and to use that non-existing distinction in an argument is to build on thin air.
I suspect that Godel’s error is to uncritically apply modal logic to metaphysical reasoning. In the realm of logic perhaps it makes sense to speak of X being necessarily possible, but that’s irrelevant to the practical business of metaphysical philosophy. After all it is not like one can map the set of all logically possible worlds to the set of all metaphysically possible worlds. So, for example, the set of all logically possible worlds (that is in the set of all internally logically consistent realities) there are some worlds which are theistic and some that aren’t. For example a by definition logically possible world is the empty world in which nothing exists, which is a non theistic world. But it is easy to prove (see Plantinga) that if it is metaphysically possible that theism is true then it it metaphysically necessary that it is true. Or, applying my meaning of modal language, if theism is true in one metaphysically possible world then it is true in all of them. One can see why this is so without actually following Plantinga’s proof: Theism is a claim about the very nature of reality. If the nature of reality is theistic then all ways reality could have been will be theistic also (it’s not like the nature of reality is a contingent fact or that God might remove himself from reality). Incidentally for the same reason Plantinga’s result can be turned on its head: If it is metaphysically possible that theism is false then it it metaphysically necessary that it is false.
I say you did better on this than Scott on the "Theoretical Bullshit" channel.
This is very good, but it depends on how God is defined. If God is defined as the set of all metaphysical possibilities, then it is not possible to remove this from the sets, because all such sets depend on this by definition. As to your point, the reason I agree is that I'd go another step and say that because there is no way to prove that anything can be metaphysically impossible, including even basics like logic itself, any technical talk of such is incoherent. For me, this means the problem reduces to what God is in respect to existence. If there is a truth about this (which there is no reason to be particularly skeptical about that I can see), then the focus must be on finding the true answer to this question, which will, in my view, require some kind of empiricism (including the subjective kind in this special case where existence can only be experienced subjectively in the final analysis.. in other words, this is not a pragmatic empirical issue that can be tested and verified locally).
@@konberner170 The definition of God that everybody accepts is that God is the greatest conceivable thing. This is a clear definition as proven by the fact that even atheists can engage in intelligent and indeed sophisticated theological argumentation.
Now the greatest conceivable being will certainly be prior to everything. That is, God will not need to stand on something else, or conform to something else. Therefore God is what philosophers call the "metaphysical ultimate", the ground on which everything else stands. (Incidentally metaphysical naturalism - which is the worldview of most atheists - also entails a metaphysical ultimate, namely mechanical nature.) But the metaphysical ultimate is the same in all metaphysically possible worlds. Therefore if it is possible that some metaphysical theory (whether theism or naturalism) is true then it is necessarily true.
As for what God is in respect to existence, the answer is pretty straightforward: Existence itself is not prior to God, thus God does not only make what exists (or may exist) but makes existence itself. Theists commonly say that "God exists", but this is a linguistic shortcut which is misleading when understood literally. Strictly speaking "God exists" is an incoherent proposition. Theism's claim is *not* that among the many things that exist God also exists. Theism's claim is rather that existence itself is created by God. As for other existents, both theists and atheists agree with the proposition "apples exist" but mean something different, because atheists and theists understand differently what it is for something to exist. The understand differently what existence itself is. So naturalists believe that the existence of, say, elementary particles and their mechanical nature is implicit and autonomous. Theists believe that their existence is not autonomous but depends on God's will; they are created and remain around as long as God wills it.
@@DianelosGeorgoudis Atheists don't all agree with that. Theists don't all agree with that. And "great" is substantially subjective. Who decides what is greater than something else? Maybe start over?
@@DianelosGeorgoudis
🕉 सर्वं खल्विदं ब्रह्म 🕉
Chandogya Upanishad 3.14
(‘sarvam khalvidam brahma’ teaches that ‘All this is indeed Brahman’.
“Brahman” is a Sanskrit word referring to the TOTALITY of existence.
There is nothing but Eternal Being, Consciousness, Bliss!).
Fascinating!
It makes me investigate one of God's potential new proof of existence.
I will share once i have more convictions.
Thank you
Thank you! I’ve been looking for a video explaining Godel’s Ontological Argument for over a year! I’m still not sure I get it, but I’ll watch it a few more times. I just wish you’d also explained the symbols used. But this is a great help!
Check out Plantingas ontological argument
@@LucicPower Are you a THEIST? 🤔
If so, what are the reasons for your BELIEF in God? 🤓
@@ReverendDr.Thomas nobody knows and if you say you do you could be wrong . Lol 😆
why does it have to be a video?
@@crossman3940 nobody knows WHAT? 🤔
The outdoor setting is really good
Thank you so very much for your videos. I’m a 65 year old photographer with a love for philosophy because I have a love for God. I’ve always liked the Ontological Argument as a starting point - followed by Contingency and on to cosmological and morals arguments. I’ve been working on an argument from beauty (as an artist) which seems to me to be somewhat like the moral argument but is also a design argument. Anyway, thank you. I greatly enjoyed your presentation and appreciate Godel’s model ontological argument.
Interesting comment. I want to hear more about this design from beauty argument (from artists pov). I'm a lover of the beauty of nature. I always think mountains/forests, fields and oceans untouched by mankind has beauty. Once arrange and rearrange, we make it ugly.
@@SH-bl9wh The new fallen snow is "beautiful"...
unless you are unprepared or unprotected.
In which case you will be dead in a day.
l second that request, that you expand on this idea of beauty if you feel like sharing.
As l child growing up on the edge of a grimy industrial landscape, with factories, coal mines, hundreds of smoke stacks across the horizon, the ugliness overwhelmed me and l would squint and minimise my visual field until l could fixate on something beautiful like a tiny patch of cloud in the sky or reflections in puddle.
These moments literally gave a crushing childhood meaning and uplift, it was the nearest thing to numinous for me.
l detest the axiom "that beauty is truth" however beauty is definitely some kind of harbinger,and reprieve, for sure.
@@SH-bl9wh thank you for your response. I will plan on posting later this week my syllogism from beauty.
@@veronica_._._._ I plan on posting later this week. Both my parents were born and raised in West Virginia so coal mining was very much part of my family. To me, just as darkness is the absence of light, so ugliness is the absence of beauty. In art we know that art/beauty has properties. The same is true with the beauty we find in nature. And, just as art needs an artist - so the beauty we find in nature needs an artist (Psalms 19). Van Gogh used paint and canvas to re-create a Starry Night, but God does it ever night.
Essentially, this and Anselm's argument are very precise formulations of the intuitive concept that humanity's conception of God must flow from His will.
thanks, this video helped me doing a research about Gödel for school! You explained very well the argument
I remember watching this like a year ago and couldnt understand it now it seems so easy
Thank you for this video that sharpens the arguments of Anselm and Descartes using the powerful logic of Godel. I would greatly appreciate if you can comment on Nagarjuna's Tetralemma and whether that is a refutation of the logic of Anselm/Dscartes/Godel.
Great Video, I also like the references to predecessors like Descartes and Leibniz.
Strange argument. For starters, it is based on questionable axioms. It leaves undefined which properties are necessarily positive, other than the property of existence and the property of being God-like, which is also not very clear. If I understand correctly, to be "God-like" is to possess all positive properties? (All necessarily positive properties, not those that are contingent on circumstances). But we don't know what those properties are, other than the property of existence. So if the logic holds and the axioms are in fact valid, we still don't know the nature of this being we call "God"?
Bingo.
If you look into eastern Theosophy, similar conclusions have been reached : the existence of Divinity/ a Divine Being, can be inferred from the existence of it's attributes ( omniscience, omnipotence, etc ) but not fully known, by any part of it's creation : nature, cosmos, humans. Peace
Gödel's ontological proof is just a formalization of a pre-existing ontological argument. He just "translated" to the mathematical language - using modal first-order logic - the argument, with no merit of the validity of the axioms of whether the conclusion really means the existence of God. I think Gödel himself didn't intend to "prove God's existence".
H8rz b h8tn'.
My thought exactly - Descartes, but in mathematical formulars.
What about the simple kantian objection to the ontological argument? Existence is not a predicate? Does that not undermine the entire argument?
For all of us that are taken by the beauty of saint Anselm's ontological argument, Gottfried Leibniz' phrase sums it up best: "if God is possible then God is (exists)". Incidentally, the syllogism is correct, pursuant to classical Aristotelian logic.
It reminds me of something I heard recently (I don't remember who said it) about physics. "Anything not prohibited is mandatory." Some people assume that magnetic monopoles and cosmic strings must exist unless there is a still-undiscovered reason they don't exist. It is at odds with Occam's razor and the concept of "burden of proof." This probably explains why they can't agree whether negative energy or sterile neutrinos are real despite some good circumstantial evidence.
Basically it says: Because we exist and it's a positive thing or property, God exists as a positive.
I could never feel the strength of Axiom 5 (Necessary existence is positive / existence is a perfection / existence is an improving quality). There's just nothing compelling me to accept it. Why is existence necessarily "better" than non-existence? Why do so many accept it without any justification as something obvious? Not only do I not find it obvious, it sounds to me like a category mistake. Is there something I don't see?
Note that this isn't the same as Kant's critique, who would deny that existence is a predicate. I'm fine with it being a predicate (at least for the sake of argument). I claim that these are two different predicates that aren't related the way that the axiom states.
It being stronger doesn't mean it's more compelling, it simply means it's a more substantial claim. "All swans are white" is stronger than "Some swans are white".
@@cynicviper You're not wrong, but that doesn't make my choice of words a mistake.
Note that we also call compelling arguments "strong" and we conceptualize arguments as resting on "strong" or "weak" foundations.
"Strong(1) claims require strong(2) evidence". When we say that a self-evident axiom is "strong", do we mean (1) or (2)? Does it even make sense for self-evident axioms to be stronger(1) or weaker?
@@luszczi It absolutely doesn't make you wrong, I apologize if that is how it came across. Without wanting to sound pretentious, I was merely trying to explain what I thought was a misunderstanding.
You are certainly right, and I as well, don't agree with the Axiom. To Gödel, who perhaps cared about logical rigor this whole endeavor matters, but to me, it is still nonsensical to Analytically grant existence to anything.
"Meaningfulness" is the why. An existing thing affects the state of reality; a non-existent thing does not. Being effects things. Non-being does not. Being is therefore greater than non-being.
@@ansaz14 pen > sword sometimes. Sometimes the concept of god is all thats needed to change the world. Since all that needs is a concept to change, then being real doesnt matter
Of course God exists.
He said so Himself.
That's why we're discussing this.
Makes me wonder if both good and omnipotence are positive properties. One can’t be because if both were, then there would be no problem of evil right?
Omnipotence is a matter of ability, I think, not of what one actually does.
If one is Omnipotent, then one is capable of doing good (as well as everything else). If one is Good, then one intends to do good. If one intends to good and one is capable of doing good, then one does good. The only thing left is: Is it good to eliminate evil?
@@bimsherwood7006 Ultimately.
@@bimsherwood7006 A better question, though, is whether or not it's good to allow evil in the first place.
I don't know if it's true and the source is questionable but funny but I like Norm Macdonald's thought on this matter. He thinks if God made everything good he would simply be expanding himself. He wants a family therefore he had to make not good who now in a cool turn of events has the capability to do good and join in him
The very idea of 'positive properties' is totally subjective; there is no way to test a property to see if it is positive or negative, it is open to the interpretation of the speculator. Gödel' should have realized this when he had to revise it to 'some properties are positive'. As an attempted argument for an objective god, this doesn't cut it. Excellent presentation in the video though!
I'm excited to learn you have a background in mathematics. We are all familiar with the idea of using different axioms concerning accessibility relations for possible worlds models to model different kinds of modality. But have you heard that a better way to do so is to use topology (at least for the case of S4 and beyond)?
Consider the axioms of S4 modal logic. A proposition is possible if and only if it is possible it is possible. If P implies Q, then P is possible implies Q is possible. If P is true, then P is possible. “P or Q” is possible, if and only if either P is possible or Q is possible.
Now consider the closure axioms for a topological space. The closure of the closure of a set equals the closure of the set. If P is a subset of Q, then closure of P is a subset of the closure of Q. P is a subset of the closure of P. The closure of the union of A and B is equal to the union of the closure of A with the closure of B.
The axioms of the possibility operator of modal logic in S4 coincide precisely with the axioms for the closure operator of a topological space! In the same way, the axioms of the necessity operator of modal logic in S4 coincide precisely with the axioms of the interior operator in a topological space! I’m still astonished by this.
So we can model a system of S4 modal logic using a topological space. The points of the topological space represent possible worlds. Propositions are represented by sets of possible world (sets in which the proposition is true). If a proposition P is represented by a set of possible worlds S, then possibly P is represented by the closure of S (it makes sense that the set of worlds in which P is possibly true is a superset of the worlds in which P is true). Necessarily P is represented by the interior of S (it makes sense that the set of worlds in which necessarily P is true is a subset of the set of worlds in which P is true).
A proposition P is represented by an open set if and only if "P is true" implies that "P is necessarily true." A proposition P is represented by a closed set if and only if "possibly P is true" implies that "P is true." For example, since a MGB is defined in part to be a being that exists necessarily, if the proposition "A MGB exists" is true, the proposition "It is necessarily true a MGB exists" is true. So "A MGB exists" is represented by an open set. Furthermore "No MGB exists" is represented by a closed set. If it is possible no MGB exists, then no MGB exists.
What would an S5 topological space be? It would be one where every open set was a closed set, and vice versa. An S5 space could be represented as a discrete union of closed-open set, where any set was closed-open if and only it was a union of a sub-collection of these discrete sets. The interior of a set would be the largest closed-open subset of that set, and the closure of a set would be the smallest closed-open set containing that set.
Above we noted that "A MGB exists" is represented by an open set. Working in S5, the set representing “a MGB exists” must be a closed set as well, so if it is possible a MGB exists then a MGB exists.
Given any topology T on a set, we can take the minimal refinement of T that satisfies the conditions of S5 in the obvious way (show the intersection of any collection of S5 topologies is S5, etc.). Therefore, it would seem given any S4 modal logic, there is in a sense a minimal extension of that logic to an S5 modal logic. Perhaps this is what Richard Swinburne was referring to when he talked about metaphysical necessity being a sort of idealized version of epistemic necessity.
That is really nice. Contemporary philosophers underutilize topological concepts; they're often very illuminating as well as elegant. One of my regrets is that, in my last semester of graduate school, I didn't at least audit a course being offered on topological logic. I feared it would distract me from finishing my dissertation. But it was an opportunity I haven't had since to study the links.
@@PhiloofAlexandria Let’s define a Goldbach number to be an even integer greater than 2 that cannot be written as the sum of two primes. Then the Goldbach conjecture asserts that there is no Goldbach number.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the Goldbach conjecture is undecidable; that it is true there is no Goldbach number, but it is impossible to prove that. In an S4 logic modelling provability, it’s possible a Goldbach number exists (because we cannot prove no such number exists). But in a metaphysical modality, it is impossible a Goldbach number exists (because in reality no such number exists).
Now given any positive integer, it is in principle possible to verify through a finite process that that integer is not a Goldbach number. So in the modality of provability modelled by S4, it is not possible 4 is a Goldbach number, it is not possible 6 is a Goldbach number, it is not possible 8 is a Goldbach number, etc. Yet at the same time it is possible there exists a positive even Goldbach number.
It’s not clear how we would model this situation using possible worlds with a transitive reflexive accessibility relation. There would have to be a world accessible from the actual world in which 4 was not a Goldbach number, 6 was not a Goldbach number, and so on, but there was a Goldbach integer. That’s not helpful.
But we can model this using topology as follows. We assume there exist possible worlds, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc., in which 4 is a Goldbach number in 4, 6 is a Goldbach number in 6, and so on. Since all of these assertions are demonstrably impossible, they are not possible in the actual world. What that means is, topologically speaking, there is an open neighbourhood of the actual world that excludes world 2, another open neighbourhood that excludes world 4, another open neighbourhood that excludes world 6, and so on. Since open sets are closed under finite intersection, there is an open neighbourhood containing the actual world that excludes any given finite set of these worlds. This reflects the fact that given any finite set of positive even integers, we can in principle verify they are not Goldbach numbers in a finite amount of time.
Now however, imagine that the actual world is a limit point of the set {2,4,6,8,. . .}. This reflects the fact that while no particular such world is possible from the perspective of the actual world, the collection of all of these worlds is possible. This reflects the fact that while we can prove any finite subset of the positive even integers contains no Goldbach numbers, we cannot prove the set of all positive even integers does not contain a Goldbach integer.
Now let’s go to the S5-topology generated by this S4 topology. This topology includes all the open and closed sets from the S4-topology. In this topology, open sets are closed sets and vice versa. So in this S5 topology, open sets are now closed under arbitrary intersections. So in this topology, the intersection of the open sets containing the actual world and excluding 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. is an open set. And so it is metaphysically impossible a Goldbach number exists.
So, basically, positive means that it's better off, thus its opposite cannot also be better off. God is the sum of all positive things, existence is a positive thing, therefore God has to exist.
Is this an accurate summary?
But how are we determining that it is better to exist than to not exist, surely there’s not much evidence for that. I’m thinking of some eastern philosophy or Schopenhauer or someone saying existence is pain and bad, not necessarily agreeing with that just wondering how to resolve this
Probably believing that existence is better than non-existence is the real leap of faith.
If you are a barber, a positive property is to shave men. But shaving a man who already shaves himself would be a negative. Therefore, shaving all men who do not shave themselves would be maximally positive. Does the maximally positive barber shave himself?
Allowing statements of universal comprehension, such as something being maximally positive in all respects, is bound to result in inconsistencies. Of all people, Gödel should have known better.
I think a bit more work is needed for an objective definition of “positive”. The definition here is very dependent on things we value as a species, like being alive vs. being dead, or “it’s preferable to be God than to not be God”. Of course a living species would value living over not, but this is an ontological argument so it needs to be ontologically positive. “Positive” needs to be something defined by its presence, & negated by its absence, like heat or strength vs. cold or weakness.
Knowledge should be positive, not because we prefer to have it than to not have it, but because it is something that can be had, while ignorance is merely the lack of having knowledge. The thing is, we may conceive of a possible world where the creatures evolved to prefer ignorance to knowledge, but there should be no possible world where ignorance is ontologically “positive” even if it is valued or preferred.
Those are similar to my thoughts...it seems those dependencies without adequate definitions indicate assumptions aka implied yet unacknowledged axioms.
🐟 03. CONCEPTS Vs THE TRUTH:
The term “TRUTH” is a grossly misused word.
Anything which has ever been written or spoken, by even the greatest sage or Avatar (incarnation of Divinity), including every single postulation within this Holy Scripture, is merely a CONCEPT and not “The Truth”, as defined further down.
A concept is either accurate or inaccurate. Virtually all concepts are inaccurate to a degree. However, some concepts are far more accurate than others. A belief is an unhealthy and somewhat problematic relationship one has with a certain concept, due to misapprehension of life as it is, objectively-speaking. Attachment to beliefs, particularly in the presumption of individual free-will, is the cause of psychological suffering.
For example, the personal conception of the Ultimate Reality (God or The Goddess) is inaccurate to a large extent (see Chapter 07). The concept of Ultimate Reality being singular (“All is One”) is far more accurate. The transcendence of BOTH the above concepts (non-duality) is excruciatingly accurate. However, none of these concepts is “The Truth” as such, since all ideas are relative, whilst The Truth is absolute.
It is VITALLY important to distinguish between relative truth and Absolute Truth. Relative truth is temporal, mutable, subjective, dependent, immanent, differentiated, conditioned, finite, complex, reducible, imperfect, and contingent, whilst Absolute Truth is eternal, immutable, objective, independent, transcendent, undifferentiated, unconditional, infinite, non-dual (i.e. simple), irreducible, perfect, and non-contingent.
Absolute Truth is the ground of all being (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit), and is prior to any mind, matter, name, form, intent, thought, word, or deed.
Good and bad are RELATIVE - what may be good or bad can vary according to temporal circumstances and according to personal preferences. For example, there is absolutely no doubt that citrus fruits are a good source of nutrients for human beings. However, it may be bad to consume such beneficial foods when one is experiencing certain illnesses, such as chronic dysentery. 'One man's food is another man's poison.'
Because of the relative nature of goodness, anything which is considered to be good must also be bad to a certain degree, since the extent of goodness is determined by the purpose of the object in question. As demonstrated, citrus fruits can be either good or bad, depending on its use. Is drinking arsenic good or bad? Well, if one wishes to remain alive, it is obviously bad, but for one who wishes to die, it is obviously good.
However, beyond the dichotomy of good and bad, is the Eternal Truth, which transcends mundane relativism. Therefore, the goal of life is to rise above the subjective “good” and “bad”, and abide in the transcendental sphere. A qualified spiritual preceptor is able to guide one in the intricacies of such transcendence. Such a person, who has transcended mundane relative truth, is said to be an ENLIGHTENED soul.
When making moral judgments, it is more appropriate to use the terms “holy/evil” or “righteous/unrighteous”, rather than “good/bad” or “right/wrong”. As the Bard of Avon so rightly declared in the script for one of his plays, there is nothing which is intrinsically either good or bad but “thinking makes it so”. At the time of writing (early twenty-first century), especially in the Anglosphere, most persons seem to use the dichotomy of “good/evil” rather than “good/bad” and “holy/evil”, most probably because they consider that “holiness” is exclusively a religious term. However, the terms “holy” and “righteous” are fundamentally synonymous, for they refer to a person or an act which is fully in accordance with pure, holy, and righteous principles (“dharma”, in Sanskrit). So a holy person is one who obeys the law of “non-harm” (“ahiṃsā”, in Sanskrit), and as the ancient Sanskrit axiom states: “ahiṃsa paramo dharma” (non-violence is the highest moral virtue or law).
The ONLY real (Absolute) Truth in the phenomenal manifestation is the impersonal sense of “I am” (“ahaṃ”, in Sanskrit).
Everything else is merely transient and unreal (“unreal” for that very reason - because it is ever-mutating, lacking permanence and stability).
This sense of quiddity is otherwise called “Infinite Awareness”, “Spirit”, “God”, “The Ground of Being”, “Necessary Existence“, “The Higher Self”, as well as various other epithets, for it is the very essence of one's being. Chapters 06 and 10 deal more fully with this subject matter.
Of course, for one who is fully self-realized and enlightened, the subject-object duality has collapsed. Therefore, a fully-awakened individual does not perceive any REAL difference between himself and the external world, and so, sees everything in himself, and himself in everything.
If it is true that there are none so blind as those who don’t WANT to see, and none so deaf as those who don’t WANT to hear, then surely, there are none so ignorant as those who don’t WANT to learn the truth.
OBVIOUSLY, in the previous paragraph, and in most other references to the word “truth” within this booklet, it is meant “the most accurate concept possible”, or at least “an extremely accurate fact”.
For example, as clearly demonstrated in Chapters 21 and 22, it is undoubtedly “true” that a divinely-instituted monarchy is the most beneficial form of national governance, but that is not the Absolute Truth, which is the impersonal, never-changing ground of all being.
So, to put it succinctly, all “truths” are relative concepts (even if they are very accurate) but the Universal Self alone is REAL (Absolute) Truth.
“In the absence of both the belief 'I am the body' and in the absence of the belief that 'I am not the body', what is left is what we really are.
We don't need to define what we really are. We don't need to create a thought to tell us what we are. What we are is what TRUTH is."
*************
“God is not something 'out-there', 'looking-in', but God (or Source) has BECOME all of This.
So, God is the Underlying Principle of all of this - the Energy or the Consciousness.
The (psycho-physical) manifestation has arisen within Consciousness as an imagination in the mind of Source.”
Roger Castillo,
Australian Spiritual Teacher, 15/07/2015.
“I am the TRUTH...” “...and the TRUTH shall set you free”.
Lord Jesus Christ,
John 14:16 and 8:32.
@@ReverendDr.Thomas Seriously, are you a bot?? A giant wall of unreadable text that's completely irrelevant to the comment thread...I'm not going to read that. It's apparently copypasted from a (I imagine _much_) larger text.
If you value your own ideas (and are not a bot) why not take some effort and actually contribute to the conversation?
@@j3ffn4v4rr0 Kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️
exactly my thoughts, positive is relative and completely inseparable from negative aspects. How can there be anything positive without negative? both of which are human constructs. For example as a thought experiment you could say death is a negative so lets keep everything that is "alive" and discard everything that is "dead". Well, people, plants, puppies, lemurs, trees are all alive so they can stay, but rocks, mountains, stars, black holes and dead people are all "dead" so let's get rid of those. So you'd end up with people, plants, puppies etc just floating in empty space, which is ridiculous. Death as a thing is jsut a state of matter; it it necessary for things to become or turn into a state of matter of being alive. It's the same thing. We as humans provide the property of positive and negative, so to me there really isn't such a things as Positive or a being that is only positive; it would be impossible to percieve it because it wouldn't have a contrast.
Well done, but I have lots of questions, the first one being: Are you aware if Gödel parsed this arguments through his own theorems? Cheers!
Wonderful video, thank you! I love the "round square" example at 15:30 that segues into Leibnitz's approach. The explanation of Leibnitz's approach appears to share similarities to showing that a space is complete. If it is, then it is spanned by a linearly independent set of basis (or "properties", in this context) which must be consistent with each other because they are independent (or "primitive", in this context). Properties of all objects in this space must therefore be consistent too.
Thanks for the video!
Existence is not a property of the subject. It is a property of the concept. "My spaceship" is not a thing that exists, but it's not the spaceship that has this negated property, because, well, it doesn't exist. Instead, the concept "my spaceship" has a negation of a reifying property. Can't believe how much people trip on this simple language pitfall.
Since in a perfect Universe you would have a spacecraft, you must have a spacecraft!
I can imagine a Flying Spaghetti Monster that created the universe. But it would not be perfect without existing, because existence is a positive property. And nobody is more positive than him! Therefore the Monster exists.
I do exist, I'm positive
R’Amen
I just spotted an argument crawling along the ground. I’m worried it still might go over your head
Again, I very much appreciate your explanation of essences. A is an essence of x if and only if it is a property of x and entails the necessary properties of x and only the necessary properties of x. That makes sense.
But when I read Godel's original proof, it seems to say something different. It seems to say A is an essence of x if and only if it is a property of x and entails all the properties of x.
Am I misreading Godel's argument? Or does this reflect a change in Anthony Anderson's revision of the argument? If it is a change, I'd say it is an improvement. I don't see why an essence of x should imply non-necessary properties of x.
Thank you for your video.
One thing that comes to mind to me when reading Axiom 5 is the myth of Sibyl, of which you talked about at the beginning of your T.S. Eliot and The Wasteland lecture. Can we say that for old Sibyl, existence is still a positive property?
Good point!
What if a society existed that sacrificed it’s most intellectual person every year? Is intellect itself a negative in that society or is it the society that’s a negative?
@@James-ms2mx Pol Pot got there first.
Around 300 BC, the Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote:
“Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
Yet again, this is taking God from a religious perspective and not a spiritual one.
God = unconditional love = no judgment = pure silence.
The last statement means each and every religion is wrong. The Bible has 5 errors in the very 1st paragraph plus it has been edited and mistranslated so much and so often and books have been taken out etc etc etc.......
Isn’t calling things “positive property” just a human construct? As arbitrary as dividing vistas into beautiful or unappealing-possibly an interesting exercise, but having no impact or implication for the world in itself
I would've thought so.
Loving and teaching one's children is a positive thing, whether animals are aware of it or not. Humanity didn't *invent* the existence of positive and negative. We've simply observed. Don't mistake ontology for epistemology.
@@WisdomThumbs no it isn't. We merely called one set of actions of human behaviour "loving" and one particular set of communication between two of more humans belonging to certain arbitrary classes "teaching". There's nothing special or specific about both
@@shahsadsaadu5817 "Loving" acts just so happen to be the acts that produce the most resilient and self-sustaining future generations, which keeps the species alive and leaves the fondest memories. It appears you've descended into the trap of contrarianism, verging on solipsistic philosophy.
I think consciousness or the ability to be conscious alive and or capable to observe demonstrates a creator . Also the limits put on the ability to imagine think and or consider a idea shows how vast our creators sandbox is
Personally, I find Godel's language easier to understand than the rephrasing, but I appreciate the video.
Am I the only one who thinks Godel's whole endeavor reeks of desperation? i mean, substitute the world god for the word smurf, as in the magical little blue men, then argue that in order for a smurf to be a smurf it needs to have the qualities that would justify its existence, and you can see just how f-ing ridiculous the whole thing is. I mean, just how many fallacies does one needs to overlook for one not to shut this whole thing down immediately? special pleading? begging the question? circular argument? equivocation? how is this even logic? first Godel assumes the existence of a being who, in order for it to be what he chooses that being to be, has to have certain qualities, in order for the imagined qualities of the imagined being to be evidence of the being itself.
Now, i am by no means an expert on Godel, hell im not even a fan, but maybe that's why he never published this. I wanna believe that the argument is just Godel f-king around, seeing how far he could take things on a ridiculously flaw foundation. Does anybody know if he has a believer?
as always, expertly put by Prof Bonevac. hope he understands mine is not a comment of his lecture, his knowledge or his capacity
@cmfox there are a few things you not taking into consideration. First as Gaunilo demonstrated, because the argument can be applied to an endless number of fantastic things, like a smurf or a "definitely not a god thing", the argument itself cannot be taken a proof of god. Second, that, like Kant demonstrated, because existence is not a predicate, it cannot be part of the concept of something, which means that it cannot be part of an analytical proposition. For it requires of evidence to be affirmed and is therefore a posteriori, which invalidates the point of the argument. Which take us back to my original argument, that because the argument can be applied to an endless number of fantastic things and therefore cannot be said to be naturally conducing to the concept of god, and because existence is not a predicate, that is, because it is a posteriori, Godel's argument necessitates the concept of god to exist to be conducing to the concept of god, which makes the whole thing fallacious.
@cmfox Your point is valid. the reason why I focus much more on Anselm's argument is because I find contemporary ontological arguments to suffers of the same fatal flaws. I'm not trying to be a philistine, I just don't understand how anybody can not see it, honestly.
The way I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, all contemporary ontological arguments revolve around the notion that the concept of god postulates the greatest possible being, that no greater being can be conceived and that therefore god's existence most be either impossible or necessary. That if god did not exist it can never come into existence, or be cause to come into existence, cause that would imply a greater being, et cetera, et cetera. there's no need to go any further. for the argument implies that we, hairless monkeys with our silly little brains are somehow able to define what the greatest possible being is, which is ridiculous. For such an assumption would imply that we have valid knowledge of god, which makes the argument circular and beg the question. or how do we know what a god is? and if we cannot reasonably define what a god is ( just take of the problems of omnipotence for example ), how can we presume to know whether god can be created or not? and why does it needs to be created? what possible justification can there be for the idea that if god comes to be is because it was created? why can't it just come to be? how can we possible argue that we know enough of divine mechanics as to presume that the greatest possible being cannot just come to be? wouldn't that make god some sort catholic god? ( as in the first thing that is) and isn't the catholic god proven impossible by the second law of thermodynamics?
See, no matter how you slice it, the contemporary or reformulated ontological argument presupposes god to make god be, which is a fallacy. and we haven't even considered Peter Van Inwagen's knowno!
@cmfox yes but that's exactly my point. We do not know, which implies that our only possible recourse is to return to the null hypothesis: until we know we most restrain from making assumptions. we cannot possibly know, so we cannot possibly justify making any assumptions as to the possible qualities of an unsubstantiated being. and that includes its powers, capacities and rules of existence. Remember, neither the ontological argument nor the reformulated ontological argument apply exclusively to the concept of god. Anselm famously destroyed the argument by applying it to an island and Peter van Inwagen chocked the life out of the reformulated argument by imagining the knowmo ( A knowno is a being that knows that there is no perfect being. there is no reason to believe that the knowno is a contradiction, and the concept of a being that has the qualities that make it a knowno is not logically absurd. if we then accept that a knowno is not intrinsically impossible, as in such a thing would require the fallacy of special pleading, then we most accept that there is a possible world where a knowno exists. and by accepting that there is a possible world where a knowno exists one accepts that there is a possible world where there is no perfect being. yet a perfect being, at least according to the unjustifiable assumptions of the reformulated ontological argument, most have necessary existence, it most exist in all possible worlds. and by lacking existence in the knowno's world it does not have necessary existence, which means that it cannot possibly be a perfect being ). thus my tendency to always use Gaunilo's and Kant's answer. The way I see it, the reformulated ontological argument is Anselm's argument with a couple of extra steps. for both versions require the reader to make assumptions it cannot possible justify, and they both depend on special pleading to make their case. or how is god more likely than a smurf? how is god more likely than a knowno? yet I don't see you arguing for the existence of a smurf. and if god is as likely as a smurf then the concept of god is idiocy, and you most accept it.
@cmfox my argument is that it is impossible to know that there is a perfect being, and that therefore belief if unwarranted. that the argument used to ascertain the existence of such a being can be applied to an endless amount of fantastic beings, and that the fact that those fantastic beings are as likely as god is evidence of the silliness of the argument itself.
god is the ultimate context which is beyond the constraints of the logics contained.
as someone who has been suicidal, necessary existence being positive is a deal-breaker.
Presumably God's existence is free of the troubles that afflict us. But that doesn't remove the worry. Whether necessary existence limits God's power is a deep and rather puzzling question. Also, if we take 'positive' as meaning something strictly logical, definable without negation, it's not clear that necessary existence is positive; it seems to mean something like 'invulnerable' or 'indestructible' or 'contingent on nothing,' all of which contain negation. So, I think you're right to think that this is a potential trouble spot.
@@PhiloofAlexandria It wouldn't be as much of an issue if it wasn't an axiom that didn't need to be an axiom if it was explicitly true thanks to the other axioms. creates a bit of a logic loop by using it as an independent factor whereas any other positive trait is proven by the other axioms. I would love to see someone tackle the problem without that. I'm open to it, because of definition 3. You could argue that something with suffering is not God. I don't think Christians would like that definition very much, though - they may argue that the ability to withstand suffering is positive and necessary as suffering is innate? that might be another loop actually.
Godel was a brilliant man. He said he had found a secret interpretation in Leibniz’s writings and that is why someone was trying to poison him. I suspect he was right.
Assuming a ranking of any sort automatically implies the ultimate rank beyond which there is no other. This sort of proof assumes its own truth from the outset, to gainsay it requires only that one doubt the ranking.
Gödel’s work is out of my grasp. If I understood it, I’d be a step ahead of those who applaud, “A brilliant man has an ontological argument for the existence of God.” I hope I don’t disappoint the mathies here. I am going to guess that I don’t need to worry about Gödel’s argument for two reasons. First, there are lots of excellent mathies out there; they do not seem to be standing on street corners with sandwich boards, proclaiming God Exists: Kurt Proved Him! Second, I can’t think of a serious* biologist yet who says that life was created by any god. (*sorry, Flood biologists don’t count; I have read a little of their stuff: it’s silly.)
Wow makes my head spin. I am not sure how this work out through the whole argument, but in Eastern philosophy, a positive condition like existence cannot be preferred to non-existence and labeled a "positive" because its opposite is absolutely necessary to consider existence "positive". In simple terms, you can't have the one without the other. Intuitively, all the argument would get you in the end would be that it is necessary for God to exist and not exist simultaneously (I am not sure of this, I am open to correction). It always seemed rational that because I can imagine a being possessing all God-like characteristics that one MAY exist. But I never thought it MUST exist. But I'm open to feedback.
If I understood the video correctly, it is not that God himself (herself? itself?) would both exist and not exist, only that something must not exist for existence to have meaning for everything else. To determine "positivity" one need only ask if one thing is better than another. It assumes a value system or moral structure. Is it better for you to exist or not exist?
Not existing is so much better: it creates zero complications. It's the simplest and most elegant solution to all problems: nothing exists. Existence is negative, not positive. Godel is exactly wrong.
Una explicación muy clara. Saludos desde Perú.
This proof is saying nothing more than simply: "good things exist in the universe, therefore good things exist." And it defines "good things" as God. I believe this is what's called a bias.
Godel's whole thesis was an exercise as to how Modal Logic ( possibility> necessity) might be applied to Anselm's ontological proof. Here, it's important to understand that ML as such was created during Godel's active years; he seemed to have had a lot of fun with it--much like his famous argument during his citizenship Q&A about contradictions in the Constitution...my dream is to have been a fly on the wall during his conversations with einstein at Princeton... which is to say that theologians shouldn't take his 'proofs' so seriously!
Philosophy is always a bit better with birdsong
YEAH....LOL. Bird song makes the bullshit sound believable.
While being a fan of Gödel, I found a way to make his proof fall apart.
1) Being a Sacrifice is Not a Positive thing; whereas NOT a Sacrifice is.
2) Christ has the God Property.
3) God Properties are Exclusively Positive Properties.
4) Christ is a Sacrifice.
Therefore:
1) Christ has a Negative Property.
2) Ergo, 3) is False and 2) is False.
. . . and the Proof unravels.
Nevertheless, since God is the Most Self-Referential Thing in the Universe, these Contradictions are really Paradoxes. not Contradictions.
This boggles the mind. I'm sticking to Faith.
@@claytonbenignus4688its a paradox even for God to reveal Himself within His Creation ("all that is"). God is the best!
the logic that existence is preferable to nonexistence is the logic of survival, which is the game all biological minds were made to play. without some context, there's no reason to say any quality is better to have than not. if that context is explicit then it's fine. so, if your goal is to stay alive, then it's better for you to exist than not. if there isn't any such goal then it isn't better to exist than not. if somethingis better, it's better *for* something.
but anyway, existence isn't a trait. what would it mean to say you have a tumor in your brain that doesn't exist? and now is existence a positive trait still?
I agree with everything here except for the "existence isn't a trait", it obviously is, the thing is that such existence is undeterminate because of the gap between noumenon and phenomenon and because of the problem of universals
You can't prove the existence of God and you can't prove the non-existence of God. So God is great mystery.
Doesn't "positive" in this logical proof context only exist as part of a human construct within human kind and it's ability to create and use language, logic, etcetera?
As some others have questioned, something like a snowflake exists as a positive, with each expression being uniquely perfect.
Historically, there were many human beings who existed in geographically isolated communities and never saw an ocean in their respective lifetimes or snow but a small number could imagine it given enough accumulated knowledge and experience over generations.
Can not 'Creative-like' be substituted for 'God-like' and come to the same logical outcome? Human creativity is unique among Earthly creatures, as is Meta-thinking for example.
Please clarify as I am failing to see why this particular proof is special or unique.
This is not an anti-religious question.
Gödel doesn't define 'positive,' except to say that he means it in either a moral/aesthetic sense or a logical sense-definable without the use of negation-but the only real characterization of its meaning is in the axioms: If P is positive, then (a) not-P is not positive; (b) it is necessary that P is positive; (c) necessarily-P is positive. Being God-like (having as essential properties all and only the positive properties) and necessary existence are positive. And the set of positive properties is logically closed: if P is positive and P entails Q, Q is positive.
One can put any interpretation of 'positive' and 'God-like' on the argument as long as it makes these axioms true.
That's not as easy as you might think, however. The requirement that if P is positive, P is necessarily positive means that 'positive' means something like "positive, no matter what." Nothing that is positive merely contingently will make that true.
Inherently positive is something that can help us and negative is something detrimental to us , it will change from person to person dependent on various factors ,some hate things that others do love .
Someone's best time is during war while others enjoy peace , something positive is derived from someone's ability to thrive in given conditions .Someone thinking like God would see the perseverance of life on earth the way we see it as a positive thing , others will want to change that .
If evil is a real force on earth all calculations are dependent on its given influence as positive for one is negative for other .
Positive is a human construct just like a straight line that is not observed in nature ,it helps us organize a perceived chaotic world we live in .
Arguing from the conclusion.
Existence is not a predicate.
Existence can be a predicate, hence "I think therefore I am".
@@roxynoz8245 At its heart, the clause "I am" ("I exist", iow) just says that there is (at least) one thing that possesses my identity. "There is" is just a logical quantifier. It is not a property.
If Descartes had said "I think, therefore I am thinking", then "thinking" is a property. It distinguishes things that are thinking from things that aren't thinking.
@@rsm3t In reflection, I belive his approach had purpose for examing what it would mean to be self-conscious as a human. His conclusion was that the activity of thinking is the matter of self-consciousness.
@@rsm3t I believe the correct standpoint for Descartes would've been to have said, 'I'm alive, therefore I exist".
As is said in Islamic religion; All the good names are to God. All praise is to God.
A proof about logical systems is not a proof of metaphysical prejudices. Godel was a great mathematician but that doesn’t mean he was right in everything else.
Very well put
This is an excellent detailed explanation of Godel’s argument. I especially appreciate your explanation of essences, which is a difficult idea. Even so, the argument doesn’t work.
The problem with the argument is that the first two axioms, negations of positive properties are not positive properties, and a positive property may not entail a negative property, together assume that a positive property must not entail its own negation.
Since we are working in S5, this is stronger than requiring a positive property to be logically consistent. We are saying that a positive property is required to be one that is metaphysically possibly instantiated. In other words, a requirement for a property to be positive is that it must be metaphysically possible a being with this property exists.
This is a reasonable requirement. After all, how could a property that made it impossible for a being to exist be positive? Furthermore, we need this principle to reply to the question, “Why isn’t being able to make a stone so big one cannot lift it a positive property?” Clearly it would be metaphysically impossible for a being to have that property, along with the other properties of a MGB (maximally great being), and so being able to make a stone one cannot lift is not a positive property.
But there is a price for making this requirement. Before we may grant any property is positive, we must now show that property is metaphysically possibly instantiated. So before we may grant axiom 3, the property of being God-like is positive, we must confirm the property of being God-like is possibly instantiated. In other words, we must confirm it is metaphysically possible a God-like being exists. A God-like being is assumed to have all positive properties, which includes necessary existence, and presumably includes omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect goodness. These are the properties of a MGB (maximally great being), as defined by Plantinga. So before we may grant axiom 3, we must show it is possible a MGB exists. But if we could do that, we would not need Godel’s argument; we could go straight to confirming the main premise of Plantinga’s argument. And so Godel’s argument, while very interesting, is useless as an actual argument for the existence of God.
Fundamentally, this argument conflates two different ideas of positivity. We can call them actual-positivity and conceptual-positivity. A property is conceptually-positive if we conceive of it as positive, ignoring whether it is metaphysically possible for any entity to possess that property or not. A property is actually-positive if it is positive within the world (or at least how the world might have metaphysically been).
As an example of how this works, consider the following argument:
Premise 1. Sherlock Holmes was the greatest detective.
Premise 2. Only a detective that exists could be the greatest detective.
Conclusion. Sherlock Holmes exists.
Both premises can be defended. Premise 1 can be defended if we think of greatness as conceptual-greatness. Premise 2 can be defended if we think of greatness as actual-greatness. But simultaneously defending premise 1 using an idea of conceptual greatness and premise 2 using an ideal of actual-greatness commits the fallacy of equivocation.
We can boil down Godel’s argument to
Premise 1. Only possibly instantiated properties can be positive.
Premise 2. Being a MGB is a positive property.
Conclusion. The property of being a MGB is possibly instantiated.
We might grant premise 1 using an idea of actual-positivity. Bear in mind we are working in S5 which assumes metaphysical possibility, so when we say it is possible a MGB exists, we’re not just saying it is conceptually possible, we’re saying in reality there is a way this world could have been such that if the world would have turned out that way, then a MGB would have existed.
On the other hand, we can defend premise 2 by interpreting positivity as conceptual positivity. If we ignore the issue of whether it is metaphysically possible the property of being a MGB is instantiated, it certainly sounds like a good property to have!
So both premises can be defended by using different ideas of positivity. But to do so is to commit the fallacy of equivocation.
your reply, though overly wordy, is correct. The three types of beings are necessary, contingent, and impossible. This argument presented in the video ignores the idea that a god or god-like being is impossible. That the first 2 premises make the assumption of conceptual goodness is how the argument skirts this notion.
Very nicely done! I was completely unaware of Godel's proof. Thank you!
Proof?! What proof?!
@@nonprogrediestregredi1711 'Proof' as in formal reasoning to a conclusion, not necessarily successful. ;)
Being evident is a positive property. God is not evident.
But... why does being evident have to be a positive property?
Actually, God _is_ evident, that's why every civilization in human history believed in (at least one) deity. Atheism emerged in the 16th century only and it's still the absolute minority of people in the world.
The existence of the universe itself makes God evident.
@@friedrichrubinstein ua-cam.com/video/9p0mV_v6cSw/v-deo.html
This made me feel really smart as I was able to effortlessly demolish every axiom before encountering his proof. LOL.
Please, enlighten us with your wisdom. Give us more details.
I don’t understand how existence (whether necessary or not) can be declared a positive property. Nothing but human feeling may provoke that assumption, and the only reason that non-existence has negative implications is because the living fear it. But isn’t the one as positive or negative or indeed meaningless as the other?
Gödel DEFINITIVELY proved that he had a fully left-brained disposition. 🤪
Genius mathematician btfo by this random nobody who is clearly so much better than him
@@bun197, kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
Do we need a deeper understanding of reality to have this argument? Positive and negative charge is an innate part of all matter, all objects. A sphere has one perfect surface the same positive curvature everywhere. If the Universe is based on a process of spherical symmetry forming and breaking, then we would be the imperfect broken symmetry. You explained this difficult subject very well!!!
Positive and negative are just names given to charges. They could've been called anything.
"Proofs"...
I do admire the attempts, though.
Dude was top shelf!
This is the argument that gave me epistemic certainty in my theism
This is besides the point but Moldbug and NRX are kinda old school these days bro. Moldbugs ideas are pretty useful but their kinda outdated a bit. I recommend that you look into more traditionalist thinkers like Guenon, Evola, or Spengler.
@@Jareers-ef8hp Rabbit holes ain’t so bad. As interesting as I find their ideas. I do have significant points of difference with Guenon and Evola on certain points of axiology. And in deviation to Spengler’s theory I think the phase of civilization can be shifted by an aggregation of the consequences of will and action of the people within towards the kingdom of God. I agree with Evola that if race is real it would be a metaphysical thing rather than biological in essence. The end of ridding the Tiger is to embody the kingdom of God on earth in the process of individuating. So the Age we are in is a judgment on those who birth it. The phases don’t follow each other necessarily. As so while I am definitely a Reactionary of some type, and favor monarchism contra democracy. I am in many respectable a Post- Moldburgian reactionary.
@@ansaz14 Thanks for the reply bro.I agree with just about everything you said regarding race, religion, and democracy (however I favor virtuous aristocracy rather then monarchy but that’s neither here nor there). However I disagree with your criticism of Spengler, I believe that his assessment of culture is more accurate then Moldbugs is. I think he hits the nail when he says that a decline is basically inevitable no matter how aggressive the right is in pushing back against the left. I think the only thing we can really do is wait out the storm and wait till China and Russia invade the west and destroy western civilization, and then we can probably build back from the ground up something more transcendental and religious and high culture. That’s what I’m convinced of, but I’d really like to hear you out more.
@@Jareers-ef8hp I think what Spengler noted is a pattern rather than a law. I think he rightly shows us that "rises" and "falls" look the same; "stagnation" looks the same. What differs, I think, is the choices the people make within the phases. In my thinking Kali Yuga can last 1000 years or year; A golden age can last 1 year or 1000 years. A civilization can shift back and forth between stages. Constantine breathes new life to the Roman civilization project, sets it to the path of glory, Commodus hastens the fall, sets it on the path of decay. More recently, compare the National Socialists with the Wiemar republic. Same generation. Different leadership. Different political formulas. Different Choices made by the people and their leaders. The Wiemar are weak, degenerate and under the thumb of the League of nations. The National Socialists on the other hand are motivated, they raise the status and standing of their nation and breathe new life into a broken, defeated people angry at the state foreign powers have reduced them to. Yet they are children of the same Generation. Born in the same era. Shaped by WW1.
So for as long as Westerners are content with the current order, they will continue to slide into depravity and decay. They will find themselves unworthy of empire, and find themselves being pale shadows of their former selves. Just as Athens and Sparta fell and the new center of power became Rome. Just as the Spartans diminished and the Macedonians rose. America's strategy of containing Nations preventing them from becoming great powers will break. A new global order emerges with new regional hegemonic powers with their won imperial ambitions.
So I don't think the West will be conquered. Rather their ambition, ingenuity and industry will fall behind others more valiant and find themselves like Sparta. Once great people living off an old reputation, but in truth a small player in the quest for greatness.
@@ansaz14 Ever thought of making a video on your channel about race? Race as a metaphysical thing before?
Well said. It was Kant who won the argument of why "existence cannot be a predicate" for the reasons @cvdevol 2 yrs ago cited--but sometimes I wonder...
"Existence and nonexistence cannot be properties of a thing, because a thing by definition exists and cannot not exist for it would not be a thing, indeed it would not BE."
How persuasive is that, really?
If Bernardo Kastrup is right in that experience is what truly is, said experience being qualia of mentation, such that measurable quanta of experience is also mentation, then it makes sense to think of that which is experienced to have the property of existence by virtue of being thought--since mentation is for us what it is.
Kant's argument presupposes the veridical experience of 'matter' to be there as phenomena such that it is a mere tautology of sorts to say ofcan existing thing it exists: or not, since if it does not one could not predicate as property anything about it since it is not there.
But how could one even do that WITHOUT first giving the thought of the inexistent thing the salient feature of nonexistence as an intrinsic property. Therefore if X exists it, X, must have the property of being actual, i.e., existing.
Spinoza in the 17th century showed that every attempt of proving the existence of God is inconsistent. The arguments of Gödel seem to me those of a lawyer who is able to convince you of anything
That's quite an odd reading of Spinoza; he argued for a Pan-theism; God as the Universe; God as the Cosmos; God as the Fundamental Substance. Where do you get the idea from Spinoza that the existence of God is inconsistent
As an analogy, let's think about all the positive counting numbers less than 10 as our "cosmos": 1, 2, ..., 9. In this cosmos (or we could just call it the universal set), only 9 numbers exist and nothing more. Given this, it is indeed not possible to demonstrate, from within the universe, that the universe exists. I am guessing that this was the sense in which our dear Spinoza suggested an inconsistency in proving the existence of God. Yet, when we transcend the universe, (and we do transcend the 9 numbers in the sense that we can, from a distance, be aware of those numbers and imagine them to compose a set, a mental construct), then we can know the reality of the universal set and God, at least Spinoza's God. The practical question then becomes, at least for me, am I (are we) limited to being in the universe (my body is), or is that ontology transcending (but not separating from) the universe?
0 is order. +1 is more chaotic. Rest would be superior to action. Nothing should exist.
Thank you very much for explaining this clearly. I'm saddened by the fact that Kurt Godel in his dotage fell victim to such a horrible rationalization to protect himself from the fear of death. He was an important man and I think he struggled to be good but many great thinkers fall apart in their last days. I think this is clearly a case of it. At least five of the seven axioms are clearly wrong on close examination so they all seem speciously true.
He had worked it out decades before, apparently, sometime in the 1940s.
@@PhiloofAlexandria Interesting, but that kind of makes me sadder. I had heard rumors that he was extraordinarily terrified of death and that fear haunted him all his life. I wonder why he never published it, perhaps he was afraid people would show its flaws.
What is sadder is the preconceived bias that a man of logic and science who makes a case for God's existence must be giving into some inner human weakness.
Though, I must admit it is a rather futile exercise, given that there is no consistent definition of God, and "perfection" which is used here is always relative to the object.
@@charlesellis7638 s5 it's not a horrid rationalization. Like most forms of logic it can be used for cringe worthy rationalizations if
1) it's assumptions are faulty
2) there are hidden assumptions in the steps.
You can't define something into existence no matter how flawless the steps of the logic are. For this kind of logical argument to work first he would have to establish that the Universe we are in actually contains perfect things. There are so many things wrong with the different assumptions and the inappropriate use of logic to try to discover the physical reality that I didn't go into the details, but this really is a big exercise in hidden circular reasoning
To paraphrase Eliezer yudkowsky when logic is true in all possible universes that logic cannot distinguish which Universe you are in.
@@hugoclarke3284 the inconsistency of definitions of God is one of the big reasons why I seldom if ever bother with these debates anymore. I call myself and ignostic I cannot reasonably discuss a definition of God until somebody gives me a tight and self-consistent definition
There is also another controversial thing that's not mentioned in any of the ontological arguments that involve modal logic; namely, in modal logic necessity or possibility are operators, not properties. Treating them as properties (and thus making use of sentential logic) at one step of the argument and then as operators to switch to modal logic is misleading and very similar to what we call "categorical errors". Existence is also a logical operator, not a predicate and as a consequence it cannot be treated at some step as a predicate (property) and in the next as an operator. As a consequence this ontological argument is just as misleading as the others before it.
Godel's Proof for the existence of God is unconvincing.
@@ady9830 Thank you for your comment.
@@ady9830 Axioms are self evident judgements and don't require Proof.
Where does it break down?
One that didn't studied god, cannot make assumptions about god.
@@davidtrindle6473 suppose there is this thing called unicorn, which i define as an all loving being which has all the positive properties,
As its shown in the video existence is preferable over non existence, cause i mean duhh.
So existance is a positive property.
But my unicorn has all the positive properties, including the property of existence.
Thus making my unicorn exist!
thanks
Was Hitler's existence positive much less a perfection? What about a virus' existence ? and he says "better" , better for who?.... this is just a clever play on words.
I tend to agree. What happens to this argument if we simply deny that positive properties exist?
@@asphaltpilgrim you end up in the postmodern nosedive of the modern world
@@mattbailey8599 Ah, well I don't know exactly what your personal view is but I take issue with the world 'nosedive'. It is true that there are challenges to reframing humanity's place in the universe... but if you are ok with electricity and the internet then IMHO you have signed up for that ride... or instead maybe God has signed you up for it because of the time you were born into.
I believe we usually eliminate things out using those rules. In some world atleast Hitler was bad. In some world virus was bad. But in no world having more love is bad. In no world wisdom is bad.
It kinda syncs with the categorical imperatives by kant on steroids with you doing a full factorial of all the possible states of worlds and doing a fitness function check to weed out bad properties
Wrong
I need to watch this a few times over.
Just tragically bad argumentation.
Explain?
Alright. Here's two issues I, and every other person who has actually critically viewed this "proof," have recognized.
First, Gödel's argument depends on a set of unproven axioms. Without universal agreement on these axioms, the argument lacks a compulsory conclusion, as it relies on subjective acceptance rather than objective evidence.
And second, existence as a concept does not equate to existence in reality. Gödel's argument may persuasively define a supreme being, but this does not necessitate its actual existence outside of our conceptual understanding, a distinction emphasized by philosophers like Kant.
Basically, a whole lot of begging the question and brutishly insists upon itself and axioms without careful scrutiny.
Dang I'm going to meditate on that tbh I'm a little out of my league intellectually. Very well put on your part.
@@apophenic_This seems odd; there's no universally recognized set of axioms. For example, the law of non-contradiction or the excluded middle is rejected by paraconsistent logic.
On the second point, Kant's objection is overestimated. First, while it's true that existence simpliciter isn't a predicate, it's much less clear whether existence as a concrete being outside the mind isn't. Even if one disagrees, the notion of existence implied by the axioms is necessary existence, which certainly is a predicate.
Given the notion of necessary existence, all one needs to prove is that the existence of the being provided by the axioms is possible (in a modal sense). If we establish this, it logically follows, via modal logic, that such a being exists.
@@magno1177 I've never understood this logic "if such a being can exist-then it does exist". What? How? Why? There is no reason to believe that just because we can prove the possibility of a thing in our minds, that it must exist or does exist. I think you're vastly overstating the importance and power of our own minds, then again I know very little about Logic as a field of study.
I would like to add another important notion: if something exists that is maximum, then it must necessarily contain all that exists and not be separate from it, for that implies restriction.
Axiom 2... If you can't feel pain and its positive as a super hero yet you can't feel the touch of a lover... that is a duality both negative and positive.
Surely I'm missing something.
The problem is with the definition of positive. It’s inherently anthropomorphic. The Universe doesn’t care.
If the property 'maximal' or 'perfect' is positive then what requirement decides whether 'maximal good or 'maximal evil is ''God-like'' (if not arbitrarily by definition)?
Maximality implies Necessary Existence. ✌🏻
St Augustine's proof for the existence of God based on the nature of Truth has not been superseded.
he made an assertion not a proof. Only God can prove He exists. And thats my assertion.
I know next nothing about logic, but am I right in suspecting that Gödel’s proof of God’s existence is essentialist in its metaphysics as opposed to relationalist?