Graham Oppy responds to Josh Rasmussen's Ontological Argument
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2024
- Josh Rasmussen recently defended a Gödelian-style ontological argument at @CapturingChristianity's CCv1 conference. In this video, Graham Oppy joins me to respond to Josh's argument.
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RESOURCES
Over 100 Arguments for God ANSWERED: • Over 100 Arguments for...
Oppy (2017), "The Ontological Arguments", link: drive.google.com/file/d/1y2cb...
Oppy (2019), SEP entry on Ontological Arguments: plato.stanford.edu/entries/on...
Oppy (1995), “Ontological Arguments and Belief in God”, link: www.amazon.com/Ontological-Ar...
Oppy's (2018) edited collection, “Ontological Arguments”, link: www.amazon.com/Ontological-Ar...
OUTLINE
0:00 Intro
1:05 Three obstacles
14:53 Anselm’s Ontological Argument
22:20 Gödel’s Ontological Argument
38:30 Josh’s Diagnosis
53:24 A way forward?
1:00:39 Josh’s new argument
1:10:21 Perfect island parody
1:15:26 A remaining worry
1:24:56 Josh responds to my question
LINKS
My website: josephschmid.com
My PhilPeople profile: philpeople.org/profiles/josep...
Empty bookshelf. What a power move. It's all in his mind, he doesn't need reference materials!
Oppy recieved great collection of books from the emperor, but they are only visible for pious observers. Don't you see them?
It's an antilibrary! Of course it would be empty for him!
It’s the first library in Oppy’s infinite set of libraries, and the number books goes from zero to aleph-omega
Joe, you are quickly becoming one of my top three favorite youtube channels, not that my top three means anything but I thought you should know how great of work and knowledge you are providing for me and others.
2 channels?
@@senkuishigami2485 Ask yourself and Dr. Avi.
Much love❤
@@senkuishigami2485naw, switch that to Alex Malpass, Kane b, Joe and Avi.
I love how Dr. Oppy thinks!
Great video, Joe
Why don't we just invite Graham to come to the conference? Somebody contact that magic man Bameron Curtuzzi.
You cannot trust the airlines these days - have you seen how many flights per day are being canceled? 😁Unless you can find another efficient way to get from Australia to the States.
I really appreciate Josh's excellent presentation. I think ontological arguments are the toughest to support and even though I'm not ultimately convinced here, the work is exciting and bold.
If you're not convinced then it failed.
@@Ken_Scalettabut by your logic, if someone was convinced, then it succeeded.
@@mpeters99 No, the converse does not hold. You would just be falling for a fallacious argument. But you cannot logically say an invalid argument is supportable. If it's supportable, it's not invalid and all fallacious arguments are equally fallacious.There are no valid proofs for the OA and this is recognized in Philosophy in general. I was taught the classical arguments for God (there are only three of them - Cosmological (first cause), Teleological (design) and Ontological. There are many permutations for each, but every argument for God falls into one of those three categories. None of them work and they are really only defended within academic philosophy by credentialed Evangelicals like Plantinga and WLC and even they don't try to defend their arguments against academic peer review but as popular apologetics.
@@Ken_Scaletta you missed my point. You asserted that the argument failed because it did not convince this commenter. By the very same logic if another commenter was convinced, then it succeeded. That was the logic you just used.
Because you can say you’re falling for a fallacious argument yet using your logic I can say “No, the argument convinced someone therefore it isn’t fallacious.” You see how your logic just doesn’t work?
I think the point about there being different senses of "entailment" in play in considering Gödelian-style ontological arguments is a really important point.
Did you say "he has an SCP entry on the Ontological Arugment"?
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-GOD is to remain unimagined at all times
Object class: Euclid
I'm confused, was that a joke or does scp mean something else in philosophy?
@@wesleybasener9705 Joe actually said SEP, which is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
@@RanchElder ok, but can we petition oppy to write an scp entry?
Will you ever invite Yuijin nagasawa to discuss Ontological arguments and also Brian leftow to discuss his recent book *Anselm's argument* ?
Yujin is super busy, like a celebrity almost. Though I could potentially get Leftow on!
@@MajestyofReason leftow will be great but please also try to bring nagasawa in future
P1 A proper epistemology needs to differentiate imagination from reality.
P2 The ontological argument deduces the real existence of something from the existence of the imagined concept of that thing.
P3 The ontological argument fails to differentiate imagination from reality.
C1 Therefore the ontological argument isn't embedded in a proper epistemology.
Is a circle not a maximally sided shape? (Under 2d constraint and related shapes exist in higher orders)
Joe I just finished reading a paper titled *A Bayesian formulation of the kalam cosmological argument* CALUM MILLER. I think this formulation is different from popular versions. So I just want to know if you have discussed this version somewhere or will discuss this in your series?
Interesting is this like stage 2 kalam?
We want Oppy vs. Vecchio on the Ontological Argument!
Maybe eventually! got lots of other videos in the works rn
Hey Joe, have you done a video on presuppositionalism? If not why?
Could someone spell out in more details the two premises version of the argument Joe gives at 1:38 ? Sometimes I think I get it, but probably not quite :
1. Being a necessarily existent being is a positive property
2. Positive properties don't entail negative properties
I spell it out in more detail in my video “Four ontological arguments in 12 minutes”🙂
1. is a positive property.
2. Positive properties don’t entail negative properties.
3. Suppose, for reductio, that is impossible.
4. If is impossible, then entails every property, including negative properties.
5. So, entails every property, including negative properties. (3,4)
6. So, isn’t a positive property. (2,5)
7. So, is a positive property, and it isn’t-a contradiction. (1,6)
8. So, is possible. (3-8, proof by contradiction)
9. If is possible, then it’s actual. (By S5)
10. So it’s actual.
@@MajestyofReason Thanks, you're the best.
The one person who didn't know who graham oppy is when you decided not to introduce him: Spongebob bwomp face
I take his lecture as a great proof of concept for an IBE agrument about how all religious thought comes into existence. I don't see substantive difference between Josh and say Isaiah, except when Isaiah had a profound new thought and it felt like divine inspiration, he took it as evidence of actual divine inspiration, the same way how e.g. Greek poets took their ability to compose classical hexameter as the Mouses speaking through them. I think this neatly explains why we have an impression of religious thoughts developing over time. For example, it's going to be really hard to square MGB theology with a lot of the material from the Hebrew Bible (Yahweh waits, gets weary, hopes his prophecies will fail, remembers, looks forward, is surprised, rests, is provokable, curious, expresses uncertainty, changes his mind etc.). This is entirely expected on that IBE view (the MGB theology hasn't been invented yet so of course the narrative about Yahweh is not going to conform to it) while all of the other usual explanations (it's anthropomorphic language, it's progressive relevation etc.) seem like obvious cop-outs.
@Quantum Passport fun fact - Apollo, the father of the Mouses was also know as the lord of mice
I'm genuinely curious: At one point, after Graham brings up what seems to be a very basic objection to Josh's argument from concepts, you say something to the effect of "we're not pretending like Josh is unaware of these objections." But I wonder what you think he's trying to do with this presentation, then, if he's not mentioning what people in the field think of as the most basic objections to his case? Like what do you think he's trying to do when he fails to mention the counterarguments in a presentation to laypeople? Is that just an oopsie on his part? Just an unfortunate byproduct of the time constraint? Or something more sinister?
Well, I don’t think he’s unaware of them because, Eg, I’ve talked with him about them before; it’s just that his responses to the objections are mistaken (by my and Oppy’s lights). He thinks (or thought), as evinced in his response to my question in the video, that the first premise (asserting the positivity or pure positivity of some property necessarily unique to God) is independently motivated because it’s intuitively obvious. But this is where I think he’s mistaken; what’s intuitively obvious is only that such a property is positive* (or purely positive*), where this is defined independently of modal space (using, Eg, logical consequence or my notion of ‘were p, it would be that q’ instead of entailment). It is by no means intuitively obvious that such a property is positive (or purely positive), where this is understood as (partly) a function of modal space. This, I think, is what’s going on - a subtle, unintentional conflation of positivity* and positivity. So I don’t think anything sinister is going on🙂
@@MajestyofReason Thanks for the response. I think I had in mind a different point in the video, but that's not a big deal. I guess I'm just venting my frustration with this style of presentation (Josh's, not yours). I'm sure Josh is aware of many of these objections, but I feel that when you're presenting to laypeople you have certain obligations (to yourself and to your audience) that you may not have if you're presenting in an academic context. In an academic setting you can present an argument like this and deal with all this business about asterisks as it arises. But when the median viewer isn't going to seek out other philosophers' responses to the argument, I think you have an obligation to raise questions like "what would Graham Oppy say?" during your presentation.
@@mf_hume that makes sense; and I think it’s a fair criticism that Josh should have considered in his presentation how Oppy responds to Gödelian arguments.
@@mf_hume Nah. He shouldn't present these extremely subtle academic disputes to a lay audience precisely *because* they're a lay audience.
No no , If someone is a theist he must be either ignorant or dishonest.
- Internet skeptics
How are positive, negative, maximal, perfection defined here? What is it that gives these terms meaning? Are these defined by human predilections? If so, is this projecting human predilections onto all and the most fundamental?
A positive property - also called a perfection - is a property that necessarily makes its possessor greater (greater than it would have been without the property); a negative property - also called an imperfection - is a property that necessarily makes its possessor worse; and a perfect or maximally perfect being is a being essentially possessing all positive properties and essentially lacking all negative properties.
Many people worry that these will reflect human predilections, so this is a legitimate worry. But defenders of ontological arguments will say that there’s an objective, human-independent notion of goodness or greatness that they’re using. (Similar to moral realism)
@@MajestyofReasonGreater and worse are more of the same type of concepts. It just seems to make man the measure of all things. This is defining everything in terms of humanity. We then face a problem of scale. Is humanity really so significant and perceptive of reality in itself to make such judgements? This seems to be us thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought.
@@MajestyofReason Why is perfection associated only with the positive? Isn't the concept of perfect used with respect to something else, like perfectly good? How would you call an all-evil god? Wouldn't it be perfectly evil? Or am I building an oxymoron here? 😂
If omniscience is the logical maximum of knowledge, and you can see knowledge; would not omniscience follow from knowledge itself?
Slight clarification. To me the statement "great making properties don't imply lesser ones" doesn't actually imply that if property G is great making, then G is possible. Rather that if a property f implies a lesser one then f is either f is a lesser property or f is not possible. A square circle is still a square, just an inconsistent one.
Afterall if G does not imply lesser properties, then that itself would be a property the G has. As such, if G is not possible, then G must have that property, given that impossible properties entail all properties.
A square circle is certainly not a square, if anything it's a _very_ bad circle.
Have you heard of the the Grüttenburg Ontological Argument?
I haven’t!
@@MajestyofReason me either I made it up hehe
@@rebelresource What a troll. Have you heard of Kirschner’s OA?
@@rebelresource I just googled it and found multiple free pdf on ontology/philosophy from The project Gutenberg haha
@@Hello-vz1md bro no way.. WHAT
Let's go! I've been waiting for a scholarly response to Dr. Rasmussen's new argument. I've contacted him and asked him a bunch of questions, to which he so kindly responded. I ended up thinking that he has provided at least a defeasible, independent reason to favor theism over atheism. So, before watching your video, I think Dr. Rasmussen has a successful ontological argument. But I'm excited to see what you and Dr. Oppy have to say about it!
Much, much love❤️
I hope you enjoy it! And I hope it serves you in your pursuit of truth.
Josh is so gracious with his time.
How did you contact him?
@@hammadakhtar7345 I messaged him on Facebook, and I also think I found one of his emails online somewhere. So maybe do that, just don't spam him lol. It may take him some time to respond, though. Also, he runs an online community called Worldview Design Training Center. There's a bunch of truth seekers, philosophy students, and philosophers (including Dr. Rasmussen) on there. You can interact with everyone by making a post, or message anyone directly. It's pretty dope. I think Joe Schmidt is also on there, but he doesn't really engage with posts. Good luck!
We could create a concept, call it an IsSkippy, which has all the attributes of fictional Skippy plus existence, an IsSkippy therefore necessarily exists following from the concept of an IsSkippy..
1:14:51 'it's the just the same problem over again'
'it's the same problem that crops up for Josh's argument that did for the original ontological argument'
In what empty world is it true that there is no truth? Empty concept world? Is non truth the empty absolute into which truth expands from a singularity of information? That is may then be subject to Shannon entropy would suppose the initial SINGULARITY was information dense, this is sounding a lot like the prologue to the gospel of John.
I'm interested in diving deeper into this EMPTY WORDS concept.
I would say racist epithets are empty words because they have no real world correspondence.
On the other hand this infinite regress dialogue is very similar to the grandfather paradox in time travel, what does it mean to be my own grandfather? And paradoxically negates not the words meaning but the presupposition on the structure of time in a space-time is where time travel into the past is possible. Hawking in addressing this takes the route that not only is understanding the space-time manifold relative and is frame of reference dependent but that the universe is FINE TUNED to prevent such paradoxes. What is the ontology of a frame of reference if it's in a FINELY TUNED matrix to support causality in how we concieve the concepts of our words? For example, I use racist epithets because I WAS my own grandfather or I am my own grandfather, Gaslighting myself with word salad so that I will pay reparations to myself, riddle me this batman, what race am I?
0:38 bruh i thought you said "he has an SCP entry on the Ontological argument." i literally went to the SCP Wiki, waited 5 minutes for the site to fully load. got impatient. typed Graham Oppy into the search bar. turns out; SCP is in a bit of a rough patch. so much so that search isn't fully working on the site. come back to the video. listen for a couple seconds.
"all links will be in the description." me: wait.. *all* links? i go searching aaaaaaannnnnd......... it's SEP. s. EEEEEE. p. i am big dum dum.
1:46 "one them being the concept of being a concept." aside from the fact that sounds grammatically off; that doesn't make any sence. in any field of philosophy. that i know of. this like "the concept of being a square." or i guess "the square of being a square."
this breaking my brain. a concept has to be about something. a noun. the concept of "the unicorn". the concept of "the perfect island". being isn't a concept, "being" is a verb. the French call it "Etre", meaning: "to be". (rolled thee r.) concepts are about nouns. the concept of "a building", the concept of "the universe". can you have a concept, that's about an ongoing verb? the concept of "a running", the concept of "a thinking". now, you can have a concept of being a thing. the concept of being a person, the concept of being a country, etc. but what does it mean to be a concept? well, concepts are already in a kind of state of "being". something has to *be*
lmao
If we just grant that absolute perfection is positive for the sake of argument, we still run into trouble with the claim "A perfect being would span all possible worlds." Before we can make that claim we must somehow establish that it is possible to span all possible worlds, because if we include any explosion into absolute perfection then we can prove that absolute perfection is not positive and contradict our assumption. Unfortunately it is not obvious that a being can span all possible worlds. For example, it would require proving that the empty world is not a possible world.
1:26:04 I like that you have far reaching influence through your minions >:3c
It leads to interesting interactions
Although Joe laughs a little at 38:00 when Graham proposes the idea of "unconditional positive properties" to distinguish from conditional positive properties like courage, this entire line of reasoning is a well articulated classical view. Aristotle did not think virtue was predicable of god, because "his state is higher than virtue". And Plotinus makes the argument explicitly in the second tractate of the first Ennead that God can't be said to have virtues like fortitude or courage for precisely the reason Joe gave--that they entail some lack or threat. Plotinus's conception of the virtues is that they are a means by which an embodied being comes to have a likeness to God, but they aren't predicable of God itself.
So although in the context of this conversation it may look like a kind of conceptual gerrymandering to make a certain argument workable, it's not actually as ad hoc as it may look. It's consistent with the classical conception of God.
The word "positive" doesn't mean anything and is both empirically and logically useless to discovering any sort of actual information, it's just human opinions, but just to play along, since God cannot have courage or virtue or compassion or anything of the sort, humans having courage does not imitate God. In fact, humans having virtue makes them better than God, who watches sociopathically and feels nothing ever.
“No one who isn’t already a theist would ever grant” -> this is not an effective defeater to the positive value of the argument nor its correctness, and frankly it’s consistent with many theodicies around rational faith, free will, and election
The elaborated comments drive the point home: value is deflated if we presume 1) an evangelistic context, 2) an atheist interlocutor, and 3) absolute credence changes in the interlocutor is the sole determinant of syllogistic value. Yet, Christians have other contexts of importance, most obviously: to retain the doubting Christian, wherein this argument clearly has some force in my view.
In addition, as a philosophy project, merely improving over prior works is a valuable contribution.
It's not a defeater, it's an objective observation. Arguments from faith do not convince anyone who does not share that faith,. You're kind of proving his point here. You are convinced by the "Free Will" theodicy because you are already a believer. It convinces no one who is not. You cannot name an atheist who thinks the Free Will argument is sound or they wouldn't be atheists. Free Will fails miserably as a theodicy, by the way. Just so you know. For one thing free will cannot logically exist and for another it doesn't explain why suffering existed long before humans did or why Jesus gives babies rabies.
And "Election," Jesus, talk about corrupt. It soives nothing. It's not a theodicy, it's rationalization for a monster.
Oppyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
I love oppy :)
Everyone is a gangsta untill Pruss Joins but he never Joins that's the problem
If we don't discuss the reality of truth before making statements about the object how shall have meaning for the definition of CONCRETE. I.E. E.G. THAT IS TO SAY, IT'S A FACT.
This is something I've always wondered about: in the context of modal ontological arguments, when we say that the atheist is committed to the impossibility of god/ a perfect being/ etc. do we mean that the atheist is committed to the impossibility of something like the omni properties being instantiated in any possible world? Or merely the impossibility of such a being existing in all possible worlds.
So for example, I could imagine some possible world such that there is a being with the omni properties, however this being wouldn't be god/ a perfect being/ etc. by my lights because I think such an entity likely doesn't exist in the actual world and thus doesn't exist necessarily. So I'm trying to figure out given this if I affirm or deny the possibility of a perfect being. I would think not since I understand necessary existence to be part of the definition of perfection.
The official definition of an MGB is tri-Omni and exists in all possible worlds. The definition of MEB is tri-omni in one possible world. Plantinga seems to believe you can have a MEB, but not a MGB but Hartshorne disagreed and, if I recall, JH Sobel agreed with Hartshorne. I think Plantinga was probably right, but I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head who accepts MEBs and not MGBs
Plantinga's modal ontological argument defines a MGB to be a being that is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, and that necessarily exists. A MEB (maximally excellent being) is defined to be a being that is essentially omnipotent, omnipresent, and perfectly good. The definition of a MEB does not include the requirement that it be a necessary being (though one might believe that in actuality anything satisfying the requirements of a MEB will be a necessary being; it's just not part of the definition). So the being you imagined in a possible world would be a MEB, not a MGB.
The MOA chooses an axiomatic system in such a way that "It is impossible a MGB exists" becomes a logical consequence of "No MEB" exists. In so far as the atheist is committed to the proposition no MEB exists, they must accept as a logical consequence of the definitions and assumptions that the theist makes in the MOA that it is impossible a MGB exists. This not in any way a burden for the atheist. Some have misinterpreted this to mean that the atheist must hold the definition of a MGB is self contradictory or internally incoherent in the same sense that a married bachelor is. But that is to confuse metaphysical and epistemic possibility. The atheist merely needs to hold no MEB exists or that we have insufficient reason to believe a MEB exists (which they presumable do as an atheist) and then point out by the definition and assumptions that the MOA makes, it follows logically it is not possible a MGB exists. I've made a video on this. ua-cam.com/video/DCv6MhJJryk/v-deo.html
@@roderictaylor A high quality series
@@roderictaylor Ok perfect that’s what I thought, thank you; very clear.
@@whatsinaname691 Thank you.
IS THE ABILITY TO CREATE A SPACE-TIME MANIFOLD A PERFECTION? What does that entail? Omnipotence, which entails omnipresence, which which entails omniscience (you have to be present to effect and present and knowing to cause, omni requires all three at all points in the space-time manifold) in creating from the beginning, to the end. A space-time manifold such as ours entails not only a beginning, but a maintenance, and a goal or telos. We can't know that as a thing in itself unless that knowledge is given as a grace, and we do see one who has the PSR in himself, Christ, and have no reason to assume Christ is subject to impoverished definite definition.
Bro got recommended this out of nowhere, but you look like if Tom Holland if he went to MIT.
lmao, enjoy the channel while you're here!!
I never understood Goedels ontological argument as stand alone but should be taken alongside Goedels incompleteness theorems. The incompleteness proves contingency, and the ontological proves the sufficient explanation, HOWEVER the ontological is subject to the incompleteness because it's made by a contingent being. Necessary statements can only be necessarily made by the necessary being. Jesus said I AM THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE AND NO MAN CAN COME TO THE FATHER BUT BY ME. It's not just exclusive, it's necessarily exclusive and is only true if it's necessarily true. I'm continently dependent on the consistency and coherence of the knowledge of the facts as sufficient to commit my trust.
Oppy is the king... :)
Then Who is the queen?
I disagree.
I disagree with your disagreement. Let's fall into infinite regress :)
@@B1bLioPhil3 I disagree about his disagreement. But I disagree to disagree with you on your disagreeing with him
I still have never seen a coherent definition for the word "Great." The word "perfect" doesn't mean anything either. For that matter neither does the word "God," and for the purposes of the OA the word "being." The word "being" is just a way to introduce the idea of any conscious agency existing outside of a human brain. It doesn't. Everything about the OA just seems childish to me. It has never convinced anyone who didn't already believe in Noah's Ark.
Joe,what is your view on islamic theology?
Who is the best Muslim philosopher according to you?
@@Jareers-ef8hp why
I think medieval philosophical Islamic theology is fascinating. We read Al Ghazali for one of my classes, and it was quite enjoyable!
@@MajestyofReason Hi Joe
I think you should engage with Islamic philosophy and Muslim philosophers like you do with Christian philosophers. It Will benefit everyone including Muslim community
I sent you an email where I suggested few resources by Muslim philosophers if those are interesting enough kindly consider engaging with them
Please
Love your great works ❤❤❤
The ontological argument has a very obvious central flaw. The only thing that would make this world more perfect is if it were a perfect world. It's not. It could have been. It wasn't. It's still this world.
When will you have Bernardo Kastrup on?
Want to think about the very base concepts of what these stories really tell, when the "humans" of the time came up with them?
Imagine if Adam/Eve were two pre-linguistic primates, that had just survived a flood that killed everyone else in their tribe. Now, with that in mind, think of all the stories of the bible in terms of when ancient humans first really started to think about the "past" and "future". Those concepts may have entered the minds of humans, far before we worked out words to describe them to other people.
The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? As in, when humans first started to think about Concepts, and "lost their innocence"; we call other animals because innocent because they cannot understand their actions the way we do.
Look at just about any cultures mythology, and think in terms of multiple generations of early humans before they started recording anything. Everything makes sense in basically every story if you replace supernatural claims with more reasonable solutions.
Take your definition of god and pick any of its properties and tell me what your evidence is for it. Here's a starter. How do you know for a fact that there is only one god?
There's proof. Mathematics. It's done.
WHEN YOU SKIP TO 58:00, PAUL addresses exactly this in Romans, first he argues strong determinism to refute freewill, then asks rhetorically "why does he then find fault " THIS IS THE FAMOUS GOD DIDN'T WANT ROBOTS QUIP, which Paul doesn't accept, and says "who are you to talk back to God...doesn't the Potter have the right to do as he wishes with his clay?" What absolute RIGHT do you have by virtue of sentience? If you had the right you would have the power to secure it, but your powerless to reason against God no absolute PSR because your subject to the IMPOVERISHED DEFINTE DEFINITION. IF you want to talk philosophy with God you must believe he exists and if God did make you incapable of belief to send you to hell to show the objects of his mercy the love he had for them...well sorry about your luck, that's why the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and seeing the logic in the INCARNATION and the benevolence commended what excuse do you have when you quibble with the sufficiency of the evidence to satisfy your own ego and continue in sin, doubt, and disqualify yourself from the trust fund he prepared for your inheritance by the spilling of his own blood on the cross. NOW THE CHRIST INTENDS THIS SO THAT YOU CAN'T USE PURE PHILOSOPHY, YOU MUST ACTUALLY TALK WITH JESUS, SEEK ASK KNOCK.
PHILOSOPHY =I HAVE HEARD ABOUT GOD AND TALK ABOUT THE IDEA.
CHRISTIANITY=I HEARD ABOUT JESUS AND I PRAYED, TALKED PHILOSOPHY WITH HIM.
8:56 If no propositions are truth apt then there are no truths, and the proposition that "there are no truths" would also not be truth apt. Josh rasmussen's argument from reflexivity is also question begging because it presupposes classical or first order logic which presupposes the existence of tautologies so long as the logical language contains at least one atomic proposition/zero-order predicate or at least one n-ary predicate and at least one term in the domain of discourse.
THE BIBLE STATES P IN Q AS FOLLOWS, the ROOT and the tree, is in the FRUIT, in the SEED.
Now, apriori definitions are common, Kant shows that space and time are aprioris. In geometry a point is defined as the shortest segment of a line and a line is a contiguous series of points. EXISTENCE is a perfection in itself IF it exists perfectly, perfectly simply means that it doesn't not exist. It's much easier to concieve of perfect existence than to doubt existence. Our confirmation of existence is pain but because pain attends destruction we doubt continuity because we see death. This development of this intuition is universal and inescapable but it is learned and perfect existence as an apriori is the most clear and distinct idea that is the object of truth.
EXISTENCE IS THE PERFECTLY TRUE PROPERTY AS THE THING IN ITSELF, and outside of that our judgment is synthetic.
Awesome video. The best parts for me were 1) when you distinguished between logical consequence and Godelian entailment, and 2) when you couldn't understand how Dr. Rasmussen has a "gigachad brain".
You've got me thinking, though. You say that a theist can accept premise (1), the premise that perfection is purely positive. You also say that an atheist cannot accept it because they are committed to the impossibility of perfection. So assuming theism or atheism leads you to accept or reject the premise. Okay (as Dr. Oppy says). But what if we don't assume theism or atheism? Can't we look at the premise independently and see its intuitive appeal? It seems almost trivially true that absolute perfection is a perfection. Moreover, I think we can give an independent argument for the premise. Consider this. If absolute perfection has negativity, then you have a "construction problem" (to use Dr. Rasmussen's term). Absolute perfection - defined as the highest degree of greatness, or the property of having all perfections and no imperfections - cannot be built of imperfections. Absolute, total, 100% perfection cannot equal or entail anything negative. Negativity does not have the "resources" to build absolute perfection, and absolute perfection does not have the "resources" to entail anything negative. That's a line of reasoning I've explored. It seems to provide an independent reason to think absolute perfection is purely positive, without having to presuppose the truth or falsity of the conclusion. It is by no means a knock-down argument or symmetry breaker; it may simply be a defeasible, evidential chip (as you’ve called your own symmetry breaker). But I think that’s still a step closer to theism.
I suppose your response would have something to do with the distinction between logical consequence and technical entailment. Or perhaps you can come up with parodies. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Great, thought-provoking video, as always.
I wonder what Dr. Rasmussen thinks of your points.
Thanks for your wonderful comment, Nahoa! :)
I respond to the worry that it’s intuitive that some uniquely divine property [e.g., supreme value or absolute perfection or etc.] is a positive property [else: a perfection] in this document below. I highly recommend reading the document, since it contains essentially a summary of the central problem [else: one of the central problems] Oppy and I pinpoint in the video :)
docs.google.com/document/d/142ZNlYvg4M7XYnjte6Vpnte-gR_8XcOpF6pQO3kLjZs/edit?usp=sharing
As for your construction argument:
If absolute perfection [in the sense of being a perfect being and having omnipotence, omniscience, etc.] is impossible, then it most certainly *does* have the resources to entail something negative - indeed, it simply follows from (a) the notion of entailment and (b) absolute perfection’s impossibility that (c) absolute perfection entails negative properties. Why this tells us is that whether absolute perfection has the resources to entail something negative is simply a function of its possibility. Whether or not it has those resources depends on whether or not its possible in the first place, since if it is, indeed, impossible, then it most certainly *does* have those resources. But then to assert that it *doesn’t* have such resources, by my lights, is simply to beg the question against the atheist, since it is simply to antecedently assume that it’s possible - which, as we know, no consistent atheist would ever grant.
I also think the argument succumbs to parodies; e.g., consider an absolutely perfect trinitarian being, an absolutely perfect unitarian being, an absolutely perfect binitarian being, and so on. But that isn’t the main focus here, so I’ll set it aside :)
Anyway, I advise you to check out that document I linked above - I think it’ll serve you in your pursuit of truth
These arguments are throughout the Bible and ancient, John prologue is the ontological argument, John the Baptist the contingent being, Jesus the necessary being that established the human standard to identify truth such that we can identify with the necessary being in a relevant standard to say anything meaningful about him. PAUL in acts 17 on Mars Hill, FROM ONE BLOOD HE MADE EVERY RACE OF MEN , we are contingent on Adam, contingent on God by common ancestry evident in our common genetics. IN GOD WE LIVE MOVE AND HAVE BEING, law of biogenesis, life comes from life. GO BACK TO GENESIS 1, IN THE BEGINNING contrary to the infinite causal regress common to philosophy before the big bang evidence from penzias and Wilson outside of Christianity and this is known from Augustine who says he was ridiculed for believing the Bible because of GENESIS 1.
Furthermore, back to John's prologue, Coppelston restated it when debating Russell as THE BEING WHO HAS THE REASON FOR HIS EXISTENCE WITHIN HIMSELF, and then in the resurrection Jesus proves by virtue of his ability to resurrect himself that he has the reason for his existence within himself. The philosophical argument is then flawless, which is a conceptual miracle THEREFORE all that's left is the analysis of the true statement of concrete fact that JESUS RESURRECTED, which doesn't require extraordinary evidence but simply what our senses commonly know, the difference between a living and a dead man, and the ability to identify one man from another, and to identify a real human being from a spirit or hallucination.
THE INFINITY OF GODS PARODY. This also ancient and was debated in the context of astrology where the stars are in number as the sands of the sea. The stars represent a hierarchy of gods that work sychronistically, what power maintains the synchronicity? A single almighty, most high, creator with a telos to which they are all fine tuned. This most high was platos theos who telos was his logos, and under that were demi urgoi. The multiverse argument is the same and proposes an infinite number of universes which might produce the fine tuning we see in this universe, but still can't explain such telos or logos that would produce a universe with a telos or logos.
THIS SHOWS THE INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM IN PURE PHILOSOPHY, the Bible gave the arguments against this babylonian philosophical system and at the very beginning of written language. The astrology arguments have shifted to multiverse, but the biblical objections are still going strong. BTW, I said BIBLICAL, there is no attempt in the Bible to construct explanation of trinities.
Joe talked too much
It seems that the concept of Jesus has many negative properties: betrayal, sin, rejection, and death. Basing God of perfection really makes Christianity seem to be impossible.
Wouldn't any being that KNOWS there is no god have to be omniscient? Then, if a god is a being with one of the omni characteristics, wouldn't that omniscient being be a god (or God)? - Perhaps that came out - I have to admit I was a little distracted at times listening to this. 😁
It doesn’t require such a being to be omniscient - it only requires it to have a single, justified, unGettiered true belief. Perhaps this possible person simply discovered a successful, sound version of the problem of evil🙂
Dualism is also true.
IMPOVERISHED DEFINITE DESCRIPTION, this precisely why I don't like pure philosophical theism. CHRIST on the other hand is a flawless description of what I would expect if all my arguments were answer by God himself "come...let us reason together, though your sins are Scarlett they shall be white as snow" PARAPHRASE, come SAYS YHVHJESUS, bring your impoverished definite description and we'll discuss the reality in philosophy and where you miss the point, I'll point out the PSR.
Christianity seems to be the leading collector of empty concepts. It thrives on them, apparently.
I like the GOLDBAUCHS CONJECTURE EXAMPLE, that's the BOOK OF JOB, should we recieve only good from God and not evil also? Three friends show up and give all his wrong philosophical arguments. Job says he needs a GODMAN to solve the riddle, and he believes God will do that because he knows he exists and trusts in God. GOD shows up, argues JOB doesn't know enough about the natural sciences to even begin to make absolute metaphysical statements based on the principle of IMPOVERISHED DEFINTE DEFINITION , but that the argument JOB made for a GODMAN was a PSR God would honor. BTW, look over the arguments of Job's three friends and put them in philosophical language, you will see modern philosophical theology is just reinventing the wheel, the three flat tires.