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The Problem with the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

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  • bebarcebebarce Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    So i am probably really stupid, because i'm having a really hard time following along with all this "jibba jabba".

    But how can something be "most perfect". Doesn't that imply levels of perfection? Or was that just thrown in for flair?

    bebarce on
  • PantsBPantsB Fake Thomas Jefferson Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    I like to use self-defeating proofs since I first read The Golden Braid.

    If the concept of God exists a priori and the ontological argument uses only logic and reason, the ontological argument is a priori. If the thesis of an argument exists a priori, so does the idea of its inverse, as are all variations on that argument. We then arrive at

    1. The idea of a perfect argument against the ontological argument for the existence of God exists
    2. If this argument is not valid, not complete or not true a more perfect argument exists.
    3. Therefore a valid, complete and true proof against the ontological argument exists.
    \

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  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    You know what the problem here is? Thinking that epistemology is a worthwhile and meaningful area of study.

    HamHamJ on
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  • PowerpuppiesPowerpuppies drinking coffee in the mountain cabinRegistered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Couscous wrote: »
    Podly wrote: »
    Seeking a recap of the problems with Kant's argument.

    Talking about whether something exists is discussing existence rather than discussing a thing. Existence is not a quality or property something can possess, it is a thing that possesses qualities and properties. Whether I exist or God exists is a quality or property of existence and not of me or God.

    So what's the problem? Seems straightforward.

    When you make "existence," or, more appropriately, Being, separate, then Being becomes something like God.

    But being something like God is different from being God. I don't see how it crosses the threshold and becomes God.

    exactly. I don't see how it's not a valid atheistic position to say "the only thing that is omnipresent is the existence, the volitionless substance of the universe."

    Powerpuppies on
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  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    You know what the problem here is? Thinking that epistemology is a worthwhile and meaningful area of study.

    Jesus Christ. The ontological argument isn't even part of epistemology.

    MrMister on
  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Podly wrote: »
    It's a good argument. I hold that existence and actuality are difficult categories to speak of, because they interact with each other but function differently. For instance, everything that is actual exists, but something that exist are not actual. I argue that Unicorns, Socrates, and Sherlock Holmes exist because we can think of their possibility, but that they do not constitute actuality.

    This is roughly what I understand to be Meinong's approach to ontology and philosophy of language. Although he refrained from saying that Sherlock Holmes exists; instead, he said that Sherlock Holmes was a thing that we directly referred to (just like other things) but which happened to lack the property of existence. So it sounds like you're giving a similar sort of approach, but substituting 'being actual' where he used 'existing.'

    Regardless, as you go on to say, existence in your sense doesn't tell us anything about 'being actual,' or existence in the more common parlance:
    God "exists" because we talk about him, but what does that have to do with the reality of God? Is he merely existing like a unicorn, or does he have a metaphysical or ontological reality about him?

    That is the question, isn't it.

    MrMister on
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    bebarce wrote: »
    So i am probably really stupid, because i'm having a really hard time following along with all this "jibba jabba".

    But how can something be "most perfect". Doesn't that imply levels of perfection? Or was that just thrown in for flair?

    It had better have been thrown in for flair, because it kills the argument. If it is impossible for God to exist, then God could easily still be the most perfect being despite not existing, since everything else is flawed in more significant ways that not existing.

    Unless you're claiming that existance dwarfs everything else in importance, which is both arbitrary and has a whole bunch of ramifications that I haven't even considered yet.

    jothki on
  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    MrMister wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    You know what the problem here is? Thinking that epistemology is a worthwhile and meaningful area of study.

    Jesus Christ. The ontological argument isn't even part of epistemology.

    Ontology is part of epistemology. The idea that "existance" is something you need to justify somehow or something you can have a "problem of" and so forth is all predicated on that "knowledge" of anything is something you need a "theory of".

    HamHamJ on
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  • armageddonboundarmageddonbound Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    The Problem with the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God is that second year philosophy students aren't good at describing it other than parotting lines from the text book.

    armageddonbound on
  • evilintentevilintent Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Podly wrote: »
    Ontological argument isn't really an argument at all. It's not based in any kind of realistic logic. You could replace "God" in that sentence with any other word and it would be as valid.

    Major premise: "Chicken, by its concept, is the most perfect being."
    Minor premise: a perfect being is necessarily infinite
    Conclusion: Chicken is infinite

    You can call God whatever you want; the fact of the matter is that there can only be one perfect being, because if there were another perfect being, it would have to be the same being; otherwise it would not be perfect.

    Why? A perfect square and a perfect circle are both perfect, yet completely different.


    Suggestion: find your own God, and stop arguing about the existence, or lack thereof, of the Gods of major religions - it's impossible to prove or disprove such a concept.

    Edit: the Ontological argument holds water if a God exists. If He doesn't, it doesn't. It's really simple. It's a conditional argument that pretty much folds in on itself. So, I'm guessing that until someone can actually show us God, we should consider it a logical fallacy.

    evilintent on
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  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    The ontological argument proves the existence of god for a particular definition of exist and of god, and a particular definition of perfect within the definition of god. It is both necessarily true and necessarily reliant upon an axiom because there is no argument which is not reliant on some axiom. In this case it's a pretty basic one: existence is possible. If existence were impossible then the argument would have no value because it relies on a definition of perfection which pre-supposes existence.

    Taking as axiomatic that existence is possible then the argument is necessarily true. If existence is possible then something exists because even the existence of nothing is still an existence. If the definition of 'perfect' is being all that exists, then whensoever anything exists there is a category of being which is everything that exists and that is perfect. Because that is necessarily true, God exists for the definition of God as a perfect being.

    Really all that this 'argument' does is provide two levels of abstraction over the statement of the axiom.

    Axiom: Existence is possible.
    Definition: Perfection is the totality of existence.
    Definition: God is perfection.
    Restatement: The totality of existence is the totality of existence.
    Reduction: Existence is.

    I am not arguing that it is possible for the axiom of existence to be incorrect, I'm just saying that it's assumed here and that the argument has no value beyond the statement of that assumption.

    This God has no relation to any theist God with which I am familiar, so arguments regarding the relation of this God to theism or atheism are merit-less because there is no form of theism which attributes to their God perfection. Christianity calls their god 'perfect', but under the understanding that 'perfect' does not mean 'all encompassing' so much as 'omnibenevolent'. Atheism is not the rejection of the word God but the rejection of theism. This argument is, you said yourself Podly, unrelated to theism and therefore also unrelated to atheism. Atheists need not account for Being or being any differently from theists because ontological being is not directly related to theist deities any more intrinsically than it is linked to unicorns or chairs.

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  • ThisThis Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    What a bunch of horseshit.

    This on
  • PantsBPantsB Fake Thomas Jefferson Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    there is no form of theism which attributes to their God perfection. Christianity calls their god 'perfect', but under the understanding that 'perfect' does not mean 'all encompassing' so much as 'omnibenevolent'.

    I'm going to disagree with you there. In fact the exact opposite is true.
    The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of Heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection. Since He is one, singular, completely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, He must be declared to be in reality and in essence, distinct from the world, supremely happy in Himself and from Himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything besides Himself which either exists or can be imagined

    "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Matt 5:48
    "He is the Rock, his works are perfect,and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he." Deuteronomy 32:4
    "Be assured that my words are not false; one perfect in knowledge is with you." Job 36:3-5
    Quran wrote:
    He is God, the Creator, the Maker who shapes all forms and appearances! [31] His [alone] are the attributes of perfection.

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  • TinuzTinuz Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Okay,

    So we are arguing that existence is the basis of everything we see around us, a basic premise. And, therefore, existence is omnipresent, 'superior' to everything and thus becomes very much like god. Secondly, without existence nothing can exist. Now since I am sure something exists, existence must exist. Thus, god being existence, god exists.

    Correct?

    Tinuz on
  • 101101 Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Podly wrote: »
    Things exist.

    So you are just saying that "things exist?" How do you know that?

    I hate it when philosophers get into this kind of thing.

    For all intents and purposes, i exist, the chair i'm sitting on exists, the computer i'm typing this on exists. Do we really need to get into the whole 'how do you know?' stuff? We could all be part of someone's (rather amazing) imagination, but it would make no difference to us at all.

    So why ask?

    101 on
  • BloodySlothBloodySloth Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Tinuz wrote: »
    Okay,

    So we are arguing that existence is the basis of everything we see around us, a basic premise. And, therefore, existence is omnipresent, 'superior' to everything and thus becomes very much like god. Secondly, without existence nothing can exist. Now since I am sure something exists, existence must exist. Thus, god being existence, god exists.

    Correct?

    Kind of, I think. The OP wasn't very clear (referring to God even as a "he" with knowledge of things, which was a concept summarily thrown out the window later on) and threw a bunch of people through a loop.

    The problem is being very much like God and being God are utterly different things, and no one has yet made sense of the phrase "existence sustains us" because existence is unable to take any actions or possess any qualities in and of itself, because it's not that kind of word.

    Going to great lengths just to prove that existence exists is a fruitless and confusing exercise, because if you're wrong, you've deluded yourself (among other problems), and if you're right, everyone else knows already.

    BloodySloth on
  • TaximesTaximes Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Really, it just seems to me to be rather futile to attempt to rope a godly being into the confines of logic.

    It's an effort to conclusively describe a perfect being through imperfect means, or, at the very least, a highly complex being through relatively simple means.

    It's like trying to describe the structure of an atom by observing matter through a simple microscope. Sure, maybe you can come up with something that's on the right track. But then again, you can just as easily come up with something that's way off, and there's no way to really tell which is which without better tools.

    You can shove your microscope in everyone's face and tell them what you think you see in there, but the tools are too basic and the objective too complex for anyone to ever reach a consensus on which assumptions are valid.

    Taximes on
  • CognisseurCognisseur Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    I don't really see anywhere interesting a debate like this can lead. Reading through the comments, it just looks like people are labeling 'God' as an increasingly vaguer idea until it loses any significance. God is the composite of all things 'perfect', or God is non-existence, or God is existence, or whatever else.

    At the end of the day, it seems like whether God is a being or not is the big issue in these debates. If God is a being, then there's something to apply these labels like 'perfect' to and we can talk about creations and such. But if God isn't even a being, as the majority of this thread has been about, then it's just an arbitrary label you can tack on near-any adjective.

    God is the composite of all things green.
    There are green things in this world.
    Therefore, God exists in this world.

    Well sure, that indicates God exists, but not in any meaningful fashion, not in any way that has implications for people in the least. God as a label or a set of concepts is just boring.

    Cognisseur on
  • CognisseurCognisseur Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Taximes wrote: »
    Really, it just seems to me to be rather futile to attempt to rope a godly being into the confines of logic.

    It's an effort to conclusively describe a perfect being through imperfect means, or, at the very least, a highly complex being through relatively simple means.

    It's like trying to describe the structure of an atom by observing matter through a simple microscope. Sure, maybe you can come up with something that's on the right track. But then again, you can just as easily come up with something that's way off, and there's no way to really tell which is which without better tools.

    You can shove your microscope in everyone's face and tell them what you think you see in there, but the tools are too basic and the objective too complex for anyone to ever reach a consensus on which assumptions are valid.

    With your example of observing an atom, the problem is insufficient measurement. There is no specific evidence against the notion of atoms that can be derived from a simple microscope, only uncertainty due to lack of decent measurement devices.
    When we're talking about God in any meaningful way, as in not just a label for some other concept, then we run into the problem that our current measurement devices are already finding flaws. When we try to define God in the context of a being, all sorts of problems crop up, which is quite different from the "I can't see atoms so I'm confused" argument.

    Cognisseur on
  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    edited April 2009
    I haven't read all 6 pages of philosophical wankery, so maybe this has been stated, but:

    Doesn't the ontological argument necessarily depend on an infinite universe? Because only in an infinite universe would anything that is possible also exist. Except, by all evidence, the universe is not infinite - there is a finite amount of matter in a finite volume.

    So sure, there is a "most perfect being" out there, in the sense that for any definition of "perfect", there must necessarily be some entity that is closest to it. Just as there is a "largest being" and a "jar containing the closest to 1,572 jellybeans". But given a finite universe, "most perfect" needn't be very close to perfect at all.

    I mean, even if we accept the argument as valid on its face, all it does is pick some object in the universe and call it "God". Well shit, I can do that without a bunch of fancy philosophy: God is a realtor from Tacoma named Leroy. Get to worshippin', I guess.

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  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Ontology is part of epistemology. The idea that "existance" is something you need to justify somehow or something you can have a "problem of" and so forth is all predicated on that "knowledge" of anything is something you need a "theory of".

    Actually, it's traditionally part of metaphysics. See:
    metaphysics... is the philosophical discipline that encompasses ontology as one of its parts

    Besides, your diagnostic is off. You blame what you see as a pseudo-problem, namely 'the problem of justifying existence,' on the misconceptions inherent in the analytic tradition. However, you ignore the fact that plenty of philosophers working within that very same tradition have also thought that such problems were pseudo-problems.

    MrMister on
  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    Doesn't the ontological argument necessarily depend on an infinite universe? Because only in an infinite universe would anything that is possible also exist. Except, by all evidence, the universe is not infinite - there is a finite amount of matter in a finite volume.

    An infinite universe needn't contain everything that is possible, any more than an infinite string of numbers need contain every number. If you represent one third in decimal form, the result is an infinite string, but it still contains only one numeral.

    In order to know that an infinite universe contains everything that's possible, you would also need to know something about the rules which generated it.

    MrMister on
  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    you, then, are Catholic and religious not because the very-much-a-being God of Catholicism and Christianity resonates with your philosophy, but because the experience in ritual of that religious tradition makes you "experience Being" in a way that you find most effective and authentic, which is in accordance with your philosophy?

    Perhaps. I really don't know. Religious experiences and rites, for me, are quite ambiguous. They can be visceral, but nevertheless they are quite ambiguous.

    @HamHamJ: Ontology is part of Metaphysics, which is a separate branch from epistemology. You're just been annoying.

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  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Unlike El Jeffe, I DID read all six pages.
    Taximes wrote: »
    It's an effort to conclusively describe a perfect being through imperfect means, or, at the very least, a highly complex being through relatively simple means.

    This perfectly describes what I've seen here. You can play some very fine tricks with language when you treat the words as equivalent to the concepts they represent, ignoring that concepts are ephemeral and biased by perception. Thus, as stated, they are imperfect tools; the words themselves are too easily twisted and redefined, until they no longer represent the concept they began as; the glaring example is the word "God". Compound this with variations of understanding of the core concept by each participant in the debate, and you have a room of people discussing the same words, but none of them discussing the same concepts.

    Which is the primary reason that the Ontological Argument strikes me as a failure: it's a twisting of language, not an insight into concepts.

    Houn on
  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    bebarce wrote: »
    So i am probably really stupid, because i'm having a really hard time following along with all this "jibba jabba".

    But how can something be "most perfect". Doesn't that imply levels of perfection? Or was that just thrown in for flair?

    Well, it's to guard against other beings which might attain perfection. For instance, if someone plays a perfect game of golf, is he God? Presumably not. Got is the being for whom every possibility is perfected, brought to complete actuality.

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  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Couscous wrote: »
    Podly wrote: »
    Seeking a recap of the problems with Kant's argument.

    Talking about whether something exists is discussing existence rather than discussing a thing. Existence is not a quality or property something can possess, it is a thing that possesses qualities and properties. Whether I exist or God exists is a quality or property of existence and not of me or God.

    So what's the problem? Seems straightforward.

    When you make "existence," or, more appropriately, Being, separate, then Being becomes something like God.

    But being something like God is different from being God. I don't see how it crosses the threshold and becomes God.

    That's a good question. Being, as argued by Kant, however, is not merely like God -- it looks as if it meets the definition of the divine.

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  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Podly wrote: »
    Couscous wrote: »
    Podly wrote: »
    Seeking a recap of the problems with Kant's argument.

    Talking about whether something exists is discussing existence rather than discussing a thing. Existence is not a quality or property something can possess, it is a thing that possesses qualities and properties. Whether I exist or God exists is a quality or property of existence and not of me or God.

    So what's the problem? Seems straightforward.

    When you make "existence," or, more appropriately, Being, separate, then Being becomes something like God.

    But being something like God is different from being God. I don't see how it crosses the threshold and becomes God.

    That's a good question. Being, as argued by Kant, however, is not merely like God -- it looks as if it meets the definition of the divine.
    How? Being isn't necessarily the most perfect being.

    Couscous on
  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    MrMister wrote: »
    Podly wrote: »
    It's a good argument. I hold that existence and actuality are difficult categories to speak of, because they interact with each other but function differently. For instance, everything that is actual exists, but something that exist are not actual. I argue that Unicorns, Socrates, and Sherlock Holmes exist because we can think of their possibility, but that they do not constitute actuality.

    This is roughly what I understand to be Meinong's approach to ontology and philosophy of language. Although he refrained from saying that Sherlock Holmes exists; instead, he said that Sherlock Holmes was a thing that we directly referred to (just like other things) but which happened to lack the property of existence. So it sounds like you're giving a similar sort of approach, but substituting 'being actual' where he used 'existing.'

    Regardless, as you go on to say, existence in your sense doesn't tell us anything about 'being actual,' or existence in the more common parlance

    Well that was Kant's basic critique that you can not derive reality from existence, because the knowledge of the two stems from different catagories. It would be like saying "I exist, therefore I was caused." It seems to be true, via synthetic thought, by the simply fact of my existence does not mean that I was caused. The same goes for "I am part of reality:" that, too, is not "caused" per se, although we cannot imagine how it would not be caused.
    God "exists" because we talk about him, but what does that have to do with the reality of God? Is he merely existing like a unicorn, or does he have a metaphysical or ontological reality about him?

    That is the question, isn't it.

    I think it's a rather good'n.
    But that's just me.

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  • AdrienAdrien Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Properties aren't real, silly.

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  • KetherialKetherial Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Podly wrote: »
    Kagera wrote: »
    If God is perfect then everything would by necessity have to be perfect since it came from God who cannot make imperfect things....

    Well for something to be created, it is necessarily imperfect, because there can not be more than one being which is perfect.

    lttp, but why can there only be one being which is perfect? who made that rule up?

    also, no matter how you play with words, you cannot define god into existence.

    Ketherial on
  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    If you're going to define God as Existence, why are you bothering to use the word God?

    Houn on
  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Atheists need not account for Being or being any differently from theists because ontological being is not directly related to theist deities any more intrinsically than it is linked to unicorns or chairs.

    The problem is that unicorns or chairs are beings, whereas Being "presences" beings. Being is omnipresent and the the only [strike]being[/strike] capable of doing such. Beings are only allowed because there is Being.

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  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Houn wrote: »
    If you're going to define God as Existence, why are you bothering to use the word God?

    Because that is the traditional definition of God: essentia dei est existentia, existence is the essence of God.

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  • Metal Gear Solid 2 DemoMetal Gear Solid 2 Demo Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Podly wrote: »
    Houn wrote: »
    If you're going to define God as Existence, why are you bothering to use the word God?

    Because that is the traditional definition of God: essentia dei est existentia, existence is the essence of God.

    Except humans made this concept, this is not how it actually is

    Swapping around words and semantics doesn't prove God exists anymore than it proves Cthulu exists.

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  • saggiosaggio Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Language games, Poldy. You are playing language games.

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  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    saggio wrote: »
    Language games, Poldy. You are playing language games.

    Do you think that Being is a linguistic construct?

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  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Ketherial wrote: »
    why can there only be one being which is perfect?

    Because if God is the being who is completely perfect, then he is infinitely actualized -- he is infinite. If there is a being of which he is not, then he is not infinite. If there were another "perfect" being, it would just be a mode of God, like a trinity God, or a Hinduistic set of modal gods.

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  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    MrMister wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Ontology is part of epistemology. The idea that "existance" is something you need to justify somehow or something you can have a "problem of" and so forth is all predicated on that "knowledge" of anything is something you need a "theory of".

    Actually, it's traditionally part of metaphysics. See:
    metaphysics... is the philosophical discipline that encompasses ontology as one of its parts

    Besides, your diagnostic is off. You blame what you see as a pseudo-problem, namely 'the problem of justifying existence,' on the misconceptions inherent in the analytic tradition. However, you ignore the fact that plenty of philosophers working within that very same tradition have also thought that such problems were pseudo-problems.

    That there are other reasons for thinking it's a pseudo-problem does not invalidate the reason I stated for thinking it's a pseudo-problem. It just means that the original problem fails on multiple levels.

    If we take knowledge to be a matter of justified belief, we can see that existance is going to be defined as some combination of observability and interactivity and necessity. Any statement about existance is just a statement about a physical state of one kind or another and thus not requiring of metaphysical justification of any kind.

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  • Metal Gear Solid 2 DemoMetal Gear Solid 2 Demo Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Podly wrote: »
    Ketherial wrote: »
    why can there only be one being which is perfect?

    Because if God is the being who is completely perfect, then he is infinitely actualized -- he is infinite. If there is a being of which he is not, then he is not infinite. If there were another "perfect" being, it would just be a mode of God, like a trinity God, or a Hinduistic set of modal gods.

    And what's the problem with that?

    I can cite a whole bunch of religions with numerous 'perfect' beings.

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    When I say pop it that means pop it
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  • PodlyPodly you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Podly wrote: »
    Ketherial wrote: »
    why can there only be one being which is perfect?

    Because if God is the being who is completely perfect, then he is infinitely actualized -- he is infinite. If there is a being of which he is not, then he is not infinite. If there were another "perfect" being, it would just be a mode of God, like a trinity God, or a Hinduistic set of modal gods.

    And what's the problem with that?

    I can cite a whole bunch of religions with numerous 'perfect' beings.

    Well, in hinduism and christianity, there is really only one God, and the rest are just knowable modes. The number is still one, universal and transcendent, it just has modular singularity.

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