I am proposing that we could plausibly identify a property with the set of all things that have this property. This set would be the property, and the elements of this set would be the instances of the property. For example, the property of redness would be identified with the set of all red things, or the property of being a car would be identified with the set of all cars. — litewave

There are properties that exist that are not of a referent, like the property of being the King of France attaches to no object, yet being the King of France is a property nontheless. There are also no essences of objects that would dictate which set all examples belong, like whether a particular car belongs in the set of cars is contextually dependent.

Searle, Wittgenstein.

In modern western societies, a testimony that appeals to clairvoyance falls under misrepresentation of evidence, an inevitable outcome under witness cross examination in relation to critical norms of rational enquiry and expert testimony, possibly resulting in accusations of perjury against the witness. I would hazard a guess that the last time an American court accepted 'spectral' evidence was during the Salem witch trials. — sime

I agree with this generally, but I don't think it's a fair criticism of @Sam's position. That is, in court, if the physical evidence contradicts the testimonial evidence or if the testimonial evidence is not possible under the laws of physics as we know them to be, then then testimonial evidence fails. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit so to speak.

If we accept the priority of the laws of physics over testimony as a given, then it would become impossible to ever challenge the laws of physics as we know them to be by testimony.

To give two differing examples to make this point: If I say I saw Bigfoot, you might challenge that because you don't believe there to be a Bigfoot, but it's not based upon the fact that our laws of physics deny the possibility of there being a Bigfoot. You will listen to my testimony and others and you may or may not believe Bigfoot was seen, but it stands as a possibility that there is a Bigfoot. As a juror, you would be weighing the credibility of the testimony.

If I say I had an NDE and you say that me saying it can never overcome the fact that disembodied spirits are physically impossible, and no matter how convincing I might be, you reject it based upon your belief in the priority of physics over testimony, then you are creating a situation where I can never prove the NDEs exist. As a juror, you would not be weighing the credibility of the testimony. You would be rejecting it as impossible.

My question is not silly. Considering that your thoughts are mental events and have no physical properties, I wonder how they could affect physical processes, such as typing. Do you have an explanation for that? — MoK

This makes an assumption that NDEs or any paranormal experience involving disembodied spirits (ghosts, reincarnation, etc) challenges Cartesian dualism. It would seem that type of evidence, if accepted as valid, would be amenable to monistic theories. That is, if I can see a ghost, it must be physical. If I can leave my body and see myself on the operating table, then whatever that floating mass is has the ability to see. These are all examples of physical interactions. It takes light to see and soundwaves to hear, and there must be some apparatus to sense them.

My point here is that if we take the mind/body interaction problem seriously, we don't just shrug our shoulders and claim that ghosts exist as a seperate substance in a mysterious way, but we say instead that ghosts must be physical as well. Once you start observing and measuring, you're a physicist, and you need to categorize your discoveries scientifically. That is, it is impossible to physically prove the non-physical.

If you want to put this to a clean test, pick a single, well-documented case that meets my five standards—volume/diversity/consistency are background, but the decisive screens are firsthand plus independent corroboration, and run your three courtroom filters on it: exclude hearsay, interrogate it as you would on cross, and then weigh credibility in light of the objective traces (records, witnesses, timestamps, objects). If it fails, I’ll strike it from the “strong” column. If it passes, then by your own rules, it deserves evidential weight. — Sam26

Well, you have the burden here of proving NDEs exist. It's not upon me to go through the volumes of claims and cross them off the list one by one. So, give me the one that meets the criteria and we'll see if it survives.

First, that testimonial evidence is a valid way of justifying one's conclusions, and moreover, one's beliefs. Most of what we know comes from the testimony of others. Thus, it's a way of attaining knowledge. — Sam26

Let's talk then about how testimonial evidence is typically accepted as proof of a fact. Testimony is the primary method used in courtrooms for fact finders to consider when determining fairly important matters, like whether a person should have his liberty or life taken from him or whether he should be indebted to another for millions of dollars.

There are all sorts of rules, referred to as rules of evidence that, for our purposes, could be called pragmatic epistimology, meaning the applied ways we consider evidence generally, but testimony specifically, trustworthy. Without getting into all the rules, I'll just focus on a few: (1) hearsay, (2) cross examination, and (3) the weighing of credibility. I'm sure another lawyer out there might think it better to focus on other rules, but these are enough to make my point.

To begin: Hearsay is an out of court statement conveyed by another in order to prove its truth. Think of it as "I heard Bob say [i.e. hear say] that Mike shot Joe." We don't trust that because we need to hear from Bob as to what Bob said, not me. You can't question me on what I witnessed because all I can tell you is what I heard.

So, when you tell me that you read a book that offered testimony from a witness as to their NDE, or even further removed, testimony of testimony from another as to what someone said, I have second and third hand evidence, none of which I can question.

And that brings me to the second issue: Cross examination. I have to be able to seriously question the witness to know what happened. Reading a witness statement without asking all sorts of details, particularly ones like how much familiarity someone might have with operating rooms, who they may have spoken with between the event and the testimony, the very particular thing they said without embellishment at the time of the event, who was present to corroborate the testimony, whether those corroborating witnesses have offered consistent information, and on and on and on.

And then there is the weighing of credibility. All the things I've said have to be considered, and it's perfectly appropriate for someone just not to buy it. To listen to the witnesses and feel like it just doesn't add up, that the speakers seem flaky, motivated, confused, or whatever it might be is a very acceptable to reason just not to beleive what they're saying.

The point here is that you're asking me to believe NDE testimony has been offered in a way that leads to no other conclusion than to admit that our physical laws as we know them have been violated. That's just way too much to ask. I would need a videotaped OR, watching a pronouncement of death, seeing a patient revived and then hearing that patient then tell of his observations he made without using his eyes from a bird's eye view hovering in the operating room.

Since I don't have that, it's very reasonable for me to reject the testimony. In fact, it's fairly unreasonable to read a bunch of books on NDEs and then believe it's possible to see without eyes. Other experiments show that just cannot be done. That there are volumes and volumes of evidence amounts to nothing if that evidence isn't subjected to meaningful scrutiny.

Started "The Ant Trap" by Brian Epstein. A book on social ontology. If I'm following (and there's always that), his thesis is that marriage (for example) is valid if (1) there is grounding by my having met the requirements of marriage like an officiant married me, a filed a license, etc, and (2) there is anchoring by society having accepted and created rules as to what that marriage means. This supposedly offers a better explanation from the traditional individualistic versus holistic theory that says you are married if (A) you as an individual hold yourself out to be and believe yourself to be married and (B) the community a a whole recognized you as married. The limitation of A is that it doesn't allow an explanation for how you can believe yourself to be married but not be married because you don't have a license and the limitaiton of B is that it doesn't explain how the license doesn't get tied back to the community rule.

It's interesting because it's not the standard "language is use," but it's trying to explain the ontology of marriage (or any social event) itself, making it modern day analytic metaphysics far removed from the Cartesian type.

Oh, indeed, you and I would never make use of AI... — Banno

The old tu quoque fallacy.

To be clear though, you can use AI, just not:

"AI LLMs are not to be used to write posts either in full or in part (unless there is some obvious reason to do so, e.g. an LLM discussion thread where use is explicitly declared). Those suspected of breaking this rule will receive a warning and potentially a ban.

AI LLMs may be used to proofread pre-written posts, but if this results in you being suspected of using them to write posts, that is a risk you run. We recommend that you do not use them at all."

You can interact with AI all you want, you just can't have it write your posts. I use AI all the time. Bounce ideas off it. Use its search engine feature. But whatever I post is in my own words and understanding, and I don't use it as source information, but locate whatever it says on some independent site.

Where it says you can't use it to write posts, it means literally as @Athena was suggesting. You can't just plug in info and have it spit you out a response. You can learn whatever you learn however you learn, and once learned, you can tell us what you learned.

This is no different than having your friend do your homework for you. If he explains you the topic, you read the book, you understand it, you do the assignment, you're fine. If he does it for you, then you cheated, and no one likes a cheater.

But you can't just say feel free to have your friend do your homework because it's impossible for your teacher to know, which is kinda what you did say.

:clap:

I don't know where you got that you need AI to present your case.

It's a rule that is unenforceable in practice. — Banno

Respect for the rule of law assures compliance.

I do appreciate your thoughts, and no one's objective is to make anyone's life more difficult, but the rule has an important purpose in assuring we are communicating with one another and not with bots.

So, the rule does stand. That being said, it does appear you've responded to me without AI coherently and passionately, which means you will do just fine without sending us bot created messages.

What is the reasoning for this prejudice? — Athena

AI offers the best explanations
You want the best explanation for why AI can't be used here

Ergo, ask AI why you can't use AI here.

hat is hilarious. Just try to go against nature and see how well that works. — Athena

Very well. Sketch your best guess about how we evolved and then insist we stay true to that course else be punished by Mother Nature.

Even assuming you've accurately described humanity's educational odyssey from the cave until today in those few paragraphs and you've deciphered with accuracy "what is natural to our species," take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

This position is no where near complete; and I would appreciate it, though, if people could engage with me on this position and its claims to help further or kill the ideas in it. — Bob Ross

My thought is that this is an attempt to justify Christianity upon rationality alone without reliance upon revelation, perhaps because you believe rationality is a firmer basis for belief than revelation or faith alone. Your views on the Trinity, incarnation and sacrifice, grace, mercy, and justice, and the distinctions between heaven, hell, and purgatory are clearly Christian. Suggesting that we could arrive at those ideas without introduction to and indoctrination to Christianity, but that we could arrive at that through reason alone will not ring true to anyone but a very devout Christian.

You do move away from Christian orthodoxy in some places, like hell not being eternal, with the possibility of posthumous salvation, purgatory taking on a more traditional hell-like state, you seem to redefine original sin, you describe a purely rational state when we go to heaven (which seems consistent with your desire to prioritize rationality as an attribute), and you see this propensity to prioritize the rational with the way you describe atonement, which I didn't completely follow.

If I had to offer a single assessment, it would be that you're trying to sort out your very Christian beliefs and orientation in a way that comports with your philosophical leanings. It presents an account of your religious journey, which I think would be well received by a pastor with philosophical leanings and who isn't overly orthodox in his views, but less so to a conservative minded priest.

To the average reader with no Christian leanings (me, for example), I don't find it all persuasive in terms of convincing me that your views might arise without an a priori commitment to Christianity. The person who might find this interesting is a Christian who is troubled with some of the consequences of Christianity, so he's doing like most religious people do who are otherwise devout believers: they modify the doctrine in a personally palatable way and often convince themselves that they have uncovered the truer form of the religion lost somewhere in time.

In terms of the text giving guidance itself, such a disconnect (if one takes the point of the text as being primarily documentary) could hardly have been lost on the writer or any redactor. It's like that for a reason. There are a number of cases like this in the Bible, right from Genesis 1 vs Genesis 2. And I think this at least suggests a close reading. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It could be just that there were multiple versions of the various stories and a desire to create a single consistent story was of less priority to the person who sewed the various accounts together than was protecting as much original text as possible.

This posits that there were multiple sources for the Bible and that the redactor's primary objective was that of an archivist of foundational literature.

This is a widely held view.

We await Tim's providing an coherent explanation of what an essence is, and why it is needed. — Banno

What do you await? How it's used? It's irrelevant that there are no essences we can point to.

How might a computer recognize a cat? Surely differently than humans, but is the code, whatever it might be, the best definition of a cat?

I'd suspect a Wittgensteinian analogy could be used to describe computer recognition - thousands of examples with certain statistical patterns revealing family resemblance, with no required certain characteristic. However, there is no shared form of life from within the computer, so that analogy has some limits..

I'd also suspect computer identification error that humans would not make, which is an interesting suggestion because it posits humans as the gold standard. That is, if humans say the picture is not of a cat, then it's not. The computer must rely upon the human fed data.

There's an erroneous understanding that the influence of parents and teachers last forever. — L'éléphant

They do and they don't, both good and bad. There are those families caught in cycles of poverty, poor education, and violence, and others with long term successes. That's from learned behavior. No question I see my parents in my own behavior and I see myself in my kids' behavior.

This isn't to say other people and events haven't affected me or that I've not made my own decisions. Regardless of where my behavior comes from, I'm held responsible for it.

But my point is that your childhood influences don't always wither away.

Fascinating stuff. I see that Han argues protection against this encroachment against our humanity is engagement in communal ritual. While not advocating specifically religious ritual, it would seem that those subscribing to those beliefs and practices would have a certain immunity to the problem you identify, perhaps even more than one who practiced ritual secularly. The practices of the religious tend to be more committed and less fragile to immediate persuasion.

The idea that freedom arises from the routine practice of rites seems a surprising result to come from a secular perspective. A harkening back to the simplicity of antiquity to save us from the dehumanization of modernerity. I'm not oversimplifying this to Han just being a luddite or even being opposed to technology per se, but it does seem he's trying to establish a barrier against the continued evolution of technological control over society.

I recognize I've hijacked Han's view here to some extent to fit my worldview, and I realize a great chasm between the justification of my adherence to custom and his (covenantal versus utilitarian/protective), but I can't help but to see the similarities and wonder if an arguable thesis doesn't exist that ritual arose evolutionarily for the very purposes Han identifies. This problem is therefore just another consequence of our killing God.

I'm not overstating, just thinking out loud. I recognize that societies rigidly affixed to religion face a host of probably more serious problems than the democratization of social control by the handing out of TikTok candy and whatnot. I also see your point that today's subjugation isn"t just limited to the Clampetts (I'll let you Google this reference), but also the Gatsby's (piece of shit novel, for the record).

Essence is the meaning of a word that might be compiled from an analysis of all of the uses of a word - if we quantify and collect all of the uses of a word and find its mean use, we’d hold the essence. — Fire Ologist

What does this even mean? I gather up 5,000 definitions of "dog" and I add them together and divide by 5,000? How do you add definitions and divide them?

Calculate one out for me so I can see what you mean. Use the word "essence" as the example so I can see if your definition of essence is even correct. Wouldn't that be crazy if we used your definition engine to show your definition engine produced wrong definitions? What would that mean?

Waiting for Godot. — Banno

It's coming to Broadway next month with Keanu Reeves. I hear the music score and dancing are amazing..

First sentence is true. Second, not so much. I'll be in NYC the week before opening, alas.

What good would woke folks be if they didn’t notice things that most people are oblivious to. :lol: — praxis

This poll says only 12% of the population was offended by the Sweeney ad. https://nypost.com/2025/08/12/business/12-find-sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-ad-offensive-poll/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

This suggests a conservative backlash disproportionate to the extent of the liberal position being used to present the left as radicalized.

It's also possible the left took the bait by refusing to downplay the ad and instead chose to adopt the 12% minority as its official position.

Really, you believe that she was describing the collapse of Western civilization's reliance upon a foundational diety and challenge of finding a suitable replacement for the avoidance of existential crisis.

Just thought it'd sound more ridiculous to say out loud

Perhaps. Perhaps not. That was not my reality, so I can't speak to that aspect. And yes, religious trauma is all too pervasive, way too pervasive. That's my point in sharing. A surgical, logical state of mind is sometimes hard won, wouldn't you agree? — Paula Tozer

Sure, personal change is often forged in trauma, and maybe yours was, and possibly yours is a story of overcoming great adversity, and maybe I'm a dick for being combative despite what you've been through, and fill in the rest of the blanks that describe me and you.

I'm just looking for where the philosophical debate lies.

Christianity is a dying religion. Vindication, even if it were possible, wouldn't help. — frank

Do you think that responsive to my post?

Hey, you don't have to validate me. Or agree. It's about transparency on my part. My upbringing shaped me, as yours shaped you. I agree with Chris Hitchens and Sam Harris in this regard - you don't have to be religious to be a good person. In fact, religion warps the mind of those who must operate within its confines. — Paula Tozer

My point is simply that this is a philosophy forum, so what difference does it make philosophically whether your mom used religion to build a horribly dysfunctional childhood for you or whether she did hundreds of other terrible things?

In all cases, I'd extend my sympathies. How is that a philosophy issue?

Then you throw in that atheists can be good people too. I agree with you. Was that your point in the OP you wanted to debate?

I didn't get that out of it. Philosophy is all about recognizing the forces that shaped you and trying to peep beyond them. If you don't encounter anything negative on that journey, you're probably in denial. — frank

Doesn't the word "Therapy" work better in that sentence than "Philosophy."

What I got out of the post is that she suffers from religion trauma, a thing all too pervasive, and a thing that plenty of people can identify with.

Had her mother been open to her questions, unconditionally loving and embracing, and in all ways the perfect mother, is Christianity vindicated?

The problem is that your post is just a trauma dump, leaving the only appropriate response to be "sorry you went through that," and then maybe sharing similar stories we've had in order to validate your feelings.

Consider that done.

Now describe the lie (the intentional misrepresentation) of the truth by the Church, not just how the people in your life disappointed you. That way we might be able to respond philosophically, as opposed to just offering you personal encouragement.

It's not going to happen, but such huge changes might accomplish what some people are asking schools to do. — BC

Yeah, and my response was motivated by my wife being a public school administrator. There's the never ending pull to make schools the universal social security system for every child. Teachers already have an impossible job, and none of them are trained in social work.

Just so it's not missed on anyone, there is a large part of the country that would have had no inkling the ad was offensive (me, for example) had offense not been expressed, and so what is newsworthy is that someone would be offended by it.

Teachers aren't social workers and schools aren't community support systems. They are for educating kids.

I say this even if I bought into your idea that the government should offer such a high level of support for families. That is, if you want the government to do all this, do that, but don't ask teachers to do things other than teach. They didn't sign up to raise other's kids or fix the world's problems.

Especially with the sycophantic stuff- people have been and will continue to be extremely deluded. But they can be useful if used with care for some topics. — Manuel

The new ChatGPT 5.0 is much better at being honest. That was part of their major upgrade. I used to work around the old one by characterizing my posts as being presented by my opponents so that I could get a more honest response.

It's the name, yes - although he was buried as a Catholic... — Banno

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363461506070780#:~:text=Most%20accounts%20of%20Wittgenstein's%20life,.%20.%20.

Maybe not BECAUSE, they are logically consistent, provable. But you can probably formulate them into coherent sentences. You can probably correct people who assign belief to you that you do not hold - all of that takes discussion and reasoning. — Fire Ologist

I don't have a good explanation for theodicy. I admit that, yet I persist in my beliefs.

I cannot come to know any person by reason alone. Not you, not Banno, not my children. I cannot come to know many things by reason alone. — Fire Ologist

That does an injustice to the Trinity. The mystery of knowing the Trinity is not akin to the mystery of truly knowing the nuances of me, Banno, or a fine wine.

We don't have official declarations that we can't know each other. The Trinity is not just a routine complicated thing.

I'm struck by how much this resembles the roughly Wittgensteinian view — Banno

"Wittgenstein." Sounds like an MOT to me. https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/319

None of that has much to do with consensus. There is a Christian consensus on the Trinity, and it is based in the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople (325 and 381). — Leontiskos

98% of Christian denominations accept the Trinity from a doctrinal point of view, yet only 16% of Christians actually accept it. https://www.arizonachristian.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AWVI-2025_03_Most-Americans-Reject-the-Trinity_FINAL_03_26_2025.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

What this means is that there is a distinction between self avowing as a Christian and being a part of the institution of Christianity. Such is common among religions, particularly large ones.

I see myself less indoctrinated into analytic thought, particularly the Wittgensteinian approaches, and portraying this as a tension between old school and new school analytics and Christians defines a battleground that doesn't really exist.

I have always thought Christians were polytheistic, not as a criticism, but just a fact, not having any reason to particularly care to save them from it. I found Mormon belief clearer and just more forthright, but, again, there were no consequences for my view. I might as well have been studying the Greek gods.

My point here is that I can fully understand preposterous views, like a snake talking to Eve, but you're arguing from incoheremce. While you may say it all makes sense if you think about it long enough, it really doesn't.

This is the official view of the Catholic Church:

"The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith…” (CCC §234)

“The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense… We cannot come to know the Trinity by reason alone.” (CCC §237)

This is a direct nod to mysticism. While you might use reason to get at it somewhat, ultimately it's "a mystery."

I do note in the Creed that it refers to "we," which could simply mean human reason cannot be used as a basis to understand the Trinity, and it would follow also that it can't be used to reject the Trinity. We can neither come up with reasons to prove it exists or that it doesn't, but we accept on faith that it does.

If Christian, confirmation bias is dogmaticaly imposed and it eliminates the possibility of disproof and it entails belief regardless. You can understand then the feeling that there is no value in the debate. Your mind can't be changed by operation of law, so to speak.

You're therefore not in a battle with the analytics or the users of reason. You're in a battle specifically with non-Christians who reject your demand of acceptance of Church dogma and refuse to humbly accept their human rationality cannot comprehend divine rationality.

This therefore has nothing to do with secularism versus theism or analytics versus whatever. This is just whether one is willing to be Christian or not. If true Christians tied to doctrinal belief (98%) constitute the authentic Christians, then this is just about being Christian or not, and not about being an Analytic, a rationalist, a theist, or whatever.

My belief holds, for example, that death is mourned because the opportunity to perform God's law has ended. Heaven, in all its glory, is not sought after, but is brought to earth by good acts. We seek to bring God here, not to go to the heavens for God. It's a this worldly religion based upon what you do. It's not a religion centered around eternal rewards.

My point is that you probably find that profoundly wrong, and you may find issues within it unresolvable, but why should I pretend to care. I don't hold my views because they are logically consistent, empirically provable, or factually credible. I hold them for meaning, purpose, comfort, morality, sense of community, sense of beauty, utilitarian benefit, belonging, etc etc.

I guess I'm asking, why the grappling in the muck with the non-believers when you've got enough reason to believe even if some of their academic objections can't be readily overcome?

was looking through your posts to try to understand where you are coming from. Maybe part of the problem here is that you are depending on Mormon sources. At least the second sentence of your article is candid: — Leontiskos

The source was openly an LDS source, That's why @frank provided the picture of the Mormons on bikes. @Banno then cited another article describing other views on the Trinity. The point then was just to point out there wasn't Christian consensus on the Trinity.

Atheism is a very different thing to analytic method. It is surprising to me that this needs mention. — Banno

Thinking about this, we have some unclarity regarding the analytic method as we're using it here with some degree of equivocation.

To the extent we're using it just to mean adherence to deductive logic and the avoidance of formal fallacies, we have to commit to that else fall into incoherence. @Leontiskos's suggestion that analytic philosophy is overly restrictive when evaluating the Trinity because it demands logic is difficult to accept, especially given Catholicism's reliance generally on Aristotelian logic.

To the extent we're referencing the analytic tradition as elaborated by Wittgenstein and Davidson, particularly with their dispensing with the idea that meaning is based on an internal referent, I see Leon's point. If the soul is an entity and the love one has for God is a true thing in one's heart, it's entirely inadequate to suggest these words refer to just their use and not some mystical entity.

And we've got to keep in mind that the linchpin of Wittgenstein's enterprise is in denying private language, which is a metaphysical impossibility to the theist because his internal state is publicly shared by God. That is,a theist might see Wittgenstein's theory as a brilliant reductio that proves without God you are limited to an absurdly restricted system of language. Of course, the secular analytic embraces this conclusion and runs with it.

I recognize there are plenty of fully analytic philosophers (in all ways that word is used) who are theists, and I appreciate this spin in negating private language by insisting God speaks within us is my own. But I like it, so there's that. I fully commit therefore to a language game between God and his children, as it were.

But then I disagree with Leon in his hesitation to accept that logical thought (which here I mean logical reasoning, which includes analogizing and the use of precedent as authority) by itself is not a religious act. Fundamental to Jewish orthodoxy (see, e.g., Rav Soloveitchik) is the sacredness of assessing a priori Mosaic law (as it is accepted as divinely given) against a posteriori events. In fact, Yeshiva learning is considered prayer-like even when the assessment of law is upon purely hypothetical situations without any practical application because it advances an understanding of holy law.

The Judaic reliance on logic is, to be sure, beholden by analytic principles, but it goes far beyond just that with its legalistic precedential reliance and its considerations of worldly situations and what law might be implicated. It is of a very different logical feel than what you see with Catholic thought that can at times be entirely syllogistic, as in the logical arguments for God's existence and the Trinity, but to be fair to my Catholic brethren I suspect some degree of Judaic type analysis occurs as well. But, broad strokes, it's different.

The point being here that likely any of these systems (secular, theistic, analytic, formally logical) can work internally, but I don't think it's correct to suggest the Trinity struggles because it's unfairly subjected to Wittgenstein's restrictions on metaphysics. I think it struggles if it's subjected to basic logical demands (e.g., law of identity, law of non-contradiction, etc.). I appreciate that great lengths have been made in Catholic theology to save the Trinity from logical defeat and it would fly in the face of these efforts for a Catholic to admit the Trinity is contradictory or fails under the law of identity.

But does this not mean that Banno is not wrong to subject the Trinity to this logic, even if it shouldn't be subjected to greater Wittgensteinian analysis?

The Analytic, with his tiny set of norms, must ultimately admit that pretty much everything passes muster, at least on Analytic grounds. — Leontiskos

The sanctification of rules results in their analysis being a pursuit of the divine. The point being that the analytic tradition need not be atheistic. If we assert the Talmud a hinge belief, for example, you create a framework for an analytic theology. Analysis becomes a form of worship.

I just point out that both sides to our hearty debate are being myopic if they think analytic thought entails atheism. What entails atheism or theism is worldview, which relates to form of life.

Both analyze, yet one calls it secular philosophical reasoning and the other calls it prayer. Very different languages they're speaking.

I agree that it's not my job to tell other people what kind of relationship they should have to religion, but somewhere short of actually getting offensive, challenging a belief can shed light. Maybe it doesn't shed light on strict philosophical issues, though. Maybe it's more about psychology. — frank

I think you have to challenge a belief from within the dictates of the belief system. I think both sides have said it here a number of times, which is to stop telling me how your belief system (whether it be anglo-analytic versus Christian or whatever) says things are. From a Catholic perspective, you have the Trinity entirely wrong, and your opponents have it entirely wrong from your perspective.

I'm not arguing relativism here. You can debate on a meta-level if you want what is the best episimological system (which, by the way, need not be the one that best discovers "truth" in some ontological sense, but it could very well be the one that imparts the greatest meaning), but that is an entirely different argument. It would actually be about hermaneutics generally.

The point here is that none of us care to argue the esoteric points of Catholicism to determine whether the trinity is sustainable within the dictates of that logical system and to otherwise point out the tensions from within that system. That's the stuff of seminary school. By the same token, no Catholic really needs to prove the trinity works from a secular perspective. They may stubbornly insist it does, but it's hardly relevant if it doesn't. They're still going to mass on Sunday (or at least on Easter and Christmas).

I guess what I'm saying is that you're about as likely to shake lose their viewpoint by the sheer force of your conviction as they would yours to theirs. And to be sure, they want you to come to their position far more than you really care about them coming to yours.