If we accept abductive reasoning (inference to best explanation on available evidence - IBE) as leading to rational beliefs, is there really a problem? Such beliefs will, of course, be undertermined but that just means they don't comprise knowledge (in the strict sense).

Epistemology should be of practical use in the world, and in the real world we are nearly always deriving conclusions from limited information. IBEs are the practical ideal. — Relativist

This is a really interesting objection. Is an IBE underdetermined? Remember that the conclusion is not, "X is the explanation," but rather, "X is the best explanation." I actually don't see why underdetermination would need to attend IBEs.

A significant part of this thread will turn on what exactly is meant by "underdetermined."

Is it enough to say

"Modern philosophy has problems. These medieval thinkers didn't have these problems. This is because modern philosophy invented this problem for itself by stripping out all the thoughts which earlier thinkers relied upon in making such inferences. Therefore, we should adopt these earlier approaches, given the incredible progress knowledge has made -- there is a disconnect between ability, and these supposed modern problems that we can pass over by reading the older solutions" ?

Does that demonstrate having read the OP? — Moliere

No, not really. No mention of underdetermintion or realism. You're basically assuming that the OP is about something that it doesn't claim to be about, hence the ad hominem nature. The OP is about underdetermination and realism. That's the core.

My thinking is with respect to underdetermination and its value -- what I read were some solutions to underdetermination based on a generalization of a few select authors rather than what I might say in favor of underdetermination, for instance. So I wanted some sort of reason why these are even appealing at all? — Moliere

So you think Hume, Wittgenstein, Quine, Sextus Empiricus, etc., offer poor arguments for underdetermination? That's intelligible. What is your alternative argument for underdetermination?

For myself I don't feel a deep need to argue for underdetermination because to me it explains why we go through all the hoops we do in making scientific inferences -- we don't just see the object as it is, we frequently make mistakes, and go about looking for reasons to justify our first beliefs while discounting possibilities not on the basis of evidence, but because they do not fit. This is inescapable for any productive thought at all -- but it has the result that we only have a tentative grasp of the whole. — Moliere

Okay, well that's a good start for an argument for underdetermination. :up:

I would want to actually look at some of these premises you are alluding to. For example:

1. We don't just see the object as it is
2. We frequently make mistakes
3. We frequently go about looking for reasons to justify our first beliefs
4. We have only a tentative grasp of the whole
5. Therefore, Underdetermination explains why we go through all the hoops we do in making scientific inferences

I don't see how (5) follows from your premises. Here is something you might want to revisit regarding premises like 1, 2, or 4:

This does not imply that we come to know everything about the actuality of the form. Indeed, we will never know everything about any sort of thing. As Aquinas’ famously put it: “all the efforts of the human intellect cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.” Nonetheless we know what a fly is. We understand it. It is this phenomenological experience of understanding that is the key datum which epistemology is supposed to explain. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is something I thought while reading MacIntyre. Yes, I see what you're saying, but like Heidegger you're sort of inventing a whole mindset that is "pre-modern", and justifying it with many quotes -- but at the end of the day if you haven't spoken to people from the pre-modern era then, my brother in christ, you cannot make claims about how pre-modern people think no matter how many texts you read from that era.

It elucidates how we think, but it may not be the panacea of problems contemporary philosophy faces.

It looks soothing -- but ultimately when someone says that if we go back to some ancient or medieval thinker as the person who saw it all I think that we're kind of fibbing to ourselves. — Moliere

You don't seem to be engaging the OP at all.

We're attempting to reconstruct the thoughts of people we can't talk to, yes. — Moliere

Such is philosophy. You do the same thing with the philosophers you appeal to and interpret.

There is lots of substance in the OP. Why not address that substance instead of trying to undercut it with ad hominem gesturing towards Aristotle or Aquinas? Count spent a fair amount of time on this. I would want to honor that.

I want to see some responses that show evidence that the OP was actually read. Your post doesn't manage that. It could be recycled for any Aristotelian-Thomistic OP, regardless of content. Therefore if one reads your post they will not be given any insight into the content of the OP, given that your post in no way reflects the content of the OP. They will only be able to infer that the OP involves the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas.

This is a wonderful essay, eminently relevant. Its work in clearing away canards cannot be overestimated. Its research and accuracy are commendable. It is long yet worthwhile and readable.

Yet if an epistemology results in our having to affirm conclusions that seem prima facie absurd, and if further, it seems to lead towards radical skepticism and epistemological nihilism, or an ever branching fragmentation of disparate “skeptical solutions” and new “anti-realisms,” that might be a good indication that it is simply a bad epistemology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I recently listened to Nathan Jacobs' podcast on realism and nominalism, which I thought gave a good overview of the territory. I started but have not finished his follow-up podcast, "The Case for Realism," in which he argues for realism and explains why he abandoned nominalism for realism. So far it has been good, and has tracked some of the same points you are making.

Knowledge of trees, an understanding of what a tree is, comes from the presence of this form in our intellect after it has been abstracted from the senses. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is a good exchange on this point between Robert Pasnau and Gyula Klima, where Pasnau takes up skepticism arguendo against Aristotle and Klima responds.

The result is that the underdetermination of sheer prediction becomes unanswerable, and skepticism reigns.* — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would want to add that the realism quandary is also internal to "predictionism." The one who predicts is attempting to predict ad unum (towards the one, actual, future outcome). Without that future-oriented determinacy—whether actual or theoretical—the "predictionist" cannot function.

I am looking forward to following this thread. I think it will be especially hard to keep it on-topic given that it touches on so many neuralgic subjects which could lead us far afield of the OP.

Edit: with Superman we could also avoid belief and still get an apparent error with "Clark Kent appears on the Daily Planet payroll." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, or:

On your reasoning, we can disprove the thesis simply by noting that Superman wears a cape whereas Kent does not. — Leontiskos

I'm sympathetic to most of what you have been saying. But this contradiction can easily be resolved. "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are both names for the same person - but each name is assigned to a different persona. This is not particularly strange - pen names, professional names, character names (Barry Humphries, for example), regal names, baptismal names, adoptive names, married names, aliases of all sorts. — Ludwig V

Well, if the personas have different properties then you have solved the "puzzle."

As it is being trained to complete massive amounts of texts, the model comes to develop latent representations (encoded as the values of billions of contextual embedding stored in the hidden neural network layers) of the beliefs of the authors of the text as well as the features of the human world that those authors are talking about. At some stage, the model comes to be able to accurately impersonate, say, both a misinformed Moon landing hoax theorist and a well informed NASA engineer/historian. However, in order to be able to successfully impersonate both of those people, the model must be able to build a representation of the state of the world that better reflects the knowledge of the engineer than it does the beliefs of the conspiracy theorist. The reason for this is that the beliefs of the conspiracy theorist are more easily predictable in light of the actual facts (known by the engineer/historian) and the additional assumption that they are misguided and misinformed in specific ways than the other way around. In other words, the well informed engineer/historian would be more capable of impersonating a Moon landing hoax theorist in a play than the other way around. He/she would sound plausible to conspiracy theorists in the audience. The opposite isn't true. The misinformed theorists would do a poor job of stating the reasons why we can trust that Americans really landed on the Moon. So, the simple algorithms that trains the model for impersonating proponents of various competing paradigms enable it to highlight the flaws of one paradigm in light of another one. When the model is being fine-tuned, it may be rewarded for favoring some paradigms over others (mainstream medicine over alternative medicines, say) but it retains the latent ability to criticize consensual opinions in the light of heterodox ones and, through suitable prompting, the user can elicit the exercise of those capabilities by the post-trained model. — Pierre-Normand

Thank you again: that is very helpful. As someone who has pondered that general phenomenon, your account makes a lot of sense.

It's interesting that among humans there is another factor which seems to allow the conspiracy theorist to be better informed about the scientific orthodoxy than the layman is informed about the conspiracy theories. This is presumably because the conspiracy theorist more often faces objections to his views (and thus forms counter-arguments), whereas the layman who accepts the reigning orthodoxy will not face objections as often, and therefore will not form counter-arguments and self-reflect on his own reasoning as often. This is perhaps even more obvious when it comes to ideological minorities than conspiracy theorists per se.

My guess is that—supposing this phenomenon does not affect LLMs—the reason it does not affect LLMs is because the LLM has the "time" and "effort" available to expend on the conspiracy theorist, whereas the layman does not. (This gets into the "fairly difficult question" you reference below, namely the manner in which democratic thinking diverges from correct thinking.)

There is both low-level continuity and high-level shift in telos. At the low level, the telos remains accurate next-token prediction, or, more accurately, autoregressive selection. At the high level, there occurs a shift from aimless reproduction of patterns in the training data to, as GPT-5 puts it "assistant policy with H/H/A (helpful/harmless/accurate) goals". How the sense that the model develops of what constitute an accurate response, and of how accuracy is better tracked by some consensual opinions and not others (and sometimes is better tracked by particular minority opinions) is a fairly difficult question. But I think it's an epistemological question that humans also are faced with, and LLMs merely inherit it. — Pierre-Normand

Indeed. Thank you. :up:

I'd suggest that the sheer instrumentality of the "new science" is a major culprit here. It leads to a sort of pride. It's a particularly pernicious pride in that it often masquerades as epistemic humility. Its epistemic bracketing is often an explicit turn towards the creature and the good of the creature without reference to the creator, as if the one could be cut off from the other. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools," and exchanged a holistic view for a diabolical process that cuts apart and makes it so that "reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions." — Count Timothy von Icarus

And what's interesting to me is the way that philosophical and cultural degradation is often very subtle, especially at its inception. For example, it is quite difficult to pinpoint where this "proceduralizing" of reason began, even though we can see it fully flowered in the modern period.

Then beginning where we are now, medicinal movement in the proper direction poses the same sort of question. People and especially cultures cannot do a 180° reversal in a day, and usually the reordering must be done via a multitude of small and subtle shifts or re-orderings. It's remarkably difficult for a rationalistic mindset to yield even the smallest concessions (and thus re-orderings) to a more holistic paradigm. It's almost as if the rationalistic context must be abandoned for a time, in much the same way that someone who has developed bad habits of gait should just go swimming for a few hours in an attempt to forget and reset the whole realm of walking.

Merely syllogistic logic cannot deal with modal or other intensional contexts. It treats identity as just another predication. That's one of the reasons it's not much used anymore. — Banno

You're floundering in your continual ignorance of history and philosophy, and you still haven't answered the question at hand. Ironically, the problem with your own view is that it treats identity as just another predication, failing to think through the equivocation between self-identity and other-identity.

Leibniz' whole point was that if you have two things with all the same properties, then you don't have two things. You were mistaken and there is only one thing after all. Thus the "=" on your definition is by definition not a two-place relation. Instead it is a reflexive relation where the object is identical to itself, and where we have mistaken a single object for two different objects. — Leontiskos

Nothing in God's late condemnation of Saul suggests the misrepresentation thesis. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I haven't read much on this point, but it seems to me that the condemnation remains intelligible as long as we don't take the Samuel thesis to an extreme. Saul's actions seem indefensible in general.

So I think this line could be fruitful even if we don't go the route of the "deceiving" thesis:

I remember the writing in bSamuel as brilliant and capturing what can happen even when legitimate prophecy is granted to the crooked timber of humanity.

...

In Torah, you'll hear, e.g., "And God said to Abraham...." In the book of Samuel, this doesn't happen, and instead, it's Samuel telling Saul to put Amalek under the ban. The key here is Samuel. He could be correctly and perfectly conveying God's will, or he could be mistaken, or he could be deceiving. The clarity of Torah, where we see God's words openly dictated, is no longer present in Samuel. — BitconnectCarlos

Meier's Themes and Transformations in Old Testament Prophecy would generally support this thesis, as he argues that the potency, competency, and clarity of prophets gradually diminishes as the Bible draws on.

So true. :fire:

---

I continue to be impressed by the amount of gymnastics — jorndoe

I continue to be impressed by the anti-Trinitarian "mysticism". "It's totally contradictory. I don't have a coherent argument for that conclusion, but just take my word for it!~" Usually one comes to the conclusion that something is contradictory after making a serious argument to that effect. Not on TPF, though. :wink:

Dude, — Banno

On your reasoning, we can disprove the thesis simply by noting that Superman wears a cape whereas Kent does not. Therefore they are not equal or identical. — Leontiskos

You're just kicking the can and avoiding the concrete question. What you mean by "=" is something like, "equivalent with respect to the properties that we take to be relevant," and you haven't the slightest idea of what should count as a relevant or irrelevant property. Else, on your "all properties" account, there are no two things that are equal. Therefore, as I said, your "=" is just a matter of different names for the same thing. Again:

Consider two biconditionals:

SC: The two terms can be substituted salva veritate within this context ↔ The two terms are equivalent within this context
SA: The two terms can be substituted salva veritate in every context ↔ The two terms are equivalent in every context (i.e. the two terms are absolutely identical)

Both of these biconditionals are true, but this is the argumentation that leverages SA:

i. [Claim that two terms can be substituted in every context]
ii. [Identify a context in which the two terms cannot be substituted]
iii. Draw a reductio of some kind

For example:

1. "Superman" = "Clark Kent."
2. Lois believes that Superman can fly.
3. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly.

As I pointed out above, (1) is false, but it is false in a very deep sense. This is because SA is a linguistic impossibility, and therefore to stipulate that some pair of terms satisfies SA is to stipulate a linguistic impossibility. It’s therefore no surprise that one can always find a context in which the two terms cannot be substituted once one moves out into the real world. — Leontiskos

SA is a linguistic impossibility. Leibniz' whole point was that if you have two things with all the same properties, then you don't have two things. You were mistaken and there is only one thing after all. Thus the "=" on your definition is by definition not a two-place relation. Instead it is a reflexive relation where the object is identical to itself, and where we have mistaken a single object for two different objects. It is epistemology trying to disguise itself and pass for a static proposition. It is a conflation of reference and referent.

"Superman = Clark Kent" is logically presupposing both that there are two things being related, and that there are not two things but only one thing. It's that inherent contradiction that is the problem, and which is so bound up in your own thought.

I apologize: I was not understanding you before. I thought you were referring to demonic possession. Indeed, I agree that it is much more questionable if demonic hybrids would have rights. — Bob Ross

That's alright - it's an understandable assumption. At this point we are knee-deep in obscura. :smile:
For example, according to the secondary literature the demons that Jesus casts out were originally spawned by groups like the Amalekites, and roamed the Earth looking for hosts after being killed by the Israelites.

Could God wipe them out justly? I don’t know, but it would definitely violate the rationale I gave above for rights. — Bob Ross

That's a fair argument you give. What's interesting is that when Jesus encounters these demons that—according to the secondary literature—originally came from groups like the Amalekites, they say things like this:

And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” — Matthew 8:29 (RSV)

The backstory here is that in his mercy and providence, God has allowed such beings to continue to exist on Earth until "the time," namely the end times. So oddly enough, there is a respect even for demons built into the narratives. Jesus even accedes to their request in v. 32.

Yes, but no one that objects with those to me (so far) has ever coherently defined what ‘murder’ is. Like I said, that view may be internally coherent in some theory; but it isn’t coherent with the idea of rights I expounded above. Do you have a different definition of murder that you prefer such that God and the Angel of Death are not committing murder?

My definition, to recap, is that murder is the direct intentional killing of a person. — Bob Ross

Yes, and it's fair enough that you would press your point. Let's try to understand the logic a bit. First, your argument, which of course presupposes that murder is impermissible:

1. Murder is the direct intentional killing of an [innocent] person
2. The Angel of Death intentionally kills the innocent Amalekite infant
3. Therefore, the Angel of Death is a murderer

And then the reductio I mentioned (although I will not here present it as a reductio):

4. It is the Angel of Death's job to take life
5. It is not impermissible to do one's job
6. Therefore, the Angel of Death is not a murderer

This is the case where there is a logical standoff between two contradictory conclusions, and yet there is no attempt to formally invalidate the opposing argument. Formal reductios also function in precisely this way. If we have only these two arguments, then one must simply weigh them and decide which is stronger.

Digging deeper, (4) and (5) have to do with the idea that death is inevitable, and that for a person to die is not inherently unjust. This opens up the can of worms of the metaphysics and ethics of death, and the adjacent can of worms is the question of God's sovereignty within which question is the matter of whether God is responsible for death (or whether God "directly intends" the fact of natural death).

So this all gets complicated quickly, and therefore it is hard to try to capture the various complexities with a syllogism or two. For example, if everything that occurs is allowed by God to occur, and if this allowance counts as an intentional bringing-about, then it follows that everyone who dies is murdered. The reductio in this case lies in the idea that murder and death are two different things. Note too that we are wrestling with precisely the same issue that the Hebrews wrestled with in trying to understand God's sovereignty and providence (in, for example, hardening or not-hardening Pharaoh's heart).

Interesting. It seems like Fr. Stephen is taking a more spiritual approach to the theology and the Bible (going back to the beginning of our conversation). — Bob Ross

I wouldn't say that he takes a more spiritual or metaphorical approach to theology and the Bible, but I can see how this video in particular might produce that idea.

His critique is fair insofar that systematizing is can go too far and systematize for the sole sake of doing so (e.g., Kant); but I wonder how valid this critique really is: he seems to just have given up on striving towards perfect knowledge. It seems like systematic knowledge is just the attempt at, or aspiration towards, complete knowledge. Should we really give that up? What do we have left after doing so? — Bob Ross

This is a really interesting and complicated topic, but I will try to say a few things.

In general we recognize that one must collect the data before they form their theory or propose their thesis. We also recognize that if a theory is invalidated by data, we have to accept that rather than stubbornly cling to the theory while ignoring the data. I think De Young is saying that a lot of people have over-simple theories that run into problems when deeper and broader datasets are encountered. For example, I am told that there is a fun documentary on the Super Smash Bros video game, which follows different groups of people who thought they were the best and had mastered the game, only to find that others were much better (and that South Koreans are often elite in such matters).

It's something like that: you thought you understood it until you understand that you don't. That is Socrates' virtue: an understanding of his own limitations and ignorance. De Young is saying that when it comes to God this phenomenon gets taken to a whole new level (cf. Isaiah 55:8-9).

At the same time there is the danger of falling into the other extreme, which is what I think you are speaking to. There is the danger of skepticism or despair of knowledge altogether. There is the danger of theological voluntarism where God becomes wholly inscrutable. Yet what happens when one settles into a deep tradition such as Christianity, is that they settle into the habit of finding they were mistaken and thus being prepared to see how they are currently mistaken. This creates an openness to a reality beyond them (and this same phenomenon occurs when someone takes on a teacher, acknowledging that they have much to learn). I want to say that this humble stance towards reality and God is incredibly important, even if one rejects Christianity. We can of course reject things, but (please God) we should never find ourselves in a place where a self-confidence has closed us off to reality or to that which transcends our own capacities.

That must mean there is something objective and particular about the concept of the Trinity — Fire Ologist

I think this is right. The "sensus fidelium" could not exist if what is agreed upon were truly incoherent.

That was a very good bringing-together of various different strands of the thread. :up:
I was revisiting Damascene's exposition of the faith to see how much more accessible it is than Aquinas. It is certainly more accessible, but perhaps still not accessible enough for what this thread would require.

Wholly instrumental analytic reason is in a sense diabolical (in both its original and current sense). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed. And we can hold that such an approach is diabolical while also maintaining that it need not be explicitly atheistic (for example). The issue has to do with a closed-off-ness to both analogical reasoning and transcendence.

-

Let's just leave it at this: on it's face, the Catholic Trinity appears to be contradictory. — frank

If there is a contradiction, then present the argument for that conclusion. As I noted earlier, internecine differences over the Trinity do not turn on the question of contradiction. They turn on the question of consistency with Scripture, the Fathers, or other such sources.

Thank you, that is very helpful! Let me ask a few follow-up questions.

As a result, the base-model has the latent ability to express any of the wide range of intelligible opinions that an author of some piece of the training data might have produced, and has no proclivity to adjudicate between them. — Pierre-Normand

Isn't it true that the opinions of the author of some piece of training data will converge in some ways and diverge in others? For example, the opinions might converge on the idea that slavery is wrong but diverge on the question of who will be the Governor of Nevada in 2032. If that is right, then how does the LLM handle each case, and how does one know when the opinions are converging and when they are diverging? Similarly, [what] criteria does the LLM use to decide when to present its answer as a mere opinion, and when to present its answer with more certitude?

During post-training, the model's weights are reconfigured through reinforcement learning in order to fit the schema USER: <query>, ASSISTANT: <response>, USER: <follow up question>, etc. and the models responses that are deemed best in accordance with predetermined criteria (usefulness, harmlessness, accuracy, etc.) are reinforced by human evaluators of by a reward model trained by human evaluators. Some political biases may arise from this process rather than from the consensual or majority opinions present in the training data. But it is also a process by means of which the opinions expressed by the model come to be pegged rather closely to the inferred opinions of the user just because such responses tend to be deemed by evaluators to be more useful or accurate. (Some degree of reward-hacking sometimes is going on at this stage). — Pierre-Normand

Great.

So suppose the LLM's response is an output, and there are various inputs that inform that output. I am wondering which inputs are stable and which inputs are variable. For example, the "post-training" that you describe is a variable input which varies with user decisions. The "predetermined criteria" that you describe is a stable input that does not change apart from things like software updates or "backend" tinkering. The dataset that the LLM is trained on is a variable input insofar as one is allowed to do the training themselves.

I am ultimately wondering about the telos of the LLM. For example, if the LLM is designed to be agreeable, informative, and adaptive, we might say that its telos is to mimic an agreeable and intelligent person who is familiar with all of the data that the LLM has been trained on. We might say that post-training modifies the "personality" of the LLM to accord with those users it has interacted with, thus giving special weight to the interests and goals of such users. Obviously different LLMs will have a different telos, but are there some overarching generalities to be had? The other caveat here is that my question may be incoherent if the base model and the post-trained model have starkly different teloi, with no significant continuity.

It's more akin to a rational reconstruction of the opinions that the model has learned to produce under the constraints that this response would likely be deemed by the user to be useful, cogent and accurate. Actual cogency and accuracy are achieved with some reliability when, as often is the case, the most plausible sounding answer (as the specific user would evaluate it) is the most plausible answer. — Pierre-Normand

Okay, interesting. :up:

(I also read through some of your GPT links. :up:)

Googling "God: Multiple persons sharing one being" returns the Trinity. — Banno

Is that really a surprise?

Banno is a case in point for the future in which LLM-based arguments become synonymous with a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy bias. What Narcissus would have given for an LLM to reflect back to him his own prejudices!

↪frank But I think what I've said in the above posts acknowledges all of that. I said:

So two men both 'participate' in the form 'man' even though they are numerically different men. — Wayfarer

One (rather limited) way of approaching the Trinity is as a mean between the extreme of a strong emphasis on the persons (which moves in the direction of polytheism) and the extreme of a strong emphasis on the unification of the divine nature (which moves in the direction of emphasizing the divine nature at the expense of the personal distinctions).

So on this scheme we're sailing down a river where the north shore is polytheism, the south shore is ousia-overemphasis, and we want to stay in the middle of the river and avoid crashing into either shore. As with all areas of subtle philosophy, overcorrection is a constant danger.

Banno presented " an unlikely strawman that very little attention is [historically] paid to the idea at all." You responded by pointing to the idea that "is God" is indicating the predication of a nature, and that is definitely the right response to Banno's odd transitivity argument. You gave an example of two men who participate in the form of 'man' (human), which is also a helpful illustration. The quibble against your example is that the persons of the Trinity are not separated from each other in the way that human persons are separated from each other, and that if for some reason we take your example to be identical to the Trinity, then it fails: it veers too close to the north shore. This objection is intelligible, but I don't see any reason to assume that you were offering the example as something more than an analogy.

(Another way of viewing that objection is as a utilization of Euthyphro-like reasoning against the reification of the ousia.)

The danger for the Catholic is polytheism. — Banno

No, Catholicism (and Western Christianity in general) has always veered closer to the south shore. Polytheism is the danger for Eastern Christianity.

When Catholics say the Father is God, they are not predicating. They aren't saying God is a category the Father belongs to. It's an identity statement. The Father is not a section of God. The Father is fully God. Whatever God is, the Father is equal to that. — frank

No, this is not right. I would go back to my posts where I quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We can say that the Father is God (in the Triune sense), but by that we include the Son and the Spirit with the Father, for they are never apart (except notionally, in the single notional case where an exclusive relation of origin is being considered). More commonly, we would say that the Father is divine (and this is a matter of ousia).

Regarding my post to you about John 1:1, there is an ancient sense in which "God" ("the god") is used hypostatically to refer to the Father, but the semantics of the hypostatic use and the Triune use are distinct.

Christianity is the most ideologically dynamic of all the global religions because it's a fusion of several different sets of cultural outlooks and values. — frank

Perhaps this is most true of Christianity given its geographic sprawl, but it is also true of many other religions to a lesser extent.

Kastrup uses this as a metaphor for the relationship between individual minds and what he calls “mind at large.” Just as each dissociated identity experiences itself as a separate person, we experience ourselves as separate individuals—when, in his view, we are all expressions of the same underlying mind manifesting in different ways. — Wayfarer

In a more individual way Trinitarian thought is often applied analogously to psychological health. When the various aspects of one's personality become dissociated, one becomes mad, corrupt, divided, schizophrenic, etc. When the various aspects of one's personality enter into a symbiotic and fruitful union, one achieves psychological health. Monomania would be the case where only one aspect of one's personality is allowed to continue existing.

And I'll note that you've failed to answer the simple question, "What does <Superman = Clark Kent> mean?," three times now.

More of the same from Banno.

Why not just admit what I've said from the start: that you don't know what you mean when you say things like, "Superman = Clark Kent"?

On your reasoning, we can disprove the thesis simply by noting that Superman wears a cape whereas Kent does not. Therefore they are not equal or identical.

This is not a complete account, but it'll do. — Banno

So again, what does <Superman = Clark Kent> mean? And is the "binary predicate" true or false in this case?

(I of course responded to your confusions yesterday.)

"=" is very well defined in both maths and logic — Banno

Then give your account of what <Superman = Clark Kent> means.

I only grant that it is well-defined in mathematics.

Analytics like Banno seldom have any idea what they are doing when they say, "x = y," as they assume that anything can be placed into that form. They don't recognize the mathematical context and the single genus of the relata that their formulation takes for granted. — Leontiskos

That conclusion (not premise) could only be made by someone who knew both the differences and sameness between what is a “Clark” and what is a “Superman”. — Fire Ologist

Right. In order for (1) to avoid tautology there must be rational movement, and this requires some difference between the two relata.

And of course I don't mean that we can't use (1) as a premise, but rather that we must be prepared to give an argument for such premises. Such premises are not self-evident.

P1: X = Y
P2: Z is ready enough to say "X can fly."
P3: Therefore, Z is ready enough to say "Y can fly."

I don’t think this apparent controversy is about an apparent flaw in the notion “X = Y”, but from the insertion of the “Z is ready to say that…”. Z’s belief creates a new context in which we must redefine X and Y. So we can’t substitute the use of either X or Y from P1, in any sentence following P2; P2 has redefined X and Y according to Z’s belief. — Fire Ologist

Yeah, I think you're right about this. P3 requires a premise about whether X = Y for Z.

But drumming my point, we could also scrutinize P1. What does P1 mean? In the Superman case it is supposed to mean that one and the same thing goes by two different names. Is that what it means in a mathematical context? I'd say the fact that we don't really know what we are saying with (1) is significant. Given that there are so many multivalent meanings to P1, it is itself a kind of analogical claim. Presumably disambiguating P1 would shed light on P3.

How did I end up analogizing the Trinity to a single human person, and it jibes with Aquinas, but I didn’t go to Aquinas? Incoherence in the notion of a ‘Trinity’ would make this an utter accident. — Fire Ologist

Yes, and what's interesting here is that the development of the concept of personhood had a great deal to do with Trinitarian theology. The precision that we now have around the word "person" did not exist in the 4th century. Theater and Trinitarian thought were two of the principle ways that the concept was developed.

There is a similar way in which someone might think that a cardinal (bird) looks like a Roman Catholic Cardinal, or that cappuccino looks like a Capuchin's habit. In fact the bird and the coffee were named after Cardinals and Capuchins, and so the causality is reversed.

This all helps give the lie to the idea that religious thinking is somehow private or irrelevant. Religious thinking forms the basis for much of our current thought and language.

'Essence' is 'what is essential to the being', from the Latin 'esse' 'to be'. So two men both 'participate' in the form 'man' even though they are numerically different men. — Wayfarer

Right. So if we stumbled upon an organism, we might wonder whether it is human. We might come to decide, "This thing is of the same nature as John Doe (and is therefore human)."

The genesis of Trinitarian theology is the same. Folks were wondering what Jesus is. The Council of Nicea came to decide, "The Son is consubstantial with the Father (and is therefore divine)."

@bongo fury

I can’t say I understand Analytic Philosophy’s interest in this sort of substitutability and “referential opacity.” It seems endlessly confused.

For example, suppose “Superman” = “Clark Kent.” This looks like an absurd supposition from the start. The only reason Clark Kent exists at all is because “Superman” != “Clark Kent.” If Superman and Clark Kent were equivalent and therefore substitutable, then this would only mean that Kal-El’s disguise or pseudo-identity had failed.

More generally, if we have two names for the exact same thing (identical both notionally and mind-independently), then one of the names is superfluous and pointless. This hangup with referential opacity seems to be a matter where one posits that superfluous and pointless case and then supposes that it is a centrally important case. How the heck is this case deemed so important?

Probably what is happening is that the “objective” identity is focused on so strongly that one forgets that what is (supposedly) “objectively” identical need not be notionally identical. It seems controversial to claim that the “objective” referent of “Superman” and the “objective” referent of “Clark Kent” are identical, but I would say that it is clearly false to claim that the two signs have notional equivalence. Even to the narrator, “Superman” means something like, “Kal-El in his superhero identity,” whereas, “Clark Kent,” means something like, “Kal-El in his secondary identity, disguised as a human.” That they are not simply equivalent means that they cannot be substituted in every context.

More simply, “Superman” and “Clark Kent” are not different names for the same thing. The whole point of a disguise is to create a “name” that does not reference the true referent. Thus it is much truer to say that “Clark Kent” means “Not-Superman” than to say that “Clark Kent” and “Superman” name the same thing.

What’s weird is that the person interested in this sort of thing might respond, “Okay, so Superman isn’t the best example of this.” But what is the best example? Wouldn’t the best example be something that is completely absurd rather than only partially absurd (like Superman)? It seems like the best example would be two words which refer to the exact same thing, such that there is no notional difference, no difference of semantic range, no connotative difference, etc. The best example looks to be a sheer linguistic impossibility.

Am I missing something important here?

---

Let me sketch out my guess at what is occurring.

Consider two biconditionals:

• SC: The two terms can be substituted salva veritate within this context ↔ The two terms are equivalent within this context
• SA: The two terms can be substituted salva veritate in every context ↔ The two terms are equivalent in every context (i.e. the two terms are absolutely identical)

Both of these biconditionals are true, but this is the argumentation that leverages SA:

i. [Claim that two terms can be substituted in every context]
ii. [Identify a context in which the two terms cannot be substituted]
iii. Draw a reductio of some kind

For example:

1. "Superman" = "Clark Kent."
2. Lois believes that Superman can fly.
3. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly.

As I pointed out above, (1) is false, but it is false in a very deep sense. This is because SA is a linguistic impossibility, and therefore to stipulate that some pair of terms satisfies SA is to stipulate a linguistic impossibility. It’s therefore no surprise that one can always find a context in which the two terms cannot be substituted once one moves out into the real world.

I think the issue has to do with epistemic direction, and this error plagues much of Analytic Philosophy. SC and SA are only epistemically coherent (and generally useful) when one moves from the first half to the second half. “These two terms are substitutable, therefore they are equivalent—either in this context or in every context.” That is how one reasons. A judgment of equivalence is inherently a conclusion rather than a premise. Equivalence is never intuited or stipulated.

Now we did get a kind of argument for equivalence in this thread. In this thread (1) was supported by the argument, “Term1 and term2 both rigidly designate the same thing.” Yet note that this does not fulfill SA, namely because it does not address the “context” where such a thing is not believed by Lois. Validity would require, “Term1 and term2 both rigidly designate the same thing, and every rational agent knows this.”

Note that this sort of thing happens all the time among TPF Analytics. For example, in the thread from which this thread was spawned, was just assuming by fiat that the Christian theological terms “Jesus” and “God” are unconditionally substitutable. It is the same sort of move from, “Superman is Clark Kent,” to, “Superman = Clark Kent” (in the sense of SA), albeit with a different context-valence.

In this case, “is” doesn’t mean numerical identity (as in "Clark Kent is Superman") but rather participation in a common essence. — Wayfarer

Spot on. Apparently this has been explained quite a few times throughout the thread. :up:

The abstract of your article contains such outrageous grammatical errors that I am inclined to suspect either that it was written by rather poor AI, or that you are only semi-literate. — alan1000

You are mistaken. There are no grammatical errors in the abstract.

It looks like an interesting article.

The second problem is that to read the article, I have to sign on to a website, with the obvious security compromise which that entails. — alan1000

Academia.edu is a highly regarded website, and your idea that having to sign in is prohibitive doesn't make much sense. You also have to sign in on TPF, after all.

Owing to the way they've been post-trained, all LLMs are largely unable to offer political opinions of their own. — Pierre-Normand

Can you expand on that?

My assumption was that—supposing an LLM will not offer contextless political opinions—it is because a polemical topic is one where there is wide disagreement, lack of consensus, and therefore no clear answer for an LLM.

I'm also curious what the difference is between, "Do you think Trump is a good president?," versus, "Does [some demographic] think Trump is a good president?," especially in the case where the demographic in question is unlimited (i.e. everyone). It seems like the two questions would converge on the same question for the LLM, given that the "opinion" of the LLM should be identical with the various opinions (or rather, linguistic patterns) which it collates.

That's a good post, frank. :up:

In Aristotelian-speak we would say that a material phoneme is not a formal word, and that the presence of a rigid designator requires certain intentions and beliefs on the part of the speaker.

T1 has to show up in the b sentence, and it's not there. There's nothing to substitute. — frank

...And so the question asks what t1 really is, given that the material markings which attend t1 are not sufficient for the presence of t1. So if we let t1 = "Superman," we haven't yet achieved what is needed for "objective" substitution-claims, given that "Superman" means different things to different people (i.e. the term is equivocal). Approaching these issues without something like 's Setoid is a dead end.

Substitutability depends on equivalence, and given that no rational or logical law/relation sidesteps the filter of belief, therefore it is false to claim that substitutability depends on equivalence irrespective of belief. If John does not believe that two terms are equivalent, then John cannot substitute them, and it is sheer confusion to think that there is some case where a substitution occurs but a "John" does not exist.

It is reasonable to think that the relationship between L and some other category W that represents an alternative analytic conception of the world, can be described in terms of a functor F : L --> W. — sime

Right, and I think a lot of this could be tied back to the "God's-eye view" question. If no category (L, W, etc.) is inherently privileged over any other, then it looks like the referential opacity "problem" cannot even arise.

Put differently, if we omit the presupposition that there is a "narrator" perspective which provides indisputable facts, then there is merely a disagreement between Lois ( L) and the observer (W) over whether Superman is Clark Kent. In that case each accuses the other of holding a mistaken belief which in turn influences their belief about what is permissibly substitutable.

(The reason I find this example so strange is because, depending on the time index, Lois may or may not believe that Superman is Clark Kent.)

They believed God is everything. — frank

In the sense that God is everything - God is the “in” and “with” of all things.
But in the sense that each separate thing is separate from each other (like this rock and that drink), each separate thing is not God and God is not that thing. — Fire Ologist

Right. So to take a group like the Stoics, the Logos is seen to order all things without remainder, but what is at stake is not an ontological thesis. Logos-providence does not entail pantheism.

So now here’s the analytic side of it. Leontiskos does the above make sense to you? It’s not expressly dogma, or from someone else - just my attempt to speak about the Trinity and how is see it. Where is there blatant error and where is it correct?

I think you, @Leontiskos can check my math and see coherence with the basic doctrines in some of the above, see the logic of it. — Fire Ologist

I think the general thrust is correct. The traditional Christian metaphysics of the God-world relation tends to be participatory rather than a matter of identification. God does things like create, sustain, and guide creation, but he is not himself creation. An ontological creator-creation distinction is maintained in traditional Christianity.

(And you made a distinction between God as a category of being and God as the living being we know as God. And you talked of “the God” versus “God”. These are all necessary distinctions, but I think it can confuse this further. Meaning, I follow you, but I could see someone misconstruing that you are saying there is more than one God.). — Fire Ologist

To simplify the whole question, because the ancient Greek texts did not have the uppercase-lowercase distinction, and they did not have indefinite articles, therefore they were unable to linguistically represent 'God' in the way that we commonly do today. But there are pros and cons. One of the cons of our own idiom is that although everyone uses the term 'God', it is not at all clear when the term is being used with any clear sense.

What is a person? — Fire Ologist

:up:

Aquinas sees this as the preliminary question to the whole discussion.

Fine. The use of Logos tells that it's related to Plato, the Stoics, and Philo. The basic idea was that God is everything. That's what Plotinus believed. I'm happy to give you the victory over sorting out what Catholics believe. — frank

Okay, well thanks for that. Logos was a philosophical term of art, but it was also a common linguistic term. Both are probably at play in John's prologue.

The basic idea was that God is everything. — frank

Not for any of the figures you mention (i.e. pantheism).

I'm glad you concede that Catholics do not fall into the transitive problem. More generally, I would say that in an anthropological sense it is mistaken to attribute extremely simplistic mistakes to millennia-old traditions. Millennia-old traditions do not make extremely simplistic mistakes, such as failing to recognize the law of identity or transitivity, and this includes all sorts of religions and traditions. This is because 1) just because someone lived before the 21st century does not make them dumb; 2) adherents of a tradition will tend to scrutinize their tradition more thoroughly than outsiders given that they think about the issues more seriously; and 3) when you have the input of billions of people over thousands of years, extremely simplistic mistakes do not survive. It is this remarkable underestimation of millennia-old traditions that I find especially problematic.

Fine. You're saying John 1:1 is saying that the Word was with the Father, and the Word was divine. — frank

Yep, and it's the same with predications of the Son. His nature/ousia is God/divine. But he is not "the god," where "the god" means something like the Father or else a generic god-person. The Nicene Creed says, "Consubstantial with the Father," which is the much more traditional phrase.

262 The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father the Son is one and the same God. — Catechism of the Catholic Church, #262

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. — Hanover

Nah, @Fire Ologist is right on the money. Here is the Catechism:

236 The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). "Theology" refers to the mystery of God's inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and "economy" to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia. God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.

237 The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the "mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God".58 To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit. — Catechism of the Catholic Church

The inner life of others is also opaque to us unless they "let us in," and once they do that their outer works are made transparent. Granted, the Trinity is moreso, but the similarity is significant.

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. — Hanover

I think it only means that not everyone studies Trinitarian theology.

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. — Hanover

The Mormon view is clearer. But it isn't representative of Christianity.

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. — Hanover

Well you presented an argument and I pointed out why your argument fails. Calling it "preposterous" but being unable to present a valid argument against it is not helpful.

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." — Hanover

We've covered this ad nauseum in the thread. "Mystery" does not mean "preposterous" or "contradictory."

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. — Hanover

No, that is incorrect. The Catholic view is that the Trinity is not contradictory, and that is why Catholics such as Augustine answer charges of contradiction, and they do it substantively. They do not say, "Oh it's a mystery so you can't argue against it by definition." That's not what Catholicism means by "mystery."

Look, our religious difference seems to have everything to do with the truth-aptness of religious claims. You always go back to the idea, "None of this is provable or disprovable or rational or irrational, and none of it really matters anyway (for there are no differences that arise on account of these beliefs), so let's all just stop arguing about it." I think that is deeply mistaken. If one has that view then a lackadaisical approach to religion is warranted, such as failing to distinguish Mormons from traditional Christians. But if one does not have that view then the lackadaisical approach is not warranted. In that case we would have to take the objections seriously and admit that religion is susceptible to rational objections. It seems like I think religion is susceptible to rational objections and you don't, and therefore we approach all of this from significantly different vantage points.

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. — Hanover

I've explained why this claim fails quite a few times. Check out my posts towards the end of <this thread>.

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. — Hanover

This is an incorrect framing, and it evinces the same lackadaisical attitude that led you to interpret me to be saying the exact opposite of what I had said. You aren't reading or interpreting posts carefully, likely because you hold to an a priori position which says that none of this matters anyway.

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. — Hanover

Believe it or not, people don't just decide whether to be a Christian or not for no reason whatsoever. It has to do with other holdings, including things like rationalism, theism, atheism, etc.

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. — Hanover

I don't think religious positions are inadjudicable. I think your belief in the inadjudicability of religious positions is mistaken.

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? — Hanover

Because a fallacious argument against Christianity impedes others from life in God.

Look, if you believe something is good and shareable, and someone gives a fallacious argument against it, then (ceteris paribus) you should point out the problems in the argument. If you don't do that then you don't care about others sharing in the good.

Obviously Judaism is not an evangelistic religion, and that's a big difference. But the idea that one should protect what is good and true is not a strange idea.

This is actually a really excellent question and objection, given that my claim is that "The Son is God" is never used in early Christianity.

In the Greek of Jn 1:1 the first instance of 'God' includes the definite article whereas the second does not.

So if we use your NIV translation but include the articles and omit the capitalization, we get this:

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with the god, and the word was god."

The reading that you and Banno see is, "...and the word was the god," which is on par with, "Jesus is the god."

In the Biblical mindset god (theos) is not a binary notion. For example, angels and demons would also be described with theos or similar terms (which have to do with generalized divinity). Nevertheless, the Hebrew authors still differentiate the one god or the creator god from lesser divinities. In the New Testament Greek this is usually done with the definite article ("the god"). This is why, for example, Jn 1:1 was not a knockdown argument against Arius, for Arius saw the Word as a divine being unequal with the one god.

So in that Jewish and Early Christian idiom, "the god" is the Father, whereas Jesus is the Son of God. This same idiom is present in the Nicene Creed as well as in current Catholic and Orthodox liturgy. "God" used hypostatically refers to the Father.

So the opening Collect of a Roman Catholic liturgy is conditional in the following way:

– If the prayer is directed to the Father: "Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever";
– If it is directed to the Father, but the Son is mentioned at the end: "Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever";
– If it is directed to the Son: "Who live and reign with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." — Roman Missal, Third Edition

Now I bolded each instance of 'God'. You can see that instances 1, 2, and 4 are a Triune use of 'God', whereas 3 is the ancient hypostatic use of 'God' (the Father).

Another example is the opening Collect from the first Sunday of Advent (chosen at random):

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,
the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ
with righteous deeds at his coming,
so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.
Through our lord Jesus Christ, your son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. — Roman Missal, Third Edition

Again, instance 1 is hypostatic whereas instance 2 is Triune (despite the fact that the Father is never without the Son and Spirit).

Well, I know what I mean... Ands the thread is pretty much about trying to make sense of what you mean. — Banno

Tell me what you mean by 'is' and what you mean by 'God' and I will tell you whether the proposition "Jesus is God" is true.

Curiously, when I typed "Shield of the Trinity" into Google, the AI gave an overview. Part of the overview was that the diagram can be misleading insofar as some might see four entities (Father, Son, Spirit, God), and that they might therefore mistake "is" for a copula of identity. Ding ding!

-

Edit: Else, to avoid repeating myself:

Again, basing the entire discussion on a heuristic diagram which is famous for its oversimplification is not a good approach. Here is a clause from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that most closely approximates the same idea:

262 The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father the Son is one and the same God.
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, #262

We could disambiguate the modern phrase, "The Son is God":

A. "The Son—in the Father and Spirit and with the Father and Spirit—is God"
B. "The Son—apart from the Father and the Spirit—is God"

(A) is theologically true whereas (B) is theologically false. The Son is never apart from the Father and the Spirit. What is happening in this thread is that (B) is being claimed as Catholic teaching, and this is false given that (B) is not Catholic teaching. (B) is a hostile translation of a highly compacted and oversimplified diagram.* In the contemporary colloquial idiom when Catholics speak of "God" as a sort of proper name they are talking about the Triune communion of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For Catholics the inner life of God is tri-personal, and this creates friction with the standard account of 'God' as mono-personal. The hostile translation (B) is presupposing 'God' as a mono-personal hypostasis, which would place the relata into the same genus and accord with a transitive property of identity. But anyone with knowledge of historic Christianity will know that this is a misrepresentation, that for Christians the generic "God" is triune rather than a single hypostasis, and that "Son" and "God" therefore belong to different genera. ↪Bob Ross was correct in saying that what is at stake is a predication rather than an identity relation. That is a remarkably accurate interpretation of Nicene Christianity. — Leontiskos

That's the reasoning behind the substitution argument given earlier. If in "Jesus is God" and "The Holy Spirit is God" the "is" is that of identity, then we ought be able to substitute and get "Jesus is the Holy Spirit". But Scripture won't let us. — Banno

The underlying idea that, "'Son' and 'God' are formally substitutable terms," requires an insane ignorance of Christian Trinitarianism. — Leontiskos

-

Are you now denying that Jesus is God? — Banno

You literally don't know what you mean when you say, "Jesus is God." You literally have no idea what you mean by "is," and now you are trying to leverage your ambiguous, bumper-sticker phrase to try to somehow shame me. :lol:

In syllogistic logic, all relations are reduced to single-places predications. “Socrates is taller than Plato” have to be paraphrased into one-place predicates like “Socrates is-a-thing-taller-than-Plato” before entering a syllogism. Something like "Tully is Cicero" has to be treated not as a relation, but as a single-placed predicate. It has to be treated the same way as, say, "Tully is a writer". Tully is a member of the group of writers, and Tully is a member of the group of things which are Cicero. — Banno

This is just more ignorance of history, in this case syllogistic logic. Syllogistic logic is predicative. For example, "Socrates is human," is not the single-place predicate H(S). Pretending it is is a kind of myopic projection of predicate logic beyond its bounds. That's what your strange analysis of "is" is: an awkward shoehorning of natural language into the straightjacket of specialized logical devices.

But all of this is based on your insistence that we must stick with your bumper sticker formulation, "Jesus is God," despite the fact that the theological sources simply do not rely on such bumper sticker formulations. Were we to abandon the bumper sticker, your strawman would fall apart. So we can't do that! :grimace: