Insofar that there is an object "God" as they describe it with various predicates I don't really think it's there. — Moliere

Why not?

But I do believe the words mean something, and that my belief that they are false isn't really that important after all. And I believe that words mean, and they are sincere, so there's something there, like you said here — Moliere

What would that "something" be, if not God?

Even if someone did have a mystical experience with unicorns -- which really might not be that unlikely, now that I think on it, just embarrassing so people wouldn't say it -- I think I'd put it in the same box as other religious experiences. — Moliere

Yes, so would I.

But we could come up with another example to demonstrate the point that we can say true things about what we name which are still fictional and thereby not persuasive when we're talking about attributing existence to things. — Moliere

I'm not quite sure I understood this part. Could you explain it to me, in a simpler way?

The mystics, however, really do attribute existence to things which others do not because of their experience. Given my fixation on empirical justification for existential claims it throws a wrench into my thinking which I have to accommodate.

I still think what I think, but I think the mystics make sincere claims that are pretty much on par with saying "The cat is on the mat". — Moliere

Yes, they are making sincere claims. They really do have those experiences. So what would we make of that? If religious experiences are literally experiences, the least we could say is that something is going on inside the brains of those who have those experiences. When I look at my kitchen table, I'm having an experience. A visual experience, to be more precise. Something is going on in my brain while I'm looking at my kitchen table. But there is an external correlate in this case: the kitchen table itself. Do religious experiences have an external correlate?

Even though I'm an atheist I believe that Mystics have visited God, for instance. — Moliere

This piqued my curiosity. Can you please elaborate? How can mystics visit God if, by atheist lights, God doesn't exist?

Good question. I think that many philosophies are compatible with those conditions. For example, the ancient atomists like Democritus thought that there is only one type of thing, -the atoms-, and they are innumerable. But there might be other cases. One might believe instead, for example, that there are innumerable spirits, and that is all that there is, and all of them are the same type of thing: spirit.

If I were to phrase it in more technical terms, I would say two things:

1 The thesis that there is only one type of thing can be called "qualitative monism".
2) The thesis that there is an innumerable number of such things can be called "quantitative pluralism".

So, both ancient atomism and the sort of spiritualism mentioned above would be qualitatively monist as well as quantitatively pluralist.

The parts of the human brain that are more or less similar to the parts of the brains of non-human vertebrates are the ones that are most "connected" with nature, so to speak. I say that in a descriptive sense, not a normative sense.

An ontology with just one thing (or nothing!) would be more parsimonious. But this seems to me to be in the vein of the eliminitivist who wants to get rid of consciousness because it messes with their models. If you're ontology doesn't describe what there actually is, what good is it for it to be parsimonious? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course. This is why some eliminativists are monists. They claim that there exists a single, giant thing, and nothing else. They differ as to what that giant thing should be called. Some call it "The Universe", in the hopes of making eliminativism compatible with ordinary speech. Some call it "The blobject", a portmanteau of "blob" and "object". Or maybe it's just one gigantic quantum field, or "quantum froth". Or even a sort of colossal, cosmic "soup".

The question then is if this giant thing changes, as Heraclitus would have it, of if it doesn't change, as Parmenides suggests.

An even more extreme position would be the one favored by Gorgias: nothing exists, not even the single giant thing that eliminative monists postulate.

Ok, I'll bite. A tautology, as I understand it, is a proposition that is true, and necessarily so. A contradiction is a proposition which is necessarily false, and a contingent proposition is one that can be true or false. I see no reason to depart from the standard stuff any further than that. Why would I? Depart from the standard stuff, that is.

P1: If things exist, they must be properly defined/delineated in exactly this sort of way (insert rigid, unworkable definition, often made in terms of "unique particle ensembles" or bundle metaphysics). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd say that the antecedent is true ("things exist"), while the consequent (everything else after "things exist") is false. The burden of proof is then on the eliminativists to defend P1 by means of a secondary argument. They might do so in the following way:

P3) Ockham's razor favors eliminativism over conservatism and permissivism.
P4) If so, then: If things exist, they must be properly defined/delineated in exactly this sort of way (insert etc.)
P1) So, If things exist, they must be properly defined/delineated in exactly this sort of way (insert etc.)

The idea behind P3 is that eliminativism is more parsimonious than its metaphysical rivals (conservatism and permissivism). Its ontology has fewer elements. I think this is impossible to argue against. So, if we wish to resist this secondary argument, it seems that the only option is to deny P4. But then the burden of proof is on us to explain why we believe that eliminativism is indeed more parsimonious while saying at the same time that things (if they exist) should be defined in some other way. Leibniz's Law arguments might do the trick here. We would need to find, for each thing, a property that the thing in question has, that its collection of atoms arranged thing-wise don't, and/or vice-versa.

My take is that the difficulty arises from an inability to question presuppositions about what an adequate response can even look like. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could be.

Artifacts are (for the most part) not self-organizing. A bikini isn't. A bikini is a lot like a rock. It isn't even like a star or storm, which at least have "life cycles" and act to sustain themselves. A rock is fairly arbitrary. It isn't entirely arbitrary, but obviously we can blast a cliff with dynamite and form very many rocks, pretty much at random. This is not how storms work, or stars, or life.

Hence, I would point to the research on dissipative systems, complexity studies, systems biology, etc., since these explain how we get self-organizing, self-determining systems that are arranged into wholes with proper parts. In living things, parts are unified in goal-directed pursuits. What makes a cat a cat then is primarily its being alive, and its being a specific sort of living thing, not its being comprised of some unique particle ensemble or fitting the rigid criteria of some bundle of properties. — Count Timothy von Icarus

By permissivist lights, fouts (and troutkeys, trogs, and other strange mereological fusions) are not alive. In other words, a permissivist wouldn't say that the scattered object composed of a fox and a trout is a living creature. It's more like a mathematical set, "fout = {fox, trout}". This is similar to how the Axiom of Pairing works in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory:

If x and y are sets, then there exists a set which contains x and y as elements, for example if x = {1,2} and y = {2,3} then z will be {{1,2},{2,3}} — Wikipedia

With that in mind, the permissivist can make one simple, humble philosophical move: she can declare that metaphysics, while not being identical to set theory, is nonetheless similar, to the extent that any two things "a" and "b" always compose a third thing "c", just as any two sets "x" and "y" are always elements of a third set "z". Therefore, if foxes exist, and if trouts exist, then fouts exist as well.

She might go on to say that if a bikini is like a rock (as you say), and if a fout is like a bikini, then it follows (by modus ponens) that a fout is like a rock (assuming that the relation of "likeness" is transitive). Arguably, none of these three objects are self-organizing, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Shorter: a fout is not like a cat, it's like a rock. And by permissivist lights, it exists just as much as rocks do.

Ok :up:

Sounds fair to me :up:

I'm not sure what you mean. Horse in what race? — Tom Storm

It's a joking reference to .

For example, we can define a perfect unicorn, but this doesn't mean such an beast must exist. — Tom Storm

True, but I think there's a difference between God and the perfect unicorn, because some people have religious experiences (mystics, for example) while no one has had a religious experience involving unicorns, perfect as they may otherwise be. Not to my knowledge, at least.

Basically, if Jesus and the documentary evidence we now possess are not self-consciously presenting evidence for Jesus' divinity, then the whole point is moot. If that is not in place then one could as easily claim that Benjamin Franklin was the Son of God as Jesus. — Leontiskos

Columbus died thinking he had landed in Asia (India, specifically). But he still arrived at the New World, even though he never claimed such a thing. If one claimed that Benjamin Franklin is the Son of God, that wouldn't make that statement true, just as saying that Columbus reached Asia wouldn't make that statement true either.

Does it matter if Jesus claimed that he was God? My contention is that he could be God even if he never claimed such a thing.

(We actually have a lot of threads on these sorts of topics, so I don't want belabor this for too long.) — Leontiskos

Fair enough. Let's get this Thread back on track, then. I find it odd that Christian philosophers only offer arguments for the conclusion that God exists, while not offering any arguments for the conclusion that Jesus is God. Why would you resort to logic in the former case but not the latter? Is there any reason that warrants this differential treatment?

The fully eliminative response (not van Inwagen's almost fully eliminative response) is that you and I do not exist. You are just a collection of atoms arranged Count-wise, I'm just a collection of atoms arranged Sandwich-wise. The collection of atoms arranged Count-wise collectively experience all of the things that you said. If there's n atoms, it would not be parsimonious to say that there is one more thing (i.e., n+1), such that the thing in question is you. And the same goes for me.

The permissive response in the case of fouts is the following parity argument:

1) There is no ontologically significant difference between bikinis and fouts.
2) If so, then: if bikinis exist, then fouts exist.
3) Bikinis exist.
4) So, fouts exist.

Eliminativists can resist this argument by denying the third premise: bikinis do not exist. Conservatives would reject the first premise: there is indeed an ontologically significant difference between bikinis and fouts. But that difference can't have anything to do with the question about scattered objects, because bikinis are scattered objects just as much as fouts are. Instead, the difference must be that bikinis are artifacts while fouts are presumably natural objects. In that sense, there were creative intentions involved in the making of the bikini, but no creative intentions were involved in the creation of fouts.

Of course, theistic permissivists (and yes, they exist) can simply reject the preceding claim by arguing that creative intentions were indeed involved in the creation of fouts: just as God creatively intended to bring foxes and trouts into existence, He also creatively intended to bring fouts into existence.

It is merely a subset of the truth table where p!=q. — Leontiskos

But the problem is that the subset in question only contemplates two cases (T and T, F and F), such that both cases are necessarily true, while the larger set contains a case which is false (T and F).

If two things behave in precisely the same manner, then they do not have two different logical structures. — Leontiskos

Exactly, which is why p → p and p → q don't have the same logical structure: they don't behave in precisely the same manner as far as their possible truth values go. The former is always true, it's a tautology (it's always true, it can never be false). The latter is not a tautology, it is instead contingent (it can be true or false, depending on the case).

The two modus ponens "arguments" under scrutiny behave in precisely the same manner; therefore they do not have two different logical structures — Leontiskos

Their argumentative structure is identical, but their propositional structure is different.

You say that but then you want to make an ad hoc distinction between the "structure" of different modus ponens "arguments," so I still have hope for you. :wink: — Leontiskos

I meant "structure" as in the structure of their propositions, not the structure of their logical form.

That's an interesting account, but I don't know of any rule of logic which requires that a modus ponens where p=q magically has a different structure. The validity rules are all the same, so it's not clear what it would even mean to claim that it has a different structure. If you're all about formalism, then the structure is exactly the same. — Leontiskos

Not quite, because the difference between p → p and p → q affects their truth values. Consider the former case first:

p → p
T__T
F__F

Now consider the latter case:

p → q
T__T
T__F
F__T
F__F

See the difference? In the former case, p → p can never be false, while in the latter case, p → q can indeed be false (in only one case: the second one).

Then you have no reason to claim that the modus ponens where p=q has a different structure, apart from poetry. "Poetically they have a different structure, but formally they do not." — Leontiskos

That's not what I claim. Formally they have different structures, not poetically. The poetry (or rhetoric) has more to do with the question of which arguments are preferable for this or that objective, such as arguing for the conclusion that God exists (or does not exist). In that sense, not all arguments are equally good. But their goodness (or badness) is outside the province of logic, because those are not logical notions to begin with.

On my view if someone cannot see that this is a degenerate case of modus ponens, then they haven't grasped the raison d'être of logic:

1. p → p
2. p
3. ∴ p — Leontiskos

There's nothing degenerate about it. It's a perfectly valid argument.

...and of course someone who limits themselves to "formalisms" cannot admit the notion of a degenerate case. — Leontiskos

Am I limited to "formalisms"? Maybe. Can I admit the notion of a degenerate case, in the context of a formal science? Not really. I don't admit the notion of mathematical beauty either, not within the context of math as a formal science. There are very beautiful objects in nature as well as culture, that have certain qualities like symmetry, but the notion of mathematical beauty only makes sense outside of mathematics, not within it. The same goes for the notion of degeneracy. It only makes sense outside of logic, not within it.

It was a joking reference to .

Same structure:

p: God exists
q: God exists

1. p → q
2. p
3. ∴ q — Leontiskos

In this case, if "p" and "q" are both identical to "God exists", then the structure is the following one:

1. p → p
2. p
3. ∴ p

(The structure is modus ponens, and you yourself claimed that 1-2-3 is a modus ponens.) — Leontiskos

There's two types of structures in logic: the structure of arguments, and the structure of propositions. Two arguments can have the same structure (i.e., both of them are modus ponens) while having propositions with different structures (i.e., p → q instead of p → p).

But just a few minutes ago you said, "An argument is either sound or unsound. There's nothing more to it." Now you want to say that some sound arguments are good and some sound arguments are bad. So clearly there is something more to it. — Leontiskos

Nah. I stand by what I said earlier: there is nothing more to an argument than its soundness (or unsoundness). Its validity is taken for granted, because if it wasn't valid, it wouldn't be an argument to begin with (it would be a formal fallacy instead). When I say that some arguments are good and that some of them are bad, I'm speaking poetically. In other words, I'm being rhetorical, not logical. I don't dismiss rhetoric, I simply declare that being persuasive and compelling are within its province, instead of being qualities of the formal science that we call logic.

<Sure it does>. And when Frege first tried to introduce the material conditional he was resisted for decades for this very reason. — Leontiskos

Mathematicians also like to talk about mathematical beauty, but I reject that notion myself. Aesthetic notions have no place in a formal science.

But you yourself said that it is a "perfectly valid modus ponens." So what's the problem? What's the difference between a modus ponens where p=q and a modus ponens where p!=q? It seems that on your view there can be no significant distinction between the two modus ponens. — Leontiskos

They have different structures. "If p, then p" is not the same structure as "If p, then q".

Yes: you think 4-5-6 is the sound argument, right? — Leontiskos

Of course. It's both valid and sound. But I wouldn't endorse that argument myself, because it's easily refutable. To speak poetically for a moment, it's not a good argument, even though it's both valid and sound.

You're both quite chatty in your most recent posts, but I'm going to need to ask you two if you have horses in this race, before proceeding any further. If not, then you're immoral. Says who? The Boy Scouts, that's who.

A very thoughtful and informative post, thanks for contributing it to this Thread :clap:

Sure, if you rely on the degenerate cases of the material conditional, where a false antecedent or a true consequent guarantees a true conditional. But I think I spoke to that. — Leontiskos

There's nothing "degenerate" about such cases. That notion has no place in a formal science such as logic.

Let me show why I disagree.

Suppose I say that God exists, and you tell me that I've made an assertion rather than an argument. So I give what you view as an "argument":

1. If God exists, then God exists
2. God exists
3. Therefore, God exists — Leontiskos

Sure, that's an argument. It's a modus ponens. I'll just deny the second premise: God does not exist. That makes the first premise true, but only because both the antecedent and the consequent are false.

Now apparently this is an argument, which is entirely different from an assertion. Since I have given an argument, you have the burden of proof in addressing the argument. You might say, "God does not exist," and I might say, "That's an assertion, not an argument." — Leontiskos

I don't need to formulate an argument of my own to deny the second premise of your argument. The burden of proof is not on me in that case, since I don't need to prove a negative here.

So you comply: — Leontiskos

No, I don't, for the reason that I've stated above.

4. If God does not exist, then God does not exist
5. God does not exist
6. Therefore, God does not exist — Leontiskos

That's a perfectly valid modus ponens. It's easily refutable for a theist. All you have to do is to deny the second premise.

We could do that for eternity — Leontiskos

Sure.

on my view we are neither arguing nor giving arguments, whereas on your view we are (and I have encountered people who literally did this). — Leontiskos

Which is why the arguments in the OP, while being modus ponens, do not have the same structure as the one in your example. Because in your example, the conditional has the form "if p, then p", while the conditionals in the arguments of the OP have this other structure: "if p, then q".

Aristotle tells us that arguments move from premises that are better-known to conclusions that are lesser-known. If it doesn't do that, it isn't an argument. — Leontiskos

A lot has happened in logic ever since Aristotle. The same goes for mathematics, especially geometry. But if we focus on the former, there's nothing similar to (for example) paraconsistent logic in Aristotle's philosophy.

In fact 1-2-3 is a sound "argument," but I would contend that it is not an argument at all. — Leontiskos

It's not a sound argument, at least not to my atheist eyes. It is valid, however. Just not sound.

An since an argument is the same thing as a proof, it follows that I already gave two proofs in the OP. — Arcane Sandwich


Well if you "spoke" the proofs then you have the basic burden of proof, no? Your Wikipedia article says that the one who speaks has the burden. — Leontiskos

Yes, and the proofs are the arguments themselves, because that is what a proof is: a list of premises from which a conclusion follows by deduction.

Or rather, you have simulated a scenario in which someone gives a very opaque argument (FTI), and then you "denied" part of FTI (to quote Wikipedia), so for Wikipedia whoever spoke FTI has the initial burden of proof. So who spoke FTI? No one at all, it seems. It is part of an OP that offers no real argument, and which does not accept the burden of proof for what it claims. — Leontiskos

Again, I don't accept your notion of a "real" argument. An argument is either sound or unsound, there's nothing more to it. And since an argument is the same thing as a proof, it follows that I already gave two proofs in the OP. But they can't both be sound. If one of them is sound, then the other one is unsound. That being said, you are indeed right in one of your earlier comments, in that both arguments can be unsound.

According to your Wikipedia article you have the burden of proof, for you are the one who spoke. — Leontiskos

The proofs have already been given, since a proof is (to my mind) the same thing as an argument. As such, proofs can be sound or unsound.

...the question is actually meaningless to you, and is basically a form of entertainment, if that. — Wayfarer

Not really. I'm open to the idea that God might exist, and that Jesus might be God.

This is good, I feel like we're making progress here, but there's still a lot of distance to cover before we can reach an actual agreement on anything. Right now, we're still trying to settle on the terminology and some of the rules. For example:

you said, "if FTI1 is true, then FTI2 must necessarily be false." Why? Why can't both premises be true? — Leontiskos

Both premises can be true, but they can't both be false. Only one of them can be false.

Okay sure, if you are appealing to the "degenerate cases" of the material conditional then I agree that the former Muslim cannot deny that God exists without affirming that, "If God exists, then God is identical to Jesus," at least if he is consistent. But I'm not sure how useful arguments that depend on such degenerate cases are. — Leontiskos

No, that's not what I had in mind. If I caused such a confusion, then I apologize for that.

Here you might be right, but only in the sense that both arguments might be valid and yet unsound. — Arcane Sandwich


But isn't that precisely what you meant when you spoke about the possibility of "rejecting both arguments at the same time"? — Leontiskos

Yes, indeed.

On the contrary, a sound conclusion is the conclusion of a sound argument. And as I said, "if either conclusion is sound then both first-premises must be true" (given material conditionals). — Leontiskos

Yes, but a material conditional can be true for the wrong reasons. For example, if both the antecedent and the consequent are false, the conditional itself is true. It's an odd result, and it's counter-intuitive (intuitively, the conditional should be false in that case, but it isn't). I prefer to reserve the concept of soundness for arguments, but feel free to use it for conclusions in the sense that you just mentioned. It's not a hill that I'm willing to die on.

It is not an argument in any substantial sense, and the "arguments" of the OP are similarly insubstantial. Namely, there is nothing persuasive or compelling about them. — Leontiskos

The way I see it, the qualities of being persuasive and compelling are rhetorical qualities, not logical ones. An argument can be unpersuasive and uncompelling and yet it can still be both valid and sound. Conversely, a formal fallacy can be both persuasive and compelling, and yet it would not be valid nor sound.

For example, I could write an OP:

1. If the moon is made of cheese, then pelicans are vegans
2. The moon is made of cheese
3. Therefore, pelicans are vegans — Leontiskos

That's a modus ponens. As such, it's a valid argument. But it's unsound. The false premise in this case is the second one: the moon is not made of cheese. The first premise is a more interesting case. What should we say about it? Well, given that the second premise is false, the first premise must be true, due to the truth table for conditional statements. But it's true for the wrong reasons: both the antecedent and the consequent are false, which make the conditional itself true (as paradoxical as that may seem).

I might follow this with, "Options for resisting the argument." But there is no argument to resist, not in any substantial sense. The person making the argument has the burden of proof in showing the argument to be persuasive or compelling, and mere validity does not succeed in doing this. (Formalizations such as this are only valid consequences, not cases of true inference.) — Leontiskos

It's an easily refutable, but perfectly valid argument. By contrast, the two arguments in the OP in this thread, while equally valid, are not as easily refutable.

So rather than give a substantial argument, you've asked TPF users to give substantial arguments against at least one of four propositions (namely, the premises). It's a bit like saying, "I think X. Prove me wrong."

(I would grant that ATI is closer to a substantial argument than FTI, since FTI1 is entirely opaque.) — Leontiskos

What can I say? I don't share your notion of a "substantial" argument. An argument is either sound or unsound. There's nothing more to it. Logic is a science (a formal science, just like mathematics). It has nothing to do with persuasiveness, just as algebra or geometry have nothing to do with persuasiveness.

Still... determining if God exists by modern science can't be done, either way. I like to say that this is a positive thing -- in a way Kant's philosophy is attractive because people can be of any religious persuasion and still believe the same things about the world we experience, and independently believe whatever makes them fulfilled in a moral sense. — Moliere

The theory of the Big Bang, which is currently accepted in contemporary science, was first proposed by Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest:

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (/ləˈmɛtrə/ lə-MET-rə; French: [ʒɔʁʒ ləmɛːtʁ]; 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, and mathematician who made major contributions to cosmology and astrophysics. He was the first to argue that the recession of galaxies is evidence of an expanding universe and to connect the observational Hubble–Lemaître law with the solution to the Einstein field equations in the general theory of relativity for a homogenous and isotropic universe. That work led Lemaître to propose what he called the "hypothesis of the primeval atom", now regarded as the first formulation of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. — Wikipedia

In his view, the Big Bang was caused by the Christian God.

If I investigate textbooks which academic departments use to teach science -- there is absolutely nothing in there about Jesus or God. — Moliere

Yet that wasn't always the case. As Hegel suggests, in The Phenomenology of Spirit, the history of philosophy is like the maturing of a plant. We wouldn't say that the fruit refutes the flower, or that the flower refutes the seed. I believe the same can be said about science. In its contemporary version, it's the end product of a history in which its roots were deeply interwoven with matters of theology, whether we like it or not. It is what it is, as you oossians like to say.

EDIT: Here's the quote:

The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole. But contradiction as between philosophical systems is not wont to be conceived in this way; on the other hand, the mind perceiving the contradiction does not commonly know how to relieve it or keep it free from its one-sidedness, and to recognise in what seems conflicting and inherently antagonistic the presence of mutually necessary moments. — Hegel

It's just not rational in terms of scientific justification -- there's not a science which can evaluate which religious concept of god is superior because, by the science, they're all
false, and mostly useless. So the science doesn't have much to say on the issue. (which is what Kant's "theoretical knowledge" is based upon) — Moliere

Well, not quite. The ancient Greek episteme, as well as the ancient Roman and Medieval scientia, weren't necessarily alien to ontology and theology. Aristotle didn't see it that way, for example. He was a scientist, as well as a metaphysician. And, given his notion of the Prime Mover, he was arguably also a theologist, if the nature of his Prime Mover is divine. Aquinas was certainly a theologian as well as a metaphysican, and he was also arguably a scientist, given that he sought to harmonize reason and faith. As Bunge himself says:

Hence the atheist will have to propose serious arguments against it [Anselm's argument] instead of the sophistry of the logical imperialist. (...) In short, Anselm was far less wrong than his modern critics would have it. — Bunge (2012: 175)

I don't see why I can't deny that as well.

Interesting comments, but I'm going to have to ask you both if you have a horse in this race, otherwise it seems (per some folks' deluded opinions) that you can't philosophize about religion. Source: The Boy Scouts. Secondary source: Trust Me Bro.

The notion of god is inconsistent.

Anything follows from an inconsistency.

Therefore Jesus is God. — Banno

I'll just deny your first premise: The notion of god is not inconsistent.

So, no comments on Taliaferro's work? Is it theology or philosophy of religion, in your opinion?

I'm more tempted to say that God, as a concept, is empty than inconsistent -- it's like the empty set. — Moliere

Nah. I'll just deny that. God, as a concept, is not like the empty set.

First, if it is not possible to deny both premises, then it would follow that if one is false, then the other must necessarily be true. — Leontiskos

Indeed.

Your opposite claim simply does not follow. — Leontiskos

You lost me here. Can you please clarify what you mean by that?

(FTI1) If God exists, then God is identical to Jesus.
(FTI2) God exists.
(FTI3) So, God is identical to Jesus. — Arcane Sandwich


To give a counterexample, consider a Muslim who became an atheist. They deny (1) and (2). So it is very clearly possible to deny both premises. — Leontiskos

I'm not sure I follow. The formal structure of that argument is the following one:

1) If p, then q.
2) p.
3) so, q.

If (1) is false, then (2) is true, and if (1) is true, then (2) is false.

Conversely, it's not possible to reject both arguments at the same time. If you reject one of them, then that means that you accept the other one — Arcane Sandwich


This too looks to be false. The conclusions are contradictories, but that does not entail that the arguments are "contradictories" (so to speak). The believing Muslim is someone who rejects both arguments. — Leontiskos

Here you might be right, but only in the sense that both arguments might be valid and yet unsound. If so, then that's a powerful reason for rejecting both arguments. However, it's still the case that if one of the conclusions is true, then the other one is false, and vice-versa. It cannot be the case that God exists and that God does not exist, at the same time, and in the same sense.

(Beyond that, I wouldn't count the formalizations of the OP as arguments, given that their premises are neither intuitive nor defended.) — Leontiskos

I find this last comment somewhat odd. Consider the following case:

1) p and q.
2) If q, then r.
3) So, r.

This is indeed an argument, and it's valid (here's the proof). Indeed, (1) and (2) are premises. What do they mean? They don't mean anything, they're just empty symbols. But they're still premises. As such, they don't need to be intuitive, nor do they need to be defended. The same goes for the premises of the two arguments in the OP. They don't need to be intuitive, and they don't need to be defended in order to be premises. They only need to be defended if someone denies them.

That gets into the questions similar to <this thread>. My point wasn't to claim that both first premises are false. That cannot be done if we are using material conditionals. Note, though, that if we are talking about material conditionals, then if either conclusion is sound then both first-premises must be true. — Leontiskos

The concept of soundness (and unsoundness) applies only to arguments, not to propositions (premises and conclusions), just as the concept of validity (or lack of thereof) only applies to arguments, not to propositions. A proposition (being a premise or a conclusion) can only be true or false. That is at least the modern understanding of such notions. It's not the same as in Aristotelian logic.

It's a different argument from the atheist. Furthermore we can plug in any God here -- there's a lot to choose from in picking out God's identity. But God existing just says that without saying what God is. — Moliere

Exactly. That's the "problem" (if it can be called a problem) with classic Christian arguments for the existence of God, such as the ones provided by Anselm and Aquinas. They never say that God is Jesus, they only say that God exists.

Further, unlike saying something like "John Doe exists", there is no way to adjudicate between any of the above arguments. There is absolutely no difference in the external world whether God does or does not exist, which is normally how we'd go about making a decision as to which premise -- God exists or God does not exist -- to accept. — Moliere

Well, a Christian philosopher such as Aquinas would argue that God is real. He exists independently of human beings.

So, in isolation, sure -- but in terms of how people go about deciding these things I don't see a reason to accept that there is a relationship between God's -- or any objects -- existence and what they are identical to. — Moliere

I believe that the concept of existence is important not only in the context of philosophy of religion, but also in the context of science. As Bunge says:

Let us now use the existential predicate introduced above to revisit the most famous of all the arguments for God’s existence. Anselm of Canterbury argued that God exists because He is perfect, and existence is a property of perfection. Some mathematical logicians have claimed that Anselm was wrong because existence is not a predicate but the ∃ quantifier. I suggest that this objection is sophistic because in all the fields of knowledge we tacitly use an existential predicate that has nothing to do with the “existential” quantifier, as when it is asserted or denied that there are living beings in Mars or perpetual motion machines. — Bunge (2012: 174-175)

Using the existence predicate defined a while ago, we may reformulate Anselm’s argument as follows.

God is perfect ______________________ Pg
Everything perfect exists in R [really]_____∀x(Px → E_Rx)
God exists in R.______________________ E_Rg

Both premises are controversial, particularly the first one since it presupposes the existence of God. Hence the atheist will have to propose serious arguments against it instead of the sophistry of the logical imperialist. An alternative is to admit the existence of God for the sake of argument, and add the ontological postulate that everything real is imperfect: that if something is perfect then it is ideal, like Pythagoras’ theorem or a Beethoven sonata. But the conjunction of both postulates implies the unreality of God. In short, Anselm was far less wrong than his modern critics would have it. — Bunge (2012: 175)

I'm kind of uncertain about properties just as I'm uncertain about objects, but that'll take us pretty far astray :D -- a lot of my skepticism is based in wondering how we can reliably make inferences with respect to metaphysics, and generally wondering how it is we can really ascertain what metaphysics is preferable in the face of many smart and educated people asserting contradictory opinions on the subject. — Moliere

I'll just quote someone who is better than me:

Ontology should precede epistemology. And yet modern philosophy started rejecting metaphysics. It did so just because the ruling metaphysics around 1600 was obsolete. The price paid for this antimetaphysical turn was subjectivism, outspoken as in Berkeley’s case, or shame-faced as in Kant’s. — Bunge (2010: 201)

Such as your two arguments -- it's just kind of funny to make an inference between existence and identity. I'd be inclined to go the reverse -- if Jesus is God, then God exists. — Moliere

You could, sure. The argument would look like this:

1) If Jesus is God, then God exists.
2) Jesus is God.
3) So, God exists.

As an atheist, I would deny the second premise: Jesus is not God.

So God could exist without Jesus being God — Moliere

Yes, he could. For example, according to Muslims, God exists, and God is not Jesus.

"If God exists, then Muhammed is the prophet, and Jesus is a prophet. God exists, therefore..."

Do you see how that's funny? — Moliere

I'm afraid not, you'd have to spell it out for me, if you fancy.

:up:

Depends upon how far back you go. — Paine

Sure, at the end of the day, humanity started in Africa. So, no one is really indigenous to anywhere except the African continent.

But in following Kant there's not an easy distinction between predicates and properties. — Moliere

I believe that predicates are linguistic, while properties are ontological. The latter exist out there, in the external world, in the things themselves, independently of human beings. Existence is one such property, in my view.

Well, yes, as I said, it's not a great example. We might get out our CRISPR and re-arrange the genetics of a fruit fly so that it has an extra body segment and two more pairs of legs. Is it still an insect? — Banno

Good question. I've no idea. I can see arguments for, as well as against.

I'm suggesting that this is as much a question of word use as it is of entomology. — Banno

Could be.

Very informative reply , thanks.

Eugenics and classic nationalism of the 19th Century went away in the Nordic countries quite quickly. — ssu

Yeah well, except in Norwegian Black Metal, right? For the most part, at least. Swedish Death Metal bands don't seem to be overtly racist in that sense. And Finland doesn't have a comparable metal scene. I mean, it has one, but it's basically Nightwish, Finntroll, and Korpiklaani. And few dozen bands that sound more or less like one of those.

More like a tourist attraction nowdays when you have Europe's "only indigenous people" around. — ssu

That's a bit of a strange thing to say. Aren't Germans indigenous to Germany, the Irish indigenous to Ireland, and the French indigenous to France? Etc.

I follow Bunge in conceptualizing existence as a real property. The table in my living room has the property of existence. When I say that it exists, what I mean is that it has that property. As such, it's not a predicate. We instead symbolize it as a predicate, in particular with the first-order predicate letter "E". If the context is second-order or higher-order logic, we still use the "E" symbol, but as a predicate constant. Others disagree. Quine, for example, believes that we should symbolize it with a quantifier instead, "∃". I take it that Quine is wrong and that Bunge is right about this. However, I also believe that Bunge is wrong to distinguish two kinds of existence: real and conceptual. In my view, there's only real existence. Should the words "God" and "Jesus" be treated like Russellian definite descriptions? Or Kripkean rigid designators? Those are open questions.

My thinking on existence is largely influenced by Kant. So sentences of the sort "God exists" do not have conditions of justification even if they have a truth-value, so I wouldn't bother believing "God exists", or its negation, on rational grounds. The old "existence is not a predicate" is something that rings basically true to me -- logic does not prove existence, existence exists regardless of a choice of logic -- and the thought experiment between the imagined unicorn and the imagined unicorn existing demonstrates to me that there's not really a property added to something I'm thinking about. I need some other kind of justification to infer that something exists. — Moliere

Are you averse to a statement such as "John Doe exists"? Replace "John Doe" with any other individual if you prefer.

This process might involve persons receiving (accepting) the revelation of Jesus Christ as redeemer and sanctifier who calls persons to a radical life of loving compassion, even the loving of our enemies. By willfully subjecting oneself to the commanding love of God, a person in this filial relationship with God through Christ may experience a change of character (from self-centeredness to serving others) in which the person’s character (or very being) may come to serve as evidence of the truths of faith. — Charles Taliaferro

Each of these attributes has been subject to nuanced different analysis, as noted below. God has also been traditionally conceived to be incorporeal or immaterial, immutable, impassable, omnipresent. And unlike Judaism and Islam, Christian theists conceive of God as triune (the Godhead is not homogenous but consists of three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth (fully God and fully human). — Charles Taliaferro

The “truth” of the Incarnation has been interpreted in such terms as these: in Jesus Christ (or in the narratives about Christ) God is disclosed. Or: Jesus Christ was so united with God’s will that his actions were and are the functional display of God’s character. Perhaps as a result of Hick’s challenge, philosophical work on the incarnation and other beliefs and practice specific to religious traditions have received renewed attention (see, for example, Taliaferro and Meister 2009). Hick has been a leading, widely appreciated force in the expansion of philosophy of religion in the late twentieth century. — Charles Taliaferro

Etc.

Is Charles Taliaferro's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also bigoted, in your view? Must he have a horse in the race to be able to philosophize about religion? Is it bad philosophy, in your view?

More or less the same questions. Is Charles Taliaffero's entry in the SEP an example of theology or philosophy of religion, in your view?