You know as well as I, that illogical arguments are still manifestations of logic, just as unreasonable thinking is still reason. Reason is way too subjective to chastise too rigorously. Enough to disagree, but not enough to ridicule. Among otherwise reasonable people, I mean. Nutjobs get no respect, throw the fools on the fire, I say!!!

What is not a scientific fact, and is being acknowledged as true, is the existence in the Universe, or acts as the cause of the Universe, of the thing Rank claims to have faith in. Conflict with what doesn’t exist, is impossible.

All empirical science has a metaphysical ground. Metaphysics without empiricism is transcendent (mystical), empiricism without metaphysics is stagnant.

Fundamental laws of logic have no rule over faith-based cognitions, the prime example being transferring the being of some supernatural necessity from phenomenal in the world to ideal in the mind.

Threw me for a loop, no doubt. When I read “belief not in conflict with fact”, many years of cognitive prejudice comes to the fore and I wanna say....WHAAATT???

He got all tricksies on us hobbittses.....he said a thing (faith) is truthfully based on not-fact, which is of course, quite possible.

Oh hell no....I’m not arguing for or against anything I haven’t convinced myself I know something about.

I guess I see where you coming from here. Not in conflict with fact because there isn’t a fact to be in conflict with, and that’s all cool and stuff, but I’m a fan of knowledge myself, and where knowledge isn’t attainable.....or I’m just not interested in pursuing it......I’m just as happy being ignorant, rather than inject a subjective explanatory placeholder.

I bet you’re gonna get in a bunch of trouble by stipulating “not in conflict with fact”. Not in conflict with reason, sure, no problem; you had to reason to your conclusion, after all. While you are absolutely privileged to your own reason, from which a valid belief may follows, you are not so priviledged to your own facts, which suggests fact regarding faith is not the same as fact regarding empirical reality. Even so, it would appear you invite a whole world of explanatory hurt in trying to justify how a fact could ground something so subjectively dominant as faith.

Then we compare A and B, and make the inference A is different from B. Why would you say that this is not a logical inference? — Metaphysician Undercover

When I compare a brick to a cinder block, I’m not sure I’m inferring anything. Why can’t I just be observing a difference, without having to logically infer there is one?

Are you saying sensual awareness itself involves logical inference? Metaphysically speaking.....which I suspect you are wont to do......I suppose you could say perception A is the major premise and perception B is the minor, in a cognitive syllogism, from which the conclusion that the brick is different than the cinder block is rendered valid deductively, but.....who does that!!!!

Are you (plural) really using logic to determine the existence of God? — Pattern-chaser

As one of the (plural) you’s in attendance.....not me. Logic is just a set of rules for descriptions of true statements; it doesn’t determine anything existential.

Are you really debating the objective existence of God in the scientific space-time universe? — Pattern-chaser

Again, not me; I just don’t care. But if one is debating the objective existence of a thing, he must be doing so from the domain of a scientific space-time Universe; there isn’t anyplace else to find an objective existence, as far as we’re concerned.

I don’t know a damn thing about what is commonly referred to as “God”. But I sure as hell have a lot of experience with my fellow men who think THEY know about it.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. Title of the thread is sort of a clue, huh?

Part. 6 does include some thoughts on maybe not publishing right away. He doesn’t mention Galileo by name, of course, but that was the big news cycle of the day, and they were contemporaries, so....

I can’t find anything definitive on publishing, but I kinda pieced together that Discourse was written in French in 1634, put aside for three years, published in the Netherlands in 1637, translated into Latin and published in Amsterdam six years after his death, in 1656.

I can live with that.

What other problems can we solve? Red pill, blue pill?

So what’s the difference between this and any other dialogue with opposing views? Do you see you’re working from a location in space where a point can be found, but I’m working from a conceivable description of what a point is? No need to be sorry.

Part 6 of what? Meditations? I don’t know Galileo’s works well enough to comment on their respective similarities.

Holland before 1638, at least, I think. His major works after that were done in Latin, published by a friend in Paris, and were directed at French nobility and academia.

“The World” was pulled out of consideration for Galileo’s predicament, but Descartes didn’t suffer the “heresy” of his contemporary.

What....can’t a point be thought of as located on any one axis of a Cartesian system? Only a geometric figure requires two dimensions; lines and points can be conceived as having but one, because if you spin a line as if you were looking at it end-on it shouldn’t just disappear, so you could think of it as seeing a point. Conceptually speaking.

Time has no dimension at all. It may be considered *AS* a dimension, a condition for referencing spatial locality in conjunction with relative motion. Then there’s always the metaphysical time.......pretty much just as contentious as politics and religion.

Honestly.....hell no I can’t grasp the fact of one dimension. But I don’t have any problem grasping the concept of one; the problem comes with assigning an object to it. It’s easy to say...a point in space exists necessarily because lines are a succession of points and lines in space are possible. But from conceiving a point to giving the conditions necessary for a point’s reality as an object, is impossible. Same for infinite gravity. It’s easy to think all the gravity there could ever be, but trying to do any more with the conception than that, gets you all mixed up in illusions and contradictions.

I for one am not going to commit to thinking science is eventually going to discover the cause of the Universe. I’m more inclined to think there are some things humans are just plain not equipped to learn.

isn't the prospect of a singularly nearly as unbelievable as a necessary being? — Rank Amateur

Isn’t the prospect? No, because the math justifies the prospect of the one and has nothing to say at all about the other, and the human experience with math suggests its reliability. The actual reality of either one, of course, is another matter.

I understand the limits of science. Puulleease!!! I also grant the contingency of human knowledge. Nonetheless, what is objectively satisfactory in science is altogether lacking anywhere else in doctrinal systems. Bottom line....everyone has to accept the instance of contradiction in objective domains wherein knowledge is proven mistaken, but no one has to accept self-contradictions in subjective domains wherein beliefs are shown to be inconclusive.

Oh, I dunno.....anybody putting opinion into print usually feels sufficient reason justifying it. In the case at hand......or was til he quit.....I personally didn’t feel the sufficient reason was anywhere sufficient enough. He did, and nothing changes.

Yeah....there have been metaphysical antinomies for centuries.....whatever can be thought under one set of conditions can be counter-thought under a different set of conditions. Sometimes the original thought survives, sometimes the counter overthrows it. It’s just a matter of how much power the arguments have to convince.

I think this whole necessity snafu thing is taken from Aristotle’s “That which exists exists necessarily”, which was never meant to quantify any causal closure whatsoever, which makes the assertion some diety is therefore necessary for that existence, barely more than post hoc junk.

Even if both sides invoke the principle of cause and effect as the legislative governance for the existence of the Universe, at least one side escapes the post hoc fallacy by stipulating a lack of knowledge as to cause. On one hand, a diety caused the Universe and we don’t have to say anything more about it, and on the other, something probably caused the Universe and that’s all we can say about it right now.

And the beat goes on.

If you’re gonna pick a fight, at least come to the battlefield as well prepared as those you pick a fight with. Showing up and saying Hey, I’m here, now y’all go ahead and give up right now.....is a good way to get your helmet handed back to you in pieces.

Had-a couplea extra expressos this morning, have we? (Grin)

Even if by chance he was necessary, that says nothing about whether he was sufficient. Logically speaking then, he has no more power for the causation of the Universe than natural law.

TO
THE VERY SAGE AND ILLUSTRIOUS

THE DEAN AND DOCTORS OF THE SACRED
FACULTY OF THEOLOGY OF PARIS.

This is the greeting Descartes used in his “Meditations on First Philosophy” in 1641. Seems the church was pretty much the go-to outfit to get anything put in print, whether or not he was aware of Galleo’s problems or not.

Given the pre-French Revolution era absolute power of the church, and the pervasive beliefs of the day among the general population, I would think what was written by early modern philosophers was really the way they viewed their world.

As far as following his own method, I think he had to simply just draw the uncrossable line somewhere,
So he had to admit, or he had to write as if, the method worked up to a point and no further.

Crap. Forgot the EPR spooky action. OK....I’ll grant your counterpoint. You know that’s up to 14 miles now, last I read about anyway. Chinese did it a few years ago.

(Chuckles to self) Wasn’t it Feynman that said, “shut up and calculate!!!”? Maybe Wheeler. I can’t remember. One of those theoretical eggheads.

You know....we’ve never been where relativity doesn’t work. We’re pretty sure there are those kinda places, but we won’t have that first-person direct experience for awhile yet, methinks. And I have to say, I don’t think we’ll ever be in a place where a supernatural explanation will be necessary for anything GR doesn’t explain already.

Roger that. But I’m a metaphysical kinda guy, so it’s fine with me. Still, there was a time when mathematics wasn’t associated with off-planet possibilities, but now Voyager2 is out of the solar system, and hasn’t fallen apart or disappeared like it never was, so.....maybe Tegmark was right after all.

Besides, I got me one of those bigger-than-really-necessary backyard telescopes, and when I point that sucka anywhere in the up direction.......(gasp).....sufficient reason to think empirically, if you ask me.

Hey....you asked me if there was a theory; common decorum mandates that I answer.

Yeah, odd isn’t it? GR points to a sub-Planck dynamic but falls apart as an explanatory device once it gets there.

There may be no philosophical difference in the conceptual imaginings, but there is a significant difference in the verification in the phenomenal aspect of those imaginings. Even if it is said such verifications are themselves based on a form of philosophical theory, it remains much more objectively manifest than any other. Pretty hard to argue the objectivity of gravity philosophically after falling out of a tree.

Dog.

Meet tail.

Have fun!!!

Yes, I think it’s called the Big Bang Theory, which has its roots in.....can you believe it? A Catholic priest’s?......essay on “the hypothesis of the primeval atom”, and no, the singularity is not a scientific fact because we have yet to experimentally replicate even the possible conditions for one.

It’s all mathematical, and apparently, if complex mathematics isn’t magical enough, throw a bunch of words at the blank spots and call it good.

Gnarly dude, that. Fuzzy hair, no socks......and a brain the size of Montana, I swear.

Consider this, if you please: the Universe can account for its own existence, but cannot be supposed as the cause of its own existence. The former carries the mandatory presupposition the Universe already exists, from which the account for it would logically be contained in it. The latter, on the other hand, falsifies the almost mandatory principle of cause and effect, which as far as our human intelligence is concerned, is categorically self-defeating.

Accepting these conditions (or some equivalents) permits your causal hypotheticals, but as soon as you objectify them, by bringing them out into the world, you have to justify them with something stronger than overly generalized assertions, in just the same way non-theists justify theirs.

(Sigh)

Saying it’s magical thinking doesn’t make it magical thinking.

No, my friend, I have not been given anything except that which appears to me as nothing but blanket, catch-all generalizations. And I don’t cop out because of them; I simply don’t know how to respond. The concepts as you present them are completely foreign to me, and, I think you are mistaken in your characterization of atheism the doctrine.

Edit: I see you’ve qualified the “Universe accounts for its own existence”, by adding “by some inexplicable magic”. I don’t know if atheists in general call it inexplicable magic, but I do know theoretical astrophysicists certainly do not. Solving 4 of Einstein’s 10 field equations for GR gives rise to the possibility of quantum singularity at t0, from which the origin of the Universe as we know is given. Maybe.

OK, guess you better talk to a real atheist, or at least somebody who actually gives a crap about stuff outside time and space, cuz you’re not giving me anything to work with here. Such blanket, catch-all ideas like outside time, beyond time, not subject to time......beyond the Universe......just ain’t got no substance. Easy to say, easy to believe, pretty damn hard to explain.

To each, and all that.

Then I am missing something as well, because I don’t agree that an atheist is forced to think the Universe exists just because. Only the rationally deficient thinks a thing without a reason for it.

Do you see that upon any examination by anybody on anything whatsoever, such examination automatically and necessarily subsumes its object under the concept of time?

“...intuitions without concepts are empty; concepts without intuitions are blind...”

Is that what an atheist rests his belief on? The Universe exists just because the Universe exists? If that’s true, I’m sure as hell not sending him any get-well-soon cards, that’s for sure.

Can you....do you have the capacity.....to explain the concept “beyond time”, such that anyone considering the phrase as the result of magical thinking, would have to change his mind?

I choose to speak for myself alone, so when I say it is a tautologically true statement that the Universe either accounts for its own existence or something beyond it does, I attend the statement to a rational thinking subject without any other qualifiers, insofar as no one should have logical ground to falsify that statement.

So why exactly.....or even how, for that matter.....does an atheist NOT accord with it? Well, actually, he doesn’t, because he can’t.

It isn’t the ends of that statement with which he finds exception; it’s the means. So in effect, you are insisting the magical thinking on atheistic display derives from the fact he doesn’t agree with a specific kind of creator beyond the Universe which theists think to be the cause of it, when he is actually only stipulating that it must be something possible, and that IFF the Universe doesn’t or can’t account for itself.

OK, fine. Wonderful, in fact. Now all a theist has to do is substantially demonstrate how the creator beyond the Universe must be any less magically thought than the atheist who substantially demonstrates the opposite.

acknowledge the magical element of atheism, — AJJ

Hmmm......

How can an atheist be accused of magical thinking if he happens to accord with a theist’s belief, re: the Universe either accounts for its own existence or something else does?

Not interested in helping anybody out......usually on lending a helping hand, one comes away missing some fingers.

My view.....because you did ask.....on the syllogism on pg3 and pg8:

It would hard for me to concur that the conclusion follows from the argument because the conclusion says....
“..Theism, as defined......(once), Theism, as defined....(twice).....
.......but theism isn’t so defined anywhere in the list of premises. P1 says theist, defined as. If the inclusion of “theism” into the conclusion was meant to be rhetorical, insofar as it should be accepted as prima facia understanding derived from P1, fine. Shoulda said so, seems like. Nonetheless, I can say without hesitation I agree with the statements stipulated by the conclusion but not that it *IS* itself, a conclusion to a logical argument.

I’m not so sure a series of antinomies qualifies as a logical argument anyway. One premise says this, the next premise says not this, when it should be, one premise says this and the next premise says that. Any cognitively intelligible statement has its own negation given immediately, as a matter of course; that’s just the way the human thinking system works. So it’s irrelevant to premise what reason already gives necessarily.

I’m a serious reductionist. For me, defining what a “fact” is, even to qualify its limits, doesn’t say anything about the altogether tentative nature of human knowledge which are also generally the same limits placed on the “facts”. Something is needed to prevent falsification of the premise because it lacks the conditions of time.

P1, 4,5,6,7 are acceptable stand-alone affirmative judgements, but as logical premises......ehhhhhh, it’s your show. Treat ‘em as you wish.

Yeah, categorical error, or error of equivocation. Dunno. Just didn’t sound right.

‘Nuff said?

To be clear, it was inquired that, given an dedicated understanding of a predicate of a logical proposition (matter of fact), could it be argued that breaking down a proposition with a compound subject (a thing is or is not) into a single subject proposition (a thing is) and its negation (a thing is not), have the strictly equivalent degree of validity?

I’m suggesting it cannot be expected that one formal instance of understanding transfers unequivocably to separated propositions. In this case, the proposition constructed with a compounded subject and its predicate is an analytic true statement, whereas the separated propositions both require a formal synthesis in order to even be possibly true. Thus, the same understanding cannot justify all three at the same time.

I’m saying you threw a metaphysical monkey wrench into an otherwise respectable dialectic by forcing a co-conversant to argue from an irrational position.

Nevertheless.......carry on!!!!!

A thing is or a thing is not is a matter of fact.
A thing is a matter of fact.
A thing is not a matter of fact.

In the first proposition, the subject is, “a thing is or a thing is not”, and the predicate is “a matter of fact”.
In the second and third propositions, the subject is “a thing”, and the predicate is “a matter of fact”.

What’s the big deal?

The why......
“.....Our knowledge springs from two main sources in the mind, first of which is the faculty or power of receiving representations; the second is the power of cognizing by means of these representations. Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is thought....”
“....We apply the term sensibility to the receptivity of the mind for impressions, we call the faculty of spontaneously producing representations, or the spontaneity of cognition, understanding....”
“....Neither of these faculties has a preference over the other. Without the sensuous faculty no object would be given to us, and without the understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind. Hence it is as necessary for the mind to make its conceptions sensuous (that is, to join to them the object in intuition), as to make its intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under conceptions). Neither of these faculties can exchange its proper function. Understanding cannot intuit, and the sensuous faculty cannot think. In no other way than from the united operation of both, can knowledge arise....”
“....We therefore distinguish the science of the laws of sensibility, that is, aesthetic, from the science of the laws of the understanding, that is, logic....”
“....logic in its turn may be considered as twofold—namely, as logic of the general use, or of the particular use, of the understanding. The first contains the absolutely necessary laws of thought, without which no use whatsoever of the understanding is possible, and gives laws therefore to the understanding, without regard to the difference of objects on which it may be employed....”
“....general logic has nothing to do with the origin of our cognitions, but contemplates our representations, be they given primitively a priori in ourselves, or be they only of empirical origin, solely according to the laws which the understanding observes in employing them in the process of thought, in relation to each other. Consequently, general logic treats of the form of the understanding only, which can be applied to representations, from whatever source they may have arisen....”
“....All intuitions, as sensuous, depend on affections; conceptions, upon functions. Conceptions, then, are based on the spontaneity of thought, as sensuous intuitions are on the receptivity of impressions. Now, the understanding cannot make any other use of these conceptions than to judge by means of them...”
“....In all judgements wherein the relation of a subject to the predicate is cogitated, this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as somewhat which is contained (though covertly) in the conception A; or the predicate B lies completely out of the conception A, although it stands in connection with it. In the first instance, I term the judgement analytical, in the second, synthetical...”
“....The former may be called explicative, the latter augmentative judgements; because the former add in the predicate nothing to the conception of the subject, the latter add to our conceptions of the subject a predicate which was not contained in it, and which no analysis could ever have discovered therein....”
(Insert for clarity: “...analyse the conception, that is, become conscious of the manifold properties which I think in that conception,...”)
“....Judgements of experience, as such, are always synthetical. For it would be absurd to think of grounding an analytical judgement on experience, because in forming such a judgement I need not go out of the sphere of my conceptions, and therefore recourse to the testimony of experience is quite unnecessary....”

And the wherefore.......
“....But as in all the attempts hitherto made to answer the questions which reason is prompted by its very nature to propose to itself, for example, whether the world had a beginning, or has existed from eternity, it has always met with unavoidable contradictions (...), but it must be possible to arrive at certainty in regard to the question whether we know or do not know the things of which metaphysics treats....”
“....For what of analysis, that is, mere dissection of conceptions, is contained in one or other, is not the aim of, but only a preparation for metaphysics proper, which has for its object the extension, by means of synthesis, of our a priori knowledge. And for this purpose, mere analysis is of course useless, because it only shows what is contained in these conceptions, but not how we arrive, a priori, at them; and this it is her duty to show, in order to be able afterwards to determine their valid use in regard to all objects of experience, to all knowledge in general....”
————————————————————————

Logic is the law of thought, understanding is the means of thought, therefore logic rules understanding. Understanding manifests in judgements, judgements are of two kinds, one for objects, one for thought of objects. Therefore the laws of thought in the form of logic rules judgements. One form of logic, in which thought is transposed to intelligible communication, is the proposition. A logical proposition requires a subject and a predicate, and the relationship between them determines the kind and the source of the judgement being communicated.

Analytic propositions dissect conceptions in order to determine whether the conception in the predicate belongs to the conception in the subject by the logical law of identity, re: all dogs are canines.

Propositions where the conception in the predicate does not belong to the conception in the subject by identity, but must be connected to it by synthesis from an intuition of experience, earn the title synthetic propositions, re: all dogs have four legs.

Analytic judgements a priori occur when the relations in the conceptions in the predicate belong to the conceptions in the subject from the logical principles of universality and necessity, re: all bodies are in space.

Synthetic a priori judgements, synthetic in the method of their subject/predicate relation and a priori from the nature of the conceptions in them, are shown by any pure mathematical expression.

An analytic a posteriori proposition may be merely a tautology, hence useless, re: my hat is a hat.

Synthetic a posteriori propositions are redundancy in kind, for synthetic propositions are already completely empirical judgements, the concept in the predicate supplements the concept in the subject, even if not contained in it.

The proof of the possibility and validity of synthetic a priori propositions is given in mathematics and the principles for them are given to all natural sciences. Their true value, however, lays in their employment by reason in questions of metaphysics, which is in effect, the examination of grounds for possible truth.

Thus is the division into and function of differences in the approach to the attainment of knowledge, and the justification for synthetic a priori judgements being by far the most important.

Theoretically.