Are there edges to logic? Is logic a continuum or discrete?

"(1) that which creates and is not created; (2) that which is created and creates; (3) that which is created and does not create; (4) that which is neither created nor creates. The first is God as the ground or origin of all things; the second, Platonic ideas or forms; the third, phenomena, the material world; and the last is God as the final end or goal of all things.." WIkipedia on John the Scott

I think the fate of the distinction between "is all possibility" and "has all possibility" rests on questions better answered by Sartre then classical Greek thoughts. Can existence precede ALL essence? And is that then just a state of Pure potentiality. Then suddenly we are are at Plotinus's door, he, as a modernized Greek, put potentiality before actuality

That last quote was Eckhart. I found in a Huston Smith book

Well he said "God is all possibility, even the possibility to not exist". I think Eckhart got this idea perhaps from John the Scott who said in his four fold division that God is that which is uncreated and creates as well as being created (in his creation) and being the absense of form. Two original thinkers of those days, which I want to read more about. "Love Him as not-God, not-spirit, no-person, not-image, just love God as He is, a sheet pure absolute One, sundered from all twoness, and in Whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness."

I could list hundreds of poetic ways of looking at the world if I wanted to take the time. They are indistinguishable from Avicenna's "argument". Even William Craig said this was the weakest argument of the arguments he uses for God. If it means something to you to believe in an omnipotent girl, that's your right. Don't be mad if others mock it as Super Girl. I would only mock it because you say I don't know God because I never searched for him\her\it. That's just like Christians who blame doubters instead of blaming Jesus for him not existing. That's messed up.

But, you should though look up Meister Eckhart's ideas on God. They seem similar to yours and you might enjoy reading on it. Have a good one

You never provided an argument of any kind. Saying the universe doesnt have the reason for its existence in itself is sheer poetry

Taking an empirical object, abstracting it from time, and asking "is this, this thing, necessary or contingent" is really pointless. It's subjective deception that possesses no objectivity that is universal and acknowledged by everyone. Maybe art reveals thoughts of those kind but there are many aesthetics out there. Anschauung, much to "view". Even Satanism is just an aesthetic

Even if God existed, maybe he wants us to be atheists. Piety is not a virtue. Its simply taking our endless craving and creating an object for them. Maybe what we think has no relation to reality in that case. If we can never truly conceptualize God, maybe is reasonable for us to conclude that he, if he exists, wants us to ignore him

Were you trying to say that laws of logic don't necessarily apply outside our minds? — BARAA

Yes. Thoughts like 'exists and cannot not exist' are just constructions of the mind and have no place in reality. We live in a stray universe and it exists uncaused. To say otherwise is just superstition it seems to me. The world is incidental, brute, quaint. Kant's thoughts speak beautifully to the horizons of the heart. Hegel in Faith and Knowledge (1802) wrote that, for Kant, God is the perfect connection between our thoughts and the world. To see the world perfectly is most divine. To want to get on your knees and worship a being of your imagination is unbecoming

because it is self-evident to reason - that any existing thing has either to exist contingently or necessarily. — Bartricks

Offer a syllogism or state, please, that it's a priori innately self-evident. I deny that it is the latter

she is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being - that is, God. — Bartricks

Saying God is male is a problem. Saying she is female is a problem. Saying she is neither is a problem. Saying there is God is a problem

I can never have the ability to reason with someone who doubts pure logic or worse....... denying it... because if so, I'll literally lack every possible common ground to begin a philosphical conversation with him. — BARAA

any existing thing has to be either contingent or necessary — BARAA

"Contingent, "grounding", these are concepts you mention which are simply flowery language designed to support something you take on faith, not logic or reason. Ever since (specifically) Hobbes, Descartes, and those of their company, it has been known in the West that the supernatural is not necessary to explain the world. You can take lofty ideas as your path but that is just going into the clouds without knowing with certainly someone will receive you home there

Furthermore, how did this "God" become so good. He would have to act and be victorious BEFOREHAND in order to become good. People think that a divinity can just be all good without doing anything. That sounds ridiculous. Read Sartre please

It's impossible to prove the supernatural. I can claim there exists a fairy's butt in your nose but that would just be nonsense, the same nonsense that comes from theistic claims

Hmmmm....no...a big No...the universe exists externally.. therefore the universe has to be either contingent or necessary not because I say so but because of logical essence — BARAA

False. Contingency and necessity are logical categories but don't apply to external things

We have writers on here going from Islamic conceptions to Zeus-like ideas. Why would anyone promote ideas about somebody who doesn't exist?

Does God strive or work? Not sure, but he certainly could if he wanted. Again, what's the problem?

You ask 'how is he great?' He fully approves of himself, that's how. — Bartricks

Everyone approves of themselves at times. Why does this make God special? Maybe yesterday he committed his mortal sin and is now Satan. Are you still going to follow him tomorrow?

People do often say the world is "contingent" and needs something spiritual and "necessary" to be its "ground of being. These might just be philosophical categories they are making up to make the existence of the universe more personal for them. The universe could be groundless and also NEITHER contingent or necessary. It would exist as a brute fact (just is, random, quaint) and if we have a sound scientific explanation for the past of the universe, that is all we would need. Necessity deals with abstract logic.

It's Greek bias that say that "if God could destroy Himself He is not necessary". Eckhart maybe right said that (assuming God exists i say) God is all possibilities, even the possibility to not exist. Saying that God's nature constrains him to the "logical" and yet that he is all being sounds very loopy. In fact the idea of God becomes looping in many respects. Does God freely choose the good? If yes, than he can do sin. If no, than he wills freely and necessarily at the same time, an antimony humans cannot figure out. Does God strive or work? If it's effortless to be God, how is he powerful? How is he great? Again, it's Greek bias (platonism to be specific) the turned the Unity of Forms in a person (3 persons for Christians) and said "THIS is perfection!"

"For sight is the keenest of the physical senses" Plato (thanks Wayfarer!)

Aquinas has an article in the Summa Theologica saying (rather dogmatically) that he knows the sense (out of the 5) which can give a human, in his optimal state, the greatest enjoyment is the eyes (through seeing beauty). One problem I think with saying beauty is objective is that everyone goes around trying to say what is more beautiful than other things. The Middle Ages may have just lacked beautiful music, or at least music that reached the levels of beauty that latter centuries discovered. If we are to say that beauty is objective, maybe that is all we are to say, and not try to delineate "this" or "that" as more or most sublime. Kant thought that beauty was objective but that something (a painting, ect.) could not be proven to be beautiful by any categories. I find Spinoza's views to be sublime (although Hume called them "monstrous"), and yet pantheism would have to be wrong if there is anything truly evil and ugly in the world: if God is all, those things would make God evil and ugly as well as being good (although someone might take up such a position nonetheless). There are so many aesthetics out there, it's hard not to get decision paralysis as we grasp for them (retched humans).

Jordan Peterson has taken a very Western view of tragedy, archetypes, and beauty in saying that Christianity is "true" because the story of Jesus is (allegedly) the "best story that can be told" and since it accords with the harmony of all our archetypes, it must be SO true that it is a "meta-truth" (his word), more true than the reality of the universe. Sam Harris couldn't get Peterson to admit this is "just your opinion man". Anyway, historians like Leopold von Ranke believed that we are confined to judging cultures purely in terms of their own standards. Culture carves us up more deeply than we realize.

I just want to add this quotation here, although (I'm sorry) I do not know who wrote it:


"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth."

There are no mathematical truths. 1 plus 1 equals 1 plus 1, not 2 (which doesnt exist) so math is a bunch of semantic tataulogies masquerading as ontology. Someday it will be surpassed by those who don't equate feeling with being, and math will end as medieval philosophy fell to science

The mind has a deep interior and for Buddhists (from what I've read) reason itself must be transcended. Reason seems most real and intuition seems like a dream, so we assume the dream is less real. We always think "about" and feel "for" something. It's hard to see the interpenetration and convertibility of the cosmos, and maybe we are the eye of the universe. Why do we need to ask "whose awareness?" or "awareness of what?" Emptiness means undivided and perfect means connected. I read once that the Buddhist equation is infinity=1=0=infinity. The infinite "in" the finite is kinda expressed in geometry when we say a segment has infinite points along it. We shouldn't be indifferent, but we should react to the world with agreeableness because life is "perfect like unto vast space" (Seng Ts'an)

Kant did think that Euclidean geometry was written into our minds a priori, but does this make this geometry true? Heidegger in his lecture on What is Metaphysics says that Hegel was right all along in asserting that pure being and pure nothing were identical. We reach out into the nothing, where there is no structure, by being Dasein. Nishida Kitaro wrote something similar in the Zen tradition in Japan. "Do not be seized by the sacred" he said, for many people make gods for themselves

From what I've gathered from Heidegger's lectures on what is metaphysics, if you were to turn the mind's eye around you would touch "the nothing". He says that "nothing" is not what is left when you negate "the all" but it is nothing that does that negating. In the West we have an assumption that truth has substance and nothingness is ugly. But what would happen if you negated nothingness? Would you get phenomena?

Maybe we actually form logic from our experience of the world. If we had always looked through different lenses like that great scene in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, logic would be bewildering different from what we know now. Who knows?

Thanks for all the posts everyone. This is a good discussion. Last night I was reading articles off the internet comparing Nagarjuna and Zeno of Elea. One writer posited that they weren't simply arguing that the world and identity were illusion (and that we were the One) but that their paradoxes functioned as koans back in the day. Trying to reconcile finitude with infinity (Zeno) surely could be mind expanding! But what if we do merge with the One (or rather, wake up to it) and find that everything we thought was true (math, ect) has really been wrong and the real truth is the opposite of all we were once so sure of? It makes you wonder what reason can demonstrate in the Aristotelian sense.

I also wanted to add that Busdhists' anatta (atta is Pali for atman, which is Sanskrit) may be consistent with Hinduism. Hindus say your identity is the ocean of Brahmam. Buddhist say you have no soul and are usually silent about the emptiness you experience after enlightenment. So perhaps Buddhists are saying to Hindus "You mistake the soul for Brahmam. You are not there yet" and the Hindus respond "You say every thing is empty, but this is simply the impossibility of language to describe Brahmam. Someday you will see." Just a thought. Have a good day

There is no such thing as a "more rational" view of an event so long ago. Language changes every generation so there is no guarantee we have the right translation of the gospels. Assuming we do though, Josephus said Jesus did miracles, but so did other jews, it is claimed, in that time and place. Miracle workers are everywhere in ancient history. The New Testament is mostly reliable as a historical record except for the virgin birth, , raising of Lasuras, the resurrection, and the claim that Jesus's disciples died for belief in the resurrection. Those are religious documents intended to convert people. It's totally "rational" as you say to reject those four claims I mentioned but to basically accept the rest.

I think at the last supper Jesus was so afraid of his death that he tried to shatter his ego into 12 parts and impart them to his apostles. Christians interpret this as a sacrament. But I think it was based on fear

Sorry for the delay. People call themselves Catholic and have apologists who argue that their sacraments are from God. So that is on them. I did propose a biological interpretation of phenomena but I don't know if its a priori or a posteriori. Which do you think it is?

In Catholicism, it's called the sacrament of confession, the sacrament of repentence, or the sacrament of reconciliation. All the same thing

Materialism gets kinda boring, which is why I've been exploring spirituality of late. But even when I'm a materialist I still believe in mortal and venial sins. You don't have to believe in God for that. Nowadays I see the idea and concept of God as expressing something about my self. The "Father" expresses memory, the "Son" expressed logos in my reason, and "Spirit" represents my free will. Maybe I am totally based on matter. I don't know those fundamentals.

I've been told "such and such" is a "sin" many times in confession. I no longer go. Morality comes from within us, from our Dasein (is German as good as French?).

Is there an infinite number of layers of reality? — Eugen

Science generally works under the assumption that everything is inner-connected. This is seen as a good thing since it accords at least in language with what certain spiritual traditions have spoken of. It's possible inter-connectedness is a limiting thing though, that our environment is not put together in the right order. We don't know what kind of world would have been if the puzzle was put together correctly

Did you find any usefull insights yet? — Claude

Yes, I understand what phenomena is better. Malebranche would have told me in the confessional that it's a sin to doubt God. But I think it is necessary for spiritual growth. Belief in God is much more often than not based on bad archetypes coming into consciousness

There is a problem with your guys arguments. God is supposed to know everything by his nature. How else could he know everything from all eternity? However, pain and evil are supposed to be negatives, so God would have to see his nature and then understand the negatives through it. Yet he is is simple and thinks with his nature. So it would have to be a simultaneous action of seeing his nature with his nature and knowing negatives thru it. Now here is the problem: the knowledge that God has that he decided to create the world is divinely contingent. It is not part of his nature. He created freely and by choice. This knowledge that he created and had decided to created is done by his nature, which is his intellect. So the knowledge that he created and had decided to create would in itself create a new idea of knowledge, which would in essence change the nature of God because he can only think and know with his nature. He is his thoughts. Therefore, God changed by creating. However, the Bible says God cannot change.

what it’s like to be a swan is not a part of human experience — Joaquin

Have you read Being and Nothingness by Sartre? It might expand your perspective

I've read the articles on Malebranche from the Sanford encyclopedia twice. Sure, he was coming from a semi-esoteric perspective, but he was also a priest. He explicitly said that all we experience with the senses are God's ideas, and even objects in themselves move by divine power in his Occasionalism. I think that what's has been settled on this thread is that Kant believed phenomena was part idea and seemingly part material, although we don't know noumena in itself and can't say that it is material or something else. It was as if Kant took Malebranche, doubted God, and then watched the system invert on its own

I see, thanks guys for your replies. I was introduced to Aristotle before Kant. Aristotle had material potency bonding with an immaterial nature to make an object composed of accidents and substance. Accidents reveal something about the substance, which in turn reveals matter and nature. This is a far-cry from Kant's world

Lots of great thoughts in your post

My edition of the Britannica Encyclopedia says that some in Kant's time said he had merely rehashed Leibniz. Now Leibniz had put forth the "relational" theory of time and space. Is it possible that when Kant says time and space are our intuitions, he is ultimately saying they don't exist except as relations? That seems like a more materialist understanding of Kant. I think Hume really disturbed Kant and the three critiques can be seen as his attempt to heal his faith and psychology

I didn't mean that the Critique was mechanistic like Descartes. Kant does believe in substance underlying quantity and quality. I think he got this from Locke. Descartes regarded objects as extension, as simply the total of their accidents. Objects are dead for Descartes, having no "will to power" (conatus?) in them.

Thank you, you cleared up my confusion on all this.

Side note: I notice that there is no mention of conatus in the Critique of Pure Reason. I probably will have to read the Critique of Judgement for anything relating to that. The Critique of Pure Reason feels mechanistic to me

Hmm. I was thinking in terms of Christian atheism, which is a real thing. On the other hand Karl Rahner in the last century built a vibrant Christian theology on Kantian thought. I'm still learning on this issue

Thank you. You've been very helpful. I think we shouldn't read Kant like he is Descartes or Aquinas. He is more modern. To illustrate, Nietzsche is a good example. Although he spoke of "will to power" in nature, I think he was trying to get a point across without being an idealist. He may have been simply a materialist, and Kant as well. Kant's idea that time and space are our internal intuitions solved his First Antimony at least ( i think)

"In this reinterpretation the Kantian 'a priori' is indirectly connected with experience in so far as it has been formed through the development of the human mind in a very distant past. Following this argument the biologist Lorentz has once compared the 'a priori' concepts with forms of behavior that in animals are called 'inherited or innate schemes." Werner Heisenberg in Physics and Philosophy