That’s true, although it’s worth noting that Aristotle’s unmoved mover does not function as a source of the world’s intelligibility. As νοήσεως νόησις, it thinks only itself, and does not impose form or order on the cosmos. For Aristotle, the intelligibility of nature is intrinsic to substances themselves rather than conferred by a divine intellect contemplating or structuring the world. — Esse Quam Videri

I'm not so sure about this. While God is not seen as an efficient cause of entities, it is seen as their final cause, IIRC. Given this, I'm not sure how you can safely say that their intelligibility isn't rooted in the Unmoved Mover according to him.

Regardless for that, however, I agree with you that intelligibility alone certainly doesn't 'prove' the existence of God.

Well, my first reaction is to examine the question to work out what will count as an answer. — Ludwig V

Yes, I agree.

A disordered pile of books is only chaotic because it is not ordered in a way that is interesting to us. There are in fact, endless ways in which they could be ordered. Our problem is only to pick which order we impose on them. Radical chaos is different. In such a world, we would be unable to identify any object, process or event; there could be no constituents to be ordered or chaotic. — Ludwig V

In other words, the intelligibility of the world to you is a 'given' that isn't explainable in terms of something more fundamental. Am I misunderstanding you?

Fair enough. — Ludwig V

Ok.

I'm not so sure about this. While God is not seen as an efficient cause of entities, it is seen as their final cause, IIRC. Given this, I'm not sure how you can safely say that their intelligibility isn't rooted in the Unmoved Mover according to him. — boundless

That’s a fair point — you’re right that, for Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover functions as a final cause of cosmic motion, even though it is not an efficient cause. I don’t mean to deny that.

My claim is narrower: even granting divine final causality, Aristotle does not treat the Unmoved Mover as the source of the intelligible form of natural substances. Final causality explains why motion is directed toward an end; form explains what a thing is, and it is form that grounds intelligibility. On Aristotle’s own terms, those forms are intrinsic to substances rather than conferred by divine cognition.

So while Aristotle certainly affirms a divine intellect, the intelligibility of nature, as he understands it, does not consist in being thought by God, but in being formally structured in its own right. And on that much, I think we agree that intelligibility alone doesn’t prove the existence of God.

Agreed!

I’m not saying that anyone should believe it, or that I believe it. But that we should at least acknowledge that it was believed by all the adherents of these religions movements and is depicted en masse in their iconography and teachings. And was accepted as true by the whole population prior to the Cartesian divide. — Punshhh

I don't think this assessment is accurate if the Ancient Greeks philosophers are taken into account.

All I’m saying is that if we are going to consider transcendence, we have to somehow translate what is revealed to people during revelation into something amenable to philosophical discourse. That there is no other way. It is rather like Kant’s neumenon. Philosophy accepts the neumenon into discursive discourse, why not transcendence? It’s rather like a positive form of neumenon. — Punshhh

Perhaps, but 'revelation' is a loaded term―I prefer 'altered states' or 'non-ordinary states'. Kant's noumenon is specifically defined as that of which no experience at all is possible. The question about revelation is as to whether what is revealed is the same as what is articulated. The question is whether adequate discursive articulation is possible. I tend to think not. In fact I think the same about ordinary states―they are made to seem ordinary by the assumption that our talk in terms of identities adequately characterizes them, captures their nature.

For Husserl and the other thinkers I mentioned there are no thing-in-themselves. Not just because humans or animals must be present for them to be perceived, but because a world seen in itself, apart from humans or animals, is a temporal flux of qualitative change with respect to itself. — Joshs

I agree―we identify things as determinate things, as being this or that. On the other hand I think there is structure in the temporal flux or field of differential intensities that is the determinator, that enables the reliable appearance of a shared world for both humans and animals. If not all would be anarchic chaos, and no discourse at all possible.

Spinoza, yes. Hegel and Whitehead, no. For the latter two the idea of mathematical truths that are utterly independent of history, world, relation, or realization is not just false, it is philosophically incoherent. — Joshs

I'm not going to argue about Hegel, as he is complicated and variously interpreted, including as having links with the Hermetic Tradition, but I think you need to look closer at Whitehead. In his ontology there are actual occasions, more or less evanescent events that make up the spatiotemporal flux that constitutes reality, and there are eternal objects―atemporal potentials that are "ingressed" (a Whiteheadian term that Levin has adopted) in the actual occasions. Basically the actualization of eternal potentials. Mathematical objects, or better, patterns, and forms, including ontic forms.

Whitehead stands Plato on his head as Marx did with Hegel―or perhaps better, stood Plato on his feet (as Marx said he did with Hegel), in that he denied that actual reality is the dim, imperfect copy of eternal forms, but their actualization, without which they would be effectively nothing at all. The eternal objects together constitute the totality of possibility, which is of course, numerically speaking, far greater than actuality, but greater only in that sense.