1) Causality is irrelevant for determining God.

2) Whether you know God within or without, is irrelevant - because they're all God's manifestations. That's the idea behind the Hindu Avatar.

3) If you can determine the phenomenon, you can determine the noumenon in contrast. Like how drawing a square on paper, consequently draws the frame outside of the square.

These answers aren't necessarily theistic.

Your problem stems from this:

3) We cannot know the noumena behind phenomena — Jonathan McCormack

If anything, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation uses a methodology that does just that. He uses our own individual wills- the inside perspective, to posit that there is a double-aspect to reality. He then extends this to all appearances. Will is the metaphysical flipside to representation which is the appearances or epistemological constraint. Thus, very much uses the "this world" to speculate about the ontology of being. Being happens to be Will in his philosophy- a striving force that goes nowhere but is tied intricately with the appearances of space, time, and causality, the transcendental grounds for our cognitive capacities. Now, how Will is connected with the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is interesting and a bit knotty, but I think this sufficiently proves your third claim otherwise, and thereby also counters your first two claims as well.

One might respond by eschewing all arguments for the existence of God. If God is beyond the limits of our understanding then we cannot even know what it would mean for God to exist.

How might one respond ? As a platonist, or theist ? — Jonathan McCormack

First it ought to be stated that Schopenhauer declared himself atheist and was fiercely critical of institutional religion. But then perhaps that is also instructive, as Schopenhauer was also witheringly dismissive of materialism. So consider that Schopenhauer, as an idealist, is categorised on the 'theist' side of the ledger, even despite his professed atheism! That actually tells us something, in my opinion.

Anyway, more to the point: consider the limitations of knowledge. Whilst there might be an endless procession of facts that can be discovered, knowledge itself is limited or circumscribed by certain conditions inherent in the operations of the knowing mind.

The opening passages of WWR might serve to illustrate:

"THE world is my idea":— this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself. — Schopenhauer

I myself think this is indubitable, but that it nearly always misapprehended. Normally what it leads to is the thought that, if this is so, that when"I" stop perceiving or being conscious, then the world also ceases to exist. So it is taken to imply solipsism or something of the kind. What this doesn't see is that this imagines the world's non-existence as an externally-established fact; it implicitly sees 'the world not existing' from a third-party perspective, as if we are seeing from some point outside our conception of the nature of existence, which is the very thing we can't actually do.

What I take Schopenhauer's philosophy to mean (and also Kant's) is that there is an irreducibly subjective pole in every act of knowledge. The mind plays a fundamental role in the integration and orchestration of the perceptions which comprise the sensory constituents of knowledge, according to the categories of the understanding and so on. What has generally happened in modern thinking, is that this role has been taken for granted in such a way that it is now simply assumed that we see the world 'as it exists in itself' (which is the stance of scientific realism). However, we do not, and cannot; it is the nature of knowledge that it relies on a perspective provided by the observer. Whereas, in post-Enlightenment philosophy, this fact has been generally neglected as a consequence of the 'bifurcation of nature' that Whitehead noted.

That is the main lesson of Kant and Schopenhauer in my opinion. Now what understanding it gives us of what, if anything, can be said to be "beyond appearances" is still an open question - but what is vitally important to understand is what kind of question it is. And in my experience, again, very few grasp the nature of the question itself. This is because our culture conditions and pre-disposes us to a certain kind of stance or attitude, grounded in realist assumptions that are difficult and even painful to question. But that is where the real work of philosophy commences - as Schopenhauer says!

What I take Schopenhauer's philosophy to mean (and also Kant's) is that there is an irreducibly subjective pole in every act of knowledge — Wayfarer

Well that is something neither of them really wanted to acknowledge. kant's argument from intelligent design similarly has a subjective element which remains a problem for all acts of induction from the particular to the general case.

I don't think they would not have articulated it that way. The school of philosophy that has most fully realised and articulated these insights is actually phenomenology, which is a descendant of Kant, via Husserl. But we are now talking with 'the benefit of hindsight' so we are able to consider the matter, refined by a few more centuries of analysis and understanding.

Oh, and Kant by no means would support any argument for God on the basis of intelligent design. I think he would roll in his grave if anyone said he did. His 'religion within the limits of reason alone' goes into all that, but it's tortuous and I really haven't waded through all of it.

Generally people say that Kant acknowledges the impetus to argue teleologically exists. Schopenhauer is adamant that all such cases are wrong, but Kant did not attempt to argue it rationally. he claimed it was an aesthetic judgment, and thus independent of pure reason.

A devotee of Schopenhauer, I imagine, would make 3 points.


1) You cannot apply our notions of causality beyond physical reality.

2) We only know our experience inside time and space, so how could we know this “God” beyond everything we know ?


3) We cannot know the noumena behind phenomena. — Jonathan McCormack

First I am not an expert on S. But I think the proper response is epistemological. One cannot know one way or the other. What S. says neither proves not disproves the existence of higher spiritual forces. What remains is belief. His criticism of causality equally applies to his own belief that human endeavor is futile in the face of apathetic yet evil forces.

Let us analyze this a bit.

“1) You cannot apply our notions of causality beyond physical reality.”

We don’t figure this out by experience. I don’t go “beyond physical reality and apply this notion and see it does not work. So, it is a concept and provides great use in the physical world and serves as a talking point for much theological debate.

“2) We only know our experience inside time and space, so how could we know this “God” beyond everything we know ?”

Or do we defined are experience with notions of space and time? Can’t we do the same with a concept of “God”?

“
3) We cannot know the noumena behind phenomena.

“

Than why bring up noumena at all? Stick to phenomena, and infer the rest if you like.

it is a concept and provides great use in the physical world and serves as a talking point for much theological debate. — Richard B

Not really. S. says, 'if one connects a voltmeter across a battery, the voltmeter displays a result.' He claims this is physiological observation, and therefore not causal.

However, if one describes it as a phenomenon of science it does become a causal statement. For example, one can say a battery provides power because its capacitative charge provides a potential difference across its poles.

Or one can say a battery provides power because it is a gift from the god Mercury.

They are both causal statements. The first is empirically demonstrable, and the second is hermeneutically understood. S. does not define a significant difference between such causal relationships.

I am merely providing a pragmatist approach to the concept of causality. If I place my hand near the fire and I get burned. I am going to use this idea of causality that if I do it again, it will not be beneficial. And the same with the concept of “God”. The idea that something was the cause of this universe give me a sense of meaning in my life, I am going to use it.

Well the argument is that everything is contingent not its being, and therefore must find origin in an absolute, which logically must be necessary. The contingent can exist only derivatively, receiving its existence from the Absolute, is a simple deduction of reason. 

Schop I thought identified 4 categories of cause - that a cause must happen in time, that there cannot be simultaneous causation etc so "God" cannot be a cause in THAT sense...

And indeed, God could not be an "efficient cause", because He would be the source of the conditions for the possibility an efficient cause to exist - rather more like contingent beings must be ontologically dependent upon an absolute to donate being..

Don't people actually know things outside finite existence ?

Like the concept of infinity, infinite numbers that cannot be even or odd ?

IF the argument holds, and *some beings lack the power of their own existence, then being is given, *there is a prior giveness, so thought is NOT constrained to only move from the world to the worlds principals in the measure of what is, or what must be - only because being is NOT constrained by necessity to these manifestations, as if being MUST show itself in beings - this is not an autonomous metaphysics, but a participatory one....ie principals of necessity or positive grounds for some principal must be subordinate to "grace", the givenness of being....God is not the highest principal available to thought, nor the ground of being.

So things are not nessesary but "contingent" upon God donating being; being is given.

IF being were external to thought, and not given, then the actual content of thought, what thought apprehends, would not be reality itself but some image or impression of it, and then Schop'Kant would be on point.

So, IF the argument holds, and God donates being continuously to beings, then things exist already “intending” to be known - they purposely “fit” the human mind, as both ontologically participate in God.

And doesn't the fact that there there IS a constant correlation between that act of rational consciousness and the intelligibility of being, a correlation, in its indiscerptibility , strongly suggest the structure reality is already rational ?

So couldn't the question of the correspondence between the perception and the perceived be answered by ascribing that correspondence to a supereminent unity in which the poles of experience, the phenomena and perception, participate in ?

The unity itself cannot be grasped according to the discrete properties of finite existence, and so is transcendent perception....

Am I totally off here guys ?

Am I totally off here guys ? — Jonathan McCormack

Not at all, I think you’re asking very good questions. (And apologies if I went off on a tangent in my first reply. )

I think, however, it might be worth exploring the question through some other perspectives as well, specifically, Thomist or neo-Thomist, as Aquinas was really the philosopher who best articulated the idea of ‘necessary being’.

Intuitively, I feel I have a grasp of the idea through the notion of 'the unconditioned'. Something like that intuition is found in many traditional philosophies - it is characteristically described as 'the uncreated' or 'the wisdom uncreate' in Catholic philosophy (see here for example). It goes right back to the notion that all compound or created beings are composed of parts and limited in time - so is there anything of which that is not characteristic of? I think in the Platonist tradition, the notion was that the forms, ideas, and also in some respect arithmetical and geometric principles, are of a different order to the temporal, because they are grasped directly by intellect, rather than by the fallible senses, therefore 'higher', therefore nearer the source of being. That became developed in neo-Platonism as The One as the source or ground of being, which cascaded or emanated 'downwards' to give rise to the world of individual particulars.

I know that's extremely sketchy, but I think if we can re-trace the steps to an understanding of how 'the uncreated' and 'the created' are related, then it clarifies at least the outline of the subject.

Don't people actually know things outside finite existence ?

Like the concept of infinity, infinite numbers that cannot be even or odd ? — Jonathan McCormack

Are those things outside?
What if they're inside, would that change anything?

Divide an orange infinitely, and tell me your conclusion.

So couldn't the question of the correspondence between the perception and the perceived be answered by ascribing that correspondence to a supereminent unity in which the poles of experience, the phenomena and perception, participate in ?

The unity itself cannot be grasped according to the discrete properties of finite existence, and so is transcendent perception.... — Jonathan McCormack

What is transcendent about it?
Maybe it's grasping exactly what you say cannot be grasped?