- Not even 36 hours have elapsed since we began section 3. I have reiterated my desire to move slowly, in large part so that those who do not have as much time still have an opportunity to participate. Not everyone has time to write dozens of posts a day, as you do. I don't see why it is so burdensome to average two days per section. It's great you're enjoying the thread so much, but to be so impatient as to ignore the OP while constantly writing posts that don't engage with other users at all is a bit strange. I suppose if you don't care about engaging with others then there is no need to move slowly and encourage participation. But in that case what you need is a diary, not a discussion forum. Or Twitter, where you just spam out content and no one reads anything. I figured the Reading Groups section was for reading things as a group.

(And the fact that you haven't even been been reading carefully is rather ironic here. For example, that you did not even understand that the proof was a reductio until it was explicitly pointed out to you. That's what happens in a fast-paced thread: you "read" a proof, argue about it for 26 days, and then on day 27 you figure out that it was a reductio and the entire analysis was hopelessly confused.)

- I'm glad you found the lecture interesting. I don't think the lecture had much to say about Trump. If I recall, the only reference to Trump was a reference to Trump's wall as a conservative symbol, although there is likely an implication that Trump's re-election was driven by the sort of conservatism Reno defined.

I liked his points about conservatism and progressivism being relative and non-ideological (and populism being neither inherently left nor right). That is, conservatism values permanence and progressivism values change, and apart from that core the doctrines are all historically contingent. Thus a doctrine will not ultimately be a sign of conservatism or progressivism, unless that doctrine is viewed under the aspect of permanence or change. To take an example, slavery was a progressive issue during the Civil War, but now it is a conservative issue. We view anti-slavery laws as a permanent fixture that ought to be conserved.

So on to Part Four. — Banno

Are you trying to take over the thread entirely? No, we will open part four tomorrow. You can remove your post or I will appeal to the mods.

By who? Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass is a joke, like Molière's Imaginary Invalid. "Language is used for communicating intentions" does not entail "words mean whatever a speaker wants them to mean." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ding ding. :100:

I have some radical conclusions that I'm exploring, but I don't believe Quine is there as much as serves as an entryway into what I'm thinking. — Moliere

Okay, right. We are on the same page then. :up:

Thanks for posting this -- I was beginning to wonder if I'm entirely wrong and I believe that this is basically what I've been arguing for. — Moliere

This came up earlier, but you seemed to be arguing something rather different. For example:

What is Quine's intended conclusion? I don't think it is as radical as is being assumed. In a 1970 paper he says that the gavagai example is very limited, and demonstrates the inscrutability of terms rather than indeterminacy of translation of sentences. — Leontiskos

Quine may be saying little more than that terms are inscrutable apart from context ("holism"). — Leontiskos

The first is that theology has shown that the concept of god can be made consistent; — Banno

Well, no. He says that one could point to the tradition "showing." Obviously such arguments need to be shown to one who has never seen them. Klima does not think the atheist possesses arguments he has never encountered.

The third, the familiar insistence that all that is assumed is that one can conceive of god; ignoring premise 3. — Banno

I have no idea where you find that idea in the quote. He is saying that even if contradiction is granted for the sake of argument, this still does not undermine premise (1), and in that case we would have to move to premise (2) (because that is where a contradiction becomes uncontroversially problematic). As I said:

This occurred in ↪this post of mine and explicitly in its final paragraph. — Leontiskos

Klima offers the fool a rhetorical exit — Banno

He is summarizing the Anselm-Gaunilo exchange, and this is transparent in the paper.

There are those who think that what a word means is what the speaker intends it to mean, and nothing more. So if the fool intends "four sided shape" by "triangle", then that's an end to it, and communication simply fails. — Banno

Except that's not what Anselm or Klima say at all, so this looks to be another strawman from someone who has been desperate to cast aspersions from their very first post. :roll:

But of course there is such a justification, which can be seen in the ongoing conversations and interactions amongst us; — Banno

Which is exactly why Anselm uses an ongoing conversation to clear up the equivocal term, and why Klima summarizes the same move.

I'll not reply to this directly. — Banno

That's pretty much par for the course, as all you've managed in responses to criticisms is, "I won't repeat myself." Clarifying one's argument is dangerous, after all. Better not to say too much.

Perhaps not, but here the error is set before you. — Banno

No, it's not. The possibility of error is set before you. That was the whole point.

You are equivocating between things like error and possibility of error, or between a proof of a contradiction and a gesturing towards a contradiction. This bears on the "honesty" you just spoke of.

Roark has his own critique. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Roark is getting into complicated questions of whether Klima's quantificational formulation accurately represents Anselm's proof. This is somewhat important because in order to understand that formulation one must understand that Klima is attempting an accurate representation of Anselm's proof. On the other hand, assessing the interpretation can quickly become overly complicated. Sticking for the moment to section 3, Roark's critique has to do with the - exchange, namely with sub-inference (a):

(4) R(g)
____(a) M(g)(g)............................[2,3,4, UI, &I, MP]
____(b) (∃y)(M(y)(g))....................[a, EG]
(5) (∃y)(M(y)(ix.~(∃y)(M(y)(x))).....[1,b, SI]

Without closely reading Roark's lengthy assessment, my sense is that the logic here is attempting to indicate that the suppositional (2) is at the nub of the problems in (a), (b), and (5). Or rather, (a) and (b) are an extension of the problems with (5) (and (2)). It is possible that Roark draws the same conclusion but at the same time argues that this way of looking at it deviates from Anselm's original. In any case, he clearly thinks there is a coherent interpretation.

These sorts of wrinkles are why we want to also keep an eye on the natural language version.

(Note that Roark's page numbers refer to the book chapter version, linked in the OP.)

I want to draw some connections between section 3 and what has already occurred in this thread (note that I did not read section 3 beforehand, and was not manipulating the thread to achieve these overlaps). Taking section 3 in chronological order:

Choosing the first alternative would amount to claiming that God’s concept is contradictory. [...] In any case, in Anselm’s argument the concept of God to bevemployed is adequately specified by the first premise, and the atheist would probably be hard pressed to show that the description “that than which nothing greater can be thought of” is self-contradictory. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 3

See 's post for this notion of contradictory concepts; see my replies pointing out that no contradiction has been shown/proved (, ).

At this point, however, the atheist may shift the burden of proof by saying that even if this description does not seem to contain any prima facie contradiction, it may well be contradictory. By way of analogy, he may bring up the description: “the greatest prime number”, which, on the face of it, does not appear to be contradictory, so it seems to refer to the greatest prime number. But, as we know from Euclid, the assumption that there is a greatest prime number leads to contradiction, so the description cannot refer to anything. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 3

Banno has been engaged in this "shifting of the burden of proof" all along, and has directly parallel to the argument from the greatest prime. Perhaps the clearest attempt to shift the burden of proof was , "Accordingly it is not incumbent on the fool to show that one of the premisses must be false; but only that it might be false." Banno's posts have been entirely dependent on this notion of possibility, e.g. "Might be wrong," "May be wrong," "No guarantee."

, , and make similar arguments against the concept, having to do with omnipotence or unlimitedness.

Second, he can say that a contradiction, if derivable at all, could be derived from this description only with the help of other assumptions, just as in the case of the greatest prime. But, unlike the case of the greatest prime, these auxiliary assumptions probably need not be accepted as true. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 3

I made this move in contending that the greatest prime number (or real number) has no clear parity with Anselm's first premise, as I think the may/might's also indicate ( and elsewhere).

Finally, concerning Anselm’s argument one can also say that the premise attacked by the atheist does not even require that Anselm’s description should be free from such implied contradictions. For the premise requires only that one can think that God (under Anselm’s description) exists, which one can do even with the greatest prime, until one actually realizes the implied contradiction. So the burden of proof falls back upon the atheist, if he wishes to challenge this premise. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 3

This occurred in of mine and explicitly in its final paragraph.

---

So, since [the atheist] denies that the description applies to any thought object he can think of, he just does not have such a thought object in his mind, while he perfectly understands what is meant by this description. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 3

This is an interesting idea that stays very close to Anselm, and it also bears on Quine. Namely, if one is to say, "X does not exist as a concept," then what is being referred to by X? Is it possible to understand a description without having such a thought object in one's mind? This goes back to my .

This also highlights the way that Klima differentiates objections to premise (1) from objections to premise (2). The idea is that the atheist might say that even if (1) manages some kind of quasi-concept, that concept is never really or fully present in the intellect a la (2).

---

2. There is a sleight of hand from ens rationis to ens reale, somewhat hidden here but brought out in Free Logic by the invalidity of a move from Ti to E!i. — Banno

If one reads the first section one sees that such objections have been preempted. See:

We actually saw this play out two days ago in the midst of a discussion on Mario Bunge, who admits of conceptual existence and who treats existence as a first-order predicate. A response was as follows:

[...]

That is, the assumption is that Bunge must be working with two mutually exclusive subclasses, at least "in effect." This is the sort of objection that Klima has in his sights. How does he address this objection?... — Leontiskos

-

4. The argument relies on a substitution within an intensional context, at line (5), that is not justified. — Banno

This is an assertion, not an argument.

---

If it be insisted that He is omnipotent, that implies that He can do anything, implying that there are things to be done, implying that of the things to be done, they are at present in an unperfected state needing to be perfected, implying God a kind of glorified maintenance man obliged to go about perfecting what needs to be perfected. Omnipotence, then, straight out implies an imperfect God and an imperfect creation, contradicting any notion of a perfect all-everything being. — tim wood

I think the error is, "He is omnipotent, which means he can do anything, which means there are things to be done, which means that he is obliged to do them." Those last two (bolded) interferences both look to be false, and particularly the last one.

- Great post. :up:
Hopefully Roark's response can serve as an additional sounding board as we move along.

Can one ever totally eliminate the possibility of error? Is "error is possible," without pointing out any clear error a good counter to other demonstrations? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right.

Right, and this perhaps touches on the theological concerns that came to the fore during the Reformation, that only doing what is best would somehow be a limit on divine sovereignty and power. I personally think this sort of concern doesn't hold water. Defining freedom in terms of potency leads to contradiction (e.g. the demonstrations at the opening of Hegel's Philosophy of Right) and so the notions that lead to a renewed salience for Euthyphro dilemmas in the early modern period seem to simply be flawed. This is relevant inasmuch as people claim that God is "unthinkable" due to these supposed "paradoxes." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and the claim is a little bit odd insofar as it involves the idea that "greatest" entails contradiction via two or more contradictory attributes. That is of course arguable, but it doesn't strike me as a promising approach.

This is related to your point about unlimitedness, at least in the case of bad forms of unlimitedness. For example, if to be unlimited is greater than to be limited, then Anselm's thought must be unlimited. But if certain forms of unlimitedness are not greater, then we arrive at a similar paradox.

We could also consider abductive arguments. There, we might have strong reasons to affirm the existence of something. It would be unreasonable to deny it. And yet this is also not a demonstration that it exists. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and I think we also want to draw a conceptual distinction between the natural language formulation and the quantification theory reductio formulation. A reductio is intrinsically less constraining than a simple demonstration.

Indeed, we might say that a demonstration that shows that God exists in the same manner as both our conceptions of God's existence and the real existence of all other things would be guilty of equivocation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, interesting point. The first response might simply say that an analogical notion of existence is available here. But in the second place, the proof itself will mandate the level of existence-univocity in play. So for example, if Anselm's reply to Gaunilo's island objection succeeds, then the form of existence at stake in Anselm's proof is sui generis (i.e. it applies only to the greatest thing, and not to e.g. the greatest island).

(But I am not going to delve too deeply into strictly theological objections such as this until we have finished the paper.)

Part 3. The Atheist, Who is Not a Fool — Leontiskos

As I read it, this section is meant to drum up the possibility of a dialogical impasse between the atheist (who opposes Anselm's proof) and the theist (who accepts Anselm's proof). Towards the beginning of the section Klima writes:

Anselm’s retort, that the Fool’s denial was possible in the first place only because he is truly a fool, thoughtlessly mumbling words he himself does not understand, leads us directly to the crux of the very possibility of a dialogue between the Saint and the Fool, or put in less biased terms, between the theist and the atheist. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding - Section 3

He then tries to develop "requirements of rationality" that could "avoid a complete breakdown of communication." Then at the end of the section he caps the tempest in the teapot so that it might retain its potency:

But even without these moral implications, it seems that the theist now may justifiably claim that, as a result of his denial, the atheist just rendered himself unable to think of a humanly otherwise thinkable thought object. By denying the existence of God the atheist will never be able to think of the same God as the theist, whose conception of God logically implies the existence of God, as Anselm’s proof shows. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding - Section 3

(I have noticed an underlying theme in some of Klima's work, namely an attempt to make commensurable what others view as incommensurable.)

The dialogical impasse is as follows, in the form of, "One man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens":

For the theist/proponent:

• If Anselm's thought is thought, then God exists
• Anselm's thought is humanly thinkable
• Therefore the atheist (who can think this thought) is unwilling to think it

For the atheist:

• If Anselm's thought is thought, then God exists
• God does not exist
• Therefore, Anselm's thought cannot be thought (because it is not humanly thinkable)

(We could also phrase this in a more subjective way as intimates, by making the first premise, "If Anselm's thought is thought, then God must be acknowledged to exist.")

In Klima's own words, the conclusion of the theist's modus ponens is this, "it seems that the theist now may justifiably claim that [...] the atheist just rendered himself unable to think of a humanly otherwise thinkable thought object."

Notice that if the atheist is unable to think Anselm's thought, then there is an infinite gulf of a sort. The theist and the atheist cannot help but talk past one another because they cannot think the same thought, and for Anselm this is the atheist's fault because the atheist is stubbornly refusing to think a humanly thinkable thought.*

I think this is the shape of section 3, but obviously I skimmed over the entire body of the section, which is where some of the more concrete wrestling between the theist and the atheist takes place. I want to look at that tomorrow since it so closely resembles some of the argument that occurred earlier in this thread.


* This charge from Anselm may seem outlandish, but I think it does happen quite commonly in everyday life. Namely, people will intentionally misunderstand so as to avoid an undesirable conclusion, and oddly enough this can even go on below the level of the conscious mind. So I don't think the charge is crazy. But in order for Anselm's charge to hold up at a philosophical level we would have to say that every atheist is intellectually dishonest in this manner, and that is much harder to sustain. We might then say that Anselm's charge is possible but implausible, considered as a categorical claim.

All of this is interesting in its own way, but it reminds me of the adage, "Hard cases make for bad law." If Rodl is to subtly critique the various conceptions of thought on the basis of not properly capturing self-consciousness, and if he is going to do his darndest to capture this notion of self-consciousness with perfect exactitude, will this hyper-focus on self-consciousness produce a reliable anchor for thought? Or is it a hard case that makes for bad law? Because it seems that the response of any of his interlocutors could simply be, "Our approach may not be able to handle the minutiae of self-consciousness, but it provides a much firmer foundation than an approach that is hyper-focused on, or hyper-accommodating to, the subtleties of self-consciousness." So perhaps Rodl thinks that his approach will improve on these other approaches even apart from questions of self-consciousness, or that properly understanding self-consciousness and fitting our theories to that understanding will be the key that unlocks the box containing what has previously remained hidden. And of course Rodl does not say, "I think I am Pandora," but would his interlocutors agree?

---

Good, and let's remind ourselves what Rodl means by "validity": He's not saying that "I judge p to be true" means that it must be true. We can certainly be mistaken in our judgments. He means, "If it is true, then it is valid to so judge." — J

"p is valid, and by that I mean that if p is true then it is valid to judge it true." Or, "I judge p to be true, and by that I mean that if p is true then it is valid to judge it true."

It surely must be more than that. Presumably Rodl is saying that what some separate into a second-order act is already contained in the first-order act, and validity cannot be merely a non-committal conditional, "If it is true..." (because the second-order act was more than a non-committal conditional). Presumably validity involves the notion that it is in fact true, even if this is not infallible.

I was listening to a lecture by Rusty Reno and he describes populism in a pithy way as follows:

Populism emerges when a significant sector of the population rejects the political leadership on offer. — The Conservative Mind with R.R. Reno: At the End of Liberalism - 57:38

I thought the lecture was quite good. It speaks to Trump populism indirectly:

Arguably, the argument simply proves that the atheist cannot deny God (i.e. the being greater than which no being can be thought) without affirming a contradiction. So, it shows that we should affirm the existence of God, on pain of being fools or misologes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a fair and interesting way of reading it. :up: I need to think a bit more about section 3. I'm just trying to catch up on some replies.

However, this itself does not prove "that God exists." We could consider here Brouwer and other's objections to the use of proof by contradiction in existence proofs in mathematics. So, there is a possible distinction here. And perhaps, having taken the conclusion in this way, we could dismiss some of the criticisms re "proofs cannot demonstrate existence," (what about existence theorems?) or "existence simpliciter must somehow be assumed somewhere in the premises" (I think it's fairly obvious that it isn't in Anselm's formulations though). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, I am following what you are saying here. But the difficulty is that affirmation of existence separates from existence, or something like that. Right? If the argument proves that we should affirm the existence of God without proving that God exists, then how does that work? Or do we want to take a half-step back and say that it proves that the atheist cannot deny God without proving that we should affirm the existence of God? (But that seems to fall away from Anselm.) So how would we address these difficulties?

"existence simpliciter must somehow be assumed somewhere in the premises" — Count Timothy von Icarus

I said this earlier:

The wonder of Anselm's proof is that it does something that we think it should not be able to do, and it is very hard to say why it is wrong, or at least to say why rigorously. At this point the argument looks to be sound. It is valid and there are no premises that are clearly or demonstrably false. — Leontiskos

So I don't see that objection as necessarily weak, but it is not a "close argument." If the strongest arguments attack a premise or an inference, then this sort of argument does not meet that criterion, and is a form of begging the question. So I guess it is weaker than an argument which actually addresses the proof itself, but it isn't irrational. I definitely think this form of begging the question will need to be considered at some point, perhaps as we move away from more precise critiques.

(I should note here that all of @Banno's attempts have been of this "weaker," question-begging variety. His claims that he has addressed or disproved premises are simply false. He himself knows that the conclusion he seeks to prove is that (1) involves a contradiction, and he also knows equally well that he has not produced that proof. In my opinion Gaunilo's island objection comes much closer to doing this than Banno's arguments have.)

I'm going to have another look at section 3 and the Proslogion.

Omnipotence is the greatest power. It doesn't follow it is the greatest good or knowledge. God is traditionally conceived as being the greatest everything, so all other things being equal and omnipotent God would be greater than a God whose powers were limited. — Janus

Well this is related to what said about the notion of unlimited (although it is more precisely about power than general unlimitedness). Do we think that a being which is omnipotent is greater than a being that is not? Because maybe someone would say, "If it is an evil being then the omnipotence would make it lesser, not greater." And of course no one thinks it is greater to be evil than to be good, so presumably it would not be an evil being, but the idea brings out your difference between moral (?) goodness and and a form of greatness which prescinds from the moral.

But I tend to think that (1) produces the thought of an omnipotent being, and presumably we are agreed on that?

---

Just like Zeus, eh? Btw, do you stop to think about what omnipotent means and implies? Is omnipotence the greater thing? — tim wood

Do you think it isn't? Do you think premise (1) does not bring with it omnipotence?

(This subject is interesting because a lot of new forms of theism reject omnipotence. But does that mean they would find Anselm's first premise incompatible with their God?)

On the argument, there seems to be a few issues. The first is "greater than." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't find this controversial when applied to existence. See my reply to Wayfarer:

To contradict this is to say that a thought object is not thought to be greater in virtue of its being thought to exist. Or simplified: fiction is as good as the real thing - a fiction that is in fact realized is no greater than an unrealized fiction (where both are thought objects). — Leontiskos

-

But we might suppose that such a concept is hard to fully take in. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is the concept of (1) "unlimited"? Not per se. And are you pointing to instances of "unlimited" that would not be considered great or even good? Because if so, then that kind of unlimited would not filter through the ampliated (1). If someone is thinking of a form of unlimitedness that they don't take to be great, then they aren't really engaging (1). Or at least it seems so to me.

that the argument could suffer from a premise that is not as well known as its conclusion — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is an interesting objection, and one which Klima does not canvass. But if you are depending on the notion of infinity/unlimitedness then I'm again not sure it necessarily filters through (1). Nevertheless, separated from that dependence the objection could still have merit.

This is relevant in that infinite, unlimited being is often called upon to ground metaphysics. The claim that this is "unintelligible" while putting forth "it just is, for no reason at all" as the root explanation for everything is more than a little ironic, particularly when the ad hoc appeal to brute fact is paired with eliminativism or deflationism re causes, such that everything "just is" and explanation seems to be little more than a hallucination resulting from inexplicable constant conjunction in the first place (isn't this just epistemic nihilism with extra steps?) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure. A lot of people are bringing up more general arguments for or against God, and if "unlimited" detaches from the first premise then this would be an instance of that. I am trying to stick close to the paper at least until we've finished the final section. But maybe "unlimited" does derive from the first premise and I'm just not seeing it. For me (1) does bring with it the, "si enim comprehendis, non est Deus" (which is why Banno's "objection" that there might be something greater than what is thought is so poorly aimed). And there is a component of unlimitedness in that, albeit of a particular variety.

Part 3. The Atheist, Who is Not a Fool

I want to open up the third section for anyone who wants to move on. Those who want to keep looking at earlier sections are of course welcome to do so.

In this section Klima takes a step back from Anselm's proof and catalogues some of the different ways that the theist and the atheist might argue for or against Anselm's proof (indeed we have seen in this thread some of the very approaches he outlines). Following Anselm, he tries to zero in on "those basic requirements of rationality that the Fool seems to fail to meet." My impression is that this section of the paper is an intermediate link that doesn't do a great deal of work in itself. It seems to be setting up the problematic that section 4 will address. Further, it is perhaps easing us into a meta-analysis in which the tools provided by section 1 can be brought to bear.

Note that when Klima speaks of "the next argument," he is referring to chapters 3 and 4 of Anselm's Proslogion, which follow upon the argument that Klima formulated in section 2 of the paper. Anselm is there using the conclusion of the proof as a premise in a second argument which reinforces the conclusion that God indeed exists. It seems that this second argument doesn't add much to the first, and more than anything is meant to clarify the outcome.

Again quoting the first words of the section:

It seems, therefore, that all that Anselm’s proof requires is that modicum of rationality which is needed to understand a simple descriptive phrase, to reflect on what the description implies, and to conclude to these implications concerning the thought object one has in mind as a result of understanding the description. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding - Section 3

Note: This thread has attracted some fervent atheists who are strongly predisposed to opposing Anselm’s proof. These atheists should be forewarned that when Klima uses words like “Saint” and “Fool” in this chapter, he is trying to stay close to Anselm’s language in the Proslogion. At this point in the paper he is still engaged a close commentary on the historical proof itself.

- Pulling in quotes from a different thread in order to make it appear as if something was said here? To make it look like the "this thread" from Janus' post in a different thread is a reference to this thread we are in? You're a straight up liar, aren't you Banno? You're literally willing to go around lying through your teeth to make yourself look good. That's pretty psychotic, man. :down:

(a) M(g,g) God can be thought to be greater than god. This is a valid deduction - it follows from the premises. There is the obvious problem of god being thought to be greater than himself. If you are happy with that, then all is fine, but if this strikes you as a bit rich, then this might well be treated as a reductio, showing that at least one of the premises is on the nose. — Banno

You are going to embarrass yourself again by going so fast and not taking enough care. (a) is the root of the reductio itself, for (b) contradicts (1), and yet (5) is what in fact maps to Anselm's argument, not (b). Klima explicitly tells us that, "(the intermediate steps (a) and (b) are inserted here only to facilitate recognizing how an actual derivation might proceed)." What he is doing is presenting the same argument twice, once in natural language and once in standard quantification theory. (a) and (b) are meant to help explicate the space between (4) and (5) in the quantification theory rendering.

Or more simply: you imply that Klima wants to reject (2) and keep (a). That is entirely wrong. In fact he wants to reject (2) because of (a).

I will have to respond to the rest later.

I'm pretty sure you know enough logic to know that truth and validity are not the same thing. — tim wood

The wonder of Anselm's proof is that it does something that we think it should not be able to do, and it is very hard to say why it is wrong, or at least to say why rigorously. At this point the argument looks to be sound. It is valid and there are no premises that are clearly or demonstrably false.

At this point in the thread I want to limit myself to what I call "close arguments," (or close objections), namely objections which stay close to the proof itself. These are basically arguments that attack a premise or an inference, or that try to stay very close to the interlocutor's paradigm. I don't find any of the close arguments convincing. So far, Banno's "close objection" is the one that stands out in the thread, but at the end of the day it looks to me like he is doing little more than gesturing towards the idea that the definition itself might be contradictory.

(I see that just now managed to read the argument more carefully, thus for the first time recognizing that it is a reductio.)

I'm sure that later on there will be opportunity to talk about objections that do not stay close to the proof, such as Aquinas', Kant's, or Frege's.

- Haha :grin:

-

- I like Janus' answer. I know you think the early Christians did not believe that God exists, but luckily we don't have to discuss that theory in this thread.

You can just assume basic, colloquial dictionary definitions for any words we are using.

Thus this God can have, on this construction, no fixed aspect at all, and since everything that exists in reality has some fixed aspect, it must be that God does not exist in reality. — tim wood

Well this looks like an argument against God, and I'm struggling to see how it derives from "this construction" (namely Klima/Anselm's definition of God). In any case, most theists would agree that God does not have fixed aspects. To use your descriptors, he is not tall, short, big, or small. So that seems fine.

Further, it is adduced without proof that objects in reality are greater than objects of thought. Yet lots of things are clearly greater as objects of thought than as instantiated in reality. E.g., two, justice, love, The American Way, and even God himself. — tim wood

Okay, so here you are disputing premise (3). Let's take one of your examples: justice. Suppose I have a thought of <justice in Massachusetts>. This thought is in my intellect but it is not in reality. But now suppose that the thought of <justice in Massachusetts> is both in my intellect and in reality (i.e. there is truly justice in Massachusetts). Is not this second thought greater than the first?

(A little different from the paper since we are flubbing "can be thought to exist," but that's probably fine for our purposes.)

And finally, as a being conceived - in any way whatever - He must be conceived by a conceiver. And who might that be? It cannot be God. Me? You? Banno? We will all have different conceptions; does that mean different Gods? — tim wood

Yes, this is an interesting objection, although it does not critique any particular premise of Klima's argument.

I guess I don't see why the definition in (1) must be exhaustive, as if our conception exhausts that than which nothing greater can be thought (indeed, were it exhausted it presumably could not be what it purports to be). Nevertheless, there could be conceptions which are not only different but also contradictory. Presumably the theist would here reply that the conception is not infallible. For example, if my argument about justice succeeds then an existing thought object is greater than a non-existing thought object. But other predicates may not be so easy.

The other question is this: how much would we disagree on what is greater? If contradiction and not mere difference is required, then there must be substantial disagreement on what is greater in order for the premise of the objection to succeed.

I see your point; but I am thinking that wouldn’t the ‘being alive’ be a result of those parts interacting with each other properly? Viz., if you give a dead person an organ transplant and get their neurons to start firing again and what not then wouldn’t they be alive? A part of the physical constitution of a thing is the process which is has (e.g., you can have an engine with all the parts in the right place and yet it isn’t burning fuel [i.e., on], but if you know how to start it up then it starts working properly). — Bob Ross

Well, suppose life is just the result of an accidental collection, such that when the parts are in place there is life. So as an analogy, if my jigsaw puzzle is complete, then there is life. If I take away one piece or another, then there is not life. On this view life is somehow structural.

For Aristotle you need more than just parts. You need a whole. And maybe "parts interacting with each other properly" is enough to represent that whole.

Your engine counterargument is interesting, though. Certainly Aristotle would say that the car is an artificial whole, not a real or organic whole. What this means in part is that the parts are not just interacting with one another. They are interacting with a whole of which they are a part. This is why we say, "I see with my eyes. I walk with my legs. I punch with my fist. I think with my brain." The parts are relating to some whole that is employing them and on which they rely.

Here is Ed Feser discussing change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3uoCi9VjI starting at 25:15. — Bob Ross

:up:

So it is something like the actualization involved in the normal force that upholds a desk on the floor, which is more than what we think of as change or motion. Gotcha, that makes sense.

Yes, but by ‘motion’ the medieval’s and pre-medieval’s meant any actualization of a potential and not locomotion. If you think about it, this would make sense; since for Aristotle (and Ed Feser) God keeps us in existing right now: they are not arguing merely for a being which started the locomotion at the beginning of the universe (or something like that). That would require this idea of a “hierarchical series” which is a per se series of composition which is analyzed in terms of what causes each thing to remain the same (e.g., Ed Feser likes to use the example of H20: the atoms that make up that molecule don’t themselves have any reason to be H2O—something else actualizes that and keeps it that way [and its the keeping it that way that seems to break the law of inertia]). — Bob Ross

Okay, I have a better sense of what you are saying now.

- Thanks Paine. Another very lucid and helpful post. :up:

Thus the soundness of the concept of a c-proposition depends on there being this structure to the thought of someone who uses a sentence to make an assertion: thinking it correct to use the sentence in the way that she does, she thinks that a c-proposition is true at the context in which she uses it. — ibid. page 30

Some overlap here:

Accordingly, linguistic expressions refer to what their users intend by them to refer to in a given context, that is, what they think of while using the expression either properly, or improperly.8 So referring was held to be a context-dependent property of terms: according to this view, the same expression in different propositional contexts may refer to different things, or refer to something in one context, while refer to nothing in another. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof

-

The question becomes, on what basis does that "structure of thought" involve verification from what is presumed to exist outside of it. At that point, I do not see it as a matter of how "Pat" or "Quenton" choose what is happening. — Paine

Yes, I think I am just barely understanding what you are saying here. Is it something like the idea that c-propositions, if true, demonstrate that there is significant bleed between force and content? Or does the new distinction's newness simply conceptualize the territory differently without in any way reordering that which force/content takes for granted? Is there any continuity between the force/content distinction and the new distinction?

A general point to note: within the premodern metaphysical vision, particularly in Neoplatonism and Christian theology, being was understood as a form of plenitude—what the ancients called the Pleroma, the 'fullness of being'. From this perspective, being is not a neutral or arbitrary descriptor, but an expression of fullness, goodness, and actuality, compared to which non-existence or non-being is a privation or deficiency. — Wayfarer

Yes, and this bears on premise (3):

(3) any thought object that can be thought to exist in reality can be thought to be greater than any thought object that is only in the intellect — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 2

To contradict this is to say that a thought object is not thought to be greater in virtue of its being thought to exist. Or simplified: fiction is as good as the real thing - a fiction that is in fact realized is no greater than an unrealized fiction (where both are thought objects).

Also worth noting that for the medievals, arguments for God’s existence were devotional as much as polemical — Wayfarer

This is true. But I would add that they are philosophical as much as they are devotional or polemical. Moreso, I would say. That is, Anselm is trying to engage in rigorous thinking, and this comes out when one reads him.

The ontological argument, in this context, is not merely a logical proof but an intellectual prayer — Wayfarer

Yes, it is a way in which one approaches God, and in that sense there is a measure of reverence involved. Anselm does not take it to be inconsequential or unimportant, as mere "logic chopping" might be.

So I'll set aside Leon's endless requests to repeat myself and take the criticism of (1) as read. — Banno

And moving on is fine, but I want to highlight that this objection of yours is precisely the sort of Quinian question-begging that Klima wanted to offer an alternative to in the first section of his paper:

He defines god as the greatest thing that can be thought of, and there is no guarantee that there is any such thing. — Banno

("If there is no guarantee of existence, then conceptualization is not possible.")

But if the thought of god is not coherent, then (2) collapses. — Banno

This is a repetition of your objection to (1).

(3). ∀x∀y(I(x)∧R(y)→M(y,x))
This says that for any x and any y, where x is in the intellect but y is real, y can be thought greater than x. This requires some attention, because it is mainly here that the presumption that god exists slips in. It's sitting there in plain sight, in that we have it that from (1) that there is a greatest thing, and here the presumption that that greatest thing is real. — Banno

If one wants to object to (3), they need to provide an objection to (3). They can't say, "If we allow this, then God exists. But I am an atheist so we can't allow it." That's begging the question.

Beyond that, remember Klima's point in section 1 where Gaunilo mistakenly takes Anselm to be saying that "we have it that from (1) that there is a greatest thing."

Even if we admit (1), why shouldn't we just suppose that the greatest thing can be conceived of, but not be real? Why could it not be the case that the greatest thing can be imagined, and yet might not exist? — Banno

That is precisely what the argument does. (2) supposes that the greatest thing can be conceived of but is not real.

But before starting, am I to understand you have no problems with it? — tim wood

Klima claims that the proof is valid, and it looks to me that he is correct.

Then this thought object cannot be quantified in any way, for to be quantified entails that another, greater, can be thought. And this here is fatal. Need we go on? — tim wood

I see you saying, "This thought object can't be quantified, and that's fatal." I'm not sure I understand the objection.

What a prat. — Banno

:roll:

Your animosity towards me leads you to simply gainsay my every point. — Banno

You are here projecting your own difficulties. For example, when I asked you a question we both knew the answer to, you decided to lie instead of tell the truth. And when I asked you to remove the misrepresentative dollar signs etc. from your "quotation" of "Klima's proof," you simply refused to do so, even though you know that one should not insert random symbols into quotations of others (regardless of how they got there).

And that shit gets old, Banno. The desire to accurately quote one's interlocutors seems like a sine qua non for engagement on a philosophy forum.

But as it seems the thread was also about Anselm's proof, I opted in. — tim wood

Fair enough. Anselm's proof is definitely a big part of the paper. I tried to highlight that in the OP:

Its focal point is St. Anselm’s famous proof for God’s existence, although that proof is not what the paper is ultimately centered on. — Leontiskos

-

God, it appears, is by Anselm reckoned as that than which & etc. And that seems a matter of definition and presupposition - thus not proved. — tim wood

As I said earlier, in section 2 Klima gives his formulation of Anselm's proof "in a natural language argument, and then in quantification theory" (). Banno has been focusing on the latter, but presumably a lot of people would rather talk about the former. Here it is:

By the meaning of the term,

(1) God is the thought object than which no thought object can be thought to be greater

Now suppose that

(2) God is only in the intellect (i.e. God is thought of, but does not exist)

But certainly

(3) any thought object that can be thought to exist in reality can be thought to be greater than any thought object that is only in the intellect

And it cannot be doubted that

(4) God can be thought to exist in reality

Therefore,

(5) Some thought object can be thought to be greater than the thought object than which no thought object can be thought to be greater [1,2,3,4]

which is a contradiction, whence we have to abandon our supposition that God is only in the intellect, so he has to exist in reality, too. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 2

(A link to Anselm's original work was given <here>.)

So do you find any problems in Klima's natural language formulation of Anselm's proof?

That's an example of ampliation, where we use natural numbers to reach beyond themselves. — Banno

What is your idea here? Is it that ampliation has to do with "reaching beyond themselves," and so that if something is reaching beyond it is ampliating? I am not following why you think this is ampliation.

He defines god as the greatest thing that can be thought of, and there is no guarantee that there is any such thing. — Banno

Again, if we needed a guarantee that something actually exists before conceptualizing it, then every being of reason would be a being. Then we could in no way think about what does not exist.

g:=ix¬(∃y)M(y,x) does not work becasue there might simply always be some y such that y is greater than x. — Banno

I think Klima and Anselm would say, "Yes, of course there might always be some y such that y is greater than x."
(That is, the thing-being-thought need not be greater than everything that in fact exists. This even seems like a theistic truism.)

But Leon, this is not a candidate for the greatest number. That's the point. It's the first (defined by "min") of a whole new sequence of numbers greater than any natural number.

Similarly, no sooner do you think of a being greater than any other, than you can think of a being greater than that individual. The series need have no end. — Banno

Okay, then I misunderstood what you were saying. But I still don't see that you have an argument against the concept. Read my last paragraph <here>, where I grant the idea of a proof against a greatest number (even though you haven't provided such a proof). That is: even if one has a bona fide proof that the concept does not exist in reality (i.e. is not a being), it does not therefore follow that the concept itself does not exist (i.e. that there is no being of reason/entia rationis).

The discussion of whether the concept "the greatest number" can be a real concept even without existing in reality is directly parallel to the points that Klima makes in the first section of the paper. This is not irrelevant.

And you misrepresent my saying that the parsing of his argument, the formatting, was ugly as my saying that the argument was ugly. — Banno

Not at all. You went out of your way to call Klima's argument ugly, which is eristic. And when I pointed out that you mis-quoted Klima and included all sorts of symbols that do not occur in his argument at all, you refused to correct your misrepresentation (a number of times). If you don't want to be here, that's your call. I would rather interact with people who accurately represent their interlocutor's arguments and correct blatant errors of misrepresentation when they are made aware of them. (For the umpteenth time, why the hell does your quote of Klima contain dollar signs, quotation marks, and the "registered trademark" symbol? No such symbols are present in his formulation of Anselm's proof.)

He is specifically advocating not becoming involved in the sort of discussion now occurring here, that the parties 'should not seek sheer “winning” in a debate'. — Banno

Rather, Klima thinks debating and argument is crucially important, particularly with respect to fine and concrete points. This is what we are doing right now.

Eristic is always a problem, but if you look at your early posts in this thread I think you will find no other posts exhibiting more eristic than those. One of them does nothing more than accuse Klima's argument of being "ugly."

Without taking some time to wrestle with Anselm's proof one has no sense of the problems and intricacies involved. We have a whole forum of threads full of 30,000 foot pontifications, typed out in a Twitter-esque flurry of keyboard strokes. Let's do something different in this thread. Besides, the "free for all" will come in due time. Is working through a paper really such an undue burden? Do we always have to take a position on a paper before we read it carefully?

(This thread is also meant to have a low barrier to entry, in the sense that right now anyone could read a handful of pages and jump into the thread. They don't have to read a book or know a whole tradition before contributing meaningfully. They don't even have to read an entire article. That low barrier to entry is crucially important if different traditions are going to engage each other rather than merely talk past one another.)

Concepts that contradict themselves. — Banno

But you know full well that you haven't demonstrated a contradiction:

good reason to think that it is not possible — Banno

Good reason != contradictory proof

Let’s look at ampliation in relation to Banno’s objection:

But that it was essentially the same conception of reference that was at work in his mind when he formulated his arguments in the Proslogion is clearly shown by his insistence against Gaunilo that his crucial description “that than which nothing greater can be thought of” is in no way to be equated with “greater than everything”. It is precisely the ampliative force, recognized as such by 12th-century logicians, that is missing from the latter, and is missed from it, though not described as such, by Saint Anselm in his response to Gaunilo’s objection. — Gyula Klima, St. Anselm's Proof - Section 1

Let’s consider three different options with respect to the greatest number:

• First: "The greatest number"
• Second: "The greatest number one can think of"
• Third: "The number than which no number can be thought to be greater"

For the moment let’s stick with the first and second options.

So suppose @Banno and @Count Timothy von Icarus are on a game show where they are asked a question, and they both have to answer the question within two seconds. If they were asked a question about the first option, “What is the greatest number?,” there would be no answer.

But what if we take a particular instantiation of the second option? “What is the greatest number you can think of?” With two seconds to answer, @Banno says x and @Count Timothy von Icarus says y. In fact as long as x != y one of the two numbers will be greater than the other, and either @Banno or @Count Timothy von Icarus will have won the round.

Similarly, children (or adults too) might play the game, “What is the greatest number one can think of?” We can imagine the dialogue:

• One hundred
• One million!
• One billion
• One billion plus 1
• One billion times one billion
• 2 undecillion (the number of rubles that Russia fined Google)

Eventually someone might offer an analogy as an answer to the question: < x:∞ :: 0.999… : 1 >
(Whether or not we think this makes sense)

Similarly Banno offers the following, a worthy candidate:

ω:=min{x∣x is an ordinal and ∀n∈N,n<x} — Banno

Now in the game show and in each of the children’s answers, the concept, “The greatest number one can think of” is operative. That is precisely the concept they are using to formulate their answers. So the idea that there is no such concept looks to be mistaken.

The fact that “thought” is incorporated into option 2 in a way that it is not incorporated into option 1 is a form of ampliation. “Thought” is part of the option itself. To talk about option 1 instead of option 2 would be a form of equivocation which avoids the ampliation. Indeed, option 2 represents a concept which produces determinate answers when engaged, but which has no determinate answer of itself. Nevertheless, each of the determinate answers it produces when engaged does have a form of determination qua the thought of the engaging individual (namely it will represent something like a personal limit on number knowledge).

Now suppose someone believes that they have a proof (say, from mathematical induction) that there is no greatest number (or else greatest prime, which is more fun). In that case they will believe that option 1 represents a contradiction (via their proof), but the question of the status of the concept is still an open question (given the fact that not everyone possesses such a proof, valid or invalid).

Will someone be good enough to provide as an aid to navigation a simple proposition expressing exactly what they think Anselm proves? — tim wood

Anselm's proof is for the conclusion that God "has to exist also in reality."

And the same service for Gyula Klima's paper? — tim wood

In order to understand what a paper contains one must read it. That's what we are doing. We are reading the paper. We are on section 2 of 5. Once we finish the paper we will be positioned to answer the question of what the paper is about. You can't say what a paper is about before you have read (and understood) it.

So I would be happy to talk about your first question regarding Anselm's proof, but as to your second question, I do not think we are yet positioned to answer it. In fact the second question ignores the OP and seeks an understanding of the paper before we have even moved on to section 3. I think it is good for philosophers to take their time in this way - to not draw their conclusions until all of the arguments and sections have been examined. Until all of the pages of the book have been read. In any case, that's what I want to do in this thread.

And so far I am only looking at premise (1), no further. We can go on when this bit has been understood. — Banno

The problem with objecting to the two-place predicate M()() in premise (1) without looking at premise (3) is that premise (3) is the crucial place where that predicate is actually doing work (and it is therefore the locus for understanding the predicate). You are effectively objecting to a possible way that M()() might be used, and the response is, "The place where Klima uses it is premise (3), and if his usage in premise (3) does not contravene your stricture on a possible way that it cannot be used, then the objection to this possible misuse of M()() has nothing to do with Klima's formulation of Anselm's proof."

One of the points I made is that Klima does not make use of the "ampliation" in (1), and he ought. — Banno

That's a remarkable claim. Why don't you think he is making use of ampliation in (1)? And how ought he have made use of it?

Yep. Concepts that contradict themselves. Like "The largest number". — Banno

Why does "the largest number" contradict itself? It seems to me that ω produces an infinite loop, not a contradiction.

So you want me to flesh out your concept of god for you. — Banno

Your objection relies on the idea that some concepts cannot exist even as beings of reason (entia rationis). If you can't flesh out that idea then the objection goes nowhere, given that the whole thrust of section 1 is that for Anselm a being of reason need not be a being (simpliciter).

Gaunilo of Marmoutier took this approach by positing an "island greater than which none can be conceived," in order to try to show that Anselm's argument can be used to demonstrate the existence of all sorts of things. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and I actually think Klima's interpretation vindicates Anselm's reply to Gaunilo. I added a link to Anselm's Proslogion <here>, and the header will get you to the appended parts with Gaunilo.

But in my opinion Banno is doing something a fair bit different. He is saying something like, "There is no greatest-number-concept; and a greatest-thought-concept is a lot like a greatest-number-concept; therefore there probably is no greatest-thought-concept; and therefore Klima/Anselm is not allowed to define God after the manner of a greatest-thought-concept." Or similarly, "A child might think there is a greatest number, but there is not a greatest number; therefore the child never had the concept of a greatest number in the first place." Banno is engaged in a form of concept denial, which he would need to flesh out.

(And it is worth noting that Banno's objection is much closer to Russell and Quine than Gaunilo's is.)

But I think real problem for ontological arguments is that they are unconvincing. I don't think anyone has been converted by an ontological argument, or that many people of faith feel their faith significantly bolstered by such arguments. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I actually know philosophers who find the argument convincing, but they lack prejudice in an abnormal way. Someone without prejudice who encounters an argument that they cannot find fault with will accept the conclusion, or at least be greatly troubled by it. But that's rare.

I haven't generally found Anselm's argument convincing, but there are presentations which are undeniably beguiling.