↪bert1 It's entailed by omnipotence!! The definition of God that I gave - and that you completely ignored - is that God is omnipotent (among other things). That entails that there is only one God. If X denotes someone who has 3 + 1 apples, then it denotes someone who has 4 apples. That you can't see that doesn't mean it wasn't there in the definition. — Bartricks

Sorry I'm so stupid

Uniqueness follows from omnipotence - you can't have more than one omnipotent person. — Bartricks

OK, but that's still not part of the definition you gave.

Now, engage with the substance of my case and stop telling me about how you misuse the word God. — Bartricks

You're not my real dad

I do not think I am God — Bartricks

You mean this? You were intending that as part of the definition? If so, that's not clear, and uniqueness is implied not explicit.

Opening line of the OP. Read it — Bartricks

It contains no stipulation of uniqueness

Yes, my definition of God entails that. That's why I said right at the outset that by God I mean an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person. It follows that to qualify as God you need those properties and that having those properties makes one God. All you needed to do was read my OP. — Bartricks

Oh, but that's not right. I did read your OP. From this:

It's not a God making property. If I am omnipresent it does not follow that I am God, nor does a lack of it imply i am not God. Any number of persons can be omnipresent, but there is only one God and so on. — Bartricks

You are clearly saying it is not just a matter of arbitrary stipulation that God need not be omnipresent. You give reasons for its exclusion other than its not meeting your stipulated definition. Namely, that omnipresence is consistent with multiplicity, but God is one. But not according to your definition, which you are taking as primary! You didn't include uniqueness in your original stipulation.

It's not a God making property. If I am omnipresent it does not follow that I am God, nor does a lack of it imply i am not God. Any number of persons can be omnipresent, but there is only one God and so on.
If you want you can insist that having red hair is the God making, but then you are simply using the term God to denote red headed people and are not using it as I am. — Bartricks

Oh, OK. You think omnipresence is neither necessary nor sufficient for God, but the other onmis are both necessary and sufficient? Is that your position?

I've defined God as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person. Omnipresence is not a God-making property and seems positively incompatible with omnibenevolence as it would mean God watches us shower.
An omnipotent being has the ability to be omnipresent, but they would not exercise it. — Bartricks

You can choose whatever omnis you like for your definition, of course. You prefer benevolence to presence, I was just wondering why. Is benevolence simply more traditional? Or you feel it is more consistent with the others? Seems to be that latter.

For me presence seems to be the most important one, and the one that generates the most difficulties if left out.

And so, once more, it seems I cannot be completely sure that I am not omniscient, even though I appear to be ignorant of a great deal and to have many false beliefs. — Bartricks

Don't put yourself down Bartricks. You can take humility too far.

By 'God' I mean an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person — Bartricks

How do you feel about omnipresence? Omni-gods are sometimes omnipresent, sometimes omnibenevolent, but curiously not often both in these kinds of discussions.

Why can't this happen in the dark:

The brain models a self~world relation. That is why consciousness feels like something - the something that is finding yourself as a self in its world. — apokrisis

But this can:

The computational paradigm boils down to a simple argument. Data input gets crunched into data output. Somehow information enters the nervous system, gets processed via a collection of specialised cognitive modules, and then all that results – hands starting to wave furiously at this point - in a consciously experienced display. — apokrisis

If everything is X, then we might as well say nothing is, for nothing is picked out. — Pie

Yeah, it's just he's so sure about that.

No, he won't. — Banno

Oh, what will he say?

EDIT: Perhaps it's this one:

"The same logic that leads to skepticism about objects existing independently of my mind can be applied also to other minds. So if we have no reason to believe in mind-independent objects, we also have no reason to believe in other minds, therefore solipsism. "

Is that it?

Go on... — Isaac

It's Banno's turn. He'll say realism is much better for explaining object permanence than idealism. Then I'll say the next bit.

I think Saussure is basically right — Pie

I'm not so sure he is

The OP asks us to consider the relation between idealism and solipsism. So it is worth considering how an idealist reaches the conclusion that other minds exist. — Banno

Let's get it over with. Object permanence. Your turn.

Take a lump of clay. This lump is currently a sphere. That is a property it has. Now change it so that it is a cube. Well, it has changed shape, but nothing has been added or taken away from it. That is, the clay has not been divided. — Bartricks

Sure, but it changes its shape because of the particles in it moving around. Its ability to change shape depends on the fact that it is composed of many small parts. That doesn't disprove you of course, it may be that indivisible minds are just not like clay in the relevant respects. I was just trying to understand how something indivisible can change. You could say "Well it must do, because minds change and minds are indivisible, exactly how they do it is not my concern." I've heard people say that kind of thing on this forum about other matters (i.e. such and such must be the case somehow, and it's not the job of me as a philosopher to work out the details of how).

EDIT: maybe it's a kind of stretchiness that isn't like the stretchiness caused by chemical bonds in, say, rubber? But I'm thinking of spatially extended analogues, whereas you don't think minds are spatially extended at all (unlike me).

Minds 'have' states - they're called mental states for that very reason. A mental state is a 'state of mind'. That is, a state a mind can be in. — Bartricks

You said earlier that minds are indivisible, not made of parts. But they can be in states that are different from one another. Typically, objects change their states by rearranging their parts in some way. But for a partless immaterial soul, I'm struggling to understand how such a thing could support different states. How can it change?

Sancta trinitas unus deus. — Agent Smith

Frater domi dormit

Pater non domi scribit et studet

People keep trying to attach some kind of importance or magic to consciousness when it's nothing more than just taking in information. — Darkneos

It is more than that though.

Okay. I misunderstood. You already had the answer before you asked. — 180 Proof

Nay, I wasn't sufficiently clear. We do have to specify a reference point, but one of the entropic states will do as a reference. I guess the question then becomes, if everything after that state is the future, and everything before it is the past, then is not the entropic state itself the present state?

You're asking for a "reference point" other than the relative reference points (entropic states). — 180 Proof

No I'm not

Entropy doesn't care about the direction of time. That's a misconception. See here: — Tate

Oh, no doubt. I have no idea. 180 was the one saying that future is more entropy and past is less entropy.

Nope. Unlike abstract objects "6 & 7", lower entropy is relative to higher entropy. There is no "absolute reference point". Thus, relativity of simultaneity. — 180 Proof

I never said nor implied there was an absolute reference point

Entropy-states are relative to one another (re: before / after). A lower degree of disorder relative to a higher degree of disorder. — 180 Proof

So we have to specify a reference point, then, no? Without that there is no past or future as 6 is in the past of 7 but the future of 5. So we need to set a reference point of 5 or 7 before we can tell what 6 is. We need a now before the concept of past and future make sense, even thermodynamically, no?

Entropy states from low to high:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Which ones are in the past and which ones are in the future?

Is the present real or imaginary, psychologically?

What, thermodynamically, separates the past from the future?

Now is a point and points are imaginary. — 180 Proof

Oh, OK, so there is no now. Are the past and future imaginary?

I don't even know what your ramble means. — 180 Proof

Oh, that's a shame. Anyone else know what I'm talking about? Or is it too opaque for everyone?

EDIT: Whenever you are conscious, it's now isn't it? Is that how it is for you? That's how it is for me.

Incoherent (re: relativity of simultaneity). — 180 Proof

It's not about having an absolute now. A relative now would do. Consciousness is sufficient for a now - I am never conscious in the past or the future. But is there being a now sufficient for consciousness? I don't know. I'm not sure what that would mean. And is there being a now necessary for something to happen? Can an event happen at a time that is never now?

I don't know the answers to these questions. No doubt you do, of course.

Are you a sociopath then? — hypericin

Oh, I don't know. Maybe, but I was joking I think. I started off not joking thinking it would be fun, then realised it might not be fun at all, then further realised that what fun was to be had would likely be in the suffering of another, and then I decided to stop thinking about it.

a misinterpretation. — 180 Proof

For which you bear partial responsibility

Would a universe without consciousness have any states-of-affairs? Would there ever be a now, a present moment in such a universe, in which a state-of-affairs could exist?

I neither claimed nor implied that color-signedness "serves no function". — 180 Proof

It was a natural interpretation of your words.

I would thoroughly enjoy abusing them, although I'm not sure I would enjoy it actually, knowing that they aren't actually suffering.

For those who may not known physicalism is a philosophy in which there is nothing beyond that which is strictly physical/material. — Benj96

The difficulty with it is its circular definition. Is it any more than monism? What have you said about something when you say it is physical?

I think 24 is enough for most things.

Street frequently went a bit apoplectic. I didn't find him offensive but I support the ban. Rules and have to apply to everyone, including the relatively well informed. Not sure why I didn't find him offensive - his apoplexy was easy to ignore for me, but I can imagine many others being very put off by it. Part of it is that I broadly agreed with him politically and morally. I totally disagreed with him on metaphysics and ToM but even then I didn't find his views particularly challenging even when expressed at 10,000 kelvin.

A definition sets the essence of some thing in words. — Banno

I don't think that's what dictionaries intend. The definition of 'tree' on dictionary.com uses qualifiers such as 'usually' and 'ordinarily' to indicate central unproblematic cases without implying an essence.

Philosophers might insist on essences, but that doesn't reflect lexicography.

Stipulating an essence is sometimes useful in a discussion when an important point depends on extreme clarity to be made. But usually identifying a usage is good enough for accuracy.

I like dictionaries. They're fun. And they contain definitions, which are also fun. Don't spoil the fun by saying that lexicographers peddle essences, or that definitions always stipulate essences.

Definitions describe usage, which I would have though you approve of.

The one that is codified in its foundational religious texts, or the one espoused by the people who claim to be members of said religion? — baker

Christianity isn't really codified in the new testament is it? It's hardly an unambiguous watertight legal document.