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.

Yes, what I said isn't what you attributed to me.

I have about 13 sachets of sugar in my coffee when I drink out and it causes problems as a mountain of spent paper cartridges builds up around my cup and it invariably draws comment. But I am not sure if that is relevant to this discussion.

No, I did not say that. I define omniscience as being in possession of all knowledge. Someone who is in possession of all knowledge is omniscient.
Possible knowledge is not actual knowledge. A possible murderer is not an actual murderer. These are not trivial differences.
I did not say that God changes the definitions. My point was that an omnipotent being will be the arbiter of knowledge for the presence or absence of a justification for a belief will rest in their hands. And thus their own attitudes determine what does and doesn't qualify as an item of knowledge. The definition of knowledge has not changed and nor has the definition of omniscience.

No, I did not say that. But I think that someone who thinks I did is not worth debating with as they will misunderstand every single thing i say.

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.

Yes. It's not remotely reasonable to believe one is God. After all, my arguments apply to us all, and there are billions of us and only one God, so the odds are at least billions to one. But still, it can't be ruled out entirely.

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.

I do not understand what you mean. I am saying that I cannot seem to rule out - not categorically- that I may have the properties of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. And thus I cannot completely rule out that I am God. I do not see how what you have said engages in any way with the case I made.

This is just etymologically branded linguistic prescriptivism. Regardless, I already granted your analysis as you pointed out — Kuro

Omni is latin for 'all' and scientia is latin for 'knowledge'. So historically it has meant 'all knowledge'.

If one wants one can define omniscience as 'in possession of a potato'. Hell, one can define 'God' as a potato and then insist that you just dug God up in the vegetable patch.

I have also justified this use of the term: if you define it differently, you'll get an incoherent collection of attributes, for it does not seem possible for a person to be omnipotent, and omnibenevolent and in possession of all truths.

I made the most charitable interpretation. If you truly mean 'all of actual knowledge' by omniscience then this is an awfully trivial definition wholly divorced from what anyone means by 'omniscient', since, I, like many other living people, know everything that I actually know, which has virtually nothing to do with knowing everything that is knowable (which was my initial charitable interpretation) let alone knowing every truth (what most theists think). This just prima facie renders anyone that knows anything to be omniscient, since they know everything they actually know. — Kuro

It's not at all charitable and you've ignored what I said. It is not charitable to attribute to someone a view they did not express and furthermore a view that doesn't make sense.

I'll simply repeat what I said: to be in possession of all trees does not require being in possession of all potential trees. LIkewise, to be in possession of all knowledge dose not require being in possession of all potential knowledge. We're all potential murderers - should we all be locked up for actual murder?

And my definition of omniscience is clearly not trivial. How is it trivial?

Hm. An omniscient being that knows all there is to know yet "fails to have many true beliefs". Sounds a bit iffy to me. — Outlander

That's solely due to conflating true beliefs with knowledge. They're not the same. One can be in possession of all true beliefs and not be omniscient. What if, by pure luck, one just accurately guesses all the truths there are and comes to believe them? Well, that person does not know a thing, yet they are in possession of all true beliefs.

Furthermore, there is good reason to think that God isn't in possession of all true beliefs, for that'd mean he has true beliefs about everything everyone has done and thought etc. No good person who had the power to resist acquiring such beliefs would acqurie them, as that'd be a gross invasion of other people's privacy.

I think there can be two readings of omniscience. — Kuro

Omniscience means 'all knowledge'. If - as many contemporary theists foolishly do - one defines it to mean 'all truth beliefs' then one is simply misusing a term (for one can be in possession of all true beliefs and yet not be in possession of all knowledge). Certainly it is no abuse of the term 'omniscience' to use it to label someone who is in possession of all knowledge.

Furthermore, if one defines God as a person who is in possession of all true beliefs, then one runs into difficulties, for that seems incompatible with omnibenevolence. God would turn out to have true beliefs about my bowel habits and my inner most secret thoughts - all of which are things a good person would not wish to acquire true beliefs about, due to it disrespecting another's privacy. And God would also have to believe that he is morally perfect, which is incompatible with being morally perfect (you're not humble if you believe you're morally perfect, yet humility is something a morally perfect person would need).

So, the contemporary theist is simply abusing language and abusing it to no advantage, as their abuse makes their view incoherent.

Anyway, like I say, it is no abuse of the term 'omniscient' to use it to denote someone who is in possession of all knowledge - after all, what else would one call such a person?

But you are willing to grant me this and think that I can still know that I am not omniscient in this (correct) sense of the term. But in fact you swapped my definition of omniscience for another and said that it is to be in possession of all potential knowledge. To be omniscient is to be in possession of all actual knowledge, not all possible knowledge. If a true belief is a possible item of knowledge, yet does not yet qualify as such, then lacking it does not make one lacking in knowledge. If I own all the world's trees, but not all the world's acorns, I still own all the world's trees, even though i do not own all the potential trees.

So, the fact that I do not know what 175 x 345 = does not necessarily entail a lack of knowledge on my part, for if I am omnipotent - something I can't establish with certainty that I am not - then I am the arbiter of knowledge and thus when or if I figure out what 175 x 345 is and favour myself believing it, there is no knowledge of what that sum equals, only true and false beliefs about it.

With great difficulty.

Divisible. Therefore one's mind is not a boner.

Itself. Indivisible things are called 'simples' and they are not made of anything more basic than themselves.
Not everything can be made of other things. So there must be some simples from which all else is made. And it would seem we ourselves are simples.

The only extended thing that begins with a b that you can conceive of is a banana?
I don't know what you can conceive of as I so not have access to the content of your mind, so you need to tell me what comes next. But it will be divisible and thus won't be a mind.

Yes, you can have half a banana, but not half a mind. Therefore minds are not bananas. Shall we run through every single extended thing you can conceive of?

That's half a brain. Brains can be halved. Minds can't be halved. Minds are therefore not brains

And when it comes to logic, assume that every argument you believe to be deductively valid I also believe to be deductively valid.

This is not about the content of logic. This is about what logic itself is. And what logic itself is is a set of instructions from Reason, yes?

if this premise - P - is true, and if this premise - q - is true, then you ought to conclude that therefore P and Q is the case, yes?

So it is a set of instructions about what to believe.

And instructions need an instructor.

And only an agency - only a mind - can issue an instruction.

So, Reason - the source of all the edicts of Reason (for that is why she is called Reason) - is a person.

And she will have power 'over' logic, for logic is no more or less than instructions she is issuing.

And thus, she will be omnipotent. And so she will be God.

You can believe in a person who is subject to Reason's will rather than the source of it, but then you believe in a god, not God.

I believe it is you who does not understand logic. For what do you think it is? A strange cosmic glue that binds even God? Is it a straightjacket that God did not design yet that he is in and that constrains him?

If someone has power over whether or not something is nonsense, then they have more power than someone who does not.

So once more: a person who can do more things than another is more powerful than that person. And it is a contradiction - so, actual nonsense - to maintain that a person who has more power than another is also the less powerful one of the two.

Again then: I believe in a god who can do anything. You believe in a god who can do some things and not others. That is, you believe in a god who is constrained by some mysterious external power source that he is not himself the source of (else he would not be constrained by it).

You simply don't believe in God, then. You can say you do. But you don't. For your god is less powerful than mine. And your god is not the one described in the bible either.

How can something that has no extension be able to have states, as in the states of mind? Are they states of an expanse-less thing? — Daniel

I do not know what you want by way of an answer. Our minds are immaterial: that's what the argument from indivisibility appears to show. And our minds have states. So, the evidence is that immaterial things have states. I do not owe an account of 'how' that could be the case - it clearly 'is' the case.

Furthermore, when it comes to some sensible object - a piece of cheese, say - it makes sense to wonder what it might feel like, or taste like, given that one can see it (or of something one is only touching, it makes sense to wonder what it might look like). But it clearly makes no sense to wonder what it thinks like.

So, it seems that our reason represents sensible objects to be things that have states such as shape, and size and colour and so on, but not mental states.

And when it comes to our minds it seems to make no sense to wonder what they look like, or smell like, or taste like, or what colour they are. And so our reason seems to represent those things that have mental states positively not to have sensible states.

Try to imagine that. — Daniel

I imagine you have a mind. And you imagine I do. When you imagine that, what colour and size and texture do you imagine my mind to have? None,yes? You imagine a thing that is in a state of thought, rather than something that has sensible states.

Can it be said that logic frees rather than constrains? — Agent Smith

No. If one is not bound by logic - because one is its author - then one has a power that someone who is bound by logic lacks, namely the power to alter logic. There's no power one gains by being constrained by logic.

If so, the stone paradox is both a positive (god doesn't do irrational stuff) and a negative (god can't do irrational stuff). — Agent Smith

There is no paradox there. Can God make a stone too heavy for him to lift? Yes. There are at least two ways he could do this. He could divest himself of his omnipotence. Or, more impressively, he could make a contradiction true (by making a stone that is too heavy for him to lift and lifting it).

Too, suicide, an exclusively human phenomenon (recall your previous coupla-months-old post) simply won't make sense to animals. Is our relationship with god of a similar character? Clearly, there's something inanimate about life - a stone, a plane full of screaming passengers, both follow the laws of gravity. How often do we stop and examine a worm, a bug? Do we feel any compassion for microbes (jains excepted)? — Agent Smith

I don't know what you mean.

I don't think it is possible to go beyond or change the laws of logic when the concept is properly understood. — A Christian Philosophy

Do you agree that it is actual nonsense - an actual contradiction - to maintain that of two people, the one with less power is the more powerful?

I take it I do not need to wait for an answer, as the claim that "the less powerful is the more powerful" is a clear contradiction, and thus clear nonsense.

Do you agree that a person who is not bound by logic is more powerful than one who is?

No it doesn't. 1 is true. It doesn't follow that 2 is. It is not a rule that every rule has an exception. It's just a true description.
Imagine every rule has an exception. Well then the proposition 'every rule has an exception' is true. That doesn't make that a rule. It's not dictating anything.
Imagine I say "Britain has laws". Is that a law? No.
So 2 is false and 1 is true.

Well, I will wait until you can provide an actual refutation of the self evident truth of reason that any extended thing will be capable of division.

Democrtius' reason told him over two thousand years ago that divisible extended things are made up of tiny indivisible extended things and that therefore extended things are not, as it is possible to imagine they are, infinitely divisible. Kant's antinomies show us that exercising pure reason may lead to contradictory conclusions. — Janus

That's not an argument. Explain why an extended thing could not be divided.

An extended thing occupies some space. So it can be divided.

That it can be infinitely divided is a problem - not for me, but for those who believe there are extended things.

Nothing Democritus - and it is Democritus, not Democritius - said suggests any solution to the problem of the infinite divisibility of extended things.

You are quite right that the clearest demonstration that change us possible for an indivisible thing is that our minds change states yet are indivisible. And yes, it is correct that one does not have to be able to explain why something is happening in order to have evidence that it is happening.

But we can explain in this case. The states of a thing are not what the thing is made of. There does not begin to be a problem then. So it is really you who owes an explanation. Why do you think that a change in something's properties requires that the thing itself be divided? That, to my mind, does not even get out of the starting blocks.

You are ignoring the philosophical point and telling me what Catholics think.

Omnipotence is latin for all powerful.

One can use the word omnipotence how one wants. One can insist it be used to denote a type of cat and insist that God is a cat according to Cat-olics. It misses the point.

Whether one calls it omnipotence or another thing, the simple fact is that God denotes a person who is all powerful. And jesus says that God can do anything. So, if you want to use it to mean something else, then you are just no longer talking about the person jesus was talking about. I am talking about that guy. The guy in the bible.

Now for the philosophical point (remembering that I don't care what Catholics think, I only care about what makes sense - which seems very different). If a person is constrained by logic, then they are less powerful than someone who is not. You can call them omnipotent despite this if you want, but then you are just mucking about with labels. Hell, you can call me omnipotent if you want - I am constrained by all manner of things. But if we are talking about power,then clearly a person who is able to do more than another is more powerful than another. To think power involves lacking abilities is just confused. So, a person who is not constrained by logic is more powerful than one who is. God is by definition all powerful, and thus God is not constrained by logic.
That does not mean logic is false and provides us with no insight. No, it is true and does. It just doesn't constrain God. We can still learn about God from it. Indeed that is how God tells us about himself. He tells us he is not three persons and one person by telling us that's nonsense.

I do not yet see a problem that would not just be a much more general problem of change (one that would apply as much to complex things as to indivisible simple things).

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.

So, let's now imagine that in fact the clay could not be divided. Well, that would be no impediment to it changing shape given we changed its shape without dividing it.

So, that the mind is indivisible is no impediment to it changing. The states of a thing are not parts of it.

Well now you are simply ignoring reason. The only basis upon which you claim the pizza - and everything else - would magically become indivisible upon shrinking is another self evident truth of reason, namely that nothing can be infinitely divided. But as I just explained - utterly pointlessly, it seems - the conclusion that follows from that is that extended things do not exist and that the pizza needs to be reconceived as a bundle of sensations occurring in another mind.
It is because you are wed to a false worldview- one not endorsed by reason, but convention - that you find this conclusion absurd and mistake its clash with convention as a clash with reason. It is not. It - the immaterialism of the sensible - is just what follows if one follows reason. The pizza exists, but not as an extended thing. For if it was an extended thing - a notion of ours that we bring to bear on our sensible experiences - then it would be capable of infinite division, something our reason denies is possible. Ni conventional thinker is going to be able to follow reason if doing so threatens their conventional beliefs, as for them they are only seeing in philosophy a resource to support their conventional beliefs. Hence why, at base, you have contempt for the subject and sneer at it.

Yes, you can't keep dividing something forever.
But you would be able to divide an extended thing forever. As the tiny pizza case shows.
What those two truths of reason entail is that there are no extended objects. In other words, immaterialism about the sensible world is true. I already noted this earlier. Divisibility is a huge problem for the coherence of materialism.

But that's not what this thread is about, is it? This thread is about the indivisibility of the mind.

Extended things are divisible. Your claim - your correct claim - that nothing can be infinitely divisible does not contradict that. It just entails what I said, namely that reality contains no extended things.

Now focus on this thread. Extended things are divisible and nothing our reason says implies otherwise.

Minds are indivisible

It follows that minds are not extended things.

You are not appealing to reason, but to physics.
You lie when you say it is clear to your reason that the pizza cannot be divided. It can be, can't it? The idea that below a certain size it would become indivisible is utterly inconceivable.

No, isaac - don't say physics. I told you about that. Give the urchins a slice of the pizza. You know you can. Stop saying you can't and not explaining why.
It's got nothing to do with shrinking. Imagine we've always been this tiny size. How could that stop us being able to divide things?
Don't say 'physics' Isaac. Don't. That's naughty and it means you are not thinking.

But we orphans is so hungry mister. It don't make no sense what you is saying. The pizza is three times bigger than your head. I gets that we is all tiny, but everything else is tiny too ain't it? So why can't you divide it? You ain't making no sense sir, as even us foolish urchins can see. Your reason ain't up to much it seems to me sir, begging your pardon. Don't be a tommy tanker, cut us a slice sir. You knows you can.

Tell me, Isaac, when you get a pizza and it hasn't been sliced up, do you think it can't be divided?
It can be, can't it?
What if it was smaller. Oh, then it can't.
But what if we had itsy bitsy cutlery - couldn't we then divide it?
But our big chubby hands would get in the way!
Okay, so make us smaller too.
If we all shrank down, and everything else with us, would there come a size where we couldn't divide our pizzas Isaac? Does your reason say yes?
"Mr Isaac sir, we is everso hungry. Can we orphans have a slice of your big pizza? Please sir, may we?" "No, you foolish urchins. We are too small to divide things anymore. My reason says so. Below a certain size a pizza cannot be divided as is manifest to the reason of all those who have contempt for careful thought. So I will have to eat the whole thing although I cant do that either as my teeth are too small to bite through the too small pizza, despite the fact it's three times bigger than my head"

oh, well you edumacated me for sure. Thanks guv. If only you could have edumacated Zeno and Plato and Parmenides! You belong in the canon. We dumb philosophers -we need help from washed up academics from other disciplines. Help us, oh unimaginative ones, so that we too may see as narrowly as you.
Imagine a region of space isaac. Now imagine half of that. See?
Space. You can divide it. Any region of space. And so too for anything occupying it.

Er, what?

Do explain to me, isaac, how it could be that an extended thing might not be divisible.

And don't be predictable and say 'physics' and then lament that philosophers don't study physics. It's very tiresome.

That's the spirit!

No. If you're too lazy to scroll up and find what I said, then you're too lazy to try and understand anything I might subsequently say. Everything I say is going to sound odd to you.

What's the end game, if we were to grant you the indivisibility of mind ? Do you turn the crank on your logic machine until God pops out? — Pie

I don't see how that's relevant to my point about the badger. Have you read the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius? I haven't. I really enjoyed it.