My understanding, and I may well be wrong, is that it is a prime influence on Islam; Absolute Submission.

Maybe you are incapable? — Fire Ologist

That would be easier on you, I presume. But supose that I have understood all you had to say, and yet still reject theism. What's the appropriate response?

Seems that some of the faithful will "other" me, call me an atheist and attribute all sorts of odd beliefs and acts to me. You can see this in this very thread. It's implicit in "Maybe you are incapable?".

One alternative might be to reconsider your own beliefs, in the light of my startling response. I'm not expecting that.

Then there is what might be called a liberal view, where we will disagree, and move on.

Already on Solar.

Can you show me where I did that? — Fire Ologist

I'm not that interested.

Why?

Even so, it remains that the story is understood by many as advising one to maintain one's faith even if one believes that god is asking for an abominable act.

And here we go again...

You seem to have covered that adequately. So far as I can see, this thread is finished. And was, long ago.

Not at all. — Fire Ologist

But

First, because people end up offending others without realizing it and holding on to a sort of subtle bigotry. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I had understood that being offended was a symptom of being woke.

Well put.

Is the argument being presented here now that in a philosophy forum, when asked specifically about faith, we should not entertain or discuss the negative aspects of faith for fear of offending the faithful?

Keep in mind that they do not have to be here.

Just to be sure, the Binding of Issac is understood as an exhortation to faith, especially in adversity.

A quick search on ChatGPT:

The Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22), or the Akedah, has often been interpreted as a test of faith, with emphasis on maintaining belief and trust in God despite extreme adversity or incomprehensible demands. Below are several examples across traditions and thinkers where the story is understood as a call to maintain faith despite adversity:

1. Classical Jewish Interpretation – Rashi and Medieval Commentators
Rashi, the medieval Jewish commentator, frames the Akedah as a test not only of Abraham’s obedience but of his steadfast faith in God's justice and promises (e.g., the promise of descendants through Isaac).
The adversity here is internal conflict: Abraham must reconcile God's command to kill Isaac with the divine promise that Isaac will carry on his line. Despite this apparent contradiction, Abraham continues in faith.
This sets a precedent in Jewish tradition that faith includes trust in God's plan even when it seems paradoxical or painful.

2. The Epistle to the Hebrews (New Testament)
Hebrews 11:17-19 in the New Testament explicitly praises Abraham’s faith:
"By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac… He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead..."
The focus is on Abraham's unwavering belief in God's goodness and power, even when commanded to sacrifice his son.
In Christian thought, this is a call for believers to maintain faith in God's promises even when circumstances are dire or absurd.

3. Søren Kierkegaard – Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard's Abraham is the “knight of faith”, a figure who obeys the absurd with full trust in God.
The “adversity” is radical: Abraham must sacrifice what he loves most, yet believes by virtue of the absurd that he will still receive Isaac back.
For Kierkegaard, the Akedah dramatizes the leap of faith, where reason fails and faith endures without justification.

4. Maimonides – Guide for the Perplexed
Maimonides sees the Akedah as the highest form of prophetic obedience, representing the ultimate test of trust in divine wisdom.
The adversity is ethical and emotional—being asked to violate moral norms.
Abraham is praised for not letting moral confusion or emotional pain shake his trust in God's will.

5. Modern Jewish Thought – Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
In his existential reading, Soloveitchik sees Abraham’s test as a crisis of religious identity, where one must affirm faith not in comfort, but in the face of horror or paradox.
He uses it to frame the experience of Jews through suffering (e.g., the Holocaust), where the Akedah is seen as a metaphor for holding faith in the shadow of death.

6. Liturgical Use – Rosh Hashanah Readings
The Akedah is read on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when God's judgment is central.
It's understood liturgically as an invocation of Abraham’s example: just as Abraham stayed faithful under trial, so too should Israel—and they ask to be judged mercifully in that light. — ChatGPT

It's not as if this were an uncommon interpretation. Indeed, I had not heard the "Admonition against human sacrifice" interpretation until you presented it in these fora.

Leon calling this a "hostile" interpretation is plainly absurd - it is an interpretation used by theists.

Seems we have broad agreement.

if you could show me where I am wrong — Metaphysician Undercover

I, and others, have. You can't see it. Indeed, you have quite explicitly refused to see it.

Not our problem.

The qualification "might have been" seems to imply that the imaginary "things" did not come to be (to exist), hence not ontologically real — Gnomon

Not always. They might come to pass. They do this when the possible world is the actual world.

I like dumb jokes. Sometimes.

If water was not H2O in Aristotle's day — Count Timothy von Icarus

Water presumably was H₂o in Aristotle's day.

But I'm pretty sure Aristotle never called it "water".

And if water were not H₂O in ancient Greece, then water would not be the very same thing as H₂O. So Water would not be H₂O in every possible world - Ancient Greece being an example of a possible world in which this is not so. So then, being H₂O would not be a necessary characteristic of water.

Note the couching of these in hypothetical sentences... "If... then...". That's the bit where we are looking at the logic of the situation, leaving aside the science, which philosophers do so poorly.

BOOORRRRRINNNNNNNG! :D — Moliere

Well, you can ask folk to burn there books, which would make your life more interesting.

Yep.

That's all very curious, , but where does it get us?

I guess I’ll have to respond to each item.

• Yep, all cats are cats. Whether a cat can be a dog would be an issue for the taxonomists, I suppose. I think they would say "no".
• "What sorts of things have essences" will depend on how you use "essence". Individuals, picked out by a rigid designator, may have properties in every possible world that we could call their essence; same for natural kinds; It's a topic of some discussion.
• And we might agree that being hot is a necessary property of hot things, while also agreeing that individuals can be hot at one time and cold at another. Not sure this gets us very far.
• If a black cat ceases to be a black cat when painted, then being black is just not a necessary property of black cats. But again, this seems to be a result of how we choose to use the words "black cat".
• I doubt if there is something common to all chairs or to all tables in every possible world, so I doubt there is an "essence of table" if that is what is had by every table in every possible world. That’s kinda what family resemblance addresses.
• The terms "accidental" property might be fraught with ambiguity in PWS, so that we might not be able to agree on a suitable use; you are welcome to try.
• If someone denies that water is essentially H2O, arguing instead that water is only essentially clear, potable, and wet, then that's their prerogative, and all we might do is point out that others disagree or use the terms in different ways. There need be no correct use, in any absolute sense. If that's not much of a theory, so be it.

Now what?

IS there some conclusion that you would like to draw from all this?

Edit: No response, so I've edited the block of text to hopefully make it more readable.

...an exploration of what we can coherently imagine... — Janus

That's pretty close. And "A property had by a thing that we cannot imagine it existing without" works for many purposes. The formal definition is somewhat different. The trouble is not just that we can imagine alls sorts of odd things, but that what one person can imagine might be quite different to what another person can imagine.

An alternative might be to understanding "what if this blue table had been red instead of blue" as asking what would be the case, what would be true, if this table were red instead of blue. It's convenient, if perhaps for some folk not intuitive, to call the things that would to be true were this table blue, a "world".

There's the additional problem that some folk imagine impossible worlds. A whole other story.

There's considerable overlap between "A property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists" and "A property had by a thing that we cannot imagine it existing without", but they are not quite the same.

Lots of thinkers. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ok. Anyone in this thread?

The step further, that claims that essences themselves change, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Who does this?

Whom? — Moliere

Leon.



Kripke: Identity and Necessity?

or

Naming and Necessity, reading group? and Naming and necessity Lecture Three?

Been a few others, too.

Here's the main paragraph concerning the issue from Identity and Necessity:

In recent philosophy a large number of other identity statements have
been emphasized as examples of contingent identity statements, dif-
ferent, perhaps, from either of the types I have mentioned before. One
of them is, for example, the statement "Heat is the motion of molecules."
First, science is supposed to have discovered this. Empirical scientists in
their investigations have been supposed to discover (and, I suppose, they
did) that the external phenomenon which we call "heat" is, in fact,
molecular agitation. Another example of such a discovery is that water is
H₂O , and yet other examples are that gold is the element with such and
such an atomic number, that light is a stream of photons, and so on.
These are all in some sense of "identity statement" identity statements.
Second, it is thought, they are plainly contingent identity statements,
just because they were scientific discoveries. After all, heat might have
turned out not to have been the motion of molecules. There were other
alternative theories of heat proposed, for example, the caloric theory of
heat. If these theories of heat had been correct, then heat would not
have been the motion of molecules, but instead, some substance suffus-
ing the hot object, called "caloric". And it was a matter of course of
science and not of any logical necessity that the one theory turned out to
be correct and the other theory turned out to be incorrect. — Kripke

Here it's not only water being considered. Nothing much of this argument hangs on the truth or falsity of water being H₂O, or any of the other identities listed. Rather he's concerned with the modal consequences of any such equivalence: that If a and b are rigid designators and a=b then ☐(a=b).

Too late. It's not mine to change. These is the accepted term. Not mine to change.

Repeating your errors does not reduce them.

The Libs consider themselves to be the natural party of government, in their entitled way, despite never actually achieving enough seats to govern in their own right an having to bed down with the Nats.

The natural party of government, so far as there is one, has always been the ALP. The only party to gain sufficient seats.

Partly becasue they had to accomodate the nats, and partly becasue of their funding arrangements, they could not maintain a liberal ideology. It has become increasingly conservative.

Just to add, the Libs are far more ideologically driven than the more pragmatic ALP. Hence the dearth of policy.

I quite agree.

Downside is that the Labor gov will have no strong supervision. The Greens will be the effective Opposition, via their power in the Senate, but the perks of opposition will go to the Libs in the reps - that is, the Greens will have very little admin support.

Ley says they have no choice but to move to the centre, and I think they will have to do that, otherwise the Teals will continue to eat their breakfast. — Wayfarer

Yes, but... doing so supposes support for a move to the centre. See this article:

Retiring MLA Nicole Lawder admitted on the ABC's election night broadcast that some within the ACT branch of the party were less interested in being elected than pushing it ideologically to the right. — ABC News

This has been the state of play in the ACT, where the Liberals have not won for twenty years. The Boys will not reform, becasue ideology is more important than government.

On Saturday night, Ms Lawder lashed out at what she described as "a couple of very powerful players in the party" who "have pushed the Liberals too far to the right".

"I think there are some people that are so ideologically driven that [they] would prefer to sabotage the pathway to winning," she said.

Lawder is a former MLA and knows her stuff.

And I think there is a pretty good chance of something similar occurring at Federal level.

So does Ley have an expiry date?

Or will she be kept as a figurehead, a small "l" Liberal, so they can pretend to be reforming?

I don't think the Boys will be able to stand back and let her lead. I don't think she has broad support in the Liberal establishment. 29 votes to 25 in the party room. I'm guessing it's less out in the suburbs. "Her new demographic would be the young professionals and first-generation Australians in the major cities trying to get ahead and into their first home" (Saturday Paper) but these are not the people you will find in a typical Liberal Branch.

She may surprise. I doubt it.

That looks like the second option.

The ALP specifies socialism in it's charter, so I doubt it.

The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the
extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields. — ALP Constitution

Scenario one: the Libs finalise their divorce the Nats, clean out all the right wing nutters and adopt genuine liberal policies with a social conscience and become a proper liberal opposition to Labor

Scenario two: The Libs blame Dutton entirely for the disaster - after all, he's gone, and no one else wants to take any responsibility; they take the money from Rinehart, indirectly of course, and keep to the right, business as usual, reactors and all, re-form the coalition in a year or so and repeat their mistakes next election.

Now, which of these is more likely to come to pass?

Yep. It's rather a way of setting that logical status out, and in a broader context.

But what it does put the lie to are ideas along the lines that logical impossibilities are unthinkable or even inconceivable. Impossible worlds can be conceived of, thought about and put into formal systems.

The semantics of possible worlds just says that we understand "it is possible that it will rain tomorrow" as stipulating for our consideration two possible worlds, W₀ in which it is true that it rains tomorrow, and W₁ in which it is true that it doesn't rain tomorrow. There is no contradiction.

Must be the fifth or sixth time this has been pointed out to you. In no possible world does it both rain and not rain. That only happens in impossible worlds.


Added: "It is possible that it will rain tomorrow" just says that there is a possible world in which it rains tomorrow. And this is true, and therefor "It is possible that it will rain tomorrow" has a truth value.

"It is possible that it will rain and not rain tomorrow" is false, since there is no possible world in which it both rains and does not rain.

And this adds to your idea, @Hanover, in that such things only ever happen in impossible worlds, and so "It is possible that it will rain and not rain tomorrow" is false in all the possible worlds, but perhaps true in some impossible world...

:wink: Did they not recognise the peace offering?

Cool.

There's a bunch of ambiguities in Leon's formalism that muck it up. "Water" rigidly designates H₂O, and does so even when we talk about what happened before Cavendish. But it wasn't used in that way then, for obvious reasons. There's no contradiction or circularity here that I can see.

I think he is adamantly agreeing with you.

Yep

John had a drink of water=John had a drink of H₂O
Substitution works, so it's transparent.

John knew he had a drink of water ≠ John knew he had a drink of H₂O
If John does not know water=H₂O, substitution fails.

What's important is to see that putting the issue within the scope of what we know changes how the bits fit together.

Can we say water is necessarily H2O, D2O, HDO and T2O? (Because all of these naturally occurring in nature when analyzing water) — Richard B

Sure. Yep. Fixed to "water is necessarily H₂O, D₂O, HDO or T₂O". As discussed, I'd simplify all this by just stipulating that the "H" in H₂O incudes all the various isotopes.

Or would we say no because I can imagine a possible world where water is just H2O? — Richard B

Only if we reject "Water is H₂O". Taking ☐(water =H₂O) as true limits our access to only those worlds in which water=H₂O.

The issue is simply that of consistency. If water=H₂O then ☐(water=H₂O). If water is not always H₂O, then ~☐(water=H₂O).

SO yes, we can imagine a possible world in which ~☐(water=H₂O), but nevertheless, if (water=H₂O), then ☐(water=H₂O).

Again, a side issue.

Sure. We covered that previously.

Of course it depends on how you use the term "water". It's a side issue. Here we are in effect supposing that the extension of "water" and the extension of H₂O are identical. If you think they are not, then for the purposes of this discussion, pretend that they are. Becasue "Water = H₂O" is being used as an example, and it is the resulting logic that is being discussed.

That is, we could use Kripke's lectern instead, and have the same discussion.

Nice.

So the concern is that at some future date we re-assess "Water is necessarily H₂O" and decide that it is false.

Well, then we would say that water is not necessarily H₂O. That, prior to Cavendish, folk did not use the expression "water is H₂O", quite rightly, and then there was a period were people believed that water was necessarily H₂O, and said things like "Water is necessarily H₂O". But now we know better.

This could all be set out unambiguously using a formal notion. it's be a bit convolute, so I'll leave it.

The salient bit might be the difference between "Water is necessarily H₂O" and "We know that Water is necessarily H₂O". The first is extensionally transparent, the second, extensionally opaque, becasue the sentence "Water is necessarily H₂O" is within the scope of "We know that..."

Talk of real and nominal essences is a bit of a furphy. It's about scope.

Water is necessarily H₂O. However, prior to Cavendish, folk did not use the expression "water is H₂O", and did not know that water was H₂O.

That seems pretty clear. Is there a problem?

So we now agree that the binding of Isaac would be immoral even if he were a consenting adult. Ok.

On a quick look, I'm not seeing much to commend here. Why would I care whether Quine was more like Aristotle or Plato, when Kripke, who is not mentioned in your article, gives a better account anyway?

That Quine's criticism of essentialism was misdirected doesn't much impact Kripke.

If you are going to reject the notion that essentialism is just about necessary truths in possible worlds, then you would best present an account of essence that is at least as useful.

Again, what is an essence, if not a property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists? Pointing us to an article that doesn’t offer a decisive argument for why Kripke’s modal metaphysics is insufficient just doesn't answer that question. Without showing that Kripke’s system fails or that the Aristotelian alternative can do the same explanatory work, it amounts to special pleading. Unless Spade can do the work Kripke does, the conversation will always favour the more robust, explanatory, and precise framework.