On Feb 20, 3:47 am, "Stathis Papaioannou" <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Tom Caylor <Daddycay....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> > Ultimate meaning is analogous to axioms or arithmetic truth (e.g. 42
> > is not prime). In fact the famous quote of Kronecker "God created the
> > integers" makes this point. I think Bruno takes arithmetic truth as
> > his ultimate source of meaning. If you ask the same positivist
> > questions of arithmetic truth, you also have the same problem. The
> > problem lies in the positivist view that there can be no given truth.
>
> > Tom
>
> This is indeed related to the ontological argument, first formulated by
> Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century: We say that God is a being than
> which nothing more perfect can be imagined. If God did not exist, then we
> can imagine an entity just like God, but with the additional attribute of
> existence - which is absurd, because we would then be imagining something
> more perfect than that than which nothing more perfect can be imagined.
> Therefore, God the most perfect being imaginable must necessarily have
> existence as one of his attributes. Versions of the argument from first
> cause and the argument from design also reduce to the ontological argument,
> answering the question "who made God?" with the assertion that God exists
> necessarily, with no need for the creator/designer (or, you might add,
> external source of meaning) that the merely contingents things in the
> universe need.
>
> The problem with defining God in this way as something which necessarily
> exists is that you can use the same trick to conjure up anything you like:
> an "existent pink elephant" can't be non-existent any more than a bachelor
> can be married. This objection pales a little if we admit that imagined
> existence (i.e Platonia and the conscious computations therein) is all the
> existence there is, but I am not sure that you would be happy with this
> explanation as despite the Kronecker quote (which I always understood as
> rhetorical anyway) mathematical truths are beyond even God's power to
> change.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
My point in quoting Kronecker was to simply to allude to the fact that
the foundations of mathematics are axiomatic in a similar way that
ultimate meaning is ultimate. We have a feeling that the foundation
of math is ultimately right, even though we can't prove it. In my
"logical reason" (reason #1 a few posts back), I am simply arguing for
realism (vs. positivism). Your arguments that you are trying to
enforce here would apply equally well (if valid) to realism in general
(not just God), and therefore put you in the positivist camp.
Tom
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Received on Thu Feb 22 2007 - 18:48:54 PST