[Simski]

Saying "since god is perfect, god exists because otherwise he would not be perfect", assumes the unproven fact that god actually exists and is perfect as support for his argument.
It's pretty funny really.

[KILLTHIS]

Replace "god" with "invisible unicorn" and it's even more fun. Basically it shows how ridiculous this argument is.

[Robbobin]

KILLTHIS posted:

I don't really know about the argument of "Therefore God Exists" - wouldn't this be simplified into:

"Everything is perfect, therefore perfection exists" - and not "Everything is perfect, therefore god exists" - which would require the definition of god as in the OP mentioned "Tripple O-God". But then I have to ask, if we decide to define a being such as "god", what gives us proof of our descripton?

It's a bit too hypothetical - it's philosophy, yes - but it's somewhat sluggish. It's an opinion on "god" (I don't question the existence of god here, I'm just about the definition). Calling him "perfect" would be OUR vision about god, calling him perfect in every way - but what if god is not perfect, but capable of a lot of things, therefore making him omnipotent? Than he is neither willing nor benevolent - but at least has the possibility to change / alter / create / destroy things. So I wouldn't go for a "Tripple O-God" but for an "Omnipotent but not perfect" god - if you go for it at all.

If all you're arguing about is the definition of something, it's bad philosophy. You can define anything as whatever as much as you like but ultimately, that doesn't change a thing, logically. If someone is arguing for the existence of something, just accept whatever definition they give otherwise you're both wasting your time.

Edited:

Simski posted:

Saying "since god is perfect, god exists because otherwise he would not be perfect", assumes the unproven fact that god actually exists and is perfect as support for his argument.
It's pretty funny really.

Well no, that's not why the argument fails at all. The ontological argument is supposed to work a priori, meaning without empirical proof. The argument is quite clever and not quite as silly as everyone here takes for granted. Ultimately it's wrong, but a great deal of you fail to understand why.

[Simski]

Robbobin posted:

Well no, that's not why the argument fails at all. The ontological argument is supposed to work a priori, meaning without empirical proof. The argument is quite clever and not quite as silly as everyone here takes for granted. Ultimately it's wrong, but a great deal of you fail to understand why.

He's using a fact that can't be proved as an attempt to prove that it's a fact.
An amusing idea, but ultimately wrong because his base lacks evidence. If I'm still wrong, lecture me.

[Robbobin]

Simski posted:

He's using a fact that can't be proved as an attempt to prove that it's a fact.
An amusing idea, but ultimately wrong because his base lacks evidence. If I'm still wrong, lecture me.

Anselm is most definitely not trying to do that. His argument does make mistakes, but his mistake isn't the assumption that God exists.

Pointing to a lack of evidence is not a sufficient counter argument for a priori arguments. It would be like trying to prove that a maths equation is wrong by saying there's nothing observable in the universe that proves it is true. It's just not how a priori arguments operate. You refute a priori arguments through logic alone, without appealing to observable phenomena.

[KILLTHIS]

Robbobin posted:

If all you're arguing about is the definition of something, it's bad philosophy. You can define anything as whatever as much as you like but ultimately, that doesn't change a thing, logically. If someone is arguing for the existence of something, just accept whatever definition they give otherwise you're both wasting your time.

Yes, as I can see, I went a bit too short on this term - my bad. But still I have to say it's better to start with small steps in order to actually prove or disprove things. Even though he goes a priori on this, which I definitely accept, I still have to disagree that perfection is the prove of existence of god; If he'd went for something actually happening, as matter of fact "active", I think it would've been more likely to get a better glimpse on this.

[DainBramageStudios]

Robbobin posted:

Anselm is most definitely not trying to do that. His argument does make mistakes, but his mistake isn't the assumption that God exists.

Pointing to a lack of evidence is not a sufficient counter argument for a priori arguments. It would be like trying to prove that a maths equation is wrong by saying there's nothing observable in the universe that proves it is true. It's just not how a priori arguments operate. You refute a priori arguments through logic alone, without appealing to observable phenomena.

look this probably sounds really dumb of me but

I think that the entire concept of "a priori" is a load of shit

thoughts are observable phenomena too, why do they have a separate magical world completely independent of the empirical one?

[Robbobin]

DainBramageStudios posted:

look this probably sounds really dumb of me but

I think that the entire concept of "a priori" is a load of shit

thoughts are observable phenomena too, why do they have a separate magical world completely independent of the empirical one?

Yup, I agree with you. I haven't totally rejected a priori claims quite yet, but I'm at very least very, very sceptical of them. I was just point out how unconvincing it would be to point to empirical evidence (or even worse, a lack of evidence) when your opponent is attempting to use pure logic to support a claim.

[DainBramageStudios]

Robbobin posted:

Yup, I agree with you. I haven't totally rejected a priori claims quite yet, but I'm at very least very, very sceptical of them. I was just point out how unconvincing it would be to point to empirical evidence (or even worse, a lack of evidence) when your opponent is attempting to use pure logic to support a claim.

what

it's perfectly reasonable to point to a lack of evidence. absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

I trust the real world more than another brain's chain of deductive reasoning (when all else is equal)

[Robbobin]

DainBramageStudios posted:

what

it's perfectly reasonable to point to a lack of evidence. absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

I trust the real world more than another brain's chain of deductive reasoning (when all else is equal)

Well then pretty much the whole philosophical world disagrees with you. Deductive reasoning trumps everything except maybe observed phenomena (i.e. that which is proved to exist empirically). If you disagree with valid deductive reasoning, you're committed to explosivity (every premise is both true and false). Also, evidence is a pretty useless concept, analytically, along with most induction. It's great for functioning as a human being and for formulating scientific theories, but as far as analytic, deductively valid philosophy goes, it's pretty weak. I've never seen a black swan which is absence of evidence, but I have no philosophically valid argument demonstrating they don't exist.

Edited:

Of course you can reject the ontological argument because it's objectively wrong, deductively.

But if we assumed it was valid, you couldn't point to absence of evidence because you'd reach a contradiction and explosivity would happen.

[Gekkosan]

Robbobin posted:

That's not Anselm's argument though.

Saying that everything = god is philosophically trivial because all you're doing is defining something as such.

Change your avatar please, it always reminds me of a girl pig rather than a guy in a funny pose every time I take a glimpse at it.

And I'm sure 100% of people agree with me on that one. Maybe even you?

[Noble]

Simski posted:

He's using a fact that can't be proved as an attempt to prove that it's a fact.
An amusing idea, but ultimately wrong because his base lacks evidence. If I'm still wrong, lecture me.

The ontological argument is wrong because "existence" is not a property (or "predicate") of a thing.

[Simski]

Noble posted:

The ontological argument is wrong because "existence" is not a property (or "predicate") of a thing.

Makes sense

[Robbobin]

Gekkosan posted:

Change your avatar please, it always reminds me of a girl pig rather than a guy in a funny pose every time I take a glimpse at it.

And I'm sure 100% of people agree with me on that one. Maybe even you?

I can't see anything except Tom Waits in a funny pose :(

I'll change it as soon as I think of something.

Edited:

trace around what you see for me?

[Gekkosan]

see, clearly a pig with its mouth open. (when you see it, you cannot unsee it)

[DainBramageStudios]

Robbobin posted:

Well then pretty much the whole philosophical world disagrees with you. Deductive reasoning trumps everything except maybe observed phenomena (i.e. that which is proved to exist empirically). If you disagree with valid deductive reasoning, you're committed to explosivity (every premise is both true and false). Also, evidence is a pretty useless concept, analytically, along with most induction. It's great for functioning as a human being and for formulating scientific theories, but as far as analytic, deductively valid philosophy goes, it's pretty weak. I've never seen a black swan which is absence of evidence, but I have no philosophically valid argument demonstrating they don't exist.

Edited:

Of course you can reject the ontological argument because it's objectively wrong, deductively.

But if we assumed it was valid, you couldn't point to absence of evidence because you'd reach a contradiction and explosivity would happen.

deductive reasoning is a form of inductive reasoning.

thoughts are evidence.

[matsta]

DainBramageStudios posted:

deductive reasoning is a form of inductive reasoning.

thoughts are evidence.

No, it isn't. And they are not.

There is a clear difference between deductive and inductive reasoning.

Edited:

You just reminded me of Kant's introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason. He makes that distinction right away.

[Robbobin]

DainBramageStudios posted:

deductive reasoning is a form of inductive reasoning.

No it isn't. It just flat out isn't.

Edited:

Induction is an invalid form of logic, while deduction is valid.

[matsta]

invalid, but very useful.

[Robbobin]

matsta posted:

invalid, but very useful.

Definitely. But undeniably less analytically powerful than deduction.

[DainBramageStudios]

prove to me that you remembered your reasons for making a conclusion correctly

the human brain can't hold more than a few concepts at once in working memory, so good luck proving 100% that you didn't make a mistake in a chain of complex deductive reasoning

[matsta]

DainBramageStudios posted:

the human brain can't hold more than a few concepts at once in working memory

That's why you write them down, duh.

[DainBramageStudios]

matsta posted:

That's why you write them down, duh.

how do you know you wrote them down right
how do you know you read them right
how do you know you interpreted them right

Yes I know, the actual probability of fucking up understanding something so trivial as modus ponens is fucking tiny, but it's not zero, and that's the point.

[Robbobin]

DainBramageStudios posted:

prove to me that you remembered your reasons for making a conclusion correctly

the human brain can't hold more than a few concepts at once in working memory, so good luck proving 100% that you didn't make a mistake in a chain of complex deductive reasoning

Most solutions to philosophical problems have very simple chains of deductive reasoning.

If you're denying the vaildity of valid deductive reasoning you can't argue anything. It's a self-refuting claim.

[matsta]

And what is "better" than reasoning for proving things? Evidence?

"Evidence" also has to be interpreted correctly, and interpretations of evidence rest upon previous thoughts.
Evidence has to be obtained correctly. And the way of obtaining it also rests upon previous thoughts.

Moreover, evidence alone doesn't say anything. WE are the ones who deduce BASED on empirical evidence. You should seriously read some Kant, lol.

Edited:

No, actually, if you trust evidence alone, you must read "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" . Then you'll know what you can conclude with just evidence, and it will be nothing of what you think you can.

[DainBramageStudios]

Robbobin posted:

Most solutions to philosophical problems have very simple chains of deductive reasoning.

If you're denying the vaildity of valid deductive reasoning you can't argue anything. It's a self-refuting claim.

ofcourse

I'm just saying deductive reasoning shouldn't be put on such a high pedestal. it's evidence that happens to correspond extremely well with the truth.

Edited:

matsta posted:

No, actually, if you trust evidence alone, you must read "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" . Then you'll know what you can conclude with just evidence, and it will be nothing of what you think you can.

give an example, I'm not going to read a tome like that

[Bat-shit]

So.. what's the topic exactly? You are kind of like speaking in general about what is evidence, what is proof, what is valid..

As for OP; God is made out to be perfect, and he's made out not to be seen, ever. Not to mention the scriptures and books and all that yazz that was made out to be the God's wish or command. Ask "who's the creator?" it's the people, "creator of what?" All of this bullshit.

[Robbobin]

DainBramageStudios posted:

ofcourse

I'm just saying deductive reasoning shouldn't be put on such a high pedestal. it's evidence that happens to correspond extremely well with the truth.

Well, I don't think your argument is of much significance. I think competent beings can be absolutely 100% certain of some kinds of argument's validity. Acceptance of the legitimacy of deductive claims are really axiomatic in logic. If you don't have logic you're literally incapable of any level of analysis. Even evidence is useless, because if you doubt the validity of any logic axiom, it's possible for evidence to be both true and false, rendering it absolutely useless.

Edited:

DainBramageStudios posted:

give an example, I'm not going to read a tome like that

I just studied this book, and I'd have to say there's not much point reading it unless you're willing to devote a lot of time studying it properly; let's just say if I didn't have a module on it, I wouldn't have gotten the same experience.

But his most bizarre conclusions are things like the non-existence of an external world (an argument totally distinct from Descartes' scepticism, and much more sophisticated), the non-existence of selves and the non-rationality of induction (this is a matter of some controversy, over whether Hume means to say induction [and hence the scientific method] is irrational or non-rational.) And that's just book one; we didn't cover any of his stuff on the passions or morality, etc.

[DainBramageStudios]

Robbobin posted:

Well, I don't think your argument is of much significance. I think competent beings can be absolutely 100% certain of some kinds of argument's validity. Acceptance of the legitimacy of deductive claims are really axiomatic in logic. If you don't have logic you're literally incapable of any level of analysis. Even evidence is useless, because if you doubt the validity of any logic axiom, it's possible for evidence to be both true and false, rendering it absolutely useless.

100% is not a probability

Edited:

try converting it to odds, see what happens

[Robbobin]

Hume definitely takes empiricism to its logical conclusion. But even he never doubts the validity of deduction, because to do so successfully would invalidate every single fact comprising the whole universe

Edited:

DainBramageStudios posted:

100% is not a probability

Edited:

try converting it to odds, see what happens

I'm aware it's not; I'm just disagreeing with your claim. I think we are certain of deduction's validity.

[Bat-shit]

What we sense with our eyes and hands is very reliable. So that we actually know that we don't even see the full picture of things.

[DainBramageStudios]

Robbobin posted:

I'm aware it's not; I'm just disagreeing with your claim. I think we are certain of deduction's validity.

Yeah sure, I'm not actually suggesting that mathematics is false.

[Robbobin]

Bat-shit posted:

What we sense with our eyes and hands is very reliable. So that we actually know that we don't even see the full picture of things.

Reliable relative to what? Of the external world? If that's what you're suggesting, you're wrong. On their own, our senses do not and can not cause the idea of the external world. Our imagination - ultimately an analytically invalid tool - is what causes our sense data to be interpreted as belief.

[DainBramageStudios]

Robbobin posted:

ultimately an analytically invalid too

woa woa woa slow down there

[Robbobin]

DainBramageStudios posted:

woa woa woa slow down there

Huh?

[DainBramageStudios]

well what else are you using to analyse things?

[Robbobin]

DainBramageStudios posted:

well what else are you using to analyse things?

Oh sorry, I mean imagination in a quite restricted sense.

In the sense of our minds "spreading themselves on the world" as Hume calls it, where we take the idea of ideas being connected to each other onto the world, creating the notion of cause and effect, even though it isn't in the world itself. In this sense, the imagination is just our mind going over and above what it can rationally deduce.

[DainBramageStudios]

Robbobin posted:

Oh sorry, I mean imagination in a quite restricted sense.

In the sense of our minds "spreading themselves on the world" as Hume calls it, where we take the idea of ideas being connected to each other onto the world, creating the notion of cause and effect, even though it isn't in the world itself. In this sense, the imagination is just our mind going over and above what it can rationally deduce.

Yeah that makes perfect sense. I use the "map/territory" analogy myself.

[Bat-shit]

Robbobin posted:

In this sense, the imagination is just our mind going over and above what it can rationally deduce.

So? We can "rationally deduce" too much if you ask me. So indeed we went over and beyond just our eyes to sense and learn all the stuff that's out there and wherever.

[matsta]

No, we can't.

For example, we can't rationally deduce the existence of god.