The Transcendental Argument for the existence of god – why it fails (Part 1). July 4, 2008
Posted by leeharrison in Religion, Skepticism.Tags: argument against god, Atheism, fallacies, god, logic, rational, Religion, theism, thought, transcendental argument for god
trackback
As promised to certain readers in an earlier thread, here is my look at the Transcendental Argument for God (which I’ll shorten to TAG because my typing sucks). Actually, this is just part 1 of what will probably be three posts (perhaps four depending on what happens in the comments) – TAG is one of those intensely irritating arguments that can be quickly stated but takes a significant input of time to pick apart, mostly because there are so many assumptions to be uncovered. Having to organise a kid’s birthday party and mark student essays has not helped either. On we go…
TAG is a bit of a fringe argument among modern Christian apologists – most of whom focus on arguments from religious experience, arguments from supposed miracles, or teleological, ontological or cosmological arguments. TAG claims that logic, science by inductive reasoning and objective moral standards all presuppose or rely on the existence of god – and not just any god but the christian god of the bible. So when an atheist, or a muslim, or a jew use logic, draw inductive inferences, or claim that an action is wrong they are doing so based on assumptions that only the christian conception of god can justify. TAG also argues that this true even when an atheist is using logic to refute the arguments of theists – the very existence of logic itself, they say, presupposes the existence of god so any logical argument against god must be flawed in some way.
Let’s explore – click the ‘more’ tab to read on.
Let us assume for a moment that TAG is correct and that logic, induction and objective morality all presuppose the christian god. Does this mean that christianity must be true? This issue firstly hinges on the word ‘presuppose’. The fact that something is presupposed does not mean that it has to exist. An illustration: if I am teaching chimpanzees mathematics I must presuppose that they have some concept of numbers. Does this mean that chimps actually do have a concept of numbers? For all I know, they might – but it is not proven by the fact that is has been presupposed.
The TAG presuppositionalist position assumes certain forms of logic (deductive logic as a metaphysical law), science (inductive inference driven) and morality (objective, rejection leading to anarchy). It then proceeds to argue as if they were the only possible formulations. If we assume that the TAG argument is correct in that it truly does flow logically and inescapably from its premises, does this mean that we have proven christianity? No – for the simple reason that, though an argument may be flawless, the conclusion of an argument is only as good as its premises. As long as there may be other formulations of each of the premises we cannot consider TAG to have proven anything. Notice that this is true even if no-one actually proposes other formulations of the premises – as long as other formulations could be proposed, TAG proves nothing (somewhat ironic that TAG is actually an inductive argument). Of course there are other formulations out there. Science driven primarily by inductive inference could be replaced by pure falsificationism; many formulations of logic are known to exist (quantum logic and fuzzy logic for example, or another example given by a commenter earlier: paraconsistent logic), and there are plenty of subjective moral systems, and other objective systems too, for that matter, despite the christians’ offhand dismissal of them.
So even if TAG is a valid argument it doesn’t prove the christian god. But is it a valid argument at all?
Let’s start with deductive logic. Deductive logical arguments are arguments where the conclusion is made necessary by the premises. As an example:
Premise 1: event A always leads to event B within 5 seconds
Premise 2: event A has just occurred
Conclusion: event B will occur within 5 seconds
As long as the premises of the argument are true, the conclusion must be true. This is distinct from inductive arguments where the premises support the conclusion but do not guarantee it. An example:
Premise 1: Item A is a fire
Premise 2: all fires that have so far been observed are hot
Conclusion: Item A is hot.
In this case the conclusion is strongly supported by the premises but is not necessitated – item A could be the first cold fire to be observed.
So what is god supposed to have to do with all of this? Proponents of TAG maintain that logic is universal (applies to everything, everywhere, everywhen) and non-conventional (is not a result of human conventions), and draw from this the further premise that it must have a metaphysical explanation and that explanation is the christian god.
I hope that you can see already the first failure – why the christian god? This is a bare assertion that could be made with equal force (and the same lack of viability) by muslims, hindus and pastafarians.
The idea that deductive logic is a universal has received its challenges and has yet to reconcile with them. In deductive logic, A cannot be notA at the same time as being A – on the quantum scale where indeterminacy is the rule this is defied as a matter of course. The wave-particle duality nature of light is a direct contradiction in terms, forbidden by deductive logic – but forcefully required by the evidence. Of course, if something is a contradiction in terms, perhaps the terminology is insufficient? If anyone wants to produce a verbal/textual description of a particle that not only covers all known behaviours of particles as well as all know behaviours of waves (contradictory to those of particles) but covers them both at the same time then please feel free – then you may confidently await your Nobel prize, though whether it would be for Physics or Literature is uncertain… 
. Such terminological considerations lead us to the next point: does logic require a deep metaphysical explanation at all, when it can be explained by superficial, semantic considerations?
Just because deductive validity is not conventional it does not follow that they need a metaphysical explanation. On one interpretation deductive validity is explained simply because of the meaning of terms such as “All,” “Some,” “if … , then … ,” “not,” “and,” “or,” and so on. In this case, one can see that the premises of valid deductive arguments necessitate the conclusion, and why, simply by understanding the meaning of the terms involved. But then, the explanation of the deductive validity is not metaphysical but semantical, that is, the necessity of deductive validity is a function of the meaning of concepts involved. There is nothing conventional about this, however. The terms used to express these meanings may be conventional, but not deductive validity itself. In short, the explanation of deductive validity is close to the surface, and no deep metaphysical explanation of it is necessary.
Michael Martin, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
In other words, it is the meaning of the words we use in our logical constructions that make the deductions valid. The logic of an If…Then… statement is nothing more than the meaning of the words ‘if’ and ‘then’ – it is not necessarily the grand metaphysical granting of validity that christian TAG proponents would have us assume.
Is it actually true that logic is non-conventional? In the eyes of the TAG proponents, the idea that logic is conventional means that is arbitrary and that this leads to nonsense – it is, after all, hard to imagine that the law of non-contradiction is arbitrary and could have been different (try to imagine where one can be wholly black and wholly white at the same time…). However, the question of whether logic is conventional or not is actually a contentious one because conventional does not presuppose arbitrary – the rules of logic can be justified, according to Ernest Nagel, as reported by Michael Martin, on pragmatic grounds based partly on how we employ them and partly on the semantic argument mentioned above.
The most common argument against conventionalism is the law of non-contradiction mentioned above, but to my mind (and here I disagree with Michael Martin) this shows why, as Dan Dennett says, philosophers need to become more aware of science. The only reason that the law of non-contradiction is assumed to be a death blow to conventionalism is that it is assumed to be absolute. This assumption is, as I have mentioned before, blown completely out of the water by quantum physics – a result that supports the notion that logic is a tool limited in its applicability to the real world since it is based upon our conventions of language, thought and experience.
There are arguments that go into the issue of if we grant that logic requires a metaphysical base, is that metaphysical base necessarily god? I find these arguments to be unnecessary since the above make it clear to my mind that the need for a metaphysical base is an unsupported assertion. However I will mention that Aristotle, who firmly believed that the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle were base requirements for logical thought, would have disagreed with the TAG contention that only the christian god can account for them.
In the TAG view, logic is dependent on god. Taken at face value, this would mean that the laws of logic are contingent upon god’s will and not necessary – if god had willed it, they could have been different. Of course, this would lead to the very inconsistencies that TAG proponents try to use god to avoid (how could the law of non-contradiction be false on the macro scale?) To get around this, TAG proponents insert a bit of linguistic legerdemain, saying that logic is an aspect of god’s character, and therefore necessary. What have they really done here? In order that the laws of logic not be considered to be brute fact they have simply asserted a further brute fact – the supposedly necessary existence of god and his necessary character, thereby explaining the necessary laws of logic. This is precisely that the kind of beard that Occam’s Razor shaves best – the unnecessary multiplication of postulates. If the laws of logic are necessary, there is no need to suppose a further necessary cause. If they are not necessary, then the TAG apologist will have to accept that macro scale absurdities could be in principle possible (ie that John could be 10 kilometres south of Paris and 10 km north of Paris at the same time) as long as god said so – something that they really shouldn’t have a problem with, if you think about it. Denying the existence of God does not lead to logical inconsistencies, but accepting his existence can.
In Part 2 of this three part post I will explore the supposed problem of induction (a rather large strawman if ever there was one) and in Part 3 I’ll take a look at the objective moral argument.
These are all good points, but with respect, I think you’ve missed a more basic error at the heart of TAG. Any logical argument contains the implicit assumption that the system of logic in which it is constructed is valid. Therefore, any logical argument which concludes that the system of logic in question is valid commits petitio principii and promptly disappears up its own arse. Non-Christians can’t account for our use of logic precisely because no one can; the entire concept of an external justification for logic is meaningless. TAG really just boils down to this:
1) Present opponent with insoluble problem.
2) Claim that opponent’s inability to solve insoluble problem invalidates their position.
3) When asked for solution to insoluble problem, run like hell.
Hah! Beautiful – thank you MartinM, you’ve made my day.
Like MartinM, I see TAG as somewhat begging the question. Ultimately, TAG proponents and detractors both believe logic has unknown or infinite origins. Yet TAG proponents insist a complex intelligence has always existed alongside logic, even that logic depends on the existence of said intelligence. Why? Why posit that the simplest most basic principles of our universe are dependent on an intelligence that would by definition be more complex than the principles it originates?
TAG proponents play three-cup shuffle with the god proposition.
Lee,
I have been very busy over the last few days…my wife and I are expecting a child any day. Let me digest what you have written here over the next day or so.
PS: I have enjoyed the dialog.
Best regards,
Congratulations, SA! I’ll see you back whenever – no rush. Some things are actually important!
Best wishes, and I hope everything goes well for you and your wife.
[...] argument against god, Atheism, christianity, fallacies, transcendental argument for god trackback Part 1 of my rebuttal to the Transcendental Argument for God has been up for some time now, dealing with the ‘God is [...]
Great article. You said “If we assume that the TAG argument is correct in that it truly does flow logically and inescapably from its premises, does this mean that we have proven christianity?
No, TAG does not necessarily prove God’s existence. But it does prove the supernatural, and a personal supernatural at that. Then the next question would be for theists, which God makes the most sense out of a personal supernatural? Within this theistic argument, I would provide all other theists good reasons for the Triune God of Scripture.
So every single human who uses logic, even bloggers, is proof of the supernatural because they themselves are supernatural in how they think. Namely, because their minds are functioning according to a transcendent a-priori.
This transcendent a-priori must be eternally immutable. Otherwise, logic can be said to potentially change, which in that case, would cease to exist because nothing could be distinguishable. Therefore, it is logical to say that logic is an extension of God’s own eternal mind, as it is a necessary precondition, not merely a cop out answer. The Christian has every right to presuppose this. Just as the atheist presupposes differently. The real matter is, which presupposition is more consistent with what we perceive to be reality?
Religion says that God will accept us based on what we do. The gospel says that God accepts us based on what God has done in the person of Jesus Christ. We will all die very soon and meet God face to face. Our problem with this scenario is that God is holy and we are not. We have been prideful, perverted, and selfish. But Christ lived the life we couldn’t (to transfer to us), received the wrath we deserve (in our place), and rose to prove it was all satisfactory. Those who change and believe in Jesus Christ will know they are right with God, thus His friend. This is in order to know, see, and experience Him forever, the eternal solution to our heart eternal longing. Please believe in Jesus Christ today.
Hi Cameron, thanks for your comment.
First – no, TAG really doesn’t prove the existence of the supernatural at all. Your fairly confused idea of a ‘transcendent a-priori’ includes some pretty amazing fallacious leaps and an undemonstrated premise. This is all covered extensively in the comments section to this earlier post, MartinM and Falterer provide food for thought on that proposition in their comments to this post, and this post itself provides fairly definitive answers to your objections if you read it again. Rather than type it all out again I’d just recommend that you read the linked comments (fairly big ask, I know because it is extensive) – if you still have questions afterwards then please feel free to state them with reference to where you think I’ve gone wrong.
As for your outline of what God is supposedly offering – if a surgeon sets my broken nose at a reasonable cost, do I have to thank him if he’s the guy who broke it in the first place?
In your story – God creates us and our natures, then sets the rules that our God-created natures can never live up to, then, because we can never live up to said rules, God creates hell to punish those who can never live up the rules (everyone), and then (because he’s a ‘nice guy’) sends himself to earth to be punished by himself in order to placate himself so that we don’t have to suffer under the rules that he himself put in place – provided that, after almost two thousand years of myth-building and historical-fog, we believe the story and thank him nicely for all his hard work.
And your claiming that Christianity makes sense…
People need to be convinced before they can believe. Belief is not a choice – you can only choose to pretend to believe. So convince me.
lee, I’ll get around to re-reading the post when I have time, thanks.
Looking at the gospel: you said “God creates us and our natures, then sets the rules that our God-created natures can never live up to
This is not entirely true, that is when consulting Scripture. More accurately, God created man perfect. Man’s thoughts, words, and actions were good, not evil. But even so God was sovereign over creating the potential for sin and knew that if Satan was in the garden then sin would happen. This is all part of God’s purpose, yes.
But God is not to be blamed for your sin, you are. Even though all are at fault, and only so because He has allowed it, this doesn’t change the fact that we are in a great dilemma. Namely, God is holy and we are not and we will meet Him soon.
Further, you are failing to see God’s overall purpose in Saving those whom He allowed to be at fault. God is not ultimately considered with us, but with Himself. He does all this for His own praise in that we will get to know God’s character deeper, namely, His grace. This is God’s act of love to those whom He elects to know it. Yet, here we turn full circle and see how we are blessed in this plan. Our greatest joy is in knowing Him more deeply and fuller, and His glory is reflected that we do.
People need to be convinced before they can believe.
This is your presupposition. My presupposition is based on Scripture. No one can be convinced because they are in darkness and will remain in darkness unless God changes one’s mind and heart to no longer be hostile towards Him become His friend. Rom 8:6-8. I ask you to believe today because it would simply be proof that God has done that on your behalf.
The gospel is the power of God for salvation, not proofs. But nevertheless we will talk about proofs.
I will seek to prove that logic is personal and supernatural. I already know that no matter what I say you will supress the truth in un-righteousness. Nevertheless I will proceed.
Since when did the definition of perfect include a tendency to listen to satan and the tendency to make bad choices?
This was God’s purpose? He created us in such a way that he knew would lead to us sinning – and you say he bears no responsibility for that? If I raise my children in such a way that I know will lead to them believing that black people are evil and must be ‘cleansed from the earth’ don’t I bear at least some responsibility when they go out and act on that belief?
No, not just allowed it – created us in such a way as to guarantee it. In your rush to paper over the failings of the genesis ‘morality play’, you’ve forgotten to keep your story straight.
And you think this narcisism is worthy of praise and worship…
Horsecrap – all that boils down to is the circularity of ‘before one can believe in God one must first believe in God’s power to make you believe in God’. Do yourself a favour – cut the arguments from scripture. They rely on the ‘authority’ of scripture and that is a presupposition we do not share. If your arguments are actually logical and evident, they will stand on their own. Don’t forget that you are attempting to argue with an atheist – you will need to demonstrate god first, then we can see what it supposedly said in scripture.
Also, this particular form of Calvinism paints God in a very nasty light – ‘we can only be saved if God changes our mind for us’. First, that change of mind would violate our free will ( to what extent is it your choice if God makes it for you?), and secondly it means that God is choosing to damn people to hell by choosing to not change their minds. And don’t come back with the usual special pleading of ‘but God’s not damning them – they’re damning themselves’. If it’s in my power to stop a person from walking off a cliff and I choose not to bother, I would be a monster.
Okay… this conversation will go a lot better if you don’t start with unsupported statements of your personal un-evidenced assumptions of what may or may not be my supposed motivations. The comment of yours above does not paint you as very confident in your arguments since you seem to be making preemptive excuses for any failure on your part to convince me…
You said “If I raise my children in such a way that I know will lead to them believing that black people are evil and must be ‘cleansed from the earth’ don’t I bear at least some responsibility when they go out and act on that belief?
If you intended it for good then yes. Your kids might intend it for evil, which they would be at fault for, but you may intend it for good, such as to eventually save them from that evil mindset and have them embrace all races.
“No, not just allowed it – created us in such a way as to guarantee it.
Exhaustively explain to me how God guaranteed this in such as way that it was sinful? He could not have done it in a way and potentially not sin? How do you know this? Further, what is your standard for “sin” and “evil” in the first place?
“And you think this narcisism is worthy of praise and worship… I don’t think it’s narcisism, and yes I think it’s worthy of praise.
“‘before one can believe in God one must first believe in God’s power to make you believe in God’
I never said this, and this isn’t what Scripture teaches. In Rom 4:5 God justifies the one who is condemning God. Those who believe and repent will know that God has done this for them. No one initiates it, we just make sure God has initiated it in us.
Free will? What free will? If you have free will then never sin again until you die. You see that’s impossible. We have will, but the real question is are our wills enslaved to sin or righteousness? This is clearly what Scripture teaches. Those who have the Spirit will live for righteousness, those who don’t are hostile to God and cannot submit to Him, Rom 8:6-8.
Yes God send people to Hell. It is an act of love to Himself that He does so. He protects and upholds His holiness and justice. Rom 9 teaches that God passes over some for is own purposes, namely, to reveal to objects of mercy His great and undeserved love towards them. If you don’t like it, create your own universe.
If my worldview is correct then it is likely for you to do what I stated. But if my worldview is correct then it is also likely for God to change your mind and heart.
Back to the topic of logic: MartinM said no one can account for logic. Let me start by asking you this: “What better accounts for logic, the supernatural or the natural?”
As far as falterer’s remarks go, I am pretty lost. He’d have to clarify what he’s talking about. Or maybe you can for him. Looking at this comment though, “TAG proponents insist a complex intelligence has always existed alongside logic”. The Christian worldview is more accurately that logic derives from God, and God is eternal in nature.
In other words without limits to time and space. He is the 4th dimension to our 3rd dimension. God cannot change the laws of logic anymore then He can change morality. They are both an extension of God’s nature.
If God is more natural then our finite natural world, then the laws of logic and morality would be more natural then our finite natural world. Because we are logical and moral beings, we are in this aspect supernatural. We ourselves prove the supernatural. I could say more, but I’ll let you respond now.
Oh for feck sake – why not raise them the right way in the first place? What a deeply disturbing argument – you are basically saying that it’s allright to raise evil psychopaths as long as you eventually plan on making them see the error of their unnecessary ways and become better people for it. So, I guess the whole genocide/psychopathy thing is just a valuable learning experience, hmmm?
I’m going to skip the rest of the scriptural doublespeak for the reason I gave in my last comment – it rests entirely on views of the authority of scripture, and on interpretations of scripture, that we do not share. You would have to support your base assumption of the authority of scripture before you could make any cogent arguments to me that were based on it. I also find arguments about the close details of unsupported fairy tales to be intensely boring and unproductive. The big picture of ‘Is any of it real enough to be worth arguing over?’ is much more interesting.
What part of ‘No one can account for logic’ did you fail to understand?
I actually disagree with MartinM on this one, however – deductive logic is very neatly accounted for at the level of language, as is pointed out in the quote from Michael Martin in the main post.
falterer’s full comment clears that up and says the same thing you said, in different words. What falterer is getting at is that since both TAG proponents and many TAG opponents say that logic is absolute/’built-in’/necessary/however you want to say it – TAG proponents are violating Occam’s Razor and unnecessarily multiplying postulates by proposing God as an explanation for something that both sides say is basic and built in.
Actually, we already have a 4th dimension – it’s called Time, which god is also supposed to be beyond. Does that mean he’s the 5th? If so, what does that actually mean?
The rest of your comment – look, please be aware that just making grammatical sense in a sentence is not the same as expressing coherent ideas. You say that you could say more – good, that would give me something to actually respond to.
You do strongly imply in your use of the phrase ‘God cannot change the laws of logic’ that the ‘laws’ of logic are fixed and immutable and that there is only one type of logic. This tells me that you haven’t done your background reading yet. Please tell me how the logical ‘law’ A != notA applies to wave/particle duality.
“Oh for feck sake – why not raise them the right way in the first place? you are basically saying that it’s allright to raise evil psychopaths as long as you eventually plan on making them see the error of their unnecessary ways and become better people for it.
Not precisely. God wants us to see His ‘grace’ more. This means God uses evil as a means to allow us to see, know, and experience Him more, the very thing we do want most. God has chosen to use evil as a means to reveal Himself more. He may have had to, but has chose to for His own purposes.
You would have to support your base assumption of the authority of scripture before you could make any cogent arguments to me that were based on it.
We both have problems of authority. No one can know anything for certain. However, I do believe we can know things for certain if that which is certain makes itself known to us.
What part of ‘No one can account for logic’ did you fail to understand?
Let me rephrase, in a though experiment, which better accounts for it?
TAG proponents are violating Occam’s Razor and unnecessarily multiplying postulates by proposing God as an explanation for something that both sides say is basic and built in.
Can you simplify this, I’m not following.
Actually, we already have a 4th dimension – it’s called Time
I’m not following this either. Time is a finite thing. Are you saying that time as we know it always existed (that the universe is infinitely old)? I hope not, because that is impossible.
Please tell me how the logical ‘law’ A != notA applies to wave/particle duality.
You are using circular reasoning here. You are equating the laws of logic to natural phenomenon. The reason this is circular is because your mind must use the laws of logic to tell you what is reality. Your observations must first consult your mind, thus are always filtered through the laws of logic. Further, wave particle duality can change, and there would still be a natural law present, just behaving differently. If the laws of logic in your mind change, then you would be thinking illogically, thus couldn’t know anything. You can’t derive nor equate laws of logic to natural phenomenon.
Under my first paragraph I mean to say, “He may not have had to, but has chose to for His own purposes.”
This argument, despite its popularity in Calvinist (and some other) circles, is one of the nastiest arguments ever used while attempting to sidestep the problem of evil. You allow that god may not have had to choose to use evil – then why did he? Simply blowing the question away with an airy wave of hand and a ‘God’s mysterious purposes’ does not excuse the simple fact that christian theology requires god to be blamed for evil. And yet, you choose not to blame but instead find the enabler of thousands of years of suffering to be worthy of worship and praise…
Truly despicable.
Don’t you see the contradiction?
Also, let’s assume that ‘that which is (assumed) to be certain makes itself known to us’. How does it do this in a way that we can be certain of? What does it mean to ‘be certain’? Is it ‘high probability of being correct’? Is it ‘felt strongly’? Is it ‘believed strongly’?
First, on what basis do you confidently use the word ‘impossible’?
Second, this is why philosophy needs to be better informed by science. Time as the fourth dimension of space-time is a well established principle in physics, ever since Einstein’s relativity. What makes you say that time as a dimension means that time must be infinite? The other three spatial dimensions certainly aren’t.
Where to start… there are many fallacies here, along with a false premise or two based on a misunderstanding of what I wrote.
The reason I brought up wave-particle duality is to point out that the logical ‘law’ of non-contradiction (a cannot equal notA) does not always apply to the universe in which we find ourselves. This was to reinforce the point that your claim falsely assumes that there is, and can only be, one type of logic and that it is built into the universe as ‘laws’ that everything must follow. A wave has certain properties that absolutely preclude it from being a particle (A cannot be notA); a particle has certain properties that absolutely preclude it from being a wave (notA cannot be A). And yet, the evidence forces us to conclude that wave-particle duality is a reality – one that is not allowed by our basic language-based deductive logic system. Enter quantum logic, which succesfully allows for truth values between true and untrue…
Our mind does not rigourously apply the ‘laws of logic’ to sensory inputs in order to determine what is real or not – the human mind is an evolved grab-bag of reasonable approximations and faulty assumptions that regularly gets it wrong as the price for having the very mechanisms that allow us to generally get it right. Pareidolia is a good example of this, our tendency to anthropomorphise and ascribe agency and intent to natural phenomena is another.
As I said, philosophy needs to be better informed by science than it currently is. And theology needs to stop pretending it’s philosophy.
As for the Occam’s Razor question – a common argument of TAG proponents is that the ‘Laws of Logic’ are a necessary condition of the universe. They then attempt to explain that necessity by making the laws of logic a part of the nature of god – the general fallback position when attempting to account for the ‘lucky availability’ of something that is necessary. In a gloriously circular argument they assume that god explains logic and that logic explains the need for the existence of god. The problem here is the word necessary. In philosophy, if something is stated as a ‘necessary condition’, it doesn’t actually require an explanation – and certainly not a circular one such as the god model. TAG proponents are adding an extra unsupported, unnecessary idea (god) on top of a necessary condition.
On that last point, I actually explained it better in the original post – this section here:
You allow that god may not have had to choose to use evil – then why did he?
Your argument here only puts points on my scoreboard. You are are assuming evil is a problem when assuming the problem of evil. Thus are assuming evil is real, hence there is a real standard of good. Where does your real standard of good come from?
Further, I fully believe that God is the cause of evil, but He intends causing it for good, not evil in and of itself. This problem is a paradox which you are conveniently making into a contradiction for your own God evading motives.
Don’t you see the contradiction?
Not entirely. If we can’t know anything for certain, then we don’t know that we can’t know for certain, thus there may be some certainty that we can know. Which is why all the more reason we would need certainty to make itself known.
I’m confused with the whole time thing. I was trying to clarify what you were saying. I’m saying that time as we know it is finite. The universe has not existed infinitely long.
We’re talking past each other about logic. Wave/partical duality is describing a phenomenon that IS. The laws of logic PRESCRIBE how our minds OUGHT to think. There’s a significant difference there. For example, you would have no way of even identifying what light, waves, and particles are, if they were able to also be identified as non-light, non-waves, and non-particles. You mind must use the laws of logic for you to think. Nature does not have to, but to our limited knowledge, it very well may. This is the heart of TAG. It does not merely say that contradictions are impossible, thus God exists, but that our minds must function according to the law of non-contradiction, and this is not governed by anything in finite matter. This is why the laws of logic are said to be a transcendent a-priori.
Our mind does not rigourously apply the ‘laws of logic’ to sensory inputs in order to determine what is real or not
I never said the law of logic “determine” what is real. Rather, we can’t escape perceiving reality through the lens of the laws of logic. There’s a big difference there.
Science needs to be more informed with Philosophy. Science requires observers to observe the observable. All of which mindless matter itself can’t account for.
I would not argue that God is a necessary condition, simply because this would require me to exhaustively prove it. Nothing can be proven this way, however. While all along I certainly believe this. Deductive arguments are only good on paper and in though experiments. They don’t exist in the real world, as there is always room for some degree of doubt. Putting that behind us, let me still offer an argument for God’s existence. What is governing our minds, telling us that they OUGHT to function according to the law of non-contradiction as opposed to not. This is a abstract law, but even more so, an abstract law that MUST be what it is as apposed to anything in order for us to think. Mindless matter can’t account for this.
You claim that science requires observers to observe observables, and that this doesn’t make sense without consciousness. Though the PROCESS of science may require observers, the statements of science do not. Even the things written in quantum mechanics can be dealt with (very carefully) without appealing to sentient observers.
More urgent, regarding your last point, I’m not entirely sure that I follow. There’s nothing telling us that our minds should assume the law of non-contradiction except for the fact that, as a group, we’ve decided to. The reason that we as a group decided to was because it appeared to be true in our experience. And now I’m going to bring up a point I’ve made before on this blog, there is something called paraconsistent logic in which the law of non-contradiction is not true. Do a quick google search and you’ll find a few hits on it.
The laws of logic aren’t immutable, they’re instead based on inference (and don’t go to Hume, we all know that inference isn’t justified) and then are formalized as axioms from which we begin our intellectual endeavors. But especially in modern times, we’ve broken the inference becomes axiom organization and started seeing what we can do if we assume basic axioms are, in fact, wrong. There are even a few people (logicians) who make their careers doing this.
Cameron, you are making a mistake common to theists when arguing with non-theists – you are showing yourself to be incapable of thinking outside of your worldview. This leads you to make statements that tacitly assume shared beliefs. Actually, in your case you often explicitly state (here and on your blog) that there are shared beliefs deep down – a tactic I haven’t come across often since I usually only take the time to argue with people who achieve a certain standard of intellectual honesty.
Try to get through your head, Cameron, that a person who does not believe in God cannot have ‘God-evading’ motives. There is nothing to evade, as far as I can see. It’s a fair bet that you don’t believe in Krishna – do you have Krishna-evading motives? Making assumptions about a persons motives during a discussion is a silly tactic and a sign of a weak position.
On your point regarding good, evil and standards – you, once again, assume a shared sense of some absolute standard. This is false. There is no absolute standard, and I certainly don’t assume one – but the bible does, and that was the basis of the argument at that point. See what I mean about thinking outside of a worldview? In pointing to god as the cause of evil we cast light on biblical inconsistencies in the claims made for god’s nature. Second, we do not need an absolute standard of morality in order to have a sense of right and wrong. Our moral sense is as evolved as any other aspect of our thinking – liable to make mistakes, but generally fine as a rule of thumb. And if you wish to know about the evidence and arguments for an evolved moral sense, feel free to google it and be honest enough to look at sources that you don’t already agree with – there’s too much to go into here. Thirdly, you claim that when a person looks to the ‘morals’ of God and judges them as immoral, they are actually using the absolute moral set that is part of God’s nature, therefore demonstrating (to your mind, at least) an actual deep down belief. Have you never asked yourself how a person using god’s stated moral sense could come to the conclusion that the god of the bible is evil and immoral?
Using words like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ does not presuppose an absolute standard. All that is required is a linguistic/cultural legacy and oral standard that is both shared by enough people in the community we find ourselves in and commensurate with our more general evolved sense of which actions we are comfortable with and which cause us distress. It is dishonest to suggest that borrowing terminology from a widely held viewpoint when there is no other terminology in common use somehow means that we must share that viewpoint.
Your assertion that it’s okay for god to be the cause of evil because he intends it for good is, firstly, silly and evidence of a lack of thought on your part. It assumes that the evil was necessary (can you at least agree that causing evil unnecessarily is wrong?) in order to bring about the good. In doing so, you are saying that god is limited – if the evil was necessary, then god had no choice, a position that most theologians and almost all ‘christians on the street’ would strongly disagree with.
Secondly, that you would hold that position at all is simply disturbing. It’s precisely the position held by the witch burners – burn them, hurt them, torture them – it’s all for the benefit of their souls. Almost anything can be justified with ‘logic’ like that.
Cameron, you said:
Again I ask – how can we be certain that ‘certainty has made itself known’? On what basis do you decide?
Charles – long time no see. (I know, I’ve been a bad blogger, neglecting my ‘rambling duties’ for a while.) Good points in your comment, but I’ve been roaming around Cameron’s blog over the last few days and have seen no evidence that he is actually open to argument at all.
Cameron – you say you are confused about ‘the whole time thing’. Yes, I can tell…
You haven’t answered my earlier question – on what basis do you confidently assert that time is finite and therefore cannot be a dimension? Bear in mind that you may well be right (on at least one of those points, however, you’re not) – but if you are, can you say why?
You seem equally confused about the status of ‘the laws of logic’, as you keep referring to them. You say that logic tells us what ought to be but not necessarily what is. If your best defense for the existence of logic as transcendental laws is to say that it conforms to what, in your opinion, ought to be, then you really have no argument at all. On what basis do we discern what ought to be? Can you answer that question outside of arguments from biblical authority? The simple brute fact is that quantum decoherence, wave-particle duality, etc are all violating what you think ‘ought’ to be the case all the time. What ‘is’ trumps your parochial, unevidenced idea of what ‘ought’.
You also say that “our minds must function according to the law of non-contradiction, and this is not governed by anything in finite matter” – this is nothing more than two naked assertions presented as evident fact. Why must our minds function according to the LNC? People hold contradictory opinions and views all the time – we are not naturally logical thinkers. Learning to think well takes time and effort – all of the basic tools are there but we have to learn to apply them correctly and learn to avoid the fallacies and biases of our ‘natural’ mode of thought. A reasonable analogy is the fact that we have to learn how to drive a car – everyone can get hold of a wheel and turn it, everyone can push a pedal with their foot, but we still need to practice coordinating those movements that we are all capable of to make those movements useful and meaningful.
Your idea that logical laws such as the LNC are built into how our minds work shows that you know very little about how our minds work. And if the mind truly did apply the LNC, as you say they must in order for us to think at all, then that would lead us into error when it comes to probing how the universe actually works – a mind that was truly constrained by the LNC could not even conceive of quantum physics and would be totally unable to evaluate the evidence in the way that we have.
I would broadly agree with that – in order for a deductive to be true, the premises must also be completely true, something that we can’t guarantee. In truth, all arguments outside of mathematics are inductive – the conclusions of inductive arguments are always tentative, probabilistic and open to change as new evidence comes along. The exact opposite of faith – somewhat ironic since you are using a (very bad) inductive argument to bolster/demonstrate/prove that faith in god is required to be rational.
You say or imply on several occassions that ‘mindless matter’ can’t account for the mind. This is another naked assertion and one which the proponderance of evidence from modern neurology demonstrates to be categorically false. Mind is not some nebulous ‘other’, transcendent over mere matter – the mind is an emergent property of matter organised in certain ways. Change the matter (damage the brain) and the mind changes in predictable ways. This remains true whether you like it or not, regardless of the damage it may do to your world view.
Way back in your first comment here, you use the term supernatural and say that we ourselve prove it. Please present a coherent definition of the word supernatural – if its existence is proven, we ought to be able to say what it is.
Glad to be back, Lee. Just passed my oral exams to move on to PhD Candidacy this Monday, so I’m going to get back to blogging and commenting and the like.
Just one minor point, which has been bugging me. Though the essentials of your arguments are good, I don’t see wave-particle duality as a violation of LNC in nature. I see wave-particle duality as really saying that the negation of “A is a particle” is not “A is a wave”, because the two states are not mutually exclusive (and also not exhaustive, as there are composite objects which cannot be thought of as a single particle or wave). LNC is certainly considered valid in the mathematics of quantum theory.
Now, this doesn’t take away the point that the LNC isn’t a necessary piece of logic, and that there are certainly logical systems without it, I just don’t thing that your argument is really good.
That’s fantastic news, soon-to-be-doctor Siegel – congratulations!
Good point re LNC and duality, and coherently stated – I’m not firmly wedded to the concept of LNC and duality being opposed to each other. My version of the argument really rests on our definitions of the terms wave and particle, and, as you point out, quantum physics has shown us definitively that those definitions are insufficient to express the reality of the situation. That’s cool – a bad argument is a bad argument and needs to be dropped.
I love getting challenging comments that are actually coherent – it’s an opportunity to learn something or unlearn something false (take note, Cameron…).
One part of the argument that I would say still applies, though, is where it meshes with (and disposes of) Cameron’s point – given the definitions of wave and particle that physicists used to work with before quantum physics (the understanding of the time that wave and particle were mutually exclusive), and given Cameron’s assertion that the LNC is foundational to thought, we ought to have found it impossible to properly even think about the apparently contradictory behaviours we discovered on the quantum scale.
Yeah, it always bugs me when someone attempts to claim things that imply that we are incapable of thinking of something or understanding something. That always boils down to argument from ignorance, and even if it were a valid inference, experience has shown that ignorance is often a temporary thing. In fact, I think one of the things I like most about science is that it consistently forces us into new patterns of thought, and even if they don’t work out, they’ve expanded what we can coherently think about. Now, our language is a limiter on what we can think about coherently, but languages evolve, and just think how much of our vocabulary these days is soley due to advancements in science and technology that required new words to describe.
Charles Siegel,
Even the things written in quantum mechanics can be dealt with (very carefully) without appealing to sentient observers.
Did you observe this?
Charles Siegel,
There’s nothing telling us that our minds should assume the law of non-contradiction except for the fact that, as a group, we’ve decided to.
Really? When did this take place? How many votes were handed in? Did you observe this interaction? So by your reasoning, the laws of logic are determined by popular consensus. So if everyone eventually decides that we don’t need the law of non-contradiction to be logical then it will be so? Yet, we assume the law of non-contradiction the whole time this all happens! Further, you’re also assuming prior intelligence to bring about logic. I do the same with God.
The reason that we as a group decided to was because it appeared to be true in our experience. And now I’m going to bring up a point I’ve made before on this blog, there is something called paraconsistent logic in which the law of non-contradiction is not true.
What is our “standard” of something appearing to be true. Come on man. Are you just making stuff up on the spot.
So if the law of non-contradiction doesn’t have to be true, then it’s equally true that the law of non-contradiction must be true! Wow. Sign me up for your worldview.
Cameron, you’re not very good at reading for comprehension, are you? Your entire previous comment is simply merrily hacking away at strawmen – you’ll get a couple of un-begrudged brownie points in my eyes if you can find where for yourself.
Bear in mind that your ignorance of the evidence is not evidence for your worldview. Try looking this stuff up yourself instead of responding from your incredulity.
You keep saying, over and over ‘the laws of logic. Which set? We have:
Propositional logic (this one doesn’t even require axioms and is entirely definitional)
First-order logic
First-order predicate logic
Second-order predicate logic
Modal logic
Fuzzy logic
Quantum logic
Paraconsistent logic
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have a freaking clue what most of those are – I went looking for a list of types and found one. But it is obvious that logic is not some transcendental monolith.
To say that ‘logic’ is part of God’s character/nature/..insert-unsupported-claim-here.. is simply a category error. Logic applies to arguments, arguments are referents to entities but are not the entities themselves, and nor is logic. Logic cannot be an entity or a part of an entity. A sentient entity can be ‘logical’ in the colloquial sense of consciously applying logic to arguments, but logic itself cannot be a part of the nature of the entity as that would make logic itself an entity.
Secondly, to say that logic is part of god’s nature you must also be saying that god actually has a nature at all. Isn’t god supposed to be ’supernatural’? Beyond nature? Outside of nature? By ascribing a nature to god you are stealing a concept from naturalism to prop up the broken, irrepairable negatively-defined concept of ’supernatural’. ‘Nature of’ and ‘nature’ (as opposed to ’supernature’) may seem to be different concepts but if you speak of a being’s nature without reference to nature you are simply begging the question of whether this is even possible.
What are sometimes called the Laws of Reason are prior to any sytem of logic and not part of logic itself. They’re actually fairly simple: existence, identity and consciousness. To exist is to exist as something. To be aware of existence is consciousness. To reason you must exist as something. Systems of logic, and their axioms, are ultimately derived a priori from this simple base of existence as a sentient entity – the axiom of existence. Charles is quite right to assume a prior intelligence to ‘bring about logic’ but not in the way you mean.
Systems of logic are not entities in their own right existing outside of sentient brains, and they are not something imposed upon sentient brains from the ‘outside’. Axioms are abstractions that exist in sentient brains – sentient brains are all that is required for the creation of any a priori system. All you do, Cameron, is add an extra earlier step of a ‘different earlier’ intelligence (God) – and you do this with no justification whatsoever. You are attempting to explain something which doesn’t need any further explanation, something which is, in fact, the base of all ‘explanations’ – and even worse, you are explaining it with a concept (god) that itself does need explanation as it is supposed to be ’supernatural’ and therefore ontologically incoherent.
Now, will you have anything useful to say or will you just stick your fingers in your ears and chant out loud, “You’re making it up! You’re making it up!” ?
I also notice that you haven’t answered (or even acknowledged) any of the points made or questions asked in my other recent comments.
You’re not separating the human practice of science, which requires observers, from the scientific laws which govern the universe, which do not.
Additionally, not all things need to be voted on for it to be something that we, as a group of humans, have agreed to, and this point is completely irrelevant. I agree with Lee, you keep saying “The” laws of logic, but there are many sets of such laws. There is a system of logic which most people use in every day life (when they use logic at all) but it is hardly the only one, and because most people use it, I say that we, as a group, have decided to use it.
I don’t see where I’m assuming an intelligence to bring about logic. All I’m assuming an intelligence for is to make a choice of which logic that said intelligence will use. A problem with is completely irrelevant in a universe where no intelligence ever lived.
As for a standard of something appearing to be true, I’m going to have to go with the assumption that it is true leading to increased survival rates, at least, back as far as this must have been. I’m not an expert on philosophy, I’m in math, and my view on logic is affected by this, yes. But the important part is that there are many logics.
[...] Religion, the problem of induction, theism, thought, transcendental argument for god trackback In Part 1 of this extended argument (quite a while ago, I know) I looked at the claims made about logic in [...]
Hi guys – as you can see from the above trackback, part 2 of the rebuttal to TAG is now up.