You’re the one playing word games now. Take your pick. Is the null universe devoid of even concepts, or just devoid of ontological entities? If it’s devoid of even concepts, then it’s devoid of the concept “this universe is empty”
Yes, and I made this quite clear in the original argument, distinguishing between actual impossibility and logical impossibility.
Then all it would prove would be that God is not impossible. It certainly wouldn’t necessitate his existence. For it to do that, you would first have to remove all references to possibility.
No. This space unicorn is utterly different from God. He doesn’t cause the universe to come into being, he merely has veto power over the creation of the universe.
It is unimaginable, but not strictly speaking necessarily impossible. There is a difference.
A) Strawman. I’m saying that “existence” has a different meaning for things like logic and math than for, say, a piece of granite, and that they two cannot be equated as you are attempting to do.
I’m not actually denying logic, as I said above.
Of course they do. If the law of noncontradiction holds, then contradictions are impossible in the real world. They can only exist in language, which may or may not make sense.
If God is not logically impossible, then He exists.
Then it is logically possible for God to create a world without a space unicorn, disproving the space unicorn’s existence as a necessary being. His existence is only contingent.
No, your space unicorn God is logically impossible, as I showed above. He is only a contingent being.
It’s a contradiction in terms to be talking about “logically possible” entities without presupposing logic, in whatever manner the expression “logic exists” is taken to mean.
If you’re denying the universal applicability of logic, then it amounts to the same thing. And such a supposition is axiomatically out of bounds for the present discussion.
This is the essence of your argument and it is nothing but an unproven assumption. Just because something is not logically impossible it does not mean that this entity actually exists. Maybe you consider it an axiom. It is certainly not axiomatic to me. If you do not think that it is a axiom, then go ahead and prove it.
The concept of “necessary being” is an arbitrary one. Cannot be taken seriously.
Total and complete baloney. To say that the logical impossibility of something (anything) implies that it is logically possible is a blatant disregard for logic.
I just did prove it in the case of God, or any other necessary being for that matter. If a necessary being is logically possible it does mean that this entity actually exists.
Rather, your opinion of what can be “taken seriously” is arbitrary. Why should I or anyone else take you seriously when you lecture about what should be taken seriously? In fact if you are reduced to merely arguing about what should be “taken seriously” then it only tells me you are sinking fast in this debate and know it.
Which is of course not what was said, if you would have actually cared to read the entire statement, instead of simply latching onto something which you could misrepresent as a “blatant disregard for logic”. So let me repeat:
Since the concept of a “necessary being” is just an assumption, you did not prove anything. If something is not logically impossible, from that it follows that this “thing” is logically possible, nothing more. You have to prove that a “being” actually exists in all possible worlds. Even if it did, it would not mean that this hypothetical being is “necessary”, all it would prove that there is a being in all possible worlds. But, since the null-world by definition does not contain anything, you there is no being in all possible worlds, and as such all your efforts are futile.
That is not an arguement, just an ad hominem. Dime a dozen…
Sure, it is a definition, and it is clear and coherent. But it does not follow that such a being actually exists. Sure, there are some philosophers who argue that there is such a “thing” as a “necessary being”. And there are others who find this concept incoherent. Until you or anyone else can prove that there is a “necessary being” (not just assume it), your assumption is just like any other unsupported assumptions - without merit.
Your error is very simple: The negation of “logically impossible” is not “actually exists”, it is simply “logically possible”. And no matter how many times you repeat it, from the “logically possible” to “actually existing” there is no path…
A concept is not an assumption. A concept is a concept. I don’t assume anything. I can conceive of a 100 foot tall human being. Doesn’t mean he exists, but there is no assumption involved in the conception.
This is mere argument by assertion. No, as my proof shows, if that something is a necessary being, if that something is not logically impossible, then it exists.
That being must exist only in all logically possible worlds.
That is the definition of “necessary” as I have defined it - existing in all logically possible worlds. It’s “necessary” in the sense that any logically possible world without it is impossible. Yes you are correct insofar as there must be a logical reason as to why the being’s existence is necessary - otherwise there will be a logically possible universe without him. IOW, the being’s necessity must be shown to be logically possible - the necessity is part of the attributes of the being.
All logically possible worlds, not merely all epistemically possible worlds. I agree the null-world is epistemically possible. I deny it is logically possible.
Hey, you dish it out pal, you better be willing to take it. If you think to dismiss an argument by merely saying it should not be “taken seriously”, as judged by you, well then… you sort of had it coming.
Of course not.
Of course not. The existence of a necessary being is not assumed.
The argument did not say the negation of “logically impossible” is “actually exists”. Misrepresenting the argument yet again. The argument does negate logically impossible as logically possible.
As was shown to you numerous times, the path is marked out in blazing colors.
You should probably be using the terms “Unmoved mover” and “It” or something, then, since “God” is far and away too ambiguous in this context.
In other words, “If there is no unmoved mover, then its definition is incorrect.”
I’m not following this at all. Perhaps you forgot some punctuation?
If you deny it, then you should be able to present a proof that the null-world actually contains an ontological contradiction. Since the null-world is empty, there is nothing in it, therefore there can be no contradiction in it. To paraphrase the old saying: “Which part of empty don’t you understand?
” (And this is meant to be a joke - not a put-down!).OK, I can go with that.
I can go with that, too, when the meaning of “necessarily exists” is “exists in every logically possible world”.
Don’t follow you here. We can correctly define an unexisting object.
A->B necessarily means ~B->~A.
Part 1 of the proof doesn’t do this. The only thing Part 1 of the proof does (which this is) is establish that either: the UM exists or the UM is logically impossible.
The proof fails.
Yes.
Not true. I begin with a causal chain of events (there can be a first mover or the chain can be an infinite regress, it doesn’t matter). In this universe it is logically impossible for each event to exist without the prior cause. But each event in the chain is only capable of causing the event immediately after it, not the one two steps removed. Therefore the subset of this world which consists of removing every other event in the chain is logically impossible. Each remaining event is there without its logically necessary cause.
This would be true if your constructive algorithm had universal applicability. It doesn’t. There are logical relations between the ontological entities. These logical relations are not ontological entities in themselves. Yet they can, in given circumstances, necessitate the existence of an ontological entity under pain of logical impossibility; and, therefore, deleting that ontological entity results in a logically impossible world.
I misspoke. What I should have said, and meant, was that I deny the necessary knowledge upon which to conclude that the null-universe, or any universe for that matter, is logically possible or impossible, with only two exceptions: our universe (since it exists), and any universe with a known logical impossibility (a married bachelor). Otherwise, we need to know everything about it. And don’t.
An actual married bachelor cannot exist. A world with an actual married bachelor (as opposed to the existence of the phrase) is a logically impossible world. The married bachelor can be shown to violate the law of non-contradiction.
A real logical contradiction, as opposed to one merely stated in words, would violate the logical possibility of any world in which it appears.
Sometimes the laws of logic mandate the existence of certain ontological entities. For instance, an object A which, of its nature, changes into object B (for instance, radioactive decay in this universe). The existence of object A mandates the existence of object B. A universe with A and without B is a logically impossible universe.
No, we don’t know everything about a null world. All we know is that nothing actually exists. We don’t know anything about anything that could hypothetically exist. Which is what we need to know. If the logical relationship between hypothetical objects A and B is such that ~A → B, and this relationship is true in every hypothetical world, including the null world, then the null world is logically impossible. I don’t know that such a relationship exists. Or not. Neither do you.
As I have shown, this assumes knowledge about the nature of existence which we don’t possess.
OK, so may be it wasn’t an “ad hominem” strictly speaking, but it was still silly and annoying, and is of no value whatsoever to the argument.
True. However, I did not specify the order of removal. When contemplating the causal chains, we can do the removal systematically, in reverse causative order, and this method is valid and does not lead to “hanging events”. So your objection may be valid for “haphazard” removals, but not for systematic ones.
That is not true. Removing my child from the world does not negate my existence. I suspect that you made a typo and wanted to state that removing “A” would leave “B” as uncaused. Even though this suggestion leaves out the possibility that “B” could have been cause by either “A” or “C”, and thus removing “A” does not leave “B” uncaused.
In the case of “reverse causative” removal this objection does not hold. And the end result is still the null-world, which is therefore logically possible.
I agree with your two exceptions, but I think we can add the null-world as third. Below I will give my reasons why I think so.
Since we agree that these laws (which are simply a few axioms and their corollaries) are not ontological entities, I hope we can agree that their existence or non-existence in the null world is irrelevant to our current topic. (It might be interesting to explore what does the word “existence” mean when applied to these entities.)
I am not familiar with this, but at first sight it does not look reasonable. “Nothing” is stable, since it is unchangable. “Something” can never be as stable, as the laws of nature indicate it. But maybe your meaning of “something” is something that I am not familiar with. (Ugh, what a sentence.)
Agreed.
Agreed.
Your example is contingent upon the currently known laws of the physical universe. I don’t see that the laws of logic (which are the rules of clear thinking process) could mandate the actual existence of anything. Maybe you could give another example.
This is the point where I want to explain my reasoning about the full “knowability” of the null-world. When we talk about all logically possible universes we can postulate that there is exactly one of each. It would make no sense to postulate two or more identical universes. Now, if we assume that the null-world could hypothetically change and cease to be a null-world, then this new world would not be a null-world, it would be one of the already postulated worlds. And that is not necessary, since all the other worlds are already postulated. Therefore the null-world is unchangable.
But we do know. Since the “objects” you speak of must be objectively existing othological objects, and not just concepts, we know from the definition that no such objects exist in the null-world, therefore no relationship can exist between them either. This is the beauty of the abstraction of the null-world. It can be fully known, unlike our universe which can only partially be known. Though we do know with certainty that our universe cannot contain an actual logical contradiction.
It doesn’t matter whether the order of removal is obvious or not. My objection negates your proof. For it to be a proof now you are going to need to provide more.
So you admit 2) is wrong then. What you really mean is that if a world is logically possible, there is a subset of the world which is also logically possible, not that each subset of the world is logically possible, by definition. You need to provide a formal proof of this then.
No, what I meant was, in a universe where “A” causes “B” by necessity, e.g. if you have an “A” you (definitely, not just maybe) get a “B”, and that is the only way to get a “B”. If you by nature and not by choice are forced to procreate, and it is impossible that a procreation attempt could be unsuccessful, then a world in which you don’t have a child is logically impossible.
In the first place, the burden of proof is on you to prove the assertion “for each logically possible world there exists a subset which is also logically possible”. There may be another objection besides that of causation which holds in these cases.
OK, I’ll give you my reasons why I think not. Basically it comes down to the applicability of laws governing existence or non-existence.
OK.
But actually, modern physics shows that the laws of nature indicate “something” is more stable than “nothing”.
Yes, but again, as Vic Stenger has shown (he is an atheist BTW), these laws are not “contingent” but follow necessarily from the fact that if physics is going to describe an objective reality, it cannot be dependent on the point of view of the observer (e.g. space-translation invariance, etc.) - Noether’s theorem shows that leads to a conservation law and the rest of the laws follow from gauge invariance.
If these physical laws apply universally to all universes (and I think have provided a very good argument why this is the case), and these physical laws show that “something” is more stable than “nothing”, that “nothing” will turn into “something”, I think I have shown that it is at least possible that laws of logic could mandate the existence of something.
But here is where we differ. There could be laws of existence, applicable to all universes, which mandate that a null universe change.
You can define it that way, but that does not prove its logical possibility.
No, there is a metaphysical area between mere “concepts” and “objectively existing ontological objects”. There is such a thing as “hypothetically existing ontological objects” and relationships can exist between them. These objects do not exist in our universe, but they exist in other universes and might exist in ours. It is possible universally valid relationships exist between them.
The null-world cannot be fully known. All that is known is what exists actually. What exists potentially is unspecified.