I have a suggestion. When talking to people do not use idioms like " A-T metaphysics. "
What does the symbol “+” mean. In Chinese it stands for the number ten (十). Also in Chinese, the symbol “=” stands for the number two (二).
But it is not either Absolutely True or Absolutely False. It is only relatively true or relatively false, depending on many different extraneous things outside the group of symbols themselves. Its truth or falsity is not intrinsic to the statement, but depends on a large number of extrinsic factors. In set theory, 1 + 1 = 2 is false, and 1 + 1 = 1 is true.
No. It was merely a simple way of showing that the truth of the statement was not intrinsic to the statement, but relied on external assumptions. Change those assumptions, without changing the statement, and the truth value of the statement changes. The truth or falsity of the statement is not intrinsic to the statement, as it would be for an Absolute Truth. An Absolute Truth is true in all times and in all circumstances. The statement “1 + 1 = 2” fails that test.
Of course I do not. My senses are for from perfect and all I can know of the external world is a series of electrical impulses arriving on my sensory nerves. My eyes are less sensitive than the eyes of an eagle, so I see less of the world that an eagle. I smell less of the world than a dog. I hear less of the world than a bat. I cannot even detect polarized light, like a bee. There is a huge amount of the world that I cannot, and never will be able to sense.
I think you are equivocating. I am not speaking of " mirages, " that is the psychological effect of atmospheric conditions. Normal interaction with the universe outside our minds does not involve mirages. We see or otherwise sense it and our intellect affirms that what we see is a part of the real world. Otherwise we could not live. And of course we do not know the entire universe, at once. Neither of these conditions, nor personal psychological disorders invalidates whagt I said.
The symbols do not have absolute meaning (just like sound waves and graphite marks on paper have no intrinsic meaning), but the statement 1+1=2 does reflect a truth about the universe (and it reflects that truth whether anyone is thinking about it or not).
It does, if you think about it carefully. We cannot sense the full detail of any object in the real world – our imperfect senses always leave us with incomplete information. This is unavoidable. We cannot see in the ultra violet and we cannot detect polarization. We are always working with incomplete information so we are always working with an incomplete internal model of what exists outside us.
I prefer to say a model of the real world. The model is good enough to enable our survival, but that is as far as it goes.
Correct. It is a common mistake to think that our internal model actually is the reality outside our mind. It isn’t – it is an internal model.
It does reflect a truth, but the truth it reflects is not an Absolute Truth, but a relative truth. The truth of the statement is relative to the non-absolute meaning assigned to the symbols used.
I disagree. How can we know what is being said if we don’t know what the characters, or the language, means? If we cannot determine the actual statement then we cannot assign a truth value to it. At best we can say “meaningless” or “unknown”.
Likewise every integer has a finite magnitude (‘distance’ from zero) - would you therefore conclude that there is a finite number of integers, or that there must be a ‘start’ to the negative integers?
Your argument is helped somewhat by the fact that you fail to distinguish between actual and potential infinite values. Numbers are only potentially infinite. No one has “actually” counted to infinity.
Let’s transpose that into a slightly different key:
That depends on where you start from. If you start from infinity - 10 then you can count to infinity in ten steps.
So, the eternal God, who has existed for infinite time segments prior to now cannot have created the universe, since there are an infinite number of time segments between the origin of God and the origin of the universe.
Re: bold above: This is strawman. God exists, transendent of time.
Of course the image in our mind is a different thing than the reality outside our mind but it is a true image of the reality. That does not mean we know all there is to know about that external reality. Science shows and has demonstrated that we can lean much more than what is revealed by the image which we abstract from the external reality. But these refinements or scientific precisions are themselves images of that reality, in depth images. The reality is more fully revealed as our scientific precisions advance. So there e is a constant, but more revealing image of reality. Each image is a true image but at ever more refined levels of reality’s existence. So our mind is always revealing the true reality. Can we make errors? Of course. That does not mean we do not know reality as it is. To make that conclusion is unreasonable in the extreme, it is an equivocation.
The original argument also failed to distinguish - so the counterargument succeeds. In other words the same argument you use to dismiss infinite past time would dismiss infinite negative integers, by the same logic that any two actual integers are seperated by a finite interval. There doesn’t have to be an ‘actual’ integer ‘minus infinity’ just as there does not have to be an ‘actual’ moment ‘minus infinity’.
No - if there is no distinct starting place then it makes no sense to talk about how much later in time from it we are.
Let me get this straight…
Presuming that God is in some timeframe, which, as far as I know, is not what the word eternal (outside of any time constraints) means. No one is claiming eternal means a infinite number of time segments except, perhaps, you. Why do you suppose the idea of an actual infinite being impossible was even brought up?
Again, eternal does not mean contrained by a time sequence no matter how long. Eternal means outside of the constraints of time altogether.
How can it be a “true image” when we both agree that it is “different” and lacks information? If it lacks information then it falls short of being a true image.
We disagree. It is not just errors, it is the intrinsic loss of information involved in our sense perceptions. We cannot see ultra violet because our eyes do not register light at that frequency. We cannot hear high pitched sounds like a bat can because our ears do not register those frequencies. We cannot know reality “as it is” because we are lacking complete information about that reality.
If God is not in a timeframe, the you cannot tell for how long He has existed, because there is no frame against which to measure. In the absence of a timeframe a second cannot be distinguished from a billion years. Unless you can actually measure, you cannot compare durations.
See:
rossum
By " image " I do not necessarily mean a photographic image, necessarily. Our mind refines what we are receiving. First there is an image, Then the mind goes to work analyzing the information coming in. We begin to form concepts which tell us more and more about the external reality. All of this refines the meaning of the image in relation to the external reality. So we do know external reality as far as our experience and science allow us. To counter that we do not know reality as it is is an equivocation, splitting of hairs. We live in a real world, we know it, there is nothing unreal about it, though our knowledge is always open to improvement.
Numbers don’t exist. They are theoretical concepts we use to make sense of the world, but they are not the real world.