The Greatest Conceivable Being

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FrankSchnabel

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Guess the thread on the Ontological Argument was shut down. Hope it wasn’t cuz of anything I said.

Anyway, Ateista was raising objections to the Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB) and essentially claiming that the concept is logically impossible.

This is kind of important to the ontological argument and theism in general because, if the idea of the GCB is nonsense, then it has conclusively been proven that divine existence is logically impossible. But if the concept of the GCB makes sense, then God’s existence is proven.

This is Anselm’s discovery, that God exists necessarily or the very idea of God is nonsense. We are confronted with a forced, binary choice. All arguments that assume that God’s existence could depend on some question of contingent or empirical fact are simply confused.

Ateista’s objections to the GCB boil down to these:
  1. No entity can possess all traits to the maximal degree for some traits are mutually exclusive. e.g. How can X be both the talles and the shortest, the biggest or the smallest, etc.?
  2. And besides, all assessments of greater, no matter the attribute, are subjective. Who is to say what is better or greater? For example, my tribe worships mountains and thinks that size is a great-making property. So we will (if we are rational) worship the largest mountain we can find, or the largest mountain in the abstract. But what if another mountain-worshipping tribe thinks that symmetry or some other property is great-making? So isn’t greatness in the eyes of the beholder with no definite or fixed reality?
 
And there have been other problems with the GCB that have been noted over the years. e.g. Leibniz thought that all quantity must be excluded from our definition of greatness. Take any conceivable number. A greater can be conceived. How do we know this isn’t true of “beings”? So we best exclude quantity altogether from our definition of greatness. Greatness must be purely qualitative, thought Leibniz.
 
But if “greatest conceivable quantity” is impossible, we are left with the “greatest conceivable quality devoid of quantity.” And does that make sense? Hartshorne, in the last century, thought not because we can think of situations where quantity makes a difference to quality. e.g. the sound made by several musical instruments will not be as rich and full as the sound made by a full symphony. Or a more modern example, the color generalted by a TV with low resolution (fewer pixels per square inch) will be not as vibrant as one with higher resolution.

So we have a dilemma in which it is not possible to define greatness as the “greaterst conceivable quantity” and it is also impossible to define it as the “greatest conceivable quality devoid of quantity.”

Is there any escape from this? Stay tuned.
 
FrankSchnabel said:
Ateista’s objections to the GCB boil down to these:
  1. No entity can possess all traits to the maximal degree for some traits are mutually exclusive. e.g. How can X be both the talles and the shortest, the biggest or the smallest, etc.?
  2. And besides, all assessments of greater, no matter the attribute, are subjective. Who is to say what is better or greater? For example, my tribe worships mountains and thinks that size is a great-making property. So we will (if we are rational) worship the largest mountain we can find, or the largest mountain in the abstract. But what if another mountain-worshipping tribe thinks that symmetry or some other property is great-making? So isn’t greatness in the eyes of the beholder with no definite or fixed reality?
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Because I am part of the cosmos, and because I am doing the “conceiving” if I wish to consider that the cosmos itself constitutes such a being, this would seem to overcome these objections.

One could argue that if I consider the cosmos as a being I can still think of something outside or beyond the cosmos. In fact I cannot, because the cosmos is all there is, was, or ever will be. I can only pretend there is something greater, which is to pretend that self can be something greater than self. That would be logically absurd. But if logical absurdity is allowed, all discussion is moot.
 
Hi Crow,

You are right, if we define the GCB as the Cosmos or the Whole of Reality or the All-inclusive reality, then Ateista’s objections are handled quite nicely.

If the Cosmos is comprise of all entities or things, from the hightest to the lowest, the smartest to the dumbest, the heaviest to the lightest, then the maximal expression of the trait in question is in the Cosmic Being somewhere. That is how all traits can be manifest in one being. The Cosmos truly is the bearer of all traits.

But we must be careful to distinguish between those traits which are ascribable to the Cosmic Being as a whole and those attributable to the Cosmic Whole by reason of them being characteristic of a part of the whole.

And yer right again when you say that nothing exists outside the Cosmos since it is all that exists.

And no, logical absurdity is not allowed in this thread.
 
And regarding the objective-subjective problem, it really isn’t a problem if the Cosmos includes all objects in its being and all subjects making assessments of things. All value and all value-making is included in its being.
 
The quantitative-qualitative problem is solved by defining the GCB as that being or entity which is surpassable but only by itself.

So the GCB is that being which is all-inclusive and surpassable only by itself.

Don’t have time to better explain this now. later
 
The GCB is not subjective because the GCB exists in all space. He cannot be superceded because, by definition, He comprises all things. He never exists in anything but the totality of space, since He cannot be “contained” and He is immutable.
  1. No entity can possess all traits to the maximal degree for some traits are mutually exclusive. e.g. How can X be both the talles and the shortest, the biggest or the smallest, etc.?
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This supposes that the “entity” in question has physical traits, such as “shortest/tallest, biggest/smallest”. Since God is incorporeal, He cannot be defined by natural dimensions. Since there are no other incorporeal, eternal beings like Him, He cannot be measured in comparison to anything else. Thus, there is no relativity in human terms. This is why the Incarnation is so amazing a miracle - for the infinite to dwell in a finite space is incomprehensible to human understanding. And yet, He did.
 
FrankSchnabel said:
The quantitative-qualitative problem is solved by defining the GCB as that being or entity which is surpassable but only by itself.

So the GCB is that being which is all-inclusive and surpassable only by itself.

Don’t have time to better explain this now. later
Click to expand...
yeah, I’d be interested to hear more about this. hehe 🙂
 
I need to add a little correction. The concept of GCB is not simply logically “impossible”, rather it is incoherent or meaningless for the reasons you mentioned.

Let me give you an example. Please bear with me, because it is a little complicated. Here comes:

Let’s consider numbers expressed only in alphabetic form in the Englush language. Like the numeral “1” is expressed as “one” or the numeral “1000” is expressed as “one thousand” or maybe expressed as “ten cubed” or “ten times hundred”.

Obviously the same number can be expressed in many forms, and the descriptive string has a varying length. As in the example above, “1000” expressed as “one thousand” has 12 letters, while expressed as “ten cubed” has only nine letters and the last one (ten times hundred) contains 17 letters.

Now, for each number there is at least one description which contains the fewest possible number of letters or in other words the shortest possible string. Obviously there are numbers which can be described with a few letters, and there are very large numbers which can only be described by many letters.

Let’s divide the set of positive number into two subsets: the ones where the shortest possible descriptive string contains fewer than 100 letters, and the ones where the shortest possible string contains 100 or more letters.

So, here comes the definition of a number: “the smallest positive number, which cannot be described by fewer than hundred letters”. Which is this number?

This is a very simple proposition, just like the GCB. And just like the GCB, it is completely meaningless. Can you tell me why it is meaningless?
 
FrankSchnabel said:
The quantitative-qualitative problem is solved by defining the GCB as that being or entity which is surpassable but only by itself.

So the GCB is that being which is all-inclusive and surpassable only by itself.

Don’t have time to better explain this now. later
Click to expand...
The problem with this definition is that the word “surpass” is undefined. It does not solve the problem contained in the phrase: “of which no greater one can be imagined”, it just expresses the same condition in a different lingustic form. Neither one is meaningful.
 
ateista said:
I need to add a little correction. The concept of GCB is not simply logically “impossible”, rather it is incoherent or meaningless for the reasons you mentioned.
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This is pretty much where I got to as well 🙂 I don’t think Incoherent, I think it’s logically consistant and coherant.

It is a bit meaningless for me. I felt like there was something within the OA, that was “meaningfull” in and of itself, but I can’t see it.

I think Frank seems something though, so will be interesting to see what he has to say. He’s been very generous in his time so far in this discussion 🙂
 
FrankSchnabel said:
Guess the thread on the Ontological Argument was shut down. Hope it wasn’t cuz of anything I said.

Anyway, Ateista was raising objections to the Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB) and essentially claiming that the concept is logically impossible.
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This is far from the truth. Even before I converted, I could imagine a being without imperfection; my mind could not give a form or a name to it, but I could imagine such a being existing. In fanfiction, such a being would be known as a Mary Sue.
This is kind of important to the ontological argument and theism in general because, if the idea of the GCB is nonsense, then it has conclusively been proven that divine existence is logically impossible. But if the concept of the GCB makes sense, then God’s existence is proven.
Click to expand...
God is inconceivable; He is inconcievable not only because we cannot fathom who He is in His Essense but also because the human mind cannot conceive of Him, neither in name nor in form nor in totality. God is a Self-Revelation; only He can reveal Himself to man. By reason and science we can discover a being who is infinite, eternal, powerful, omnipotent, everywhere and in everything, but neither reason nor science can lead us to the conclusion that the being is God.
This is Anselm’s discovery, that God exists necessarily or the very idea of God is nonsense. We are confronted with a forced, binary choice. All arguments that assume that God’s existence could depend on some question of contingent or empirical fact are simply confused.
Click to expand...
God certainly must exist, or else He couldn’t be God. He is Existence Itself, and Existence is self-existent. He is Existence Itself because He is Goodness Itself, and He is Goodness Itself because He is God.
Ateista’s objections to the GCB boil down to these:
Click to expand...
  1. No entity can possess all traits to the maximal degree for some traits are mutually exclusive. e.g. How can X be both the talles and the shortest, the biggest or the smallest, etc.?
Click to expand...
Ateista has, interestingly enough, discovered a problem which St. Augustine discovered when he was pondering God. The saint, before he was baptized, believed that God was an entity with dimensions and with every possible characteristic which an entity could possess. Because of this, he did not believe that God existed, since he believed - rightly so - an entity could not possibly be both old and young, big and small, cold and hot, merciul yet angry, good yet evil, etc. However, what St. Augustine failed to realize is that God is not the culimination of every possible characteristic, nor is He an entity. God is God, and He, Goodness Itself, is infinite, eternal, powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc.
  1. And besides, all assessments of greater, no matter the attribute, are subjective. Who is to say what is better or greater? For example, my tribe worships mountains and thinks that size is a great-making property. So we will (if we are rational) worship the largest mountain we can find, or the largest mountain in the abstract. But what if another mountain-worshipping tribe thinks that symmetry or some other property is great-making? So isn’t greatness in the eyes of the beholder with no definite or fixed reality?
Click to expand...
Greatness is determined by God, not by man. And God has determined that greatness is the imitation of Himself, and this must be so, too, for God is Goodness Itself - there is nothing greater or more good or holier or more perfect than Him. But this isn’t to say God is self-limited, for He has also given to man models of holiness (saints, martyrs, good parents, teachers, etc.), and He has woven into the minds of men fictional heroes, and He is the Cause of every good example done by men. But the longing of every man is God and the goal of every man is to be like God. We are created in His Image, that is, God eternally begot a Son, and He deemed to bring all His creatures in the share of His eternal happiness in Heaven, so by His Will He caused Jesus Christ to be, the first among brethern, and He created all men in the Image of Jesus Christ, according to the free-will and consequences of souls’ choices, bringing greater goods out of evils, so that each and every soul is a gift of the Father to all of mankind, and this is so so that we may all be brethern and live in peace with one another, loving one another as He has commanded; now some might say Jesus being the first among brethern is impossible, for He was born milleniums after the births of many humans, yet, God is outside of time and space, being God, and so, unbound by time or space, He acts as He pleases, and He was pleased to first cause Jesus, than to create all men in His Image, just as He created all of creation in His Word.

Correct me if I’m wrong.
 
Eucharisted said:
Ateista has, interestingly enough, discovered a problem which St. Augustine discovered when he was pondering God. The saint, before he was baptized, believed that God was an entity with dimensions and with every possible characteristic which an entity could possess. Because of this, he did not believe that God existed, since he believed - rightly so - an entity could not possibly be both old and young, big and small, cold and hot, merciul yet angry, good yet evil, etc. However, what St. Augustine failed to realize is that God is not the culimination of every possible characteristic, nor is He an entity. God is God, and He, Goodness Itself, is infinite, eternal, powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc.
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How does what you’ve said mean anything really?

God is God (okay…hmmm).

He is goodness itself(define goodness).

He is infinite(as is the universe), eternal(as is the universe), he is powerful(as is the universe), omnipotent and omnipresent…statements made about insurbassable being.

I’m sorry, but you aren’t really saying anything here as an argument to Atiestas comment.

I think Frank is trying to get people to a point where they accept a possibility. You, are just stating ideas or concepts that you believe in, not trying to generate understanding.

I do thank frank, for making that effort, I really do 🙂
 
FrankSchnabel said:
And regarding the objective-subjective problem, it really isn’t a problem if the Cosmos includes all objects in its being and all subjects making assessments of things. All value and all value-making is included in its being.
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There is also a problem in the universe being all-inclusive as pertaining to ontological objects. For example the universe did not contain certain trans-uranium elements in the natural form, even though they are logically and physically possible. They could be manufactured, of course.

We can imagine a “generalized” or “expanded” universe, which contains all the “natural” ontological objects and “all” the physically possible ontological objects (like a purple polka-dotted unicorn which expresses itself in pure mathematics and sings its thoughts in rich contralto). That “entity” (which is a better phrase than being) is certainly “greater” than the existing universe, yet it does not exist. Not to mention that the number of physically possible objects is infinite.

And since existence is not an attribute, it cannot be contended that “necessary” existence is “greater”, and therefore the supposed GCB must exist.
 
crowonsnow said:
I must admit I draw a blank. How can self surpass self?[/QUOT]

The GCB certainly must be incapable of being surpassed by any other entity. The GCB is absolutely without any equal or superior rival. But must that also mean that the GCB can’t exceed or “outdo” itself? No.

If the GCB is thought of as a being in process, then we can see how this makes sense. The GCB keeps exceeding itself from one divine moment to the next. The GCB keeps getting greater, IOW.

Of course, this understanding of the GCB does not square with the Greek notion of divine perfection, which taken to mean a changeless state. How can you improve on perfection? Well, you can’t if perfection is understood in this absolute sense.

But Hartshorne advocates a rethinking of the old Greek notions of perfection.
Click to expand...
 
ateista said:
I need to add a little correction. The concept of GCB is not simply logically “impossible”, rather it is incoherent or meaningless for the reasons you mentioned.

Let me give you an example. Please bear with me, because it is a little complicated. Here comes:

Let’s consider numbers expressed only in alphabetic form in the Englush language. Like the numeral “1” is expressed as “one” or the numeral “1000” is expressed as “one thousand” or maybe expressed as “ten cubed” or “ten times hundred”.

Obviously the same number can be expressed in many forms, and the descriptive string has a varying length. As in the example above, “1000” expressed as “one thousand” has 12 letters, while expressed as “ten cubed” has only nine letters and the last one (ten times hundred) contains 17 letters.

Now, for each number there is at least one description which contains the fewest possible number of letters or in other words the shortest possible string. Obviously there are numbers which can be described with a few letters, and there are very large numbers which can only be described by many letters.

Let’s divide the set of positive number into two subsets: the ones where the shortest possible descriptive string contains fewer than 100 letters, and the ones where the shortest possible string contains 100 or more letters.

So, here comes the definition of a number: “the smallest positive number, which cannot be described by fewer than hundred letters”. Which is this number?

This is a very simple proposition, just like the GCB. And just like the GCB, it is completely meaningless. Can you tell me why it is meaningless?
Click to expand...
Hi Ateista,

I’m afraid I’m not caffeinated sufficiently or smart enuff to deal with this. Yer goin to haffta splain it to me.

I spose the number definition ends up being nonsensical because the descriptive length for any number has no correlation to the quantity signified by the number, since the length of the descriptive string will depend on the mathematical mode of expression chosen as well as on the arbitrary length of words in the English language.
 
FrankSchnabel said:
If the GCB is thought of as a being in process, then we can see how this makes sense. The GCB keeps exceeding itself from one divine moment to the next. The GCB keeps getting greater, IOW.
Click to expand...
I suppose there’s too much of a logical positivist in me to accept that. The statement begs the question. I also have a bias against the notion of perfection. Every electron is perfect as I understand perfection or else there is no perfection. But certainly every electron is also different from the next - consider location alone. So sameness is also myth.

If we allow ourselves to invent attributes such as divinity, I think we begin down the path of make believe, which for me is something inconceivable because I don’t have the foggiest of what it would or could be. How does one supersize nature?

But please continue. I find the discussion quite interesting.
 
Hi Dame!

You truly are a “meta-something” and, by implication at least, “a theist to boot”! Thank you for kind words and interest in this subject.
 
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