philosophy

[Charro]

Fuck i wish my english were better to talk in this thread, i love philosophy

but back on topic, for me, Perfection can't exist, because it implies the "all" and the "nothing", and in my understanding, "nothing" is contradictory and illogically impossible, you can't define "nothing" without giving it a value, and that's something (a simple word is something), and blah blah, is a concept way longer than that but whatever.

And please people, don't turn this into a debate of God, i mean, i don't believe in God (yet i don't want to be called "atheist" i'm more like an "agnostic" but, i just call myself "neutral about everything"), i respect people believes and with all my experience in this debates, i can conclude that God can exist as much as it can NOT exist (and i don't want to explain why, my english sucks so explaining complicated concepts is hard for me), so, end of discussion, move on.

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

Fuck i wish my english were better to talk in this thread, i love philosophy

but back on topic, for me, Perfection can't exist, because it implies the "all" and the "nothing", and in my understanding, "nothing" is contradictory and illogically impossible, you can't define "nothing" without giving it a value, and that's something (a simple word is something), and blah blah, is a concept way longer than that but whatever.

And please people, don't turn this into a debate of God, i mean, i don't believe in God (yet i don't want to be called "atheist" i'm more like an "agnostic" but, i just call myself "neutral about everything"), i respect people believes and with all my experience in this debates, i can conclude that God can exist as much as it can NOT exist (and i don't want to explain why, my english sucks so explaining complicated concepts is hard for me),
so, end of discussion, move on.

I don't quite follow, you saw that perfection implies both the concepts of 'all' and 'nothing', what do you mean exactly by these (especially the juxtaposition of the two)? Also, I'd say you could define something by what it does not have (i.e. anti-definition) so one could say that nothing is as easy to define as everything (or 'all', perhaps that is what you meant?).

Also, icebeam, 5 star post, bravo.

 

[ivar]

@ poor english speaker guy

by defining perfection as simple and positive, you can't say that perfection includes 'nothing' because 'nothing' is a negative attribute

@morm

your counter-points didnt make much sense

Then that logic can be applied for anything and anything can exist simply by thinking of it. God does not get a free pass in logic, this isn't political correctness.

true, unless you define perfection like Leibniz did. in that case, perfection can only be attributed to God. of course there are problems with this ontological argument as well, but you didn't point it out in the above citation

Did you read the part where I explained how it's related?

i did read it and you are wrong. you said that the ontological argument is the bastard child of 'i think therefore i am', but that is not even remotely true. the cogito is supposed to be a simple intuition, like modus ponens while the ontological argument is a deductive inference, with a middle term (i.e. it is complex, as opposed to the non-complex cogito). you just phrased the ontological argument in a way that they appear similar, but that simple rephrasing totally misrepresents the argument. that's partly my fault because i didn't actually thoroughly go into all the various ontological arguments so it's easy to misinterpret them a bit, but i wanted to keep the thread more accessible.

Then anything can be anything without any reason.

that makes zero sense. how do you know all bachelors are unmarried men? do you empirically examine bachelor demographics? no, it is true based on the definitions of the terms. bachelors simply are defined as unmarried men, so of course all bachelors are unmarried men. therefore, i don't need empirical evidence to prove everything with reason--some things are true even without empirical evidence.

 

[Charro]

@ poor english speaker guy

by defining perfection as simple and positive, you can't say that perfection includes 'nothing' because 'nothing' is a negative attribute

Who says that perfection is positive?, let's start with that, also, positive attributes are only your own perception of things, we can't define an universal concept using human concepts

To me perfection means "every single attribute taken to the max", that includes "negative" attributes, you can't really be "perfect" with only positive attributes

And by definition, which are positive attributes, and which are not?

 

[Lanturn314]

that makes zero sense. how do you know all bachelors are unmarried men? do you empirically examine bachelor demographics? no, it is true based on the definitions of the terms. bachelors simply are defined as unmarried men, so of course all bachelors are unmarried men. therefore, i don't need empirical evidence to prove everything with reason--some things are true even without empirical evidence.

See, definitions are different from truth. I can set any word to mean anything: I can say that zerps are defined as broken microwaves, and it would be "true" that all zerps are broken microwaves and all broken microwaves are zerps, but that doesn't really get anyone anywhere. It's just language...

By contrast, if I were to say that the resting potential of a neuron was between -70 and -50 mV, or that E=Mc^2 or cite some other scientific theory backed by empirical evidence, those things would be true... unless they weren't. But the thing about science is that it's a process built upon skepticism, so if I wanted to say something like E=Mc^2, I'd better provide some pretty damn good evidence before it gets accepted into the scientific community, and even after it's widely accepted, it's still subject to testing and critical review.

There is no way to disprove a definition, though. Prove to me that a broken microwave is not a zerp. Prove to me that a bachelor is an unmarried man. Definitions are arbitrary constructs made by humans, so they have no intrinsic value ontologically speaking.

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

Who says that perfection is positive?, let's start with that, also, positive attributes are only your own perception of things, we can't define an universal concept using human concepts

To me perfection means "every single attribute taken to the max", that includes "negative" attributes, you can't really be "perfect" with only positive attributes

And by definition, which are positive attributes, and which are not?

That's your subjective definition, this was passed over earlier with the human concept of perfection, but the OP did provide Leibniz's definition of perfect which I'm assuming he is asking us to discuss his proposition on.

Also, I'd say it's fairly universal that perfection is positive, in fact, it's the MOST positive. Regardless of differing definition one would be hardpressed in justifying that anything that is perfect has any sort of negative attribute, and we're talking conceptually perfect.

 

[Brain]

true, unless you define perfection like Leibniz did. in that case, perfection can only be attributed to God.

Really? Your description of Leibniz's definition may have been lacking, but I see absolutely nothing in "simple and positive" that could not be simultaneously held by several distinct entities. There is no proof that this thing, should it exist, would be unique. Unless, of course, you define uniqueness itself as a positive attribute... but why?

I think the main issue in this debate is a fundamental misunderstanding of what infinity represents. See, the thing is, infinity is not actually interesting. What matters is not whether some thing is "infinite" or not, what matters is how much information the thing actually contains. Consider "a perfectly tubular rod made out of pure steel, twelve inches in diameter, that extends infinitely into the sky". As infinite as that rod may be, the fact remains that I was able to fully describe it in 19 words. There is nothing at all about that rod that these 19 words are not telling you. Therefore, and again, in spite of the rod's infinite extent, the amount of information is finite: 19 words.

You might begin seeing where I am going with this. As interesting as this debate may be, it blissfully ignores the single most important thing: *information*. Consider tautologies for an instant. What is the information content of a tautology? Think about it: a tautology can be inferred from an *empty* set of premises. Each premise is information... but there is no premise. So the information content of a tautology is... zero.

Now, don't get me wrong - tautologies might be difficult, or even impossible to figure out. They are certainly useful, in a similar way that a bucket of water is useful to put out a fire, even if it's not made out of water. But they are not *informative*, because everything about them is extraneous - you can deduce them from nothing. A tautology is a tool, it is not an end.

So, sure, all bachelors are unmarried. But insofar that definitions are part of the system and do not count as information, the statement is not informative at all. And that is the whole issue with God as a "necessary being". If God is a necessary being, then its existence is tautological given our definitions. And since a tautology is not informative, then neither is God. And even if we decide to include definitions as information, human language is clearly finite. Therefore, if God is necessary, then God can't actually be infinite. Maybe "virtually" infinite, like the steel rod of the previous example, but this is not nearly as deep or significant as you'd think. "Infinite" is not magic: it is one word, and that word, by definition, actually tells you everything you need to know. Finite information.

The whole point of empirical evidence is to acquire statements that are true, but not as a direct consequence of definitions. In such cases, then we are actually adding information. Discovering natural-language tautologies can be a nice brain teaser, but since we don't even know whether our definitions are consistent or not (though I think "no" is a very, very safe guess), I don't think it is productive.

In fact, I would wager that all these purely semantic arguments are fairly good evidence that our definitions are a cesspool of inconsistency. We really need to figure out some paraconsistent logic to deal with language, instead of standard logic.

 

[Morm]

^tl;dr is basically Brain saying it's a language issue and therefore a logic one. :D

I think it's safe to say that a hefty chunk of people would value uniqueness, just look at anyone who does body modification and the entire hipster subclass of society. I mean EVERYONE wants to feel that they are one of a kind because that would otherwise water down their perception of themself. Then again, I think there are a limited amount of personality constructs out there that are tweaked by environment to be different enough, but that's beside the point.

Language issues aside, there are also inconsistencies with the consistent perfections applied within the construct of this perfect being. The entire problem with the "all powerful" and "all loving" concepts, for example, mean it is literally impossible to be perfect by the few rigid definitions applied to this brand of perfection.

What if this creature wasn't perfect? Everyone assumes the imperfections that percolate through our universe are intentional but a perfect being should make a perfect universe without conflict and with simple and evident rules, as concision and communication should count for something. If this creature is imperfect, it would explain the inability to create perfection. Keep in mind I am defining perfection on a case by case basis, whereby all people would be perfect at their jobs and perfect in their situations without any negatives such as wastefulness, for example.

I dislike when a conversation that starts this way turns into a debate about characters of something that doesn't even exist. The concept surely exist, but a concept of a flying spaghetti monster doesn't make it exist either. Just wanted to say that.

 

[ivar]

many clarifications are in order

as for the whole bachelor, tautology mix-up.... i was not trying to argue that God's existence is provable with analytic judgements (true based on the meaning of the terms, predicate contained within the subject, self-evident from the law of non-contradiction, etc). morm said that ALL true inferences must be proven with evidence.... i was merely trying to demonstrate how untrue that was. we can prove certain inferences without any evidence, such as positing that bachelors are unmarried men--can we prove God's existence this way? i don't really think so and either way i never argued for that

in my haste, i did not specify what Leibniz meant by simple and positive and took for granted that it was obvious. for one, a positive assertion is an assertion with content, rather than an assertion that expresses a lack. for example, 'red' is a positive attribute and 'not red' is a negative attribute. to elaborate, 'red' refers to an actual colour, while 'not red' does not refer to any particular colour. to leibniz, a perfect being involves perfections that are simple and positive. as positive, the perfections cannot be limited by a lack of negatives. thus, when someone says that God has infinite attributes, some argue that 'evil' is not one of those attributes since it is supposed to be 'lack of good', hence a negative attribute (its debatable how true that is though). and if simple, god's attributes cannot be corrupted by parts

also, for those who think that positivity is a human construct, it's more like a logical category. a positive assertion is like a statement 'p'--even if you add negations in front of 'p', given double negation and an even number of negation signs you still have a positive statement. basically, positive statements say something on their own right, while negative statements just act as logical oppositions. of course, i still think God is anthropomorphized, but when saying that god has positive and simple perfections God is not being anthropomorphized per se--only if you attempt to define exactly what simple and positive attributes are do you run into that problem

:doom:

the flying spaghetti monster does not possess perfections though, of course he can't exist. though im not convinced, the argument for God is not as bad as the argument for the flying spaghetti monster--that's totally straw-maning the argument

 

[lati0s]

I think whether something is a positive attribute rather than a negative attribute has more to do with language than an actual logical category. Suppose that we made up the word ked and say that an object is ked if the dominant wavelength of light that it reflects within the visible spectrum is between 635 and 400 nanometers and that an object is not ked if it is not within this range. Now saying that an object is ked is the same as saying that it is not red and saying that it is red is the same as saying that it is not ked. so which is the positive attribute?

Also you never replied to my original post Ivar.

 

[Morm]

Just because something is hypothesized as perfect it does not necessitate existence, ivar. It means that the concept is perfect, nothing more.

 

[ivar]

@morm

agreed, just pointing out that the flying spaghetti monster point you made was not well argued and over simplified the ontological argument

@latias

even though 'ked' and 'not red' refer to the same phenomena, simply saying 'not red' doesn't say anything on its own. but by saying 'ked' you are making a positive assertion because you are describing what it means for something to not be red, rather than simple saying 'not red' without any idea of what 'not red' even means, other than the opposition of 'red'

basically, a negative assertion is negative when asserting with the intention of only making an opposing statement to a positive statement. but 'ked' is not only the opposition of 'red' but also that crap about wavelengths and shit. however, when people say 'not red' they dont mean 'ked' but simply the opposition of 'red'--evidenced by the fact that most people have no idea 'ked' and 'not red' are equivalent

hence why negative statements are only logical categories, even if a negative assertion refers to the same thing as something a positive assertion refers to

 

[Morm]

It didn't oversimplify anything. The flying spaghetti monster can have the same perfect traits applied to it and it won't make it any more real.

 

[lati0s]

I suppose that that makes sense but then how can something have all positive traits? To have all positive traits it must be both ked and red, which is a contradiction.

 

[Brain]

in my haste, i did not specify what Leibniz meant by simple and positive and took for granted that it was obvious. for one, a positive assertion is an assertion with content, rather than an assertion that expresses a lack. for example, 'red' is a positive attribute and 'not red' is a negative attribute. to elaborate, 'red' refers to an actual colour, while 'not red' does not refer to any particular colour. to leibniz, a perfect being involves perfections that are simple and positive. as positive, the perfections cannot be limited by a lack of negatives.

Perhaps, but if "red" is a positive attribute, then so is "blue". However, God cannot be both red and blue. So which is it? I mean, there's a lot of positive attributes that are mutually exclusive, you can't just have all of them.

Heck, I could define "perfect-red" as meaning a perfect being, with the caveat that this being is red. And "perfect-blue" as meaning a perfect being, with the caveat that this being is blue. A perfect-red being, by virtue of being perfect, must beat the perfect-blue being, and vice versa, and they must both exist. What gives?

thus, when someone says that God has infinite attributes, some argue that 'evil' is not one of those attributes since it is supposed to be 'lack of good', hence a negative attribute (its debatable how true that is though). and if simple, god's attributes cannot be corrupted by parts

I always thought that defining 'evil' as a 'lack of good' was asinine. It supposes that there is such a thing as maximal evil, but at the same time, it appears to me that whatever it is that you do, killing one more baby would make it more evil. And technically, when you do absolutely nothing, there is a complete lack of good deeds - so inaction is maximally evil? I mean, it really makes no sense whatsoever.

also, for those who think that positivity is a human construct, it's more like a logical category. a positive assertion is like a statement 'p'--even if you add negations in front of 'p', given double negation and an even number of negation signs you still have a positive statement. basically, positive statements say something on their own right, while negative statements just act as logical oppositions.

I would tend to define positive and negative statements in a more subtle, but also more useful manner. A positive statement is one that matches only a few possible observations, whereas a negative statement is one that matches most of them. Ergo, "x is red" is positive because it significantly narrows the number of possibilities, and "x is ked" is negative because it doesn't. If you play at the lottery, "I won" is positive, and "I lost" is negative, because the former informs me on the exact numbers you chose, but the latter only tells me that it is one of the millions of combinations that did not come up. If you toss a coin neither "the coin landed on heads" nor "the coin landed on tails" nor their respective negations is particularly positive or negative.

So essentially, "positive" statements reduce uncertainty significantly, and "negative" statements barely have any effect. Might not be a standard definition, but at least it does not depend on how you define things (or much less).

 

[ivar]

@morm

the flying spaghetti monster doesnt have all perfect and simple attributes though, hence it is not perfect according to leibinz, hence its existence cannot be proven from its essence (since its essence does not entail perfection). however, leibniz himself might be in a pickle because...

@latios

leibniz might say that ked, though a positive attribute, is not a simple attribute because it covers a range of possible wavelengths, or colours. im not sure though and think you might be onto something

@brain

perfect-red is not a perfect being, as a perfect being, according to leibniz at least, must have all positive and simple attributes, thus there can be no such thing as a perfect being which is exclusively perfect-red.

that definition seems pretty good and i like the direction it's heading to (a logical distinction), but the only difficulty i have is determining just how supposedly little an effect of narrowing down evidence a negative statement has. ked narrows down the world quite a bit--from infinite things to all things which are not red. and though red in our world narrows down possible items which are red more so than ked, its conceivable that we live in a world with more red things than not red things, thus 'not red' narrows down the world more so than red. so then 'not red' is a positive assertion?

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

how would mutually exclusive non-opposing qualities (e.g. quality x and quality y are mutually exclusive but quality x is not a lack of quality y, and vice versa) be attributed to the 'god' that we are discussing? he cannot be both, yet he must be. or perhaps I am missing something in the 'simple' part of the simple and positive definition, forgive me.

 

[MrIndigo]

@mr indigo

even if positive attributes have equivalent negative statements it does not follow that something with all positive attributes has all negative attributes.
we cant make the jump from statements to attributes

But what is a positive attribute in the first place? How is a positive attribute defined?

There are two problems here. The first is that the notion of a 'positive' and 'negative' attribute is a linguistic thing. It is conceivable that in a given language/culture's evolution, they conceive of a particular attribute as negative where we consider it a positive one, and hence the negative attribute that represents it's opposite is actually a positive attribute to this hypothetical culture. For instance, say that a somewhat existentialist society evolved in Lithuania. In their language and philosophy of life, there is a positive attribute of "nonexistence". All things that are material lack this property, and hence have the negative property non-nonexistence.

If there is a justification (i.e. nonarbitrariness) for choosing a set of attributes as positive and others as negative, then it can't survive the translation problem (i.e. you would have to assert that the universe is materially subjective and that the other culture would in fact have a different universe to us, which clashes with the fact we would be sharing the same one).

If there isn't a justification, then the second problem entire system is arbitrary and you are simply choosing a list of attributes in such a way to generate your conclusion.


This is notwithstanding that the idea of existence being an attribute at all is shaky, and the assertion that "God must have all positive attributes" is unfounded.

Ultimately, the positive/negative attribute thing is a linguistic perculiarity to us specifically, and cannot be used to make inferences about the objective state of anything.

 

[lati0s]

@latios

leibniz might say that ked, though a positive attribute, is not a simple attribute because it covers a range of possible wavelengths, or colours. im not sure though and think you might be onto something

If ked is not simple enough to be "simple" then I am doubting that existence in reality is simple enough.

Back to my original point, the ontological argument proves that if there is a possible being with all simple positive attributes then it exists in reality. If such a being is impossible because there is a contradiction between some of the simple positive attributes then the ontological argument fails. Now consider that god doesn't exist, that would mean that existence is mutually exclusive with some subset of the other traits of god, which means that the definition of god is contradictory and thus the ontological argument fails. This mean that if its conclusion isn't true the ontological argument is invalid, thus it is a worthless argument.

 

[Brain]

leibniz might say that ked, though a positive attribute, is not a simple attribute because it covers a range of possible wavelengths, or colours. im not sure though and think you might be onto something

Red also covers a range of possible wavelengths and colors (there are many shades of red). I guess that Liebniz doesn't care whether God has a color or not, but nonetheless, I guess you could be talking about a "canonical red".

However, this is still subject to my previous objection: if red is both positive and simple, so is blue. And God cannot be any more red and blue than it can be red and ked. And in fact, if God is blue, then it is ked!

In a sense, it comes down to this: God is either red or not red. If God is not red, then he has a negative attribute. So God cannot be "not red". But if God is red, then that would mean red is a positive attribute. If red is a positive attribute, so is blue, unless you define blue as a lack of red (but then what is green?). Since God has all positive attributes, he must also be blue. But something red cannot be blue, unless it has a red part and a blue part... but then it's not simple!

that definition seems pretty good and i like the direction it's heading to (a logical distinction), but the only difficulty i have is determining just how supposedly little an effect of narrowing down evidence a negative statement has. ked narrows down the world quite a bit--from infinite things to all things which are not red. and though red in our world narrows down possible items which are red more so than ked, its conceivable that we live in a world with more red things than not red things, thus 'not red' narrows down the world more so than red. so then 'not red' is a positive assertion?

That is an interesting observation. Yes, in that world, I would say that "not red" would be a positive assertion. There is also a difficulty in determining what the "thresholds" are - you could say that asserting something with odds higher than 50% is a negative statement, though I find that it dilutes the meaning of the term. It's kind of a continuum, the way I see it.

The basic idea behind this is that positive statements require evidence, whereas negative statements are "safe guesses" that are already justified by probability. In the world you described, if almost everything is red, then the onus of proof is on whoever claims something is not red, whereas here it would be the opposite.

 

[ivar]

good points all around

i think leibniz would probably cop out and say that we cannot fully comprehend what it means for something to be perfect, but only put it in superficial enough terms to infer God's existence, but not all his properties. so when we say that god has all simple and positive attributes, we cant know exactly what all the simple and positive attribute are (hence why we generate these contradiction), but merely that a perfect being has all of them and that possibility entails that perfect being's existence. like i said it's a cop out, but this is the man who posited the best of all possible worlds, and free will despite causal determinacy, so he's a master at copping out

as for the positive/negative distinction, i think maybe a distinction of truth values would make sense. positive assertions posit that something is true, while negative assertions posit something is false, hence 'red' is a positive assertion and 'not red' is a negative assertion. that would explain why a positive assertion has content on its own right, while a negative assertion opposes a partner, or rival, positive assertion

 

[Brain]

i think leibniz would probably cop out and say that we cannot fully comprehend what it means for something to be perfect, but only put it in superficial enough terms to infer God's existence, but not all his properties. so when we say that god has all simple and positive attributes, we cant know exactly what all the simple and positive attribute are (hence why we generate these contradiction), but merely that a perfect being has all of them and that possibility entails that perfect being's existence. like i said it's a cop out, but this is the man who posited the best of all possible worlds, and free will despite causal determinacy, so he's a master at copping out

Okay, so Leibniz is a tool. We cannot know exactly what all the simple and positive attributes are, but of course they include benevolence, existence, uniqueness, and whatever other attributes we think God should have. How convenient.

as for the positive/negative distinction, i think maybe a distinction of truth values would make sense. positive assertions posit that something is true, while negative assertions posit something is false, hence 'red' is a positive assertion and 'not red' is a negative assertion. that would explain why a positive assertion has content on its own right, while a negative assertion opposes a partner, or rival, positive assertion

I don't see the point. "The coin did not land on heads" may assert that "The coin landed on heads" is false, but unless you are willing to consider fringe hypotheses, it also asserts that "The coin landed on tails" is true. So is it negative, positive, or what? "The cat is not bigger than the dog" might seem negative, until you realize that it says the same thing as the seemingly positive statement that "The cat is smaller or just as big as the dog". "The tomato is red" also asserts that "The tomato is blue" is false, as well as many other negative statements.

 

[JimBob]

I think Leibniz defined a simple attribute as an attribute which, if all simple attributes are assumed positive, there is not a contradiction. Since there is a contradiction in assuming that all colors are positive, color is not a simple attribute.

 

[Brain]

So, since there is a contradiction in assuming that all preferences are positive, God has no preferences? Since there is a contradiction in assuming that all purposes are positive, God has no purpose? Justice and mercy contradict each other, so I guess God is neither just nor merciful?

Heck, at this rate, existence is God's sole attribute...

(Not to mention that there is zero evidence that "a maximal set of positive attributes such that there is no contradiction" defines something unique - there could conceivably be many such sets)

 

[Miscellaneous]

If existence would be defined as a measurable and persisting entity in reality, then existence cannot be a simple attribute as reality is relative to any perspective. To take an outside perspective on reality (the universe) is impossible. Saying God exists, because if he did not exist it would be a contradiction; only proves that the word "God" exists. An eternal existence requires a constant. But God's unchanging existence cannot be constant, unless change does not exist. Hence God both changes and does not change. So existence is no longer a trait of God, God's existence is a cause of existence. Which de-classifies existence as an attribute of God, but an attribute of reality to which God is susceptible.

But existence is not defined as the absence of no existence. If something doesn't not exist then that merely leaves a potential. Existence is measurable or at least potentially measurable. If God is immeasurable and unseen then God doesn't exist. God's existence depends on existing, not on the lack of proof for not existing. And if God has the potential to exist then God has changed, but God cannot change. And even if God did change, does that make "change" positive and simple? Hence God would have changing attributes which makes God not-positive or not-simple at least once in God's existence. If God does not change then God could never exist, or if God did then he would have a measurable and persisting presence in a reality that is changing, which means either God is completely unaffected by reality (and can therefore cannot exist in reality) or that God is reality itself and also a construct of reverse change which keeps everything constant, including God. But either would mean that God would have to be either non-existent or both positive and negative. Or it could mean reality doesn't exist, which means nothing exists but the potential for God.