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Belindi:

… Spinoza, refer to twin aspects of the one substance which Spinoza called "God- or- nature".

And so for Spinoza there is no need for another ontological argument or any ontological argument for that matter.

Philoso4 wrote:

And so for Spinoza there is no need for another ontological argument or any ontological argument for that matter.

I believe so. He is a pantheist so someone who wants to believe that God is that substance which, besides maintaining nature, also transcends nature will feel a need for another ontology. Scientists are all for nature so Spinoza's is the ontological argument for scientists.

Belindi wrote:Scientists are all for nature so Spinoza's is the ontological argument for scientists.

Or, rather, Spinoza's belief is an unnecessary and superfluous belief superimposed on nature. It is a duplication, and a redundant concept that serves no function or purpose.

However, as a belief, it sounds cool. Personally speaking, I don't buy it. It's for people who have seen the inherent contradictions in religions, but still insist at any price that there is a god.

The one problem with most if not all ontological arguments is that they try to prove the existence of God from the mere concept of God. 'Existence' is not a property to be possessed by any one. Anselm's and Descartes ontological arguments try to do the same thing.

I'd like to return to this thread all of this time later, and as a preface to any further content I produce it's important to mention that I'm using this material I composed while a theist in the past, am now agnostic, and I am interested in playing devil's advocate for both sides of this debate on modal logic (which addresses such things as necessity and contingency).


Let's address some of the big objections I've seen over the years with this argument, before I go about justifying the prospect of any kind of an ontology:

-Why can't a contingent being cause another contingent being?

Depending on the metaphysical camp you're in, there are different kinds of causes. At the time that I composed the argument I would have agreed that a contingent being can be an efficient cause for another contingent being, something modern science assiduously agrees with.

The problem here is a nuanced variation on the problem of infinite regression. In philosophy interlocutors use the problem of infinite regression to cry foul but the problem itself may be a false dilemma. Yes, posing situations where there is an infinite regression opens one to criticism because infinite propositions in general are invariably demonstrated to fall into numerous contradictions.

However the false dilemma lies in those contradictions, e.g. "positing an infinite set of numbers leads one into the folly pointed out by the Hilbert's Hotel story, where you have an infinite number of hotel rooms but you can both say you're full yet you have vacancies, you can add and subtract and still have the same number of rooms", but that's not a real contradiction because all one is pointing out is that ideas like infinity may not be compatible with the tautological language we use. A tautology is merely a tautology, it has no impetus behind it. 2+2=4 because of the definitions for those symbols, not because they necessarily represent anything we self evidently know about the universe.

Stacking an infinite set of contingents together is open to the same kinds of contradictions. Is there an infinite set of past contingents? Future contingents? What does it mean to add two infinite sets, are there any more contingents in this new twofold set than before? It's the same problem with different definitions, 'contingent', 'necessary'. A contingent being may cause another contingent being while it is being, but was every contingent cause before contingent as well? I would contend now that that's a false dilemma.

-Is the argument confusing rules for thinking with rules for physical reality?

Really, there is no confusion here. Whatever one's opinions are about the privileged epistemological status of science in the public eye (in spite of a general lack of public awareness concerning philosophy of science), arguing in the universe of discourse that is ontology isn't antithetical to typical modern reasoning. If anything those who level this objection are criticizing the scientific establishment, not me, when they point that out.

Rationalism is inextricably bound up into all modern practices of science, whatever the general epistemological heritage of any one particular field is. It may surprise some to learn that different fields in science are either more or less empirical, and this isn't just a characterization of differences between applied and experimental physics, or a "hard science" like chemistry compared to a science like psychology which some thinkers are wont to classify as a pseudo-science and more of a humanity akin to art than a science, rather it is the case that the problem of methodology is pervasive to the field as a whole and philosophy of science looms large over the differences between each field.

While in epistemology (the study of knowledge) and philosophy of science (the study of scientific methodology as it relates to epistemology) so much of the tradition is devoted to hard lines in the sand stating that thought and perception are separate things, that one might exist and the other might not, one is more reliable or the only reliable source of knowledge, i.e. the whole range of the Rationalism vs Empiricism debate, the idea must also be entertained that thought and perception are parts of the same capacity we have for reasoning, and while we define them as different things they may be quite intimately linked.

- "Using 'necessary inference' to bridge to the next set of rules is somewhat flawed, in that you are assuming that physical reality is exactly the way we 'think' of it, NOT what it is. You are assuming the same rules apply to both."

It's worth pointing out that in the present tense I'm something of a Pragmatist (similar to John Stuart Mill's Pragmatism), Nihilist, Absurdist, and Skeptic, and while I heartily intend to defend the ontological argument I'm perfectly ready to be critical of it myself and accept outside criticism with equal pleasure.

I did assume that the same rules apply and continue to assume as much. Even though I'm profoundly skeptical and am open to the possibility that language is too self referential and thus our attempts at understanding the universe are too tautological, the pragmatist in me finds it acceptable to provisionally entertain different models proposed in epistemology. So, in the spirit of reasoning charitably (it can't be overstated how important chariness is in critical thinking, things can't be adequately assessed without granting points and allowing the advocates of propositions to speak for themselves on their own terms and as accurately as possible), I've come to err more on the side of Rationalism than Empiricism. If my defense of Rationalism doesn't present much of a convincing argument, I do hope that you and other participants and readers here at least enjoy and are stimulated by it.

-The objection with reference to quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics is a fine example of what we're digging into here in terms of epistemology, me having to justify why anyone should practice or be interested in ontology in the first place, because quantum mechanics is such a popular but misleading example given to illustrate how the universe may be indeterminate and it may also challenge our understanding of the law of non-contradiction.

Bell's Theorem is worth mentioning for our purposes, as it is one of the theories concerning quantum mechanics which has the broadest acceptance. In this case we have John Stewart Bell himself explaining that he viewed the theory as not only not necessarily being problematic for determinism but potentially supporting hard lined determinism:

"There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it involves absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the 'decision' by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster-than-light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already 'knows' what that measurement, and its outcome, will be."

But frankly there are much easier criticisms to come up with against the standpoint that this area of science presents a problem for Rationalism. The problem is that the science itself being practiced to come to this conclusions is heavily suffused with Rationalist ideas. After all, they are using math and deductive inferences, not just inductive inferences. They also accept indirect observation instead of direct observation alone, which is Empiricism at its purest.

It's even arguable that David Hume himself, such a hardliner that he stated that one can't assume they have any predictive power at all because they have observed the same thing over and over as this line of thinking is simply a matter of custom, that David Hume let Rationalism creep into his thinking because after all he found language an acceptable medium for communicating his ideas.