The ontological argument
Offline SHORT VERSION
(1) God's existence cannot be denied without self-contradiction.
(2) Therefore, God exists.
LONG VERSION
(1) God is either nothing more than a concept in the understanding or he exists in reality in addition to the understanding.
(2) God, as a concept, refers to an ontologically infinite being, which, by logical necessity, would entail that his being cannot be contingent upon anything.
(3) If you say that God does not exist in reality, then you are saying either that (i) the conditions of reality are such that this being does not exist in it, which is saying that a non-contingent being is contingent, or (ii) you are saying that the concept of God is self-contradictory, which is not the case since two or more mutually exclusive ideas are not among its contents, or (iii) you are saying that the concept of God is not thought for the sake of reference much like numbers, grammatical operators, or logical principles are not thought for the sake of reference, which is clearly not the case because God, as an ontologically infinite being, would also be the all-encompassing source of being and therefore capable of action, and such a being is not in the same category as a number or linguistic operator.
(4) Since the concept of God is not contradictory, and the concept of God is thought for the sake of reference, and the existence of such a being cannot be dictated by the state of the world, the only option is that God exists in reality as well as in the understanding.
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED
(1) This argument can be used to prove the existence of anything, so long as we assign the property of being "ontologically infinite" to it.
ANSWER: (a) This objection says nothing about where the argument goes wrong. It just asserts that anything which is ontologically infinite must exist, which I'll agree with. (b) Arbitrarily assigning ontological infinitude to something is not permissible if the something in question is limited by its very nature. For example, a chimera is thought to be composed of multiple animals. Yet conceptually, there is an incompleteness because such a being has the potential to be greater, in some aspect, than it already is. Moreover, a material thing, such as a chimera which theoretically has a body, is composed of many parts and, insofar that the parts are arranged one way and not some other, you would automatically think of this being as being contingent. (c) The idea of God does not posit any limitations, as there is no spatial or temporal extension nor is there an incompleteness in spiritual qualities such as moral perfection or knowledge.
(2) Numbers do not exist in reality, yet they are neither self-contradictory nor are they dictated by the conditions of the world. Therefore, it may be that God does not exist in reality even though the concept is not self-contradictory and includes self-existence in the definition.
ANSWER: Numbers, like all other abstract entities, are not thought for the sake of reference. They are thought for the sake of practicality. God, in order to possess any currency for the theist, must be thought to refer to a real thing.
(3) For all we know, the concept of God may be self-contradictory.
ANSWER: The burden of proof is on the atheist to demonstrate how this could be the case. Such an objection is tantamount to pleading ignorance in other areas as well, given the imperfection of human knowledge. You may as well say that for all we know, the concept of gravity may be self-contradictory or that, for all we know, our understanding of cosmology is self-contradictory. Our nature is incomplete and we must deal with it.
(4) This argument does not prove the God of the Bible.
ANSWER: That's not the point of the argument. The point of the argument is to refute atheism, that is, to show that atheism itself is intellectually bankrupt insofar that its worldview is based on a self-contradictory premise.
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Preface: I think you misunderstood the argument I put forward, so I didn't bother to spend a lot of time with the post. I think you are thinking that I'm committing to empiricism, and I'm not. I'm am playing the devil's advocate, answering objections from an empiricists perspective. I would not even consider myself a strict empiricist, although I have a great deal of appreciation for it. Philosophically I'd probably consider myself an existentialist of sort, perhaps even an idealist of some kind.
I have read Quine, but not in depth.
I basically have been using the two synonymously, in the form of Chomsky's idea of nonsense and meaning.
Tell me how you understand being apart from ontology, if you can.
That's a sort of question begging, but I don't have problem with this. But at the same time it demonstrably shows that it is indeed true in the same manner one makes the meta-observation I mentioned earlier...a sort of tight cohesion, epistemically speaking.
Perceptions do alter the way one percieves something. But that's not a defeater. All it does is bolster one to make more careful observation and attempt to be as objective as one can be when considering observation -- that is, avoid making hasty conclusions or hasty generalizations. It is also one of the reason why science places a great deal of importance on peer review.
(see my comments about the meta-observation)
This is the hallmark of induction by empirical means, which gives one reason to believe something that is relatively constant will remain such, which I think is Stein's point.
Why does this require prior knowledge of mathematics? I can imagine the first species to evolve with the capacity to understand addition one day curiously separating a pile of pebbles out into individuals, then placing two of them together into a pair, then doing this again, then placing those pairs together to get quadruples. He then does this for twigs, leaves, and other objects, and thus discovering addition. Everyone who has executed the same experiment since then has validated the experiment.
You're entire post is basically railing against empiricism....
Your attempted rewrite of my objection shows this to to the case. You missed the point altogether....I'm not arguing for or against empiricism. I'm arguing against your treatment of epistemology in general without any regard to a particular epistemology or ontology. All statements, even "All effects have a cause" requires an ontological referent in order to be true, that is, if effects don't exist or causes don't exist in some ontological frame of reference, "All effects have a cause" is meaningless. How could one even make such a claim otherwise? Even a chimera has an ontological referent in myth and legend as the product of imagination.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
I'll concede, then, that you are not really an empiricist, but if you are going to play devil's advocate and adopt the empiricist perspective (methodological empiricism?), then that's what I'll respond to.
I don't understand being apart from ontology, since ontology is a subset of metaphysics, which is the study of being.
What do you mean? That we cannot deny the LNC without adhering to it isn't an empirical statement. Empirical statements are contingent upon the state of the world, which is subject to change. The universality of the LNC is not potentially revisable.
"Axioms of reason would include the axiom of existence, identity and sentience. They are defended by retortion: any attempt to refute these axioms must rely on them in order to make the refutation, leading to a stolen concept fallacy: i.e. an internal contradiction. So we can be certain that these axioms hold." -- Rational Response Squad
http://www.rationalresponders.com/doesnt_everyone_need_to_start_out_with_an_assumption
What I'm getting at is that the world of mathematics is not somehow attached to the corporeal world, such that we can observe something and say, "Oh, that is definitely 2 in number!" If this was your worldview (and I'm not saying that it is), then it would spawn all sorts of absurdities: Achilles would never be able to beat a tortoise in a race, the quantity of one collection of items could be both equal and double to another collection of items, etc.
In the case of the example with the pebbles, are they all the same size? If not, then why have you counted two pebbles instead of 1.5 pebbles?
And if addition is based upon empirical observation, how do we know the answer to "(5425 - 595 + 800) x (657 x 14^20)"? Has anybody actually affirmed this through counting a collection of items?
I'm not using "chimera" to refer to a character in some story or as something that somebody thinks of. I'm using it to refer to a real being in the corporeal world.
The truth of the statement "God exists" requires a referent as well. The issue is, how do we know it has a referent? The argument I've presented provides that epistemological foundation.
Banned for personal attacks. The explanation is here.
This is what I'm getting at, and such is an example: "being" is a categorical statement, but "a being" a part from ontology is a meaningless concept.
I'm not an RRSer...I just like the forums.
Attempting to affirm something with itself is circular reasoning, which is why it is a sort of question begging. But one could say that we have two categories: self-affirming or self-refuting. Positivism as an a priori principle is self-refuting. LNC and Empiricism are self-affirming, that is the system coheres to the principles it lays out. Epistemically, this is coherentism.
One could ask, if mathematics were not corporeal, then why am I wasting my time learning math empirically. I do not believe that or recall having learned math some other way than empirically. Should I not know how to do deferential equations coming out of the womb? On the other hand, I spent the better part of my life (I was in school for 24 years and I'm not yet 30....) learning math. Now I teach it. (I can't get away from this stuff!).
My example was to show that it's not absurd to think that one can learn mathematics empirically. It was simply a starting point. Size is not important when I'm not concerned about size. A rock or 100 grams and a rock of 200 grams are still both rocks. But if he was concerned about size, he could compare two small stone's mass to another stone's mass and find that it takes 2 small stones to equal a large one. So he breaks the large stone in half, and discovers fractions and division....
When I learn how addition works, I don't have to add every possible permutation to have a relatively high level of confidence that it works.
But even as pure as we'd like to think math is, there are numerous paradoxes and competing theories in the world of math.
How can I have an epistemological foundation without first having an ontological foundation?
If you suppose the epistemological foundation without an ontological referent, there is nothing to give any of your ideas meaning, especially concerning the an argument for the existence of something. However if you do, then I think you're begging the question. It's a sort of Catch-22.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”