Post Edited (Tom) : 12/4/2011 8:34:22 PM (GMT-6)

Jeff: I think you’re misunderstanding Hartshorne.

Tom: Jump in Asher! Jeff won’t believe me!

Jeff: …it is NECESSARY that there has never been a time when nothing existed since something exists NOW…

Tom: Right. We can infer from the fact that “something exists” that “something exists necessarily.” But Hartshorne would never agree that this something which exists necessarily can be an infinite regress of created entities. For Hartshorne that would mean an infinite regress of imperfections, for he agreed with Anselm that perfection cannot exist contingently, which is what you have with an infinite regress of created beings. Hartshorne would say, “Look, a perfect being either exists necessarily or not. It’s either necessary or impossible. If you grant that such a being is possible (i.e., not impossible), then you grant its actuality. Hence, the only way to grant the possibility of its non-existence is to argue for its impossibility. You can’t grant BOTH the possibility of necessary existence and the possibility of its non-existence, because by definition what exists necessarily cannot exist contingently.”

Jeff: I think that’s all Hartshorne is saying.

Tom: Hartshorne's argument. (N(A) means “it is logically necessary that A,” “g” means “God exists.”

1. q ⊃ Nq    [“Anselm’s Principle”1]

2. Nq ∨ ~Nq    [Excluded Middle]

3. ~Nq ⊃ N~Nq    [Form of Becker’s Postulate2]

4. Nq ∨ N~Nq    [Inference from (2,3)]

5. N~Nq ⊃ N~q    [Inference from (1)]

6. Nq ∨ N~q    [Inference (4,5)]

7. ~N~q    [Intuitive postulate3]

8. Nq    [Inference from (6,7)]

9. Nq ⊃ q    [Modal Axiom]

10. q    [Inference from (8,9)]

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1 Perfection cannot exist contingently.

2 Modal status is always necessary.

3 Perfection

-----------------------

To summarize (God = “necessarily existing God”):

1) A necessarily existing being (God) can be conceived without contradiction.
2) Therefore God is not impossible.
3) By definition God cannot be contingent.
4) Therefore God is either necessary or impossible.
5) God is not impossible, therefore, God is necessary.

Tom

Jeff: I have no idea what "existence per se" even is other than a pure concept.

Tom: I agree. Which is why I asked my question, because YOU distinguished “necessary existence” from “any necessary being” and said they don’t imply each other. So give me an example of necessary existence that doesn’t imply a necessary being. You’ll offer an infinite regress of created/contingent beings I guess. But that doesn’t work. The regress itself is an abstraction. It doesn’t exist apart from the actual concrete created gods, one then another, then another, etc. And they’re all contingent beings. If there's any 'necessity' to an infinite regress of created beings, which concrete entity instantiates the necessity? It looks like you sneak it in via the infinitude of the regress because none of the created entities can do the job. If we can infer from “something exists” that “something exists necessarily,” the only KIND of something that can fit the bill is a concrete someTHING, and a “regress” doesn’t qualify. We can’t reify the whole regress of contingencies into a concretion of necessary ‘existence’ with no necessarily existing ‘being’ simply because the regress is infinite. You need a ‘necessary BEING’ to instantiate ‘necessary EXISTENCE’.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 12/5/2011 2:09:18 PM (GMT-6)

Tom:

1) A necessarily existing being (God) can be conceived without contradiction.
2) Therefore God is not impossible.
3) By definition God cannot be contingent.
4) Therefore God is either necessary or impossible.
5) God is not impossible, therefore, God is necessary.

Jeff: It's your 3) that is problematic. For you have already admitted that the being we call God of our creation can be contingent. You said (my emphasis):

Tom: Just to clarify again...it would be possible to say the creator of our universe is himself created, yes... If one were to concede that (A) it's possible that the God who created our universe may have been created, and that THAT God may have been created, but also that (B) at SOME point there has to be an uncreated first-cause, THEN parsimony would definitely tell us not to multiply explanations needlessly and to conclude that the necessary first existent IS the God who created our universe. There's no explanatory value or metaphysical mileage to be gained in supposing there to be two, three or any FINITE number of createrr "gods" if all ultimatly owe their existence to the one uncreated "God." Just posit the uncreated God to begin with. Yes...parsimony is why we make THAT move.

But I contend that there is no difference in using parsimony to move from an infinite series (regressing into the past) than moving from 5 to 1. You say "If there's any 'necessity' to an infinite regress of created beings, which concrete entity instantiates the necessity?" The answer is, "None of them." Because you're missing WHY I'm saying existence is necessary. It's necessary in the sense that it's IMPLIED by my 1) & 2) above. But that implication is reconciled equally well by EITHER one or more necessary beings OR one or more infinite regresses of contingent beings. Parsimony is what gets us down to the minimal # of necessary beings in either case.

In my view of categories, the sense in which God is known to be perfect is in the sense of benevolence and competence. This is because our natural modes of knowledge acquisition are only warranted in any valid normative sense IF the DESIGNER of our natural modes of knowlege acquisition designed them competently unto benevolent ends. Short of these two "perfections," teleology per se gets us nowhere. For as the ID'ists constantly remind us, design CAN be defective or malicious and still BE a design. In short, the "perfections" of God that are knowable are precisely those teleologically necessary to account for the legitimacy of reason and reason's role in the motivations unto volitional action.

According to Greg, Hartshorne didn't claim that any of his "proofs" of God were sufficient per se. Greg says Hartshorne relied on the weight of their seeming plausibility. But a syllogism either works from a priori beliefs or not. Deduction isn't fuzzy. For me, God IS the Designer of us. Whether He is necessary is not relevant to WHETHER He is our God/Designer EXCEPT in the sense that we are DESIGNED to think parsimoniously--which compels us to minimize the number of SANS CREATIONAL beings.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 12/5/2011 7:08:24 PM (GMT-6)

Jeff: It's your 3) that is problematic.

Tom: I figured you’d object to (3)! But just so we’re on the same page, it’s not my syllogism. It’s Hartshorne’s.

Jeff: For you have already admitted that the being we call God of our creation can be contingent. You said (my emphasis) Tom: Just to clarify again...it would be possible to say the creator of our universe is himself created, yes...

Tom: What I admitted was that it’s possible to say the creator of our universe was created and so forth before him IFF if we end the regress by positing a necessary being at some point. Once you posit that God, why suppose there to be an additional (or a million additional) created gods between us and the necessary God? There are no reasons to suppose it. So parsimony THERE helps (though I have other theological reasons to reject any intervening created gods standing between the uncreated God and us needing salvation).

Jeff: But I contend that there is no difference in using parsimony to move from an infinite series (regressing into the past) than moving from 5 to 1.

Tom: Yes, I know!  And that’s where you’re wrong. But all I want you to see (from my part) is that Hartshorne is not on your side here.

Jeff: You say "If there's any 'necessity' to an infinite regress of created beings, which concrete entity instantiates the necessity?" The answer is, "None of them." Because you're missing WHY I'm saying existence is necessary. It's necessary in the sense that it's IMPLIED by my 1) & 2) above. But that implication is reconciled equally well by EITHER one or more necessary beings OR one or more infinite regresses of contingent beings.

Tom: I got that. Your (1) and (2) are fine, so far as they go. Your infinite regress possesses a certain implication of necessity (given your 1 and 2), but only the way any ‘infinite regress of temporal moments’ would. However, the necessity is contradicted when you populate the regress exclusively with ‘contingent’ actualities. There’s never anything concrete in your regress that implies necessary existence (in spite of the implications of causality in your 1 and 2). So the necessity is vacuous. You essentially upload the intuitions (good ones!) re: causality (your 1 and 2) into an infinite regess of created beings and then assume you've got something that we can hang 'necessity' on. Searching through an infinite regress, your (1) and (2) at best lead us to EXPECT to find a necessary being whose actuality grounds the regress and its infinity. But just because we can see your (1) and (2) in any given instance of finite/created beings doesn't mean we've got the necessary existence which an infinite regress betokens. Spreading out causality along the length of an infinite regress of contingencies doesn't do it. I'm repeating myself. Sorry.

As long as you’ll agree that Hartshorne does not support your view, I’m fine. But you can't have Hartshorne on this! :o) I was just reading through his The Logic of Perfection yesterday (and more today) and several reviews of his modal/ontological argument. There’s no question about it. Everybody who understands Hartshorne understands his view on the necessity required. The only way to posit the non-existence of a necessary being is to posit his necessary non-existence (i.e., his impossibility). A necessary being cannot not-exist contingently. That much is just definition. Hence, so long as you posit the real/ontological possibility of an infinite regress of created beings (that is, no uncreated, necessary being) you also posit the impossibility of a necessary being, i.e., that's the only way to posit a possible world in which a necessary being does not exist. Do you agree with this much Jeff?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 12/6/2011 4:17:56 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Tom) : 12/7/2011 12:30:41 PM (GMT-6)

I’m not disagreeing about time, Jeff. I’m OK with God being eternally temporal. It has fewer problems than the options I suppose. That’s fine. I don’t think anybody thinks time is a being, right. But whatever it is (reference frame or whatever), it’s not a metaphysical presupposition to God’s existing. God doesn’t require metaphysical presuppositions. He IS the metaphysical presupposition for all else that is not him and that, the East wants to say, includes time. They might be wrong. But their fear (if it’s a fear) is that folks will carelessly surrender up divine transcendence in saying “God is temporal” by viewing the relationship between God and time univocally (i.e., God is temporal in the same way we are temporal). We DEPEND UPON time to DERIVE our life, so does God. We GET our existence temporally from outside ourselves and time is the presupposed reference frame for our even existing at all, just as it is with God. So time is that upon which we depend, in which we are grounded, and from which we derive our existence (so to speak). All this, the East says, cannot be true of God. God is rather time’s reference point.  God is in fact the reference point, context, and ground for all else that exists, occurs, and gets referenced or does any referencing.

Personally I think they have a point. As much as has been written on the subject, we could use more. I want to affirm with the East that “God transcends time” but which for me cannot mean God cannot/does not experience the world temporally (think one thought after another, experience now this occurring, now that, etc.). Easterners who deny THIS are just mistaken I think. But I haven’t actually met any who deny this.

Divine transcendence of time seems to function for Eastern Orthodox on two levels—first, where God can be said to experience the world temporally, his “experience” of it is not univocally understood in terms of OUR experience; i.e., God doesn’t grow old, get tired, require rest, forget things, think slower the older he becomes. So immediately we’re faced with a KIND of temporal experience that’s UNLIKE anything WE have experienced. But we HAVE to suppose it in supposing the necessity of such being in response to "Something exists." The second level comes from the first—What KIND of life/existence must God’s be if his temporal experience (or whatever we call it) doesn’t entail increasing in age, getting old, forgetting memories, etc.? Surely that LIFE must TRANSCEND time itself, indeed, it must be that upon which time itself depends. But by this I think they just mean that it's a matter of lining things up in proper order of ontological dependeny. That seems a very safe intuition to me.

-----------------------

That aside, you agree then that a necessary being cannot not-exist contingently; that the only way for a necessary being to not-exist is if it’s existing is impossible? So the options for us to choose between are: Either Necessarily God or Necessarily not-God.

And here is where you and I disagree. You obviously agree that a necessary God is possible. But you ALSO think his non-existence is possible when you suppose an infinite regress of created beings (void of any necessary being) to be possible. Hartshorne would say you’re being inconsistent. If you concede the possibility of a necessary being, you MUST believe he actually exists. But if he exists as necessary (me talking now), and his non-existence is impossible, then an infinite regress of contingent beings is IMPOSSIBLE. You cannot concede the possibility of a necessary being and then ALSO concede the possibility of his not existing in the case of an infinite regress of contingent beings.

Now, you seem to be saying something like this (correct me if I’m wrong):

“‘Something exists’ entails that ‘something exists necessarily’.”

I agree. But then you say:

“OK, this requirement of necessity is fulfilled by either an infinite regress of contingent beings or a single, necessary being. Both fit the bill equally as well and are equally possible. Which way is it actually? I can't adjudicate. All hail parsimony! Don’t needlessly multiply explanations. I'll believe in a single, necessary being.”

Hartshorne would not disparage your use of parsimony. But he'd definitely disagree with your second move, because both “an infinite regress of contingent beings” and “a single, necessary being” cannot both be equally possible. One of them is possible and one is impossible given LNC and the definitions invovled. Parsimony isn't needed to know THAT.

Now, you may be saying, “I can’t discern the difference between them so as to judge which is the necessary and which is the impossible.”

I can respect that. And if in not knowing which is which all you have is parsimony and that gets you a single necessary being, fine. I can respect that too. But not everybody suffers from your indecision here, and Hartshorne is one of them.

But that aside, what you can’t say is, “I’m claiming that there is in fact no metaphysical advantage of one over the other and that both are in fact equally possible—ontologically speaking,” for THAT denies LNC and the very meaningfulness of language. One of these options is THE necessity implied in “Something exists” and the other is in fact impossible. You can settle for a single necessary being over an infinite regress of contingent beings on the basis of parsimony if you can't discern which is necessary and which is impossible; but settling for one over the other means at least settling for the impossibility of the one not chosen and the necessity of the one chosen. That's the meaning of the option parsimony asks you to settle on. I don't think you see this. In other words, you can not know which is possible and which is impossible, or you can make an argument for the necessity of the one and the impossibility of the other. But you cannot make an argument for both being possible. Neither of the options (an infinite regress of contingent beings or a single necessary being) can obtain or fail to obtain contingently.

To conceive of the possibility of an infinite regress of contingent beings is to conceive of the non-existence of a necessary being, and to conceive of the non-existence of a necessary being is to conceive of its impossibility.

I'm blabbing on. Sorry.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 12/8/2011 10:29:47 PM (GMT-6)

Tom: But that aside, what you can’t say is, “I’m claiming that there is in fact no metaphysical advantage of one over the other and that both are in fact equally possible—ontologically speaking ...

Jeff: No, I'm saying the metaphysical advantage is that compelled by parsimony. I'm thinking you must think that:

"something exists" implies "necessary existence" implies "necessary being."

But I'm not defining necessary existence that way. I'm defining necessary existence to mean MERELY what is implied by my 1) and 2) -- i.e., something ALWAYS (temporally) exists. Otherwise, we wouldn't exist NOW. So if Hartshorne meant that "something exists" MEANS "there is at least one necessary being," then fine. But that is not obvious from the phrase "something exists." Indeed, "something exists" doesn't even mean, per se, "something USED TO exist." So I'm necessarily interpreting him.

The other thing that is relevant is that I don't see that it's FUNDAMENTALLY intuitive that God is a necessary being. Rather, what is FUNDAMENTALLY intuitive is that God is our Designer. It is by a discursive parsimonious MOVE that we infer God is necessary. That's where you and I differ in our intuitions. So far, at least.

As for God and time, I disagree that we depend on time. Because I don't think time is causal. No causality, no dependency. So since God and humans are in the same boat in that respect, I see it as having no relevance to the issue.

To me, space and time are not beings (hence, created), but two frames of reference--not only for conceivable relations, but possibly-REAL relations (hence, we can THINK and IMAGINE in terms of temporal and spatial relations as well as EXIST and ACT in terms of temporal and spatial relations). They are both fundamental categories in the sense that all finite spatial and temporal concepts and relations are only conceivable BECAUSE of those absolute frames of reference. 

Is this brain-straining? You bet. But I can't see how they restrict or constrain God at all--rather, events and spatially-extended beings would not even be conceivable and, therefore, possible (how can God intend what He can't prehend) without them as far as I can tell. In that sense, they condition the possibiity for God to act, and act AS He clearly has.

What God is the total explanation of is contingent beings and their properties/attributes/capacities. There is no explaining God's thought or sentience, because it can't be explained in terms of design, like ours, without positing the infinite regress of creators. Rather, God's thought and sentience are conceived of as corrollaries of our own teleological inference.

If God thinks in temporal sequence and FEELS in different places simultaneously, as we do, what's that to us? We are under no obligation to attempt to analyze further than God has made us capable of analyzing. God can be conceived of as an absolute being, but not as an absolute temporal or spatial frame of reference, as far as I can tell.

In short, even IF time and space are ultimately derived from God in some sense we can't conceive of, it's precisely because we can't conceive of it that tells me it's of no relevance to our theology or philosophy. We're trying to explain our experience, not eliminate all mystery (i.e., brute facts to the human mind). Once we insist that what seems like brute fact to us is not in fact brute, we can't even know the LNC is absolute. We have to believe that all mystery is SUPRA-intuitive, not COUNTER-intuitive. IOW, there may be MORE concepts and relations that the godhead can think in terms of--but not less or contrary ones.

If one speculates that time and space are ultimately derivative from God, in the hopes that it somehow parsimoniously unifies our intuitions even more, I have no problem with it. I have no problem with speculation as long as it's offered up as just that--speculation.

But insomuch as Hartshorne views both a world and a deity as necessary, he seems to apply temporality to God as he does to the world, just as I do. I can't see how temporality for God and created entities means something different sans creation. I don't know HOW it could.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 12/8/2011 7:52:42 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Tom) : 12/9/2011 10:02:51 AM (GMT-6)

We ALL believe that right Here, right Now, the personal Presence of the crucified and bodily resurrected Incarnate Word of God the Father (Lord Christ Jesus of Nazareth) consistently permeates our human particularity via the power of the Holy Spirit, meaning that the trinitarian process of the One Triune God perichoretically indwells our total selves and empowers our lives as we continually "offer ourselves as living sacrifices" to God by remaining aware of His Presence and seeking to be continually "filled with -the Spirit" by Grace through faith. Through this awareness, Christians are able to experience the love, joy, and peace of the One Triune God as the foundation of their self-relationality and self-determination, thus re-presenting divine life. Basically, we ALL believe John 17:20-26.

"I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you (God the Father) have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

Post Edited (One Love) : 12/9/2011 9:35:08 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 12/9/2011 9:44:14 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Similitude) : 12/9/2011 8:50:22 PM (GMT-6)