I thought I’d post this just to summarize Chapter 1: The First Four A Priori Truths.

We can start discussing any part you want right here, OR anybody can start a thread on any part of Ch. 1. It would just be nice if when you start a thread you put I, II, III, IV, V, or IV first. That’ll tell us what chapter that thread discusses. Then you can narrow it down when you introduce your thread.

Sound good? Instead of typing out “Hartshorne” every time I run across it I’m just gonna type in CH for Charles Hartshorne.

This is just Greg’s summary to Ch. 1 (I.v.2.5; p. 50f). He writes:

“We have in this chapter examined CH’s understanding of metaphysics and the methodology which is necessitated by this understanding (i). We have seen that CH understands metaphysics to be the analytic evaluation of candidates for a priori truth about existence, but we have also seen that this does not entail that metaphysics is simply a matter of deducing conclusions from supposed self-evident axioms. It rather proposes statements as candidates for a priori status and evaluates them by deductively discovering their meaning to see whether or not they truly articulate what is absolutely necessary over against what is contingent in our experience of reality.

“We then saw that the statement ‘something exists’ was the first and most fundamental candidate which CH proposes to be a priori (ii). Everything else CH says in his system is really simply the attempt to flush out the full meaning of this statement. The statement ‘something is concrete’, along with the concrete/abstract distinction this statement proposes, is the first deductive step of CH’s system (iii). The statement ‘experience occurs’, we saw, was the second deductive step of CH’s system (iv). And finally, the statement ‘asymmetrical relations occur’ is the third deductive step of his system, being logically entailed by the concept of experience (v).

“These then constitute the first four a priori truths of CH’s system. Each constitutes a stepping stone in CH’s a priori understanding of the necessary creative sociality of the world. And indeed, each constitutes a stepping stone to CH’s a priori understanding of the sociality of God. This latter point shall be made clear when we explicate CH’s six theistic arguments in Part II, for each of these theistic arguments, we shall see, is really but an elaboration of one or more of the six fundamental a priori truths of his system.”

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Tom here. So, the first four necessary a priori truths:

1. Something exists.

2. Something is concrete (which is the concrete/abstract distinction).

3. Experience occurs.

4. Asymmetrical relations occurs.

2-4 explicate 1. “Something exists” for CH just means “The concrete experience of asymmetrical relations occurs.” And this is necessarily true for CH. It could not be otherwise.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 8/20/2011 11:33:45 AM (GMT-5)

Right--impossible in the sense that it's impossible to CONCEIVE of. For since we can't conceive of experience that is not temporally ordered, we can not conceive of DIVINE experience that is not temporally-ordered. And we can not conceive of LIFE in the relevant sense apart from CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE.

What is important about this is that even if there are true SOFA's outside and beyond what we can conceive of, we can not know anything about them such that they can be used as GROUNDS for inferences. Thus, Lewis is wrong, e.g., to posit that God is "outside of time" and that, therefore, he can foreknow free-will choices. No one can RATIONALLY make such an inference from a claim that is humanly inconceivable in the first place. No one has any idea what it even MEANS (or at least, if they do, most of us can't, in which case such conceptions have nothing to do with HUMAN epistemology) to talk about 6th dimensions of time/space or atemporal experience. So even if they are real, they are worthless to us, qua humans, epistemologically. So theologians and scientists who throw these words around like they mean things or like we can RATIONALLY make inferences from them are just (for most of us) concatenating words without any TRUE conceptions going on that have any epistemological value to humans, QUA humans. Lewis was right when he said, "if nothing is obvious, nothing can be proved" (i.e., RATIONALLY inferred). I think he and CH would be in agreement on that.

My book has still not arrived. But it shouldn't be long now.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 3/26/2011 9:44:43 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/26/2011 5:13:33 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/26/2011 5:30:04 PM (GMT-5)

If you think about it, the existence of eyes and ears don't ultimately explain information-acquisition by a conscious being at all. It just introduces an extra "mean" in the teleological event sequence. There is still the sheer mystery as to how a configuration of matter in the brain is a necessary condition of a conscious experience. We only infer that it is a necessary condition because of the regularity of the event sequence. But I know of no such regularity with respect to angels and God. So I don't make the same inference about them.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 3/27/2011 10:11:24 AM (GMT-5)

Tom: And if to exist is to be a disposition towards an actualization of some minimal level of aesthetic satisfaction, then we have to attribute this to Satan as well. As CH says (and Greg agreed), to be utterly and absolutey void of aesthetic apetite is to not exist at all.

Jeff: We need to work that out for fundamental 3-D particles. I'm not sure I can yet see why they need a unity-in-diversity sentient conscious experience to exist or do what they do. I can imagine them existing without consciousness and being moved around by God. Or existing and moving around by their own impulses that require a mere single-dimensionally-sentient conscious experience (like volume level for one pitch that corresponds to sentient states, where zero volume implies no impulse to vary from the current motion vector--that doesn't seem to necessarily involve aesthetic sensibilities). It seems to me that a sentient state combined with an attending impulse is all that is required to account for an entity existing with the capability of sentiently-impelled behavior.

I'm not seeing the need for aesthetic appetite, per se, except in the sense that God might would necessarily require that SOME being in a created system would be aesthetic. But I could see how other beings in that system could serve roles that didn't require aesthetic capacity.

I can certainly see how CH's system needs that assumption, though. Because he doesn't allow for a deity with the power to move things around or create, right? Because that creates the intractable problem of evil for him, right? Or is that just true of other process theists?

Post Edited (Similitude) : 3/27/2011 11:22:16 AM (GMT-5)