Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : The Philosophical Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rarebird who wrote (164)	8/6/2005 2:00:37 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26251

There are a couple of big problems with the ontological argument. Perhaps more than a couple but they aren't with the form of the argument. There are all sorts of opinions and philisophical ideas that attack one or the other of the premises. That causes a problem with the argument (at least for those who hold these ideas) but the problem is that its unconvicing because the premises are disputed. I note that you specifically say in your premise q, "the(re) exists the idea of perfection". "the(re) exists the idea of perfection" , does not equal "there exists a perfect being". The cosmological argument takes refuge in the ontologogical argument because it commits the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent It simply doesn't do that. Affirming the consequent is q p implies q Conclusion: p The pattern here is q q implies p Conclusion: p ""A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers. For as the latter signify the concept, and the former the object and the positing of the object, should the former contain more than the latter, my concept would not, in that case, express the whole object, and would not therefore be an adequate concept of it.... For the object, as it actually exists is not analytically contained in my concept, but is added to my concept ... synthetically; and yet the conceived hundred thalers are not themselves in the least increased through thus acquiring existence outside my concept." (B627)" That is just a detailed argument against "q implies p". If you find the argument convincing then you respond to "q implies p", with "q does not imply p", and this deny the argument by denying the 2nd premise. You also list other arguments against the premises. You can pile them up as high as you want but they don't support your claim that the original argument is affirming the consequent, even if they do make the original argument unconvincing to you and perhaps many other people. Tim

To: Rarebird who wrote (164)	8/6/2005 9:48:50 PM
From: LLCF	Respond to of 26251

Here's a little piece of Hawkins on all this: "The mind is used to descriptions and definitions in terms of qualities, conditions, and presumed causes. Thus, to perception, nothing is complete or total in and of itself but is always dependent on other considerations. this is due to the dualistic mind's proclivity for separation in time and space and the superimposition of the supposed and imaginary explaination of a mysterious operant called "cause". Thus to the mind, everything is both dependent on conditions and seen as a temporality which therefore requires expanation for understanding. Mental statements presume a separation between subject and object or conditions, namely, subject, adverb, adjective, and predicate. In reality, nothing requires and explanation. Nothing is caused by anything else. Existance requires no explaination nor does it have any dependence on any other state or quality." Hawkins; "I- Reality and Subjectivity" DAK PS, I highly recommend the book.