According to his logic, people conceiving a baby is somehow an instance of the Universal Mind disassociating from itself thereby creating an alter. — Bob Ross

either there is a foundation, or there's a vicious infinite regress of ever-deeper layers of reality - which I reject. — Relativist

I personally reject deism because it depends on an infinitely complex intelligence, with magical knowledge, just happening to exist by brute fact. — Relativist

However, if the adage “magic is science we don’t understand yet” is true, then the reverse may also be true: that science is magic that we do understand. — MrLiminal

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. — Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics

”Intellectus is the higher, so that if we call it ' understanding', the Coleridgean distinction which puts 'reason' above ' understanding' inverts the traditional order. Boethius, it will be remembered, distinguishes intelligentia from ratio; the former being enjoyed in its perfection by angels” — Count Timothy von Icarus

Intellectus is the Latin term adopted by Roman philosophers like Cicero and later by medieval Scholastics to translate nous from Greek philosophical texts. It similarly denotes the capacity for intellectual intuition or understanding of universal principles. Nous (and therefore Intellectus) is a key term for the higher faculty of the soul, distinct from reason (ratio), which operates discursively. … In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the faculty that underwrites the capacity of reason. For Aristotle, nous was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which animals can do. For Aristotle, discussion of nous is connected to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way (through the grasp of universals) and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories in the same logical ways. Derived from this it was also sometimes argued, in classical and medieval philosophy, that the individual nous must require help of a spiritual and divine type. By this type of account, it also came to be argued that the human understanding (nous) somehow stems from this cosmic nous, which is however not just a recipient of order, but a creator of it. — various sources including Wikipedia

'God' is not the concept of nothing. — Clearbury

Which of course leads into the discussion of what is to count as a justification... — Banno

Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what is real. People of a rational, scientific bent tend to think that the two are coextensive—that everything is physical. Many who think differently are inspired by religion to posit the existence of God and souls; Nagel affirms that he’s an atheist, but he also asserts that there’s an entirely different realm of non-physical stuff that exists—namely, mental stuff. The vast flow of perceptions, ideas, and emotions that arise in each human mind is something that, in his view, actually exists as something other than merely the electrical firings in the brain that gives rise to them—and exists as surely as a brain, a chair, an atom, or a gamma ray.

In other words, even if it were possible to map out the exact pattern of brain waves that give rise to a person’s momentary complex of awareness, that mapping would only explain the physical correlate of these experiences, but it wouldn’t be them. A person doesn’t experience patterns, and her experiences are as irreducibly real as her brain waves are, and different from them.

Nagel offers mental activity as a special realm of being and life as a special condition—in the same way that biology is a special realm of science, distinct from physics. His argument is that, if the mental things arising from the minds of living things are a distinct realm of existence, then strictly physical theories about the origins of life, such as Darwinian theory, cannot be entirely correct. Life cannot have arisen solely from a primordial chemical reaction, and the process of natural selection cannot account for the creation of the realm of mind. — Thoughts are Real (Review of Nagel, Mind and Cosmos)

It means the act of creating something out of materials that did not previously exist. The creator already exists. — Clearbury

The Greek natural philosophers were quite correct in saying that from nothing, nothing comes. But by “comes” they meant a change from one state to another, which requires some underlying material reality. It also requires some pre-existing possibility for that change, a possibility that resides in something.

Creation, on the other hand, is the radical causing of the whole existence of whatever exists. To be the complete cause of something’s existence is not the same as producing a change in something. It is not a matter of taking something and making it into something else, as if there were some primordial matter which God had to use to create the universe. Rather, Creation is the result of the divine agency being totally responsible for the production, all at once and completely, of the whole of the universe, with all it entities and all its operations, from absolutely nothing pre-existing.

Strictly speaking, points out Aquinas, the Creator does not create something out of nothing in the sense of taking some nothing and making something out of it. This is a conceptual mistake, for it treats nothing as a something. On the contrary, the Christian doctrine of Creation ex nihilo claims that God made the universe without making it out of anything. In other words, anything left entirely to itself, completely separated from the cause of its existence, would not exist—it would be absolutely nothing. The ultimate cause of the existence of anything and everything is God who creates—not out of some nothing, but from nothing at all.

If there is a God, then it exists. — Relativist

A materialist ontological foundation would also exist at all times- it being the basis for everything else that exists. — Relativist

God manages to possess knowledge with no such encoding- it just exists magically. — Relativist

I do not think that argument is sound, but we should at least be clear about what it is. — Clearbury

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, was initially attracted to Platonism—but has since come to see it as problematic. If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?)

Our account of the Blind Spot is based on the work of two major philosophers and mathematicians, Edmund Husserl and Alfred North Whitehead. Husserl, the German thinker who founded the philosophical movement of phenomenology, argued that lived experience is the source of science. It’s absurd, in principle, to think that science can step outside it. The ‘life-world’ of human experience is the ‘grounding soil’ of science, and the existential and spiritual crisis of modern scientific culture – what we are calling the Blind Spot – comes from forgetting its primacy.

Whitehead, who taught at Harvard University from the 1920s, argued that science relies on a faith in the order of nature that can’t be justified by logic. That faith rests directly on our immediate experience. Whitehead’s so-called process philosophy is based on a rejection of the ‘bifurcation of nature’, which divides immediate experience into the dichotomies of mind versus body, and perception versus reality. Instead, he argued that what we call ‘reality’ is made up of evolving processes that are equally physical and experiential.

Nowhere is the materialistic bias in science more apparent than quantum physics, the science of atoms and subatomic particles. Atoms, conceived as the building blocks of matter, have been with us since the Greeks. The discoveries of the past 100 years would seem to be a vindication for all those who have argued for an atomist, and reductionist, conception of nature. But what the Greeks, Isaac Newton and 19th-century scientists meant by the thing called an ‘atom’, and what we mean today, are very different. In fact, it’s the very notion of a ‘thing’ that quantum mechanics calls into question.

The classic model for bits of matter involves little billiard balls, clumping together and jostling around in various forms and states. In quantum mechanics, however, matter has the characteristics of both particles and waves. There are also limits to the precision with which measurements can be made, and measurements seem to disturb the reality that experimenters are trying to size up.

Today, interpretations of quantum mechanics disagree about what matter is, and what our role is with respect to it. These differences concern the so-called ‘measurement problem’: how the wave function of the electron reduces from a superposition of several states to a single state upon observation. For several schools of thought, quantum physics doesn’t give us access to the way the world fundamentally is in itself. Rather, it only lets us grasp how matter behaves in relation to our interactions with it. — The Blind Spot of Science and the Neglect of Lived Experience

There is nothing "necessary" about 2 + 2 = 4. In fact this depends on a number of more basic assumptions (axioms). — EricH

It assumes God pre-exists matter, but God is something. — Relativist

To understand the development, one has to understand the intuitive rationality of animism, and the counterintuitive nature of the modern, dead world. One has to disabuse oneself of modernity. — unenlightened

The tremendously enlarged universe of modern cosmology is conceived as a field of inanimate masses and forces which operate according to the laws of inertia and of quantitative distribution in space. This denuded substratum of all reality could only be arrived at through a progressive expurgation of vital features from the physical record and through strict abstention from projecting into its image our own felt aliveness. In the process the ban on anthropomorphism was extended to zoomorphism in general. What remained is the residue of the reduction toward the properties of mere extension which submit to measurement and hence to mathematics. These properties alone satisfy the requirements of what is now called exact knowledge: and representing the only knowable aspect of nature they, by a tempting substitution, came to be regarded as its essential aspect too: and if this, then as the only real in reality.

This means that the lifeless has become the knowable par excellence and is for that reason also considered the true and only foundation of reality. It is the "natural" as well as the original state of things. Not only in terms of relative quantity but also in terms of ontological genuineness, nonlife is the rule, life the puzzling exception in physical existence.

Accordingly, it is the existence of life within a mechanical universe which now calls for an explanation, and explanation has to be in terms of the lifeless. Left over as a borderline case in the homogeneous physical world-view, life has to be accounted for in the terms of that view. — Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life:Towards a Philosophy of Biology

Something cannot come from nothing. — Clearbury

if something can come from nothing then there is no need to posit God. — Clearbury

You'd probably like Between Naturalism and Religion (2008) — J

Lots to be said about Nagel and religion. Is he really open to religious belief? — J

He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away. — Banno

Here we are talking about Mathematics, and he must introduce god, but not in so many words. Moreover, he sees any objection to this unneeded insertion as further evidence of a supposed scientistic fear of religion. — Banno

… the apparent rejection or disappearance of religion and theology in fact conceals the continuing relevance of theological issues and commitments for the modern age. Viewed from this perspective, the process of secularization or disenchantment that has come to be seen as identical with modernity was in fact something different than it seemed, not the crushing victory of reason over infamy, to use Voltaire’s famous term, not the long drawn out death of God that Nietzsche proclaimed, and not the evermore distant withdrawal of the deus absconditus Heidegger points to, but the gradual transference of divine attributes to human beings (an infinite human will), the natural world (universal mechanical causality), social forces (the general will, the hidden hand), and history (the idea of progress, dialectical development, the cunning of reason). … — Reader Review

Mathematical platonism, otherwise known as realism, is just the view that mathematical objects are neither mental nor physical. We call them abstract objects. That's it. There's no accompanying doctrine. — frank

Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences.[1] Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate.

Although these philosophical consequences are not unique to mathematical platonism, this particular form of platonism is unusually well suited to support such consequences. For mathematics is a remarkably successful discipline, both in its own right and as a tool for other sciences.[2] Few contemporary analytic philosophers are willing to contradict any of the core claims of a discipline whose scientific credentials are as strong as those of mathematics (Lewis 1991, pp. 57–9). So if philosophical analysis revealed mathematics to have some strange and surprising consequences, it would be unattractive simply to reject mathematics.[3] A form of Platonism based on a discipline whose scientific credentials are less impressive than those of mathematics would not be in this fortunate situation. For instance, when theology turns out to have some strange and surprising philosophical consequences, many philosophers do not hesitate to reject the relevant parts of theology.

articulates a position that I think is broadly correct, but you can hold it and still be an atheist to the core. — J

Neoplatonic mathematics is governed by a fundamental distinction which is indeed inherent in Greek science in general, but is here most strongly formulated. According to this distinction, one branch of mathematics participates in the contemplation of that which is in no way subject to change, or to becoming and passing away. This branch contemplates that which is always such as it is and which alone is capable of being known: for that which is known in the act of knowing, being a communicable and teachable possession, must be something that is once and for all fixed — Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra

History of philosophy isn't my forte, and I defer to Nagel on this, though it does seem a little oversimplified? — J

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel op cit

How is sex an external representation of a mind disassociating with itself? — Bob Ross

In Bernardo Kastrup’s framework, dissociated alters are conceptualized as individual living organisms, including humans, which are distinct expressions or manifestations of a single, overarching cosmic consciousness. According to this idealist ontology, there exists only one cosmic consciousness, and all living beings are dissociated alters of this consciousness. These alters are surrounded by the thoughts of cosmic consciousness, and the inanimate world we perceive is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. Living organisms, including humans, are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters. This framework suggests that our subjective experiences and perceptions are localized within these dissociated alters, which are essentially segments of the broader cosmic consciousness.

Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things (such as "health") are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by thought.

It is in this sense, too, that Plato’s references to the forms as ‘patterns’ or ‘paradigms’, of which instances are ‘images,’ must be understood. All too often, ‘paradigm’ is taken to mean ‘model to be copied.’ The following has been offered as an example of this meaning of παράδειγμα (parádeigma) in classical Greek: “[T]he architect of a temple requiring, say, twenty-four Corinthian capitals would have one made to his own specifications, then instruct his masons to produce twenty-three more just like it.” Such a model is itself one of the instances: when we have the original and the twenty-three copies, we have twenty-four capitals of the same kind. It is the interpretation of forms as paradigms in this sense that leads to the ‘third man argument’ by regarding the form as another instance and the remaining instances as ‘copies’ of the form. This interpretation of Plato’s ‘paradigmatism’ reflects a pictorial imagination of the forms as, so to speak, higher-order sensibles located in ‘another world,’ rather than as the very intelligible identities, the whatnesses, of sensible things.

But forms cannot be paradigms in this sense. Just as the intelligible ‘look’ that is common to many things of the same kind, a form, as we have seen, is not an additional thing of that kind. Likewise, it makes no sense to say that a body, a physical, sensible thing, is a copy, in the sense of a replica or duplicate, of an intelligible idea. Indeed, Plato expressly distinguishes between a copy and an image: “Would there be two things, that is, Cratylus and an image of Cratylus, if some God copied not only your color and shape, as painters do, but also … all the things you have? — Eric D Perl Thinking Being, p31 ff

a platonic realm — Banno

The key difference between Frege and Popper here is...whether the 3rd realm exists independently of human thought, or is created by our thought. If Burge is right, then there's no doubt what Frege believed: complete independence. Popper stakes out a middle ground — J

Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he says "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. Thought contents are true and bear their relations to one another (and presumably to what they are about) independently of anyone's thinking these thought contents - "just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets." ' Furthermore in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic he says that 'the laws of truth are authoritative because of their timelessness: they "are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this, that they authority for our thought if it would attain to truth." — Tyler Burge

Intelligible objects must be independent of particular minds because they are common to all who think. In coming to grasp them, an individual mind does not alter them in any way, it cannot convert them into its exclusive possessions or transform them into parts of itself. Moreover, the mind discovers them rather than forming or constructing them, and its grasp of them can be more or less adequate. Augustine concludes from these observations that intelligible objects must exist independently of individual human minds. — Cambridge Companion to Augustine

We bring one and two into existence, by and intentional act - it's something we do. — Banno

The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to it, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real - the object of its worship and its aspiration.

The soul's deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will, by slow percolation, gradually reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities. — Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion

Even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable.

If anyone is spending their holiday on TPF, poor devils, then Merry Christmas! — J

Perhaps the attempt to understand God in terms of rational principles is a misguided attempt to understand a God who is understood, to the extent he is understood, as willful. — Fooloso4

But the PSR says that everything has an explanation. — Clearbury

I am going to call that a ticketyboo. — Clearbury

Existence isn't a property; that would imply there are objects in the world that lack it - which is absurd. All objects in the world exist. — Relativist

• a state of things not yet realized
• a specific separate object of a representation,
• a general type of property that may or may not exist,
• an abstract quality,
• an experience, and so forth-just not that which is actually present.
• something missing, separate, and possibly nonexistent
• irrelevant when it comes to inanimate things, but a defining property of life and mind
• what is absent matters.
• a purpose not yet actualized,
• a quality of feeling, a functional value just discovered
• not just superimposed probable physical relationships
• each an intrinsically absent aspect of something present

Rather than the problem of an infinite regress, the problem is one of the limits of human reason. — Fooloso4

It's not in dispute that a necessarily existing thing exists and can't not. But if the PSR is true, then there will be an explanation of that. You haven't provided one, I think. — Clearbury

One has to disabuse oneself of modernity. — unenlightened