1. L is true (assume for reductio ad absurdum) — TheMadFool

As I (along with several other people) explained, this is wrong. L cannot take a truth value since it has no semantic content that can possibly be verified or denied.

I'm out of my depths. — TheMadFool

Yes. This stuff is difficult. I am not an expert in this, but you can become better educated. Both @TonesInDeepFreeze & I gave you several excellent books that can point you in the right direction.

What a wordy response. You could have conveyed the exact same information with your first paragraph plus one more sentence.

Reason and God denote the same person - namely, a person who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. But that does not mean that the words mean the same thing such that one could use them interchangeably (although if it is understood that both denote the same person, then I suppose they could be).

So the use of “God” vs “Reason” is context dependent. — Bartricks

I added in that last sentence boldface. Much simpler and to the point, yes?

Now there’s nothing wrong with your analogies, it's just that they're unnecessary to convey the point.

So why do I start off by saying this? Because it highlights the fact that there is almost no common language between the two of us. All religious writing reads to me like some form of poetry.

“The moon was a ghostly galleon”

Of course we know that the moon isn’t really a ghostly gallon, we recognize that this is poetry. Is it great poetry? I dunno - but it certainly is memorable.

So once you say that God can lift the un-liftable stone? You are speaking poetically. God is not bound by LNC but we frail human beings are.

And just to be clear, there is nothing wrong with religious writing per se. There are some great stories and beautiful writing in the Bible. And when you say:

God is a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent — Bartricks

I can see how for some people this might be a beautiful image.

I'll stop here. Regardless of anything else I might say, I can reasonably predict that you will reject this line of reasoning and that I will get a very lengthy response. And that’s OK too. I do have one request: in your response, would you please answer me this:

If all the things you are saying are correct? How does this affect my life? Should I sell all my worldly possessions and become a hermit? Should I spend all my money on fast women and booze? Should I take up tap dancing?

A while back I engaged in a conversation with someone who was clearly making a basic mistake in set theory and formal logic (what you call squiggles). I attempted to get him to understand his error by first gently asking him to clarify one of his formulas. We did a back and forth a few times and then I explained his error - and as well as pointing out where he could get more information on the topic. As this point I got an angry response - this person thought I was some sort of acolyte seeking knowing when in fact I was undercutting him.

I firmly believe that whenever possible ideas should be criticized - not people. I’m sort of a kumbaya kind of person. In my posts here (as well as in my personal life) I attempt to be as honest and open as possible without engaging in personal invective (OK - I draw the line at out and out racists or Nazis). But at the same time I want to be open and honest about my intentions - and there is no way I could do that with you without coming across as somewhat insulting.

It is obvious that you are very well read and intelligent. If I wanted clarification regarding some fine detail about Anselm’s ontological argument, I would consider you to be as good an authority as anyone out here. And based on your posts, I do not consider you to be a bad person or some sort of troll. Very strange? Yes indeed! Bad/evil? No.

I am trying to understand how you think. We are not going to agree on any major points, and this does not bother me (as it seems to bother many other folks out here). I do not feel personally threatened by your ideas.

- - - - - - -

All that said, I’d like to get back to my question, as I did not follow your answer. I'll try re-phrasing my question.

“God is Reason”. To my way of thinking, this sentence equates the words God & Reason and implies that they can be used interchangeably.. So, for example, here are the last 2 sentences in your response to me:

Reason denotes the source of all normative reasons.

It's just that the single source of all normative reasons - Reason - is a person, and that person will be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, and thus will satisfy the definition of God. — Bartricks

So if God is Reason, would it be equally correct to swap the words God & Reason in these sentences like this:

God denotes the source of all normative reasons.

It's just that the single source of all normative reasons - God - is a person, and that person will be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, and thus will satisfy the definition of Reason.

I.e., what is the context in which you use "God" vs. "Reason"

Principle of Sufficient Reason falls apart at the atomic and sub-atomic level. Events happen randomly with no prior cause. Particles randomly pop into existence out of of nowhere. These events do follow certain statistical laws/patterns, but each individual event has no prior cause or reason. There is no cause & effect at the quantum level.

There are two separate and distinct definitions/usages of the word truth and its derivations.

The Correspondence Theory of Truth
This is the plain language and accepted standard usage of the word truth. When you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? You are asserting that your statements - the sentences that you say, write, sign, etc - will accurately describe events in the real world (AKA existence, AKA the universe, AKA "everything that is the case", etc, etc)

Usage in Logic & Mathematics
Propositions in logic/math are true if they are derivable from the basic axioms & rules of the particular system you happen to be working in. I am not an expert in this area, but here is a good starting point if you want to learn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms

The so called Liar Sentence "This1 sentence is false" is clearly not formulated in any sort of mathematical/logic framework, so it must be treated as an plain language statement. As such, there is no paradox at all, since it does not make any assertion about any event in the real world. As such it does not take a truth value, it is neither true or false. It is a collection of words that is constructed to make a grammatically correct sentence - you can think of it as a sort of poetry.

William Hughes Mearns
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

As far as your comments about Godel's Theorem go, I suggest you take @TonesInDeepFreeze's comment above to heart. You might also want to read Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Besides giving an excellent overview of Gödel, it's a great read, very entertaining.

God is Reason — Bartricks

It would be disingenuous of me not to state up front that I find your writings entertaining & bizarrely fascinating. It's not merely the things you say, but that you state them with such certainty and conviction. Perhaps I've overlooked it, but I am not seeing anything in your posts that indicates anything resembling humility or acknowledging the possibility that you are mistaken. If you have said such, I missed it and apologize for misrepresenting you.

That out of the way, I understand your position that God is not bound by LNC - otherwise (s)he would not be all powerful.

Would you clarify what you mean by "God is Reason"? Is "Reason" simply an alias for "God"? I.e., could we copy & paste the word "Reason" for the word "God" in your writings without any loss of meaning?

If I'm following you, I don't believe this is the case.

If I'm following correctly, B would disagree with #4. I believe B would say that God could make such a stone AND lift it if (s)he so chose - since (s)he is not bound by LNC.

If I'm following you, since God is omnipotent (s)he is not bound by the Law of Noncontradiction.

In other words, God can create a stone (s)he cannot lift - but (s)he can still lift it.

Am I getting this correctly?

Clean living and a pure heart - pays off every time . . .

The SEP Fitch article is here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fitch-paradox/

EricH joined in with a roughly constructivist - and hence anti-realist - account of mathematics. — Banno

Just for the record I was merely describing this account of mathematics. I have no opinion/thoughts one way or the other - it's way above my pay scale. :razz:

Another example: Does the tidal flat belong to the land or to the sea? I think fuzzy logic is appropriate here. — SolarWind

I'm jumping into the middle of this conversation, so apologies if I missed something, but isn't there a third option: "Tidal Flat is shared between land & sea". I.e., the question is wrong.

As I read the article in Stanford, Fitche's Paradox is using the word "truth" in the sense of a statement about the real world (reality, existence, the universe, everything that is the case, etc - pick a word that works for you).

Your program is generating arithmetic truths: 2 > 1, 3 > 2, etc.

Put differently, Fitch is talking about apples and your program is doing math. So not even apples & oranges.

But that aside, suppose your program were to write each line out to a file and then delete that file before generating the next line? Would you still consider your program to be generating propositions?

Please note that I'm not saying you're wrong. Much of this discussion relates to the question of how we define/use the words "proposition", "truth", "knowability", etc.

There are two meanings / usages of the words "true" or "truth." @TheMadFool gave one definition from Wikipedia a few posts back, I'll repeat it:

"Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.[1] In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, propositions, and declarative sentences."

This is how the word "truth" is used in the legal system in USA (and I assume most countries). When a witness says that they will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the witness is swearing that their statements will correspond to reality to the best of their abilities.

But there is another definition/usage of the words "true" or "truth" - and that is within mathematics / logic. Statements / propositions are true if they can be derived according to the basic axioms of the particular mathematical/logical framework under which they are generated (the basic axioms are defined as true). A particular proposition may be true in one framework and false in another.

I know that there are some very smart people who believe that mathematics is "real" in some sense of the word, but I'm ignoring that for purposes of this particular discussion.

So. When I look at the output of the Python program, these lexical strings can be converted into numbers. So when the program prints the output that string "A" is lexically prior to "B", this is simply another way of saying:

For all integers x & n (where n > 0), x - n is always less than n

and likewise, when the program prints that "C' is lexically successive to "B", this is

x + n is always greater than n.

It seems like all this program is doing is generating random numbers and ordering them according to the the rules of standard arithmetic; i.e., this is within the context of a math framework and is not about the real world.

But maybe I'm not getting the point (happens on a regular basis)

= = = = = = = = =
Meanwhile, how does all this relate to the OP (Fitch's Paradox)? I'm not sure. I'm an amateur at this stuff - but I tried plowing through the Stanford discussion. It's very dense - and truth be told my eyes glazed over fairly quickly. The thing that jumped out at me is that it Fitch seems to mix both definitions of the word "truth": it introduces an "epistemic operator" K which means that ‘it is known by someone at some time". I can't help but be suspicious of this "epistemic operator" since it entails knowledge of the real world. The article points out various objections to this usage but does not draw any conclusions one way or the other.

But beyond that, I would disagree with the statement that all "truths" are knowable - i.e. all sentences that correspond with reality are knowable. Given the inflation that happened during the beginnings of the big bang, portions of the physical universe are outside our event horizon and are not knowable. Of course future scientific discoveries could that statement.

Ah yes. So when the Nazis come to take me to the gas chambers I should try to see things from their point of view. — EricH

The horror, suffering, and anguish of a situation is all the more reason to invoke anekantavada. One party involved has failed to give the other's point of view the attention it deserves. — TheMadFool

This is so bizarrely wrong I can't tell if you're being ironic - but I will take your words at face value.

Anekantavada can work if there are reasonable people on both sides - but in this flawed real world we live in that is far too often not the case.

On my side I HAVE given the other party's point of view the attention it deserves. The other party is a psychopath intent on killing me - AND - who is incapable of listening to my point of view.

I have two choices - defend myself or be killed.

Once you realize that disagreements, the seedbed of all violence, including wars, arise from looking at issues from only one side and not from all sides, including your enemy's your reason to take up arms will be gone. World Peace! — TheMadFool

Ah yes. So when the Nazis come to take me to the gas chambers I should try to see things from their point of view.

What I find interesting about the corresponding theory of truth is that it corresponds (for want of a better word) to the way we use the word "truth" in the legal system (at least in the USA).

When a witness in a trial swears to tell the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Basically this means that the statements (spoken, written, sign language, etc) describe events in the real world as accurately as the witness is capable of doing.

I don't have the time to read this through (and likely wouldn't understand most of it):

How Can We Know that We’re Not Brains in Vats?

But what problem does a theory of consciousness solve? If this theory is a solution, then what is the problem it is setting out to solve? — Wayfarer

I solves the problem of TPF being cluttered up with conversations about the nature of consciousness. :razz:

I haven't seen you in a while - enjoy your stuff. :smile:

But this isn't how actual religious theists operate. They operate from the assumption of divine revelation, ie. top-down.

For theists, God reveals himself; it's not the case that man would discover God on his own, without God's revelation.

It doesn't matter whether you believe any of this; but it is a matter of valid reasoning about God. Otherwise, you're just busying yourself with the god of philosophers, a fiction. — baker

I could be wrong, but I believe there are folks out here who would strenuously disagree with that - e.g. @Bartricks (my apologies if I have misrepresented your position)

..no greater can be conceived." — TheMadFool

From where I'm sitting, it isn't necessary to invoke mathematics. As several folks have pointed out, the expression "greater than" must be based on some clear definition of "greatness" - and this definition must include some means/mechanism for comparing and deciding which of two "beings" is "greater than" than the other.

The ontological argument fails in this regard.

There are also many other equally valid reasons for rejecting the ontological argument that are mentioned in the 4th paragraph of the article you linked. I hope I'm not violating any forum rules by quoting:

Just as the ontological argument has been popular, a number of criticisms and objections have also been mounted. Its first critic would be Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, a contemporary of Anselm's. Gaunilo, suggesting that the ontological argument could be used to prove the existence of anything, uses the analogy of a perfect island. Such would be the first of many parodies, all of which attempted to show the absurd consequences of the ontological argument. Later, Thomas Aquinas rejected the argument on the basis that humans cannot know God's nature. David Hume also offered an empirical objection, criticising its lack of evidential reasoning and rejecting the idea that anything can exist necessarily. Immanuel Kant's critique was based on what he saw as the false premise that existence is a predicate, arguing that "existing" adds nothing (including perfection) to the essence of a being. Thus, a "supremely perfect" being can be conceived not to exist. Finally, philosophers such as C. D. Broad dismissed the coherence of a maximally great being, proposing that some attributes of greatness are incompatible with others, rendering "maximally great being" incoherent.

If you were to go outside to an open space, hold your hand out in front of you, take a flashlight and point it upwards from underneath your hand, there would be no shadow (well barring some low lying clouds). For there to be a shadow, there needs to be a surface (not necessarily flat) on which the shadow appears. So the word "shadow" points to an object - namely the atoms/molecules that comprise the surface where the shadow is currently appearing.

Shadows exist physically - they can be observed and measured.

Likely this is a naive materialist response, but for the example in the OP, the word "hole" identifies a collection of physical objects occupying a particular space. What are the objects? Air molecules, dust, perhaps the odd bird that happens to fly by, etc. So this particular "hole" has mass and occupies a reasonably well defined space. To my naive way of thinking that's sufficient to say that it exists.

What about if this hole is on an airless asteroid in outer space - in a vacuum? There's no air. But there are still countless atomic and subatomic particles flying through, not to mention the quantum foam and energy fields that permeate even the deepest vacuum in space.

So I have no problem saying that holes exists. Not sure about shadows, tho. Will have to think about that some more.

I got that part - what I'm not seeing is how this ties into the materialism vs. idealism debate in this discussion. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

My guess is that you're on the materialism side of this debate, yes?

I skimmed this discussion but didn't spot anything relevant to my question. Could you point me to a specific post?

I have a question for the good folks on both sides of this discussion - does any of this makes a difference in how I should lead my life?

If Idealism is correct, should I sell all my worldly possessions and become an ascetic?

If Materialism is correct, should I invest in petroleum stocks and $1000/night hookers?

BTW - If it isn't obvious, I'm exaggerating for comic effect. . . :razz:

What if intelligence is . .. a property of reality — Foghorn

Perhaps instead of intelligence, maybe self awareness or consciousness might be a better choice of words?

In either case, what you're saying sounds a little like this: https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/video/consciousness-as-a-fundamental-building-block-of-the-universe

I think of this as sort of a recursion thing. Our bodies are composed of atoms, yet we can look at our bodies and say "Hey, I'm made of atoms". How is this possible?

I do not have any answers - and I'm not even sure that this is the right question.

It's a deep mystery which science is just starting to grapple with. If mankind can succeed in not self destructing, perhaps in a 100 or a 1000 or 100000 years we may have some better understanding of this.

↪Anand-Haqq
Try writing in prose instead of that semi-literate drivel. — Banno

I prefer his poetry to Bart's poetry. it scans better - and makes just as much sense (maybe more).

I don't have the time to read through the OP, but just on a superficial level it reads like something out of Existential Comics

They'd vote for someone less idiotic and criminal. — Benkei

You're a cock-eyed optimist.

I thought the topic was about atheist irrationality (anger, fanaticism, and unfounded pride). — praxis

Perhaps my reading skills have declined in my elder years, but I believe the original topic had something to do with this Einstein fellow?

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … "

"And the traditional religions worry me. Their long history proves that they have not understood the meaning of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill. If we want to save this world from unimaginable destruction we should concentrate not on the faraway God, but on the heart of the individual."


As you correctly stated

. . .his religious views for which he had many . . . — 3017amen

Einstein made many statements in the course of his life about the word "God" and he did contradict himself.

I don't have the time or energy to engage in an extended conversation, so I will just point out that any discussion of Einstein's religious views has to start with - or at a minimum acknowledge - his complete and total rejection of all organized religions and any notion of a personal god.

https://libquotes.com/albert-einstein/quotes/god

This is just to thank everyone who contributed to the discussion. As I expected, there is no mechanism to neutrally resolve these issue. It appears that we (i.e. mankind) will have to muddle through and endure these conflicts for generations to come.

That said, there are a few rays of optimism floating around - the conflict on Northern Ireland - while not resolved - seems to have settled down into an uneasy accommodation. In New Zealand the national government seems to be making some good faith efforts to acknowledge & compensate for past wrongs.

But these are the exceptions.

Just to pick out the most currently visible situation in the news - I see no hope for resolving the Israel-Palestine dilemma. I would gladly be wrong - it would make me very happy to be wrong - but I foresee this cycle of violence & revenge continuing for centuries.

The best we can hope for is that these conflicts can be locally contained.

By asking for "...rules..." you're already assuming that there are such rules — TheMadFool

I thought it was clear that I was asking "Are there any rules?" but obviously not.

My hope is that you are wrong in saying (in essence) "might makes right" - my fear is that you are correct.

Just to be clear - what is the basis for the "rightfulness" of these claims? Is it solely based on the ability to demonstrate to have inhabited the land before the other claimants?

I'm not playing a rigged game. — counterpunch

My apologies if I came across that way - not my intent. I find find it very challenging to express myself succinctly yet clearly. My eyes glaze over when I see a post that goes on for paragraphs - but without sufficient detail you can lose context. Perhaps this will help:

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

could be wrong but I think EricH was talking about the moral perspective of land ownership. — Apollodorus

Jewish people vs Palestinians - who has the rightful claim to the land? Beats me. Perhaps no one.

Northern Ireland - should it be united with Ireland or stay part of Britain? Does anyone have the moral high ground here?

Kurds - are they entitled to their own country or should they forever be split out amongst Turkey, Syria, and Iraq?

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict - I don't have the time/energy to understand all the details, but it is an ongoing tragedy.

Etc/Etc/Etc

And one more: I don't know the full history, but here in the US my house sits on land that was undoubtedly seized from Native Americans about 400 years ago. If there are people alive today who could trace their ancestry back to that place & time, are they the rightful owners of the land my house sits on?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So apart from the messy details of each situation, are there any abstract principles that could in some way help come up with equitable solutions? Or are we doomed to having centuries long cycles of violence in these situations?

How do you define a nation? And of course - as several people have pointed out - this is begging the question of whether there should even be should entities as nation-states.

Was the hypothetical previous owner a citizen of a terrorist state, intent on genocide, that refused any and all compromises offered, decade after decade? — counterpunch

There are a near infinite number of possible scenarios here - but for simplicity's sake assume that the previous owner was the original owner and had always lived at peace with the current owner - up until the current owner forcefully took over the land without the previous owner's permission.

In this admittedly narrow situation do the descendants of the original owner have a legitimate claim to the land. And it so, how do we resolve things? E.g., what happens to the current title owner? They may be many generations removed - is it fair to deprive them of their home due to something that happened centuries past?

I don't have an answer to these questions.

If the question is about current ownership then the person with their name on the title deeds would seem to be the answer. — counterpunch

So if current owner obtained the title deeds by killing a previous owner (or forcing them off the property) - the descendants of the previous owner have no legitimate claim?

@Banno

I understood that question to mean, how ownership of land is originally established. If that's not the question - what is? — counterpunch

Sorry if the OP wasn't clear. Basing current ownership on original ownership is one possible solution to resolving these situations, but not necessarily the only (or best) solution. And of course there are many (maybe most) real world situations that are much more complex than simply A vs. B.

Sorites Paradox