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5/17/2017 11:35 pm  #11


Re: The Impossibility of God

Marty wrote:

You could say, "it intended to do it, but succeeds it's in intentions each time" but how are we to judge success outside the capacity from failure?

Since there's no necessity in causation, I think causal dispositions could fail to manifest, and so they do not succeed in manifesting every single time, that's the only way I can read "failure" into them. Do you mean to say that they don't fail, but out of necessity carry out their effects, or is it strictly restricted to the sense of intentionality you spoke of above? My point is, there is a sense in which there's a possibility of failure for causal dispositions, so there is a sense in which they can fail.

 

5/17/2017 11:49 pm  #12


Re: The Impossibility of God

I don't think this is a failure. Failure occurs in virute of failing to go accordance to a norm, not instantiating an actuality that could have been otherwise.


"And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith."
― Søren Kierkegaard
     Thread Starter
 

5/18/2017 10:31 am  #13


Re: The Impossibility of God

Marty wrote:

That's the only way we do understand intentions - them being normative; they can fail to uphold to certain commitments one makes. When one has a commitment, they can inevitably fail to be accordance with such a commitment to which they will then attempt to try to succeed at it again. They are different from mere casual dispositions in the sense that casual events do not have something to be accordance with. Lighting doesn't "intend" to hit a tree, it merely hits a tree - therefore never misses it's mark. If something never missed it's mark, how can we distinguish this from mere casual dispositions? You could say, "it intended to do it, but succeeds it's in intentions each time" but how are we to judge success outside the capacity from failure? Intentions need at least the possibility of failure, but God cannot fail. However, if he does truly have intentions (which presumably the theists holds) he must be able to fail!

Well, one model of the successful execution of intention which does not require the possibility of failure would be this: the execution of an intention is action in accordance with a conception about what will happen. That is, the agent who has a conception of a result he wants and is guided by that conception is executing his intention for that result to occur. As long as the notion of having a conception makes sense, this will allow one to distinguish intention from mere causation.

It's not clear to me why the possibility of failure should help anyway, since it's not clear to me that it's part of the notion of a causal disposition that it doesn't include the possibility of failure. Maybe Bs can only be caused by events of type A, but one might still have an event of type A without B.

Intentions and desires have the same direction of fit, moreover, but if the ascription of both has to presuppose the possibility of failure, and the possibility of failure is the only way to distinguish intention and desire from mere causation, then it isn't clear how there could be a basis for distinguishing intention and desire. That is, neither intention nor desire could just be causation with a possibility of failure, causation measured by some norm. They would have to be something else in addition to that, so that intentions are F causation with a possibility of failure, while desires are non-F causation with a possibility of failure. But then it isn't obvious that whatever F is should be sufficient to distinguish intention from mere causation without reference to possibility of failure.

The inkling of truth in your argument, I think, is that possibility of failure might be a precondition for our acquiring the concept of intention. But it doesn't follow that possibility of failure is a precondition for the existence of intentions. (Compare: if no proposition could fail to be true, we probably would not have the concept of truth. But that doesn't make the notion of necessary truth straightforwardly contradictory.)
 

 

5/18/2017 10:35 am  #14


Re: The Impossibility of God

Marty wrote:

Intentions need at least the possibility of failure, but God cannot fail. However, if he does truly have intentions (which presumably the theists holds) he must be able to fail!

I'll also point out that this inference presupposes that the modalities in "every intention can fail" and "God cannot fail" are the same. But "can" is ambiguous, and it's not clear that they are.

 

5/18/2017 11:16 am  #15


Re: The Impossibility of God

Marty wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

One brief point: 'But then we're just making up fantastical objects because these are not being supplied by any intuition'

This is surely incorrect - if successful various theistic proofs are in themselves successful i.e. they prove that a being with X attributes exists, then they serve as more than an intuition that Mind2 is possible. All the objection then boils down to is the observation that God must be a very unusual being, something the theist will grant given Divine uniqueness. 

And which are those?

Varying forms of the Cosmological Argument (Aquinas' First Way, PSR, Scotus' Modal et cetera), the Modal Ontological Argument and more?

Alternatively you were just being rhetorically obtuse. What you have to do to get any millage out of the proposed objection is either:

A, show that each alleged theistic proof fails.

B, show that the Gaps Problem in the Cosmological Argument is indeed a problem and that, though successful in demonstrating a necessary being, these arguments do not allow one to conclude said being has X attributes.

 

5/18/2017 12:49 pm  #16


Re: The Impossibility of God

Marty wrote:

But as you say, the gap between what a God's mind is, and what a man's Mind is seems incommensurably different; that is, to the point of compromising the definition of what it means to be a mind.

Well, Thomists distinguish between a man's, a's, soul and his mind. When they talk about a's soul, they're talking about the instance of the natural kind—substantial form—humanity that partly constitutes a; when they talk about a's mind, they're talking about passive powers of a's soul. So what they're trying to say when they talk about the Divine Intellect is that God has various (manifested) passive, intellectual powers (ST I.79.1-2).

This doesn't clear away all the obscurity of “mind” as it applies to God, but perhaps for someone more familiar with Thomist psychology it clears away enough.

I agree here that there's an analogy being made - and if I understand you correctl, an analogy of proportionality - but when we say

Given Thomists' understanding of “mind”, you're probably right that they can say predicating “mind” of both God and man involves an analogy of improper proportionality. I had originally been thinking they would say it involves an analogy of attribution, though. (Aquinas thought predications of goodness, existence, and so on, involved analogies of attribution (in his later career, anyway), and I was being a bit lazy.)

 

5/18/2017 5:44 pm  #17


Re: The Impossibility of God

Greg wrote:

Marty wrote:

That's the only way we do understand intentions - them being normative; they can fail to uphold to certain commitments one makes. When one has a commitment, they can inevitably fail to be accordance with such a commitment to which they will then attempt to try to succeed at it again. They are different from mere casual dispositions in the sense that casual events do not have something to be accordance with. Lighting doesn't "intend" to hit a tree, it merely hits a tree - therefore never misses it's mark. If something never missed it's mark, how can we distinguish this from mere casual dispositions? You could say, "it intended to do it, but succeeds it's in intentions each time" but how are we to judge success outside the capacity from failure? Intentions need at least the possibility of failure, but God cannot fail. However, if he does truly have intentions (which presumably the theists holds) he must be able to fail!

Well, one model of the successful execution of intention which does not require the possibility of failure would be this: the execution of an intention is action in accordance with a conception about what will happen. That is, the agent who has a conception of a result he wants and is guided by that conception is executing his intention for that result to occur. As long as the notion of having a conception makes sense, this will allow one to distinguish intention from mere causation.

It's not clear to me why the possibility of failure should help anyway, since it's not clear to me that it's part of the notion of a causal disposition that it doesn't include the possibility of failure. Maybe Bs can only be caused by events of type A, but one might still have an event of type A without B.

Intentions and desires have the same direction of fit, moreover, but if the ascription of both has to presuppose the possibility of failure, and the possibility of failure is the only way to distinguish intention and desire from mere causation, then it isn't clear how there could be a basis for distinguishing intention and desire. That is, neither intention nor desire could just be causation with a possibility of failure, causation measured by some norm. They would have to be something else in addition to that, so that intentions are F causation with a possibility of failure, while desires are non-F causation with a possibility of failure. But then it isn't obvious that whatever F is should be sufficient to distinguish intention from mere causation without reference to possibility of failure.

The inkling of truth in your argument, I think, is that possibility of failure might be a precondition for our acquiring the concept of intention. But it doesn't follow that possibility of failure is a precondition for the existence of intentions. (Compare: if no proposition could fail to be true, we probably would not have the concept of truth. But that doesn't make the notion of necessary truth straightforwardly contradictory.)
 

Presumably, when you say, "the execution of an intention is action in accordance with a conception about what will happen" you mean to say it will possibly occur, since you have no guarantee of what will necessarily occur. All expectations or commitments presuppose possibility that co-companies it -- unless you claim that you have such an ability that you know it will occur?

Also, to back step a bit, let me fix what I said eariler: some desires are intentional, others are mere casual dispositions. But when something is intentional, it seems to follow that it is then normative.

So looking at it another way: intentional desires/beliefs are propositional statements that are either true or false, and they're either true or false depending on how one engages through those commitments. But the tricky thing with God is that God cannot even have beliefs, he just has knoweldge, it seems.You could say that "God doesn't engage through these activites" but then we're just not talking about intentional states. 

Last edited by Marty (5/18/2017 10:37 pm)


"And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith."
― Søren Kierkegaard
     Thread Starter
 

5/18/2017 5:51 pm  #18


Re: The Impossibility of God

DanielCC wrote:

Marty wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

One brief point: 'But then we're just making up fantastical objects because these are not being supplied by any intuition'

This is surely incorrect - if successful various theistic proofs are in themselves successful i.e. they prove that a being with X attributes exists, then they serve as more than an intuition that Mind2 is possible. All the objection then boils down to is the observation that God must be a very unusual being, something the theist will grant given Divine uniqueness. 

And which are those?

Varying forms of the Cosmological Argument (Aquinas' First Way, PSR, Scotus' Modal et cetera), the Modal Ontological Argument and more?

Alternatively you were just being rhetorically obtuse. What you have to do to get any millage out of the proposed objection is either:

A, show that each alleged theistic proof fails.

B, show that the Gaps Problem in the Cosmological Argument is indeed a problem and that, though successful in demonstrating a necessary being, these arguments do not allow one to conclude said being has X attributes.

But I'm not sure how these arguments get you a God, but more a necessary being that's a pure act. It seems like a step further to say that god has an intellect, to which if I'm not mistaken, these arguments do not address? 

But since we are in this topic, can you please perhaps explain to me how the PSR does not necessitate a form of necessitarianism? How is it that a necessary being can create a world that's contingently the case? 

Last edited by Marty (5/18/2017 5:56 pm)


"And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith."
― Søren Kierkegaard
     Thread Starter
 

5/19/2017 8:33 am  #19


Re: The Impossibility of God

Marty wrote:

Presumably, when you say, "the execution of an intention is action in accordance with a conception about what will happen" you mean to say it will possibly occur, since you have no guarantee of what will necessarily occur. All expectations or commitments presuppose possibility that co-companies it -- unless you claim that you have such an ability that you know it will occur?

No, that is not what I mean. "a conception about _____" is an intensional context; when I say "what will happen," I am characterizing the content of the conception, not providing it with a referent, so that the existence of the conception does not depend on "what will happen" in fact having a referent.

Marty wrote:

Also, to back step a bit, let me fix what I said eariler: some desires are intentional, others are mere casual dispositions. But when something is intentional, it seems to follow that it is then normative.

I don't have any beef with finding a sense of "normative" in which it's true that intentions (and desires, and beliefs) are "normative". I was asking what that sense was and why the normativity of intentions, desires, and beliefs implies that for each intention, desire, or belief, it is possible for that intention, desire, or belief to fail.

Marty wrote:

So looking at it another way: intentional desires/beliefs are propositional statements that are either true or false, and they're either true or false depending on how one engages through those commitments. But the tricky thing with God is that God cannot even have beliefs, he just has knoweldge, it seems.You could say that "God doesn't engage through these activites" but then we're just not talking about intentional states. 

I don't follow your meaning.

Yes, ascriptions of intention and belief are propositions which can be true or false. For instance: A intends to φ; B believes that p. It is also true that these propositions will provide us with conditions for saying that A successfully executed his intention or that B is correct in his belief, and correspondingly they provide conditions for failure.

One could call these conditions "commitments": in the case of intention, a commitment to bringing something particular in about, and in the case of belief, a commitment to the world's being a certain way. It isn't true, though, that the truth of the ascription of intentions and beliefs depends on "how one engages through those commitments" (unless this means something I don't appreciate). Someone can intend to φ even if he doesn't, and one can believe that p even if p is false. The "success" and "failure" of intentions and beliefs is orthogonal to the truth or falsity of ascriptions of intention and belief.

In any case, I'd be happy to say that intentions and beliefs are normative if this just means that it makes sense to attribute success or failure to them. What I deny, and what I have seen little argument for, is that an ascription of intention must be false if it is not possible for that intention to fail. One would think that specifying the conditions for success or failure is sufficient; that for some reason the fulfillment of these conditions is ruled out does not seem to imperil the truth of an ascription of intention.

I wouldn't say that God lacks beliefs because he has knowledge. Knowledge seems to be a kind of belief.

 

5/19/2017 2:55 pm  #20


Re: The Impossibility of God

I mean it isn't a good argument even on Univocity, because you could say the intellect being in the intrinsic mode of infinity simply cannot fail to actualize any state of affairs. In addition, since this intellect has no principle of limit, and since God's proper object is Himself (which Aquinas gives arguments for due to God's proper beatitude), anything God would do would be governed by knowledge of His perfect self. Hence while the possibility in human agents being able to fail would be in the misjudgement of the goodness of a primary object, God simply is able to grasp the primary object of His intellect (the object being Himself) perfectly, which clearly does not necessitate a ability to fail. So even treating this univocally seems to not entail the potency to fail!
  
So, God having an intellect in the intrinsic mode of infinity, would have a mental world present in a very real sense even on a non analogical understanding of God's nature. Being able to fail doesn't seem to be a necessary, or even remotely strong definition of a mind and willing. Anselm's definition of freedom (which ties into an argument such as this), is arguably also factorable into this, which would simply say God is intellectual and free due to the fact God possesses  the "ability to keep rectitude of the will for its own sake". Anselm thinks is the same essential defintion no matter where you stand on the hierarchy of being. More importantly, I see no reason, after coming to the conclusion God is the First Being (which these arguments seek to show), we cannot move into a exercise in perfect being theology and simply remove the principles of limitation from the concept of an intellect, which in and of itself does not imply an imperfection, and predicate it of God.

For example, it is not like the perfection of having ears, which implies being a matter form composite, and hence limitation by being posterior/dependent. The argument, which seems at the very least plausible, will show that God possesses an intellect, however in the mode of infinity. I do not think the fact that intellect's within our experience necessarily have a disposition for potential failure necessitates its an essential fact. I would say the ability to have a primary object (which my first argument sought to show, even if this proof is derivataive), the ability to possess forms imminently (which Augustine's arguments show), the ability to concur with intellectual causes plus move them in a way fitting with their respective natures, and arguments from proportionate causality (which show God would possess an intellect by being the cause of creaturely ones) all would be things fitting of an intellectual being, and a infinite one would simply have the sorts of limitations you mentioned removed. If you accept a moral element to this freedom like Anselm did, then this limitation will be less obviously a key feature of an account of freedom, hence showing all of these criticisms to simply fail. Limitations from not being able to preserve goodness (proclivities to do evil, which Anselm argues is impotence) will also be limits that need to be removed, which is the primary governing law in human experience. The difference between God and humans would merely be that one goodness is essential and one is placed upon it exteriorly, constituted by obeying a moral law. Nothing about someone like Anselm's defintion necessitates an ability to fail, and to move from our human failures to a divine failure seems quite fallacious. You of course can argue against these sorts of definitions, and I agree they are very dubious, but challenge the classical theist on their own terms. Anselm does give arguments for his defintion, as do Aquinas, Scotus, Bonaventure, and the others within the Classical Theist position justify their respective positions. Even granting your defintions however, nothing about your argument follows from looking at the concept of an intellect and will. 

Lastly, I am not convinced this sort of intentionality mentioned is the mark of the mental. Brentano was simply mistaken since all causal powers for example incorporate this sort of intrinsic directedness. 

God bless you, and have a great day. 

Last edited by Camoden (5/19/2017 8:39 pm)

 

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