RE: Shia Islamic Argument for the existence of God
May 4, 2016 at 9:59 pm
(This post was last modified: May 4, 2016 at 10:40 pm by TheMuslim.)
Excited Penguin,
It’s interesting you’re saying this. I was at first drawn to another one of Ibn Sina’s arguments (the Argument from Contingency and Necessity posted on Edward Feser’s blog) but then lost interest due to atheists pointing out the flaws in considering totalities and aggregates as real things (which that argument kind of did).
The “separate entities” or finite entities refer to any actual, real, existing entities. They don’t refer to totalities or sums of parts. Totalities or sums of parts are simply notions or abstract concepts; we like to assign names to entities to make it easier for our minds to treat them as if they’re one. But the totality itself doesn’t exist; it’s only the individual “members” that truly exist. We just assign names to them, or common names to them, to make it easier for us to understand relations between them. You might ask, “But aren’t those members then comprised of other things? And are thus totalities of other things?” Well, the same thing I said above then applies to those things too; those members, if it seems like they are comprised of parts, are then actually just mental abstractions of even smaller actual entities.
A totality doesn’t have any real existence; totalities are just synonyms for many actual individual entities. It is the members that exist, and only they exist – nothing more. If this is the kind of totality you speak of, then yes – totalities exist – because that’s just another way of saying that many individual entities exist. But the semantic usage of totality in the DOTV isn’t referring to such a usage of the term. The Ayatollah, I believe, was saying that totalities in and of themselves don’t exist – only members exist, nothing else and nothing more. The actual, substantial existence of totalities is an illusion. They are simply names or concepts that we abstract and assign to help ourselves understand large numbers of entities better.
Even if we take, for the sake of argument, totalities to be actual things - then any totality would be either finite or infinite. If the former, it would be a finite entity (and finite entities cannot be the extensions of that reality, as explained in the argument). If the latter, then that totality would be an infinite/absolute/unrestricted entity - which is, again, precisely the kind of thing the "argument" seeks to demonstrate.
And if you’re talking about emergent properties, then I’ve already addressed that in my last post in response to JuliaL.
Even if we say, for the sake of argument, that everything else (cars, books, planets, galaxies, universes, etc) also has only a mental existence – how exactly would that be a problem for the DOTV? If anything, that would only strengthen it; it would show that the extension of that reality cannot be any of these things because they all only have mental existences (and mental existences are finite and conditional).
Reality, fortunately, is not a mental concept. If we and our minds didn’t exist, reality would still be hanging around. Heck, it would still be there in the form of our minds really not existing. And ah, here would be where I would repost a requote (A Commentary on Theistic Arguments, pages 184-185):
Bingo. Even saying that reality doesn't really exist only reaffirms that it does. Reality must exist unconditionally (and therefore cannot only exist in the mind).
Really? How?
Mudhammam,
You can call it whatever you want. You can call it God (with a capital G) if you feel like it (the word "God" is, after all, pretty vague in its meaning). Personally, I just call it a deity. I like to say "the DOTV proves the existence of a deity with such and such qualities (the aforementioned qualities that were traced by Ibn Sina)." You can also call it Allah. The Arabic word "Allah" predates Islam, and it literally means "the awe-inspiring" (or, according to others, "the deity"). Since I find this entity to be the only deity known, and I also find it awe-inspiring, I can call it Allah (I do, after all, speak Urdu and Arabic and such vocabulary would come naturally to me). It is also to be noted that I am not concerned with proving the truthfulness of any particular religion in this thread. If I was concerned with that, only then would I proceed with trying to identify this deity with Islam or any other religion. Here I'm only proving the existence of a deity or deity-like entity.
Quote:You fail to comprehend that the totality of entities and their universals are just as real as the finite entities are. You seem to think they aren't because the totality of entities is nothing more than a sum of its parts and therefore cannot be considered as a separate entity. I would have to disagree, since the same could be said about any separate entity in particular - namely, that it is nothing more than a sum of its parts. So if we were to take this part of your argument to its conclusion we would have to conclude that nothing could possibly exist, and yet we know that not to be true. Everything does exist, including finite entities, their totality and their universals.
It’s interesting you’re saying this. I was at first drawn to another one of Ibn Sina’s arguments (the Argument from Contingency and Necessity posted on Edward Feser’s blog) but then lost interest due to atheists pointing out the flaws in considering totalities and aggregates as real things (which that argument kind of did).
The “separate entities” or finite entities refer to any actual, real, existing entities. They don’t refer to totalities or sums of parts. Totalities or sums of parts are simply notions or abstract concepts; we like to assign names to entities to make it easier for our minds to treat them as if they’re one. But the totality itself doesn’t exist; it’s only the individual “members” that truly exist. We just assign names to them, or common names to them, to make it easier for us to understand relations between them. You might ask, “But aren’t those members then comprised of other things? And are thus totalities of other things?” Well, the same thing I said above then applies to those things too; those members, if it seems like they are comprised of parts, are then actually just mental abstractions of even smaller actual entities.
A totality doesn’t have any real existence; totalities are just synonyms for many actual individual entities. It is the members that exist, and only they exist – nothing more. If this is the kind of totality you speak of, then yes – totalities exist – because that’s just another way of saying that many individual entities exist. But the semantic usage of totality in the DOTV isn’t referring to such a usage of the term. The Ayatollah, I believe, was saying that totalities in and of themselves don’t exist – only members exist, nothing else and nothing more. The actual, substantial existence of totalities is an illusion. They are simply names or concepts that we abstract and assign to help ourselves understand large numbers of entities better.
Even if we take, for the sake of argument, totalities to be actual things - then any totality would be either finite or infinite. If the former, it would be a finite entity (and finite entities cannot be the extensions of that reality, as explained in the argument). If the latter, then that totality would be an infinite/absolute/unrestricted entity - which is, again, precisely the kind of thing the "argument" seeks to demonstrate.
And if you’re talking about emergent properties, then I’ve already addressed that in my last post in response to JuliaL.
Quote:You argued that universals have only a mental existence. That's true, but so does everything else. Reality itself is only a mental concept.
Even if we say, for the sake of argument, that everything else (cars, books, planets, galaxies, universes, etc) also has only a mental existence – how exactly would that be a problem for the DOTV? If anything, that would only strengthen it; it would show that the extension of that reality cannot be any of these things because they all only have mental existences (and mental existences are finite and conditional).
Reality, fortunately, is not a mental concept. If we and our minds didn’t exist, reality would still be hanging around. Heck, it would still be there in the form of our minds really not existing. And ah, here would be where I would repost a requote (A Commentary on Theistic Arguments, pages 184-185):
Quote:“Should reality be annihilated in a specific condition—in a beginning, or an end, or in any particular supposition—then only two situations are conceivable. The first is that its annihilation is not real, and an equivocal or false claim has been made that reality is annihilated. In this case, reality is preserved and it has not been annihilated. The second is that its annihilation is true; that is, reality has really been annihilated. In this supposition, again, the affirmation of the basic reality is acknowledged, since the supposition asserts that reality has really been destroyed; therefore, as a real phenomenon, the destruction of reality reflects the real presence of reality. Therefore, the falsehood of sophistry and veridicality of reality is well secured in every perceivable supposition; and a single instance of reality’s destruction is inconceivable. A proposition, which negates reality, is a proposition, that neither its veridicality can be related in any supposition, nor its falsehood could ever be doubted. That is, its utterance always presupposes its own falsity. On the other side of the spectrum, it is impossible to doubt the meaning of the proposition, which affirms reality, because dismissing it as meaningless or doubting its meaning entails the affirmation of reality.”
Bingo. Even saying that reality doesn't really exist only reaffirms that it does. Reality must exist unconditionally (and therefore cannot only exist in the mind).
Quote:This is a non sequitur, plain and simple.
Really? How?
Mudhammam,
Quote:Anyway, the argument is compelling in some ways, but it basically sounds to me like an equivalent of Spinoza's God, which is to say, Nature is infinite and everything is eternally necessary. In other words, this is hardly the God of Islam or any particular deity that vies for the attention of certain regions of the terrestrial spheres. So... why call it God?
You can call it whatever you want. You can call it God (with a capital G) if you feel like it (the word "God" is, after all, pretty vague in its meaning). Personally, I just call it a deity. I like to say "the DOTV proves the existence of a deity with such and such qualities (the aforementioned qualities that were traced by Ibn Sina)." You can also call it Allah. The Arabic word "Allah" predates Islam, and it literally means "the awe-inspiring" (or, according to others, "the deity"). Since I find this entity to be the only deity known, and I also find it awe-inspiring, I can call it Allah (I do, after all, speak Urdu and Arabic and such vocabulary would come naturally to me). It is also to be noted that I am not concerned with proving the truthfulness of any particular religion in this thread. If I was concerned with that, only then would I proceed with trying to identify this deity with Islam or any other religion. Here I'm only proving the existence of a deity or deity-like entity.
