Can something come from nothing

[emjay]

Emjay: The Aquaman arguments, at least the "five ways", are just ridden with logical fallacies and don't need any extra understanding to debunk. The conclusion is also bullshit, just arbitrarily labeling these five non-outcomes the same meaningless word "God" and hoping no one notices that they haven't been sewn together in any way.

At face value maybe; based on reading them in isolation from their context and bringing our own assumptions into the equation (just as I did when I gave my first impressions of them but accepting that they were only first impressions and a better understanding would come later on in my course). But I'd argue that that's not truly understanding what is being proposed and therefore arguing with something other than what is proposed, and therefore pointless. To give an example:

The following two statements are both true:

"Assuming base 10; 1+1=10 is not true"
"Assuming base 2; 1+1=10 is true"

Each sentence is the full context (expressed at the minimum level necessary to make the meaning clear) and therefore, I'd argue, the full assertion. Furthermore, each sentence is a neural context and as such, every word is important because it denotes some relationship between ideas in the overall representation.

If you now present part of these statements out of context... ie extract a substring from the full context and show it in isolation:

"1+1=10 is true"

Then with no further information, how it is evaluated depends on the assumptions of the reader. Consider the default assumption of most people to be base 10, because that's how we count in everyday life. Generally people don't need to know about base 2 unless they're interested in computing. So based on different assumptions of the reader, the following full assertions can be made (in square brackets are the assumptions, which being assumptions are often not stated because we're often not aware of them unless we look, but they are nonetheless part of the context):

("[assuming base 10 with no knowledge of base 2] '1+1=10 is true' is wrong... you suck at Maths ") = subjectively true
("[aware of base 10 and base 2] '1+1=10 is true' is ambiguous because the calculation could be done in binary or decimal") = subjectively true
("[aware of base 10, base 2, and that the claimant is a programmer] '1+1=10 is true' is true in binary, quit being a smartarse ") = subjectively true

Each statement is a subjectively coherent context of understanding and therefore represents the current truth as understood by the subject... ie each statement represents a stable neural context of activation... my definition of subjective truth.

Therefore each statement represents a different truth... a different proposition to evaluate, and it's pointless to evaluate the wrong one.

Taken to extremes, to be entirely accurate about what is being proposed you would have to state every single piece of information that contributes to your context of understanding, which would never be feasible, but due to the hierarchical nature of neural representations that is not necessary because through abstraction, lower level representations collapse into higher level representations. Ie roughly speaking, there are neural contexts representing the relationships between letters in a word, words in a sentence, sentences in a paragraph... but not as strictly hierarchical as that because any level can associate with any other level, so another context could be a word and a paragraph etc... so a neural context is actually a context of contexts (ie associated representations at whatever level of abstraction).

For example, using the above statement "Assuming base 2; 1+1=10 is true", that does not automatically represent subjective truth... ie understanding... to every possible reader. If the reader already has knowledge (ie a context of understanding) of base 2 arithmetic, then seeing that statement might elicit a quick response such as 'oh I forgot about that, I get [understand] it now' whereas if they do not have that knowledge, the above statement is not understood (no stable context) and they have to ask questions to fill in the missing details. That is the beauty of language; the brain's own way of efficiently both associating and retrieving neural contexts of understanding.

However, I really respect you spending time reading more of "the opposition". People are so often plagued by confirmation bias, and ignore disagreeable materials like... the plague

Thanks but it's not really like that for me in this case. My interest is in understanding arguments full stop, not this (or any) particular one per se (necessarily). Based on my logic above, there is no point whatsoever in arguing against a proposition that was not made, either through lack of context and/or distorting the meaning with your own  assumptions. You win such an argument, what have you gained? You've successfully argued with your own assumptions or against any number of speculative meanings of the proposition, but not the actual argument that was presented; you've not increased your own knowledge in the sense of rejecting or accepting a proposition that was actually made. So in light of that, the way I see it is you have three choices when faced with any argument requiring evaluation: either 1) do your best to understand the full context of the argument (i.e. elucidate the full statement so to speak, as much as is reasonably possible), 2) understand less of the context but acknowledge your limitations and the fact that your conclusion is not based on full understanding, or 3) don't bother. But it is not, or shouldn't be, imo, an option to consider an argument debunked without first having fully understood it on its own terms.

For instance I've been reading John Locke, all about direct realism. Beforehand my understanding of direct realism was vague and confused, but now, thanks to Locke's exceptional clarity of writing, it's all starting to make sense. My first impressions when I started reading it were 'oh, great ' cos it looked like it would be the equivalent of reading Shakespeare (as opposed to the more casual writing style or other philosophers), but I was very wrong; his writing was so clear that despite the formal style and olde-worlde language and terminology, it was quick and painless to pick up the context from reading it because he defines all his terms, elucidates all his assumptions and inferences, repeats terms (so that context can be built) etc. It's absolutely beautiful in how it's presented; so much so that I think it will be very easy to extract not only the logic of the argument itself (which is something I have to do in my course) but also extract the context tying it all together and therefore identify the essence for the benefit of learning (ie where a logical argument can be presented visually as an 'argument map', context can be represented visually with something like a 'mind map', and Locke's writing is so clear that it lends itself to both). Compare that with the more casual style of writing of other philosophers, and there's much more work required in order to do those steps, because you have to sift through the waffle and identify what's relevant and what's not etc, before you can get down to mapping it.

Anyway, there is another reason why I'm so interested in understanding. I suck at exams, so though I do well in coursework I always fail miserably at exams; the pressure gets to me and my mind goes blank (to the level of getting a D and an ungraded in the last exam I took). So usually I consider exam based courses just something I can't do, but I made an exception here because the issues of philosophy are already dear to me, so on that logic, I thought they would be more resistant to mental blocks. For instance if I was dangling off a cliff I still think I'd be able to recall details about neural networks because that knowledge is so ingrained in me What makes that knowledge so ingrained is the fact that it's a stable, coherent, and highly interconnected context. So that's what I'm trying to do with this course... create a stable context of understanding... and to that end... everything I'm doing is about cementing context; for instance I've created an offline website for my revision, where I'm linking ideas, arguments, objections etc as I go along much as they will be linking contextually in my mind at the same time... so the two should reinforce each other. If I see a weakness in the context, I have to hone in on that and find something to link them; for instance, a philosopher named Boyle was an influence to both Locke and Berkeley who are both key fixtures in my course... so that's a common link... a contextual 'hotspot' as it were, that can strengthen the context and therefore Boyle gets a page on my website, linked to both of those others. The website itself can be used almost like a benchmark for measuring the interconnectivity of the context, and the more interconnected it is, the more resilient it is to pressure (ie the inhibiting interference of other, unrelated contexts), and the easier to activate it is (neural bootstrapping) such that even if it is inhibited, it would stand a chance of being reactivated easily due to bi-directional context activation dynamics. So basically not only will I be testing my philosophy knowledge in the exam, I'll also be testing my neuroscience knowledge, because I'm relying on neural theory to create a rock solid context of understanding that will (hopefully) withstand pressure in the exam  

I'll be very interested to find out what you think! The rest of his material, I think, includes an attempt to cross the chasm between the faceless deistic "God" the 5 ways produce (which doesn't even get as far as intelligence) and the Christian God. I can't stomach it, so I look forward to any highlights!

I'll let you know   If all goes well, I also hope to be able to distill the arguments down to their essence, so if I can manage to do that, I'll let you know that as well

I feel Wooters has a genuine passion for philosophy, but his insistence on reaching certain conclusions has warped him (and his logic especially) to the point where he has detached his studies from reality. Philosophy without science produces no results outside of the abstract.

Well, that's what I want to find out; anyone can make an internally coherent context... that's what a fictional book is for instance... but that doesn't mean it's objectively true/grounded in reality. So if as is becoming more clear, Aquinas' arguments require a large contextual understanding (ie framework) to support them, the question is whether that framework is grounded in reality or just purely abstract. If it is well grounded in reality, then it will have legs and be worth more consideration, but if it is not, then it will probably fall at its own weak foundations. So believe me, I'm just as curious as you to see what Aquinas has to say.