RE: Could an omnipotent and omniscient god prove that he was God?
January 22, 2023 at 5:23 am
(This post was last modified: January 22, 2023 at 5:30 am by GrandizerII.)
(January 21, 2023 at 3:18 pm)Objectivist Wrote:(January 20, 2023 at 5:32 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I confess that I don't see yet how you're able to dismiss the necessary/contingent distinction. In itself it isn't anything demanding religion.I know, it's one of the most difficult things I've ever learned. Read my response to GrandizerII and see if that doesn't clear things up a bit. It's hard for me to explain something that took me years to understand which means I have more work to do.
"This cat is a mammal" is a necessary truth, because by definition all cats are mammals. "This cat is a reptile" would be nonsense.
"This cat is black" is a contingent truth, because it could be another color and still be a cat.
Now how this gets applied to theology of course may be debated, but the distinction itself seems pretty unassailable.
That's why I come to places like this forum. In trying to explain this it helps me to clarify my own thinking.
Here's a link to a more in depth discussion of this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqx0mingAF8
If I'm honest, your last two responses to me didn't really clarify the bit about how my existence is necessary as opposed to contingent. I understand that you don't like the wording of "necessary vs. contingent", but I did ask a question about my limited existence in a way which doesn't require employing either the word "necessary" or "contingent". So let me rephrase it better so it doesn't use those words at all:
I exist now, but is it possible I could never have existed at all instead?
I did stumble upon this link while googling:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/necessity.html
Quote:As far as metaphysical reality is concerned (omitting human actions from consideration, for the moment), there are no “facts which happen to be but could have been otherwise” as against “facts which must be.” There are only: facts which are. . . . Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific identity, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance. The nature of an entity determines what it can do and, in any given set of circumstances, dictates what it will do. The Law of Causality is entailed by the Law of Identity. Entities follow certain laws of action in consequence of their identity, and have no alternative to doing so. Metaphysically, all facts are inherent in the identities of the entities that exist; i.e., all facts are “necessary.” In this sense, to be is to be “necessary.” The concept of “necessity,” in a metaphysical context, is superfluous.
So it seems the answer to my question is "no", which means objectivism holds to the notion of modal necessitarianism, which I find to be quite unsatisfactory, to say the least. If this is the way this world could only be, then why this? Under modal necessitarianism, this is not a question to be asked, which is an attitude I disagree with.
I also have a problem with what appears to be strict empiricism. Sometimes, "imagination" is what gets us in the right direction of discovering facts, and if we didn't rely on that, we would've taken longer to discover those facts, if at all.
Thanks for the links you provided. Have checked the first one already, and will check the youtube one next soon.