Apophenia Wrote:(ETA: Another way of looking at the difficulty is to reframe your argument to something along the lines of, for all X such that X is conscious, Y [requires temporality]. I haven't the first clue how to rigorously bound the set of all X that are consciousness in order to demonstrate this, and the fact that there are numerous existents on the planet [in the animal kingdom] for which I can't conclusively say whether or not they belong to the set of all X or not [are conscious] suggests that my definition of what counts as a member of that set is not well enough defined for me to be making arguments about what does and does not belong in that set.)
A good suggestion for making the argument stronger. As of right now, I also wouldn't know how to find out if something belongs to X or not.
Quote:ETA: How do you know that you are not a movie that is stuck at frame 1? Not that I value the objection, but your counter-argument seems to fall prey to a variant of Last-Teusday-ism.
Because to think of an objection, time must pass so that I can have any thoughts as to how to object to this.
Quote:ETA: ETA: It's also worth noting that if you're attempting to prove a negative, as you are, you require more than simply something that is compelling and persuasive, you need airtight and irrefutable logic, and you don't have that. As an argument that the notion of god is implausible, fine, you may have that; as an argument that god is impossible, you'll need much more than this.
Again, good point. Agreed.
I'm not overly enthusiastic about making this prove a negative; it is what it is, and if it's just an argument that makes the concept implausible, then so be it.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
