(September 21, 2013 at 2:21 am)FallentoReason Wrote: Statement [2] doesn't apply to an omniscient being. To an omniscient being, there is *no* knowledge that it doesn't already possess, hence the being possessing the attribute of omniscience *in the first place*. Therefore [1] is outright false.
Again, this is a misunderstanding. The argument is that omniscience (meaning possessing all knowledge) is impossible. The maximum possible knowledge a mind could have is that there is nothing it is aware of that it doesn't fully understand. But a being could never know that there is something it doesn't know of (nor how much it doesn't know), because by definition it wouldn't know about it. The being in question could only believe that it's omniscient, but it couldn't know it.
Quote:And again, this statement is meaningless to an *omniscient* being who possesses *all* possible knowledge. Your statement here implies that the being in question is *not* omniscient by the very fact that you're alluding to this being possibly having the ability of attaining one more bit of knowledge. That is something an omniscient being *isn't* capable of (which, mind you, has interesting implications about omnipotence.. but I digress).
The argument is that omniscience isn't possible, not that there is a being who possesses omniscience and thus knows my argument to be faulty. There is always at least one thing that a mind could never know, and that is whether or not there is something it doesn't know of. And since that is always unknown, the being also can never know whether or not there is something that it doesn't know of, but could potentially know of.
Quote:I won't repeat myself here, as you should be able to see what my response would be from the above.
I don't get your response, honestly. It boils down to that omniscience is impossible because of an inherently unknownable answer to the question "Is there anything of which I don't know that I'm unaware of?", which further means the being doesn't know that it's acquired all possible knowledge.
