Omniscience Argument Revisited

[MindForgedManacle]

*sigh* if it can never be ruled out it's not possible knowledge, thus it does not contradict the definition since it's not possible knowledge.

UUs are a class of questions, not a single unknowable question. Hence why I can tell you things that used to be my unknown unknowns: because UUs are NOT in principle unknowable. For example, the question "How does an iPhone work?" was one of my unknown unknowns before I'd heard of an iPhone.

You just can't know everything in the set, because once you know of a member of it, it's no longer a part of it.

no, what you're saying is the equivalent of saying there is a square circle (or contradiction as you put it) in the statement "I know that there is no possible knowledge I do not have" thus making a case he can't know that therefore he doesn't know everything. but you miss that if there is a contradiction in that statement, that makes it impossible to know that you have no UU's, which makes that a knowledge he doesn't need to have since it's not a possible knowledge.

Again, you're very much misunderstanding the argument. The point is that it's impossible to know - as in having a justified true belief - that you know everything. This is unknowable. But, as I've noted several times, this is NOT what I'm talking about when referring to possible knowledge. The point to get is that such an unknowable thing necessarily prevents you from knowing that you're omniscient, so even if a being has all possible knowledge, it cannot know that it does, because it's unjustifiable and thus could never rule out if there was more possible knowledge to gain.
So again, I'm showing that there is a problem with any claim to omniscience, specifically that it's impossible to know that it's true about oneself, hence prevents you from ruling out more possible knowledge.

are you serious? i'm sorry, but you're not being consistent in your posts.

C1) Given (1 - 3), (4) is not a possible attribute.

so you're not just making a case that it's impossible to know you're truly omniscient even if you are, but you're trying to say that means omniscience is an impossible attribute which is contrary to what you're saying now.

And this is where ACTUALLY following the thread comes in handy because now you've quote-mined me:

If the God is not constrained by our understanding of existence, how many of the laws that define our existence can we apply to God?

Our understanding of knowledge, being, space, time...etc...

The assumption that this theoretical omniscient God's mind operates in the same general way as ours seems like a bit of a stretch.

I think the old timey bible stories humanize God in a way that makes him an easier sell to humans, but if such a being existed as defined rather than what we see in the stories, it'd be a much different thing.

If God has nothing to do with our understanding of anything else in existence, then we can't even say if he exists. This line of reasoning you're using is really just a dodge.



One thing I would change from my argument is that P4 should say that the being couldn't know that it is omniscient.

And that was on the first page man.

is that not what I said when I said you can know UU's via process of learning? did my use of the word can make it sound like I was implying it was necessary?

No, because you don't know what your UUs are, so you cannot say whether or not all, or some, or none are knowable or not. That's the whole point: you don't know what they currently are, but you do know that at least some of them MIGHT be knowable (this is inductive, as per my iPhone example earlier) since some are no longer UUs.

and if it is "unknowable" then not knowing it doesn't contradict with the definition of omniscience since that only includes knowledge that is "knowable."

I didn't say all UUs were unknowable, nor implied it or even referenced that there. I said it's impossible to rule them out, most especially those which might be knowable in potential.

this is how I see the construction of your argument. (it's a parody, not a quote)
"there are KU's and UU's but it is impossible to know that you don't have UU's (but instead of using the word impossible i'll use words like can't and unknowable which really mean the same but make my blunder less obvious) and omniscience is to have all possible knowledge. since it's impossible to rule out UU's it's therefore impossible to have omniscience since omniscience (to have all possible knowledge) can't include this knowledge since it's unknowable (impossible to know)."
bottom line, even if it's impossible to know you have no UU's, that therefore doesn't count as possible knowledge he doesn't have (since you know... it's not possible to rule out as you said) therefore there is no contradiction within the definition of omniscience.

No, that's a straw man. I can (again) boil it down like this:

"I know inductively that not all UUs are necessarily unknowable, so I cannot rule out UUs that could be knowable in some state of affairs. It therefore logically follows that even if some being is in fact omniscient, it cannot know that it is because it has to make a contradictory claim of 'knowing that there nothing of which it doesn't know'."

Further, it's not hard to think of thought experiments of things God has no way of knowing by his own power, yet could know. Basically, even God cannot escape solipsistic issues:

How does God know that he wasn't created by an even greater being, who merely made God's mind such that God thought he was the greatest being in reality? He can't, and to say otherwise is to pretend to have defeated solipsism (I doubt you'd make that claims). Any attempt on God's part to find out could be foiled by his creator by manipulating God's mind without his awareness. Yet, God COULD learn of this higher being's existence if that higher being wanted to, so it's a UU for God until such time as he is aware of the question, which then becomes an (unanswered) KU (known unknown).