Ed Feser's Aristotelian Proof of the Existence of God

[bennyboy]

My argument with you is...about whether all ideas need to be supported by empirical evidence. In my opinion, many do not, in particular philosophical questions where we not only don't have the means to make empirical observations, but have no reason to think we ever will.

Let's focus on this point alone, because to address everything point by point will make this exchange way too frustrating to read (and to write. I know I tried for several hours):

Turn around this idea for a moment. Lets just say some non-empirical effect is inundating our reality right now, bathing us all in some undetectible energy. If it is not emprically detectible in any way how would this "fact" matter in anyway to anyone or anything?

Another way to make this same point is to ask: what's the difference between a completely fictional idea and "a particular philosophical questions where we not only don't have the means to make empirical observations, but have no reason to think we ever will"?

By eliminating empiricism as a possible methodology, one has de facto eliminated any potential consequence, effect, benefit, harm...anything...for that said philosophical notion too, have they not?

Okay, let's take cosmogony-- the fact of existence, rather than non-existence, of the universe and everything in it. Now let's take psychogony (afaik I'm coining it but I think it works okay); I would argue, for example, that the capacity of the universe to include at least some subjective experience must be ingrained in whatever quantity "X" allows for the existence of the universe, or created it, or whatever. I think that's a fairly reasonable argument, since we generally consider that like creates like.

Now, asking me to provide empirical evidence for this would be a bit silly. Obviously, I'm not able to collect information about what actually caused the universe to exist, or to know if it is partly or fully sentient. But I'm using fairly reasonable ideas about what is known to hazard an educated guess into a context which is unknown and probably unknowable to us.

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Rather, as an alternative, try something novel -- merely start from the biggest special plea that there is -- namely, that we both accept, from the start, that there is a fundamental shared reality that we both preceive and exist within. Is that a possible starting reference point that you might consider instead?

Except that is an assumption, not a special pleading. It is an excellent assumption.

It's special pleading only in the context of a couple pages ago, where we were talking about the need to validate ideas with empirical evidence. To say that we are using empirical evidence to PROVE the existence of a shared objective world doesn't make sense, because it's only empirical evidence if we already know it to come from a shared objective world. Circles are a no-no.