Ed Feser's Aristotelian Proof of the Existence of God

[bennyboy]

Then we have no knowledge of such a thing. Full stop. No amount of "pure argument" will change that. Being unable to determine whether or not an argument is sound does not excuse that argument from the requirement.

This sounds circular. You seem to be insisting that a sound argument must be empirically provable. This axiom is necessarily false.

There's no point in appealing to logic in that context either. Demonstrate that it applies, and then demonstrate that it's useful without any way of determining that it is sound.

Without empirical observations to be made from which one can infer ideas, there are only three options left: 1) draw inferences using other means (i.e. using logical extensions); 2) wait (probably longer than your lifetime) until new empirical means are available; 3) just walk away.

I think that logical extension of philosophical ideas used in our everyday context can and should be used to generate philosophical ideas for other contexts (again, like cosmogony).

Why? You want to throw empiricism out based out context but retain logic? LOL...of course you do.....Because what you're about to -propose- is silly. It's not silly to ask for evidence of some mind that created this place.

If you are going to be insulting, at least have the courtesy to be correct. When you are considering candidate models for things which are currently a mystery, you don't have to prove or disprove them-- you only have to show that your idea is connected logically to something we DO know about.

Now, if I'm making a positive assertion about the nature of the universe, and I want you to believe me, then I'll have to meet whatever criteria you have for changing your beliefs. But that's not the conversation we're having right now.

Or why you think that like creates like applies (and aren't you appealing to empiricism now.....). You're trying to cut off one of logics legs because it's giving you shit relative to some claim you'd like to call reasonable - but I don't think that you can actually do so....because you're still going to invoke that leg in any argument you make. Logic is now and has always been an exercise in evidence and the relationships between things in evidence in the first place. It's how the universe appears to behave, it's descriptive - and this will invariably be based in some empirical claim.

Fine. Show me your empirical claim for cosmogony-- why things exist rather than not existing.

And while you spend 20,000 years developing the technology-- maybe-- to do that, I will sit here and enjoy the process of wondering about things.

It bothers me that I even have to say this.....but you're calling a gap argument reasonable........

To exactly what argument are you referring? None of mine, I believe.