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Plantiga's ontological argument.
#31
RE: Plantiga's ontological argument.
(April 17, 2013 at 10:04 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: I think I may agree with you except on one thing. It can be that it is a basis to reason and logic including morality,

The sudden insertion of morality here looks a lot like a sleight-of-mind trick to me, especially since you seem to want to lump it in with reason and logic as if it were part of Epistemology rather than the distinct philosophical branch of Ethics. It looks to me like you're slipping the ball of morality under the cup of "logic and reason," so that, after a few spins of argument, you can lift the cup and reveal Allah.

It is possible to have reason and logic without morality. Imagine a realm of inherently invulnerable, immortal beings--call them "angels" or "dark-matter lifeforms" or "post-Singularity cyber-nanotech beings" or whatever. These beings can use logic and reason to find out about their world, but they cannot harm one another. For such beings, our most important moral rules, about things like murder, rape, assault, theft (being immortal, they don't need money and property to survive), etc. have no application. If they're non-sexual beings, then moral rules about sex or "purity" don't apply, and so on. Such moral rules would only come into play if they should encounter mortal beings who can be killed, hurt, raped, etc., for whom such things are demonstrably "bad."

To put it another way, the basis for morality cannot be a Necessary Being for whom it has no conceivable application. Rather, morality emerges from the existence and nature of contingent beings, who need to uphold certain moral rules (at least the very basic ones like "don't run around killing each other") in order to co-exist and thrive.

(April 17, 2013 at 10:04 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: and these things by their nature if true, are not somethings that can possibly have been otherwise. So to attribute ultimate moral perfection to it, can be a necessary trait in all worlds.

Now you're inserting a concept of "ultimate moral perfection" that "could not possibly have been otherwise." This is circular reasoning. "Ultimate moral perfection proves that the Necessary Being is a Person, because He is the source of ultimate moral perfection."

Furthermore, we have no reason to think that there is such a thing as one, single concept of "ultimate moral perfection" that is a Necessary trait in all worlds. We're not even close to agreement on one, single "perfect" moral code on this world. How would we apply human morals about things like gender, dress, and not eating pork (Muslim, Jew) or beef (Hindu) to intelligent cephalopods from Tau Ceti IV, who don't wear clothes, communicate by changing the colors of their skin, and who naturally switch from (their equivalent of) male to female and vice versa every third Cetian year after sexual maturity? How would we obey their rule to "wear the skin-colors of the Hymn-Pattern of the Fertility Invocation of the Ogdoad when detaching your mating-tentacle"?

The Cosmos does not give any indication of having been designed in accordance with any particular concept of "ultimate moral perfection." If we look around us, we see a vast panoply of other creatures engaging in numerous different survival strategies, mating patterns, etc.. Black Widow spiders, for example, do not adhere to a morality of male headship of the family as taught in the Abrahamic religions. They, and many other creatures provide existence proof that there is not one, single "perfect" standard of behavior that must exist in all possible worlds, much less that such a "perfect" standard would be found in any human book or religion.

(April 17, 2013 at 10:04 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: In this case, while we don't know what perfection or ultimate morality is, or what the perfect personality is, they by definition are one.

If we say ultimate morality can be anything in any possible world, it would make morality contradictory, and we are simply choosing to stick to believe in a morality we are familiar with.

Only if you first assume that "morality" is one, single thing in all areas of all possible worlds. We have no reason to make that assumption. We could argue that there is an objective morality for humans because humans are entities of a certain nature, with certain ethical principles that must be upheld if they are to survive and flourish. But there is no reason to assume that such a morality would apply equally to dolphins or ants or Cetians or dark-matter beings.

A repair manual for an automobile will differ significantly from a repair manual for an airplane, or a submarine, or a Ham radio. This does not mean that "repair" is contradictory, just because there is no such thing as The One, Necessary Repair Manual that is the same for all possible devices in all possible worlds.
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#32
RE: Plantiga's ontological argument.
(April 17, 2013 at 10:04 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: I think I may agree with you except on one thing. It can be that it is a basis to reason and logic including morality, and these things by their nature if true, are not somethings that can possibly have been otherwise. So to attribute ultimate moral perfection to it, can be a necessary trait in all worlds.

How does morality get involved with reason and logic? Which morality? Whose morality? Please show that it a product entirely of reason and logic and thus can be grouped with them.
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