Omniscience Argument Revisited

[henryp]

You're not arguing against what I said.

But the point is that if you cannot infer God's existence because he conforms to none of the concepts humans encapsulate in words, then he is a nonsensical concept. It's functionally equivalent to saying:

"There is something I can't describe that exists in a way I can't describe; I can't even really say it 'exists' because it is beyond what I can describe."

See why that just reduces theism to tatters?

I'm certainly not defending theism. I'm just saying that things throughout history and still, exist outside our understanding. It makes sense, that since gods are frequently used as a place holder until the knowledge is found, that they would also exist outside our understanding. It's by design, because they are supposed to play by different rules so we can use them to explain things we can't explain.

While I think the conclusion of a God is nonsensical, I wouldn't say the concept of something which we can't describe based on our limited understanding is non-sensical. I look at the origins of the universe, and how they work with my understanding of time and space. They do not play well together. I assume either my understanding of time and space are flawed, or there exists something else that beyond my understanding that made things happen the way they did.

The massive difference of course, is that we know some explanation exists for the origins of the universe, whereas there is no reasonable reason to think there is an omniscient God.

I think Indescribable God is a necessity for modern Theism, because the desire for Theism is to have a bunch of things that we have no evidence exist to exist. Life after death, universal morality, single purpose, and stuff like that.

[Rational AKD]

sorry it took me a while to see your revised version of this argument. I must say it's a better argument in the sense that I actually agree with the definitions but still has its problems. I actually don't see how you could have missed it since for one I pointed it out in your last version and for two it's quite obvious.

3) Therefore a being cannot know it has acquired knowledge all possibly knowable UUs (in other words, even if it's in fact true that a being has no UUs, it couldn't be known that one doesn't have them (remember, JTB) because it is a claim that cannot be justified) because there is an unknowable KU.
4) Omniscience is defined as having all possible knowledge.

do you see it? your case in premise three is that it is impossible to have UU's, and your definition of omniscience includes all possible knowledge. that means omniscience by your very definition excludes knowledge of whether he has UU's or not since it's impossible to know that.

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But it is. UUs are not inherently or necessarily impossible to know. While you cannot know whether or not your current unknown unknowns are possible to know, you can't know if tey aren't. You can make an inductive case that what used to be your unknown unknowns were knowable, because they are no longer unknown to you.

so in other words, you can know your UU's by the process of learning. you do realize that learning is impossible if you're omniscient since you have all possible knowledge, so this would still be impossible knowledge for God.

[Optimistic Mysanthrope]

But using that definition, omniscience becomes a meaningless attribute as it is essentially just saying that god knows everything that god knows.

[Rational AKD]

But using that definition, omniscience becomes a meaningless attribute as it is essentially just saying that god knows everything that god knows.

that's not the definition. God knows everything that is possible for him to know. by that definition he knows everything except things that are impossible to know. that's a little more substantive than "he knows everything he knows." and BTW, i'm using the definition in the OP not imposing my own.

[Whateverist]

I'm liking the presentation of the argument better in this thread. More relaxed, less urgent.

Still I start from the position that the idea of "omniscience" makes more sense as an attribute of a comic book character than it does anything of which we're aware. Look how hard it is to even agree on terms. What little basis you find for dismissing the absurd notion just makes the other side certain that you don't have got a sufficiently robust conception of omniscience. Can either of you be sure you have the correct conception of omniscience? Of course not. There is no template to check it against.

That is why, expositionally, a comic book character would make so much more sense. It would give you the opportunity to explore various ways of looking at it and the possible conflicts which ensue. Separate issues of the comic book could start with different assumptions without the reader worrying about the disparity .. at least once they caught on to your purpose.

But seriously, why would anyone think anyone or anything is or could be omniscient. That falls entirely out of our experience. It is more like Superman for the mind. For both Omniscient Man and Superman, we have to suspend what we know about physics and the real world to make room for the character. But, if not for the entertainment value, why do it?

My own theory, as everyone must by now be tired of hearing, is that the god Christians learn to pray to is but a splinter of their own consciousness albeit one imbued with the awareness of the unconscious mind. So this god that is preyed to surely does know your business to a scary degree .. but of course that's because you aren't distinct from it, you overlap. But if anyone thinks it is possible to pray to this god and learn as yet unknown facts about the physical world or its origins, they are sadly mistaken. The 'god' within had no creative function where the universe is concerned. Although one is free to speculate about the possibility of deistic intentions, I'll leave that to others.

[MindForgedManacle]

3) Therefore a being cannot know it has acquired knowledge all possibly knowable UUs (in other words, even if it's in fact true that a being has no UUs, it couldn't be known that one doesn't have them (remember, JTB) because it is a claim that cannot be justified) because there is an unknowable KU.
4) Omniscience is defined as having all possible knowledge.

do you see it? your case in premise three is that it is impossible to have UU's, and your definition of omniscience includes all possible knowledge. that means omniscience by your very definition excludes knowledge of whether he has UU's or not since it's impossible to know that.

I didn't say it's impossible to have UUs? I said UUs can never be ruled out because to claim you know you don't have them results in a contradicory statement.

Further, you're playing a very - and I don't want to sound rude - stupid game. The equivalent of your argument is to say that there must be a square-circle because of its definition. The point of the argument is to elicit a problem with the very definition of omniscience, i.e to show that even if you do have all possible knowledge, it's not possible to actually know that, because there's no way to justify it (which is where the contradiction comes in). And since it can't be justified, omniscience is something no being can know that it has.

So really, this argument isn't so much an argument against the POSSIBILITY of omniscience, rather it's an argument against ever knowing that one is omniscient.

so in other words, you can know your UU's by the process of learning. you do realize that learning is impossible if you're omniscient since you have all possible knowledge, so this would still be impossible knowledge for God.

You MIGHT be able to learn at least some of your UUs, but not necessarily, because you don't know what they are. In other words, you can't rule out UUs as possible to know because they might be knowable, an we have inductive knowledge that it's at least possible that they are.

And there you go again with that nonsensical view. I'm not starting with the assumption that omniscience is possible as you are. I'm reductio-ing the rationality of any being claimed to be omniscience, then showing how under the definition of knowledge I used, it cannot be known to be the case.

[Rational AKD]

I didn't say it's impossible to have UUs? I said UUs can never be ruled out because to claim you know you don't have them results in a contradicory statement.

*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.

Further, you're playing a very - and I don't want to sound rude - stupid game. The equivalent of your argument is to say that there must be a square-circle because of its definition.

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.

So really, this argument isn't so much an argument against the POSSIBILITY of omniscience, rather it's an argument against ever knowing that one is omniscient.

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.

You MIGHT be able to learn at least some of your UUs, but not necessarily, because you don't know what they are.

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?

In other words, you can't rule out UUs as possible to know because they might be knowable, an we have inductive knowledge that it's at least possible that they are.

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."

And there you go again with that nonsensical view. I'm not starting with the assumption that omniscience is possible as you are. I'm reductio-ing the rationality of any being claimed to be omniscience, then showing how under the definition of knowledge I used, it cannot be known to be the case.

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.

[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).

[Rational AKD]

you'll have to excuse me, I didn't realized you changed your entire argument within the recent comments of the thread (I didn't think you would concede how flawed your original argument was so quickly). but anyways your fourth premise then is "it is impossible for an omniscient being to know it is truly omniscient." this, however, changes more of the argument more than you know or at least seem to realize. if you were to end with that premise, then I would agree with your argument... but you originally wanted to say something a little more substantive than that. P5 and C2 of the argument go on to say that it is therefore impossible for God to exist as defined with the quality of omniscience. as you said, this argument now doesn't aspire to prove omniscience itself is impossible as you stated here:

So really, this argument isn't so much an argument against the POSSIBILITY of omniscience, rather it's an argument against ever knowing that one is omniscient.

so if you're argument doesn't show it's impossible to be omniscient, you also can't conclude God who has this attribute doesn't exist. you can't logically arrive at C2 from revised C1 and P5.

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.

do you even listen to yourself? God has no way of knowing yet could know? if he has no way of knowing he can't know. but go ahead, try to come up with some knowledge God can't possibly know that's not impossible to know. this should be amusing.

ok I don't really see any more contentions with your argument as it now is. the only thing is that because you are not arguing against the possibility of omniscience, you are not making a case against the existence of God. if you want to end your argument with the conclusion "God can't possibly know whether he is truly omniscient" I have no contention. but that's not a very controversial point you're trying to establish.

[MindForgedManacle]

you'll have to excuse me, I didn't realized you changed your entire argument within the recent comments of the thread (I didn't think you would concede how flawed your original argument was so quickly).

Unlike Christian apologists, I won't stick with flawed arguments. After all, my interest in philosophy is not to defend to death my preconceived notions of what I think is (or ought be) the case. Likewise, thanks for demonstrating your inability to be charitable or thorough.

but anyways your fourth premise then is "it is impossible for an omniscient being to know it is truly omniscient." this, however, changes more of the argument more than you know or at least seem to realize.

I actually already realize what this changes in the argument, but seeing as there's a time limit on edits, I can't really alter the OP to reflect this.

if you were to end with that premise, then I would agree with your argument... but you originally wanted to say something a little more substantive than that. P5 and C2 of the argument go on to say that it is therefore impossible for God to exist as defined with the quality of omniscience. as you said, this argument now doesn't aspire to prove omniscience itself is impossible as you stated here:

So really, this argument isn't so much an argument against the POSSIBILITY of omniscience, rather it's an argument against ever knowing that one is omniscient.

so if you're argument doesn't show it's impossible to be omniscient, you also can't conclude God who has this attribute doesn't exist. you can't logically arrive at C2 from revised C1 and P5.

I can easily grant that. After all, it logically follows from my statement (which you ignored in your haste earlier). However, unless you're a rather novel kind of Christian, you have to give up any sort of basis for affirming God's omniscience, certainly if it is supposedly stated by God himself. God can only assume his omniscience, he could never know it, even in principle.

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.

do you even listen to yourself? God has no way of knowing yet could know? if he has no way of knowing he can't know. but go ahead, try to come up with some knowledge God can't possibly know that's not impossible to know. this should be amusing.[/quote]

Do you even read, and could you be more dishonest? Follow along, please. In the part of my post you "conveniently" left out, I demonstrated that there is possible knowledge that God could never BY HIMSELF learn, but is nevertheless possible in principle. Go ahead, reread the part of my post you dishonestly ignored for examples. It is indeed quite amusing how poor your reading comprehension and honesty are.

ok I don't really see any more contentions with your argument as it now is. the only thing is that because you are not arguing against the possibility of omniscience, you are not making a case against the existence of God. if you want to end your argument with the conclusion "God can't possibly know whether he is truly omniscient" I have no contention. but that's not a very controversial point you're trying to establish.

I'd disagree, especially concerning the religious implications with such. Has God EVER claimed to be omniscient? If so, he made an assertion he could never justify, which is pretty deceitful. The same goes for any of his followers who claim that he is. This makes it irrational to claim any being is omniscient, and as Plantinga has noted numerous times, trying to establish (at the very least) the rationality of theism is one of the major drives of theologians.

In regards to other arguments against omniscience, I would tend to stake my lot with those that use other common apologetic positions to undermine that attribute, such as the oft-held 'there can be no actual infinite' position that is necessary for, among other things, the Kalam Cosmological argument.