Bill Vallicella recently posted some comments on the paper I co-authored with Greg Welty. He states that he’s very sympathetic to our project, but he finds a weak point in our argument that renders it “rationally acceptable, but not rationally compelling.” Here I respond to his concerns.
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Vallicella on the Argument for God from Logic Read More »
The following is a guest post by my friend Paul Manata, a philosophy student at Calvin College. It’s a response to this recent post on the Tyndale UC Philosophy blog. Paul originally submitted it as a comment on that blog, but for some reason it didn’t appear, and now the comments are closed there. So I invited Paul to post his response here instead.
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Calvinism and the “Leviticus Principle” Read More »
A spike in my otherwise flatlined traffic alerts me to the fact that Bill Vallicella has breathed some new life into an old post of mine which connects the same-sex marriage debate with postmodernist anti-realism. Check out Bill’s commentary and then consider the following:
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Pomo Marriage Revisited Read More »
What is the most important question of all?
On the face of it, that question seems like a sensible one, even an important one. We ask many questions in life, and some are clearly more important than others. For example, the question “Where are my car keys?” is more important than the question “How many ducks are there in Belgium right now?” It’s possible, in principle, to rank questions in order of importance.
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The Most Important Question Read More »
Here’s a thoughtful email query I received with the title “Friendly Question about God and Logic”:
Recently, I have been reading about God and abstract objects and came across your article in Phil-Christi with Greg Welty regarding God and logic. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it both persuasive and useful. In doing further reading on your website I came across a follow up article where you argue that atheism presupposes theism (and so does every other ism) and your argument gets close to an objection to the claim that logic depends on God that I have long wondered about. In the article, in reference to Atheism you argue the following:
(1) God does not exist. [assumption for reductio]
(2) It is true that God does not exist. [from (1)]
(3) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that there is no God). [from (2)]
(4) If there are truths, they are divine thoughts.
(5) There is at least one divine thought. [from (3) and (4)]
(6) If there are divine thoughts, then God exists.
(7) Therefore, God exists. [from (5) and (6)]Consider the following reconstruction:
(1*) God does not exist. [assumption for reductio]
(2*) It is true that God does not exist. [from (1*)]
(3*) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that there is no God). [from (2*)]
(4*) Therefore, truth does not depend on God. [from (1*) and (3*)]Let me make explicit why I think (1*-4*):
(5*) The laws of logic are divine thoughts.
(6*) According to the aseity-sovereignty doctrine if God did not exist then nothing would exist.
(7*) If God did not exist there would be no divine thoughts.
(8*) Therefore, there would be no laws of logic.But if (5*-8*) hold, the proposition either God exists or He does not, would be a truthful description of that state of affairs and be an instance of the LEM. Likewise, the proposition God exists, would be false, not true. Not both true and false, thus an instance of the LNC.
Or another way of stating it would be:
If God did not exist then nothing would exist. But it seems that even if God did not exist there would be at least one thing that would exist, the state of affairs, nothing exists. Doesn’t that imply/entail that there is at least one truth about that state of affairs, the truth nothing exists? If that is the case don’t we have laws of logic?
I assume my objection is misguided in some way. If you have time to address this question and clarify my error I would appreciate it.
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A Friendly Question about God and Logic Read More »
Nate Silver, the statistician and psephologist, correctly predicted the winner in 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, plus the winners of all 35 US Senate races. This time around he successfully predicted the winner in all 50 states, including the 9 “swing states”. (He also predicted the winner in D.C., although that wasn’t exactly a tough call.) On the morning of the election, Silver’s FiveThirtyEight model gave Barack Obama a 90.9% chance of winning a majority of electoral college votes.
If Silver can perfect his model, it opens up some exciting possibilities for future elections. For one, it will obviate the need for people to actually go to the polls and vote. Silver will simply run his stats and tell us how Americans would have voted had they gone to the polls. Just think of all the time and money this will save!
Previously on Analogical Thoughts:
In this week’s exciting episode, I examine the arguments of Shannon, Oliphint, and Craig. Do they show that God doesn’t think propositionally or that propositions couldn’t be divine thoughts? Does the doctrine of divine simplicity rule out Theistic Conceptual Realism? Should anyone care either way? We’ll be right back with some answers after the following short section break!
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God and Propositions: The Saga Continues Read More »
Commenter Jeff posed a question in response to an earlier post:
I was wondering though how you might respond to the view held by some in the Reformed camp such as Oliphint (I think at least, so don’t hold me to it) and Poythress that God does not think propositionally. I am not sure if they would advocate the contingency of propositions, then, but if you ever have the time, could you explain how the argument might still go through, or if the objection has no effect at all?
It depends on what exactly is meant by “thinking propositionally”. If the claim is that God’s thoughts aren’t dependent on propositions (conceived as truth-bearing abstract entities) that exist externally to God and independently of God, in some kind of self-existent Platonic realm, then I wholeheartedly agree. Welty and I have argued that propositions are divine thoughts, which would rule out that Platonist scenario.
However, if the claim is that God does not think in terms of propositions at all, then I strongly disagree. For that amounts to saying that God does not think in terms of truth and falsity. Propositions are conventionally defined as the primary truth-bearers (see, e.g., the recently revised SEP entry). Propositions are simply those entities that are non-derivatively true or false. If God has any true thoughts then it follows by the very definition of ‘proposition’ that God thinks propositionally. And, of course, God does have true thoughts. (How could God reveal truths to us without first having true thoughts?)
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Does God Think Propositionally? Read More »
A correspondent asked me if I could address an objection he had encountered to the argument for God from logic. Here’s the objection as he quoted it, with my comments interspersed:
The authors equivocate when they make the leap to claim that the laws of logic are thoughts. The propositions themselves are certainly thoughts, but how can the truths that the propositions bear be thoughts?
I’m pleased that the objector concedes that “propositions … are certainly thoughts” because that’s a crucial step in the argument! However, the latter part of the question reflects a confusion. In our paper, we adopted the conventional definition of propositions as primary truth-bearers. But this doesn’t mean that propositions bear truths (as though truths were something other than propositions). Rather, it means that propositions are things that can bear the property of truth; they’re things that can be true. Given this definition, truths just are propositions; specifically, they are true propositions.
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Truths, Propositions, and the Argument for God from LogicRead More »
Truths, Propositions, and the Argument for God from Logic Read More »