Is God THE Necessary Being? Part II

Is God THE Necessary Being?
Part I · Part II · Part III

If I have been lazy, my excuse is Carrier has been even lazier in relation to me. I was just reminded of my negligence a few moments ago (or ok, a quarter of on hour or half hour or whatever).

Since Feser just replied to another Humean, Blackford, on the Five Proofs, I'll link to Feser's reply:

Edward Feser : Reply to Blackburn on Five Proofs
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/09/reply-to-blackburn-on-five-proofs.html

I actually intended to take my Presuppositional observation in part III and something else (upcoming in part III now) in part II.

However, one quote from Feser will quickly bring me to C. S. Lewis' Miracles, and its version of Presuppositional Apologetics.

The broadly Humean epistemology he deploys against the Scholastic theism I defend in Five Proofs of the Existence of God requires a careful balancing act. On the one hand, Blackburn must limit the powers of human reason sufficiently to prevent them from being able to penetrate, in any substantive way, into the ultimate “springs and principles” of nature. For that is the only way to block ascent to a divine first cause – the existence and nature of which, the Scholastic says, follows precisely from an analysis of what it would be to be an ultimate explanation.

Now, this reminds me of precisely a weakness in 8 Propositions. By the way, they seem to be now extended to 9 and 10, unless I simply missed the last ones previously.

These are propositions about a non-universe, a nothing in the sense of an absence of anything except what is necessary.

Now, in a comment under that article Carrier stated:

Logical contradictions reference nothing, and thus have no actual meaning in any language (each part of a contradiction has meaning; but their conjunction is meaningless). But it’s possible for things to exist that no language can describe, so merely being meaningless is not a sufficient conclusion. It’s enough for most things, since usually all we need know is what a sentence references, and when the answer is “nothing,” we can move on. But there is a deeper question as to why contradictory states of affairs can’t materialize. It’s not enough to say language couldn’t describe it. As arguing from that would be a non sequitur.

This is a question in the ontology of logic: what exactly is it, that makes logical laws describe all actual things too, not just languages. Why, in other words, does the universe obey the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). It’s easy to show why language always must. But that by itself doesn’t explain why not just language, but even universes, must obey.

I do answer this in SAG but I get more specific and detailed in my response to Reppert (also linked in the article above), under the heading Ontology of Logic. The short of it is this: the only state of being that would be correctly described as not obeying the LNC, is a state of being that contained no distinctions; but distinctions are always possible; even the attempt to assert they are impossible asserts they exist and thus are possible. For there to be something that existed that prevented distinctions from existing, entails distinctions exist: a distinction between the presence and the absence of that something; and if there is nothing preventing distinctions from existing, distinctions always exist: e.g. a distinction exists between distinctions being possible and distinctions being impossible.

Is this a logical or a physical fact?

The LNC is thus just a restatement of a physical fact: distinctions exist. Which is always true, because the moment any state of being obtains, it comes with distinctions.

OK, with things existing, there are distinctions. So, it is a physical fact.

I'll go down this alley, Carrier.

If it is a physical fact, it does not apply to your propositions about "nothing". Also, if it is about "distinctions", it cannot apply to a nothing which lacks distinctions.

So, the only way in which you can reason at all about the logical consequences of nothing and count on your "language logic" to apply to "the logic of things" is, if you have an access to a logic which rules the logic of all and any things under any circumstances whatsoever - but in order for this to be so, this logic needs to be a mind, ruling physical things and distinctions like your mind rules your body. Or sth like that.

If your mind only had access to the logic that physically shaped you, you would be able to reason about your surroundings, not about this kind of ultimate problem.

This is even more clear, if the words about LNC and distinctions are supposed to be a logical fact, while this would allow it to apply to "nothing" (except what is logically necessary) it is only possible if there is a logic above physics.

That is why Sherlock Holmes refuses to philosophise. He is basically an atheist, but a weak atheist : he knows that if [evolutionary] atheism is true, then its truth is a matter beyond what his mind was evolved to know.

If your position is the truth, it is a truth which can never be known. The fact that you treat it as sth which can be known shows you are wrong.

So, for logic to apply without exceptions, even to "nothing", it is necessary that God is. This makes God a known, not just candidate, but actual claimant to the title "nothing except what is logically necessary". So much for your "as far as we know".

I'll be saying a thing or two on Feser next time, in part III.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Matthew Apostle
21.IX.2018