Timeline for Is it as fallacy to say that you misunderstand in some unspecifiable way?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 5, 2023 at 8:06 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | The argument is just playing with words to sneak the conclusion into the premises. Either greatness implies existence, then God's greatness cannot be a premise (in an argument seeking to prove God's existence), or greatness does not imply existence, then non-existence implying non-greatness cannot be a premise. In short, it's really poor reasoning for an argument so prominent (like most/all apologetics). | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 16:44 | comment | added | Idiosyncratic Soul | Basing the existence of God on what can be conceived seems wrong. If humans were wiped out then their would be no one to conceive of God. So God would cease to exist? | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 16:36 | comment | added | Hokon | @AgentSmith you happen to have a reference to a lay explanation of Gödel’s ontological argument? I’d love to dig into it, but I cannot read mathematical logic. | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 16:28 | comment | added | Hokon | The fact that Gödel made his own version concerns me as an atheist. Gödel was the “spoiler” across many fields, (1) the Gödel Metric proved Einstein wrong in that, General Relativity opens the door to time travel, and (2) the Incompleteness Theorems destroyed Logicism in philosophy of math. | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 15:39 | comment | added | Hudjefa | @IdiosyncraticSoul. Anslems's exact words are "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 15:37 | comment | added | Hudjefa | @gs, Much obliged. All my info comes from Wikipedia. Did you read the page? I'm more of a reporter than an analyst. 😊 | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 15:14 | comment | added | g s | "'The most perfect Being has all perfections; existence is a perfection; therefore the most perfect Being exists' becomes: 'There is one and only one entity x which is most perfect; that one has all perfections; existence is a perfection; therefore that one exists.' As a proof, this fails for want of a proof of the premise." | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 15:13 | comment | added | g s | Russel states explicitly in On Denoting (1905) the opposite of what you say he is supposed (by whom?) to have declared. | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 15:09 | comment | added | Idiosyncratic Soul | If God does not exist then God is not the greatest being imaginable. Why does something have to exist to be imaginable? | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 14:50 | comment | added | Hudjefa | @KristianBerry, I'm the undeserving recipient of your kindness. Gracias, muchas. All I can say is, word has it that one of the toughest theistic arguments to refute is St. Anselm's. There have been attempts, but Kurt Gödel gave it his stamp of approval. Note Gödel's preeminence in the realm of logic. I'll let the argument speak for itself. Remember to survey the philosophical works on the subject. Wikipedia is a good place to start. And yet ... something's off about it ... but what? | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 14:30 | comment | added | Kristian Berry | This is not a bad answer; I could see not upvoting it, but downvoting it, when it brings up such a perspicuous example from the history of philosophy itself, of the OP's curiosity, seems unduly harsh. I suppose that, by proposing his own phrase for the quasi-fallacy(?) in question, that it comes across as "not a peer-reviewed/citation-based answer," but I would like to look into whether there is, in fact, a phrase like "St. Anselm's syndrome" that is current somewhere in the literature... | |
| Oct 4, 2023 at 14:07 | history | answered | Hudjefa | CC BY-SA 4.0 |