Nicht verstehen
Right, Plantinga on Dawkins. There is one bit that’s quite funny, but there’s another that I can’t understand. It’s familiar, and I never understand it. It just seems childish, in a literal way: childishly grandiose; and that can’t be right, so I must not understand it. Help me out here.
So why think God must be improbable? According to classical theism, God is a necessary being; it is not so much as possible that there should be no such person as God; he exists in all possible worlds. But if God is a necessary being, if he exists in all possible worlds, then the probability that he exists, of course, is 1, and the probability that he does not exist is 0. Far from its being improbable that he exists, his existence is maximally probable. So if Dawkins proposes that God’s existence is improbable, he owes us an argument for the conclusion that there is no necessary being with the attributes of God—an argument that doesn’t just start from the premise that materialism is true. Neither he nor anyone else has provided even a decent argument along these lines; Dawkins doesn’t even seem to be aware that he needs an argument of that sort.
I just don’t begin to understand that. I don’t understand the ‘So’ that begins the fifth sentence. So? So? Coming after ‘his existence is maximally probable’? When the whole chain started with ‘According to classical theism’? And then said a lot of things that (as far as I can tell) are to do with logic but make nothing happen. Why does the fact that ‘God’ is X according to classical theism mean that anything else follows for people who don’t adhere to classical theism in the first place? I could understand why something would follow if the phrase went ‘according to geology’ or physics or molecular biology and then were followed by a claim about rocks or quarks or DNA that included the word ‘is’ – but classical theism? No. And then there’s that ‘if’. If God is a necessary being, then…then how do we get to So? We start from a claim from a supernaturalist field, we go on to an if, and we end up at a bizarre certainty that Dawkins owes us an explanation. I do not understand that passage. It looks nonsensical to me, and that can’t be right.
I think Plantinga is trying to say that to refute a posited necessary thing, you need to prove that it doesn’t exist–arguments about probability are irrelevant. But this is obviously illogical. If I were to hypothesize that a fair coin will necessarily land heads-up on the next toss, then Plantinga seems to be saying that unless you can prove to me that the coin will land heads-down, you must accept that the coin will land heads-up.
Well, it’s clearly a faccident. I love the coinage by R. Joseph Hoffmann in your Articles section: “…facts that do not fall into place without the benefit of a prior commitment to an established conclusion.”
What a useful word, and now part of my vocabulary.
Is it obviously illogical? Oh good! It seems so to me, but I thought it couldn’t be as obviously so as it seems – couldn’t be a blatant faccident.
I’ve already commented on “faccidents” – the polite term is FICTION – there is another term, but I’ve promised to try to be good, so I won’t say it here …
Seriously, apart from Opheleia’s point, why is “god” a necessary being?
Which stone did that assumption crawl out from under?
Where did it come from?
Why/how is this imaginary sky-fairy a “Necessary” being?
And “being” too – now is this god thing real (and therfore detectable, or is he/sh/it/they transcendent and “outside” thr normal rational universe – see two or three threads back.
ARRGHHHH!
Doesn’t Plantinga’s ontological ‘proof’ essentially just depend on defining necessarily existing in a particular way then playing on the ambiguity of the meaning?
Isn’t this just a wild assertion followed by a burden of proof shift? “We think it’s probable that god does exist, so you unless you can prove otherwise – it is.”
I guess Plantinga has one point that I’m sympathetic to. It does seem inconsistent (perhaps, ‘irregular’ is the better word) that Dawkins applies Occam’s razor to the God hypothesis but not to the idea of multiple universes. Also, the anthropic principle is incomprehensible to me.
But for the most part, I can’t agree with Plantinga’s criticisms.
“God is a necessary being.”
What necessitates God’s existence? What entity, what situation, what bit of logic, causes or entails that God is necessary?
Is it something external to God? If so, then God is not ultimately supreme, not ultimately transcendent: something governs or constrains or defines God such that his existence is necessary, he is dependent on this external source of his necessity. In which case God is not the maximally supreme God of “classical theology” (though there may, on this account, be gods of the sort found in classical mythology).
Or, is God the source of his own necessity? If so, then if God does not exist, there is nothing necessitating his existence. His existence, if he exists, would be just a brute fact, something to be demonstrated by empirical tests, rather than as a consequence of a logical argument from premises or standards that govern and control God.
Seems to me like a “we got here first” argument, as in we got here first, we’re playing cricket, and we don’t care if there are H-shaped posts at the end of the ground, we’re not leaving until one of us is bowled out, and not with that big egg-shaped so-called ball either…
From the quotes it looks like Dawkins’ complexity argument needs more work to avoid circularity, and even then I’m not sure it doesn’t fail (surely you can come up with some kind of infinite time evolutionary argument for god?)
If existence is a dodgy property then necessary existence is even worse. Plantinga’s argument works on the rather easy sleight of hand of saying “isn’t it possible that god necessarily exists?”, “hey, necessarily exists means exists in all possible worlds, since it is possible it must be the case that he necessarily exists in all possible worlds”.
Problems with that off the top of my head, if god doesn’t exist he can’t have properties like necessarily existing, just like santa doesn’t exist even though existence is one of the properties of our idea of santa.
Plantinga’s argument makes sense… if you’re already someone a lot like Alvin Plantinga.
A classical theistic argument going back to good ol’ Augustine and even before does purport to “prove” that one of God’s properties is “necessary existence.” Problem is, this argument has about ten things horribly wrong with it: The argument demonstrably commits equivocation in two or three different ways; it posits that “existence” is a predicate (which is a flat-out no-no in every coherent and consistent formal logic system sophisticated enough to represent the substance of the argument); and it sneaks in a whole lot of unsupported assumptions in amongst the premises.
Alvin Plantinga appears to believe that the classical “argument from necessity” is irrefutable, despite it’s many quite impressive refutations over the centuries. Or he at least believes that being necessarily existent is a property that must be ascribed to God – despite the rather obvious and unavoidable logical point that a thing must exist in order to have properties, so existence (necessary or contingent) cannot itself be a property. Yes, you can assign properties to posited beings if you wish, but those properties are just ascribed, not observed or deduced or any such thing: That is, they are hypothetical properties of a hypothetical being, such that if the being exists it has those properties (or it is another sort of being). But you can’t do an end run around this problem by treating existence as just another property, because something must exist in order to have actual properties (rather than just ascribed, hypothetical properties of the sort one supposes it would have if it did exist).
Oops. I got sidetracked again by the flaws of the argument from necessity.
As I was saying, if you’re like Plantinga and you accept the conclusion of this argument in spite of the many rather glaring and oft-noted logical flaws in it, then you must believe that anyone who would dispute the existence of God is obligated to dispose of this argument. But frankly, that’s been done to death, and no one believes it needs to be done again except theists who believe its conclusion for reasons other than logical. Dawkins is certainly not obligated to dispose of this argument yet again when so many professional philosophers have done so before. Instead, what he does is offer an entirely different argument with solidly empirical foundations – which frankly is a much better foundation for arguments than the web of assumptions and logical errors underlying the classic argument from necessity. Whether Dawkins’ argument is all that great or not is irrelevant: The point is that he is not truly obligated to dispose of a completely separate bad argument that has already been repeatedly disposed of as question-begging nonsense. Alvin Plantinga just thinks Dawkin’s is so obligated because Plantinga is a true believer of all that question-begging nonsense.
Alvin Plantinga is very smart. He is often very persuasive, and like all philosophical theologians he is a master of cunningly concealing his assumed conclusion in amongst his premises. He may even be so cunning at it that he doesn’t see that he’s doing it – but other people do. No matter how much he dresses it up, arguing in a circle is still arguing in a circle. Such arguments seem persuasive because they are technically valid – insofar as if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. But since the conclusion is really just one of the premises – the premise most obviously standing in need of some argument, or you wouldn’t be making the argument – then it accomplishes nothing but pulling the wool over the eyes of the insufficiently wary reader. Dawkins is a sufficiently wary reader. As am I, as are most of the commenters here at B&W. If Plantinga isn’t a particularly wary reader of arguments whose conclusion he really, really wants to believe, that’s his problem, not Dawkins’ problem.
This is why theology is completely different from philosophy: Theology always, always, ALWAYS starts with the conclusions preferred by theologians and proceeds from there. Philosophers may not always succeed, but we try very hard not to do that sort of thing.
Plantinga is doubtlessly referring to his own version of the ontological argument, using modal logic, which is summarized on Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Plantinga.27s_modal_form_and_contemporary_discussion> and referred to elsewhere on the intertubes.
A brief intermission while we all study modal logic. Good — ready? Class will proceed. Using modal logic still doesn’t make the hoary old thing work.
The previous note somehow omitted the URL I wanted to included. Hope this works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Plantinga.27s_modal_form_and_contemporary_discussion
I’m just a simple minded, not particularly well-read, non professional philosopher and I have to admit, study of logic aside, the argument that because I can conceive of something existing it must exist unless you prove otherwise seems…bollocks.
Plantinga uses the classical conception of God as necessary to avoid the problems he would otherwise face by trying to argue God’s probability on the basis of the empirical evidence. Even if, on the empirical evidence, God would be highly improbable, if Plantinga can show God is a necessary being, then logic wins out over experience and God is maximally probable. The problem I do not see Plantinga overcoming is the classical Kantian objection that existence is not a concept, and that conceptual necessity does not guarantee existence (although it might govern the conceptual features pertaining to what happens to exist and it might explain the impossibility of the existence of something with contradictory features).
Yes, the pretty modal logic version of the argument can be shown to be valid: Did it as an exercise in a graduate level logic course once. It’s still bollocks because existence is a part of the grammar of existential modal logic therefore it cannot be treated as a predicate. Effectively, that “proof” treats existing (possibly or necessarily) as both a syntactical operator (“There is an X such that…”) and a predicate (“…X has the property of existing in the mind”). Plantinga’s use of modal logic doesn’t make the argument any better, it just makes it easier for me to explain specifically why the sneaky move of treating existence as a predicate is forbidden. Even in the very grammar of existential logic (modal or otherwise), a thing must exist before it can have any properties (predicates).
It is also bollocks because the premises are complete nonsense: The necessarily relational and contextual concept of perfection is treated as a non-relational predicate with no context whatsoever. There are ways to represent relational predicates and context in existential modal logic, albeit difficult ways that might not end up being sufficiently formalizable. But neither Plantinga’s nor anyone else’s version of the ontological argument acknowledges those complexities – because then the argument wouldn’t work anymore.
G, isn’t the objection better thought of as rather than existence not being a predicate, ideas are not the objects they represent, so if my idea of Santa includes existence as a predicate, that does not make the idea suddenly represent an extant thing. Looking at it this way I think explains our intuition that you can’t reason things into existence – my idea of Santa is not Santa himself.
Repeating (with corrected typos) can someone answer the questions?
Why is “god” a necessary being?
Which stone did that assumption crawl out from under?
Where did it come from?
Why/how is this imaginary sky-fairy a “Necessary” being?
And “being” too – now is this god thing real (and therefore detectable, or is he/she/it/they transcendent and “outside” the normal rational universe – see two or three threads back.
Because, if outside the normal rational universe, we don’t have to bother.
If inside, it will be detectable, and if a bit of both, then the “real” bit will still be detectable.
Right clever-clogs believers and theologians, get out of that one.
Good to go – modal logic is a language, not an instrument, and like most languages harbours antinomies.
One can reason things into existence as abstracta, but one cannot reason things into existence as concreta – they are different categories. Simple, no?
PM: The main reason I focus on the idea that existence cannot be a predicate/property (because a thing must exist to have properties) is because of the formal logic component of this debate. There are other ways to put the point. But your way won’t quite work, and here’s why:
While you’re right to say that “ideas are not the objects they represent,” the whole point of the ontological argument is to claim that necessary existence somehow bridges the gap between ideas and objects. For your everyday idea, of course, simply thinking of a being doesn’t tell you anything about it’s existence. But for a PERFECT being… Since key point of the argument is the reasoning that shows God (a perfect being by definition) to be a special case with respect to the ideas/objects divide – the “Surely it is more perfect to exist in the world and in the mind than to exist only in the mind” maneuver, however it’s phrased – it won’t do simply to say that this reasoning doesn’t work in other cases: One has to say why this particular bit of reasoning doesn’t work even in this case – and that hinges on the fact that something must exist to have properties, so existence cannot be treated as just another property.
To cut out repitition/rubbish:
According to us, god must exist, there is no way for anything to exist without a god. Therefore, to say that God is unlikely to exist, you need an argument that says that it is possible for things to exist without God, without assuming that there is no god.
Funny, it didn’t take quite so many words as he used.
G, I don;t think I agree with you there. The Santa of my mind has predicates, but the Santa of my mind is non-extant – but we can extend this to things that are extant, let us say that the mother-in-law of my mind is a hideous old crone, even if, in actuality, she isn’t. But what is this, the representation in my mind has properties that the real thing doesn’t have, how can this be? Obviously because the representation is not the thing itself. Once we accept that the representation is not the thing itself then there can never be properties of the representation that have any force when considering the thing itself. And I think this reasoning holds whether or not existence is accepted as a property. Essentially, the syllogism fails because the ‘God’ which is necessarily existent is not the same ‘God’ as might actually exist because the former is just a representation of the latter, not the latter Himself. I think perhaps where I’m not making myself clear is in pointing out that representations don’t have properties in the same way that real things have properties, i.e. real things actually exist, actually are red, are smelly, are heavy etc, whereas mental representations of things have properties ascribed to them i.e. my representation of god is not itself perfect, my representation ascribes perfection to god.
Therefore, the “”Surely it is more perfect to exist in the world and in the mind than to exist only in the mind” maneuver” doesn’t work because the representation in the mind does actually exist itself, but what it is representing does not (necessarily) exist, and has properties like necessary existence ascribed to it, it does not have the properties itself (which obviously it can’t, because it may not even exist) i.e. the whole argument is based on a conceptual confusion that assumes that the things mental representations represent somehow really have the properties they are ascribed, and thus somehow exist. I suppose a Platonist might disagree but then they’d just leave god floating about in a platonic realm away from the rest of us.
“there is no way for anything to exist without a god”
So therefore god can’t exist – unless the argument is the special case one that G cites – that god can exist because it is by definition the thing that can exist without another god.
That argument makes a kind of sense in its own terms – so that one can kind of glimpse a sense of being convinced by it, or at least persuaded – but then one falls back gasping from the effort.
The hypothesis of god as a necessary being gives us ‘If god does exist, then he must exist’. It certainly doesn’t give us ‘God must exist, therefore he does exist’.
And as for “if Dawkins proposes that God’s existence is improbable, he owes us an argument for the conclusion that there is no necessary being with the attributes of God”…
Fair enough – but if you’ve got an argument that god doesn’t exist in fact, then it follows from that that he doesn’t exist of necessity either.
Well that suggests a fun possibility – we could just all agree that god doesn’t exist in fact but does exist of necessity – then all collaborate on working out the resulting confusion. Hours of fun for the whole family.
(By ‘all’ I mean all humans, not all of us here – we here don’t have time for such nonsense unless the other 6 billion are going to help.)
I was thinking today about this whole ‘existence is not a predicate’ thing, ad it rather seems that if you take my aproach that existence can certainly be a predicate, the null predicate if you will, the really nonsensical predicate is non-existence. Yet this highlights again the difference between what I’ve been calling ascribed properties of a representation, and properties of an actual thing – my representation of Santa certainly includes the ascription of non-existence (sorry kids) but it would be utterly impossible, indeed meaningless, for something to possess such a property.
Actually, PM, I think we’re on the same page but just reading it from different angles. When you say that representations don’t have properties in the same way real things have properties, that’s pretty much what I meant when I talked about hypothetical properties ascribed to posited beings. Your posited mother-in-law has the property of being a harridan, but the actual m-i-l has no such property, so a formal logical statement attaching the predicate (harridan) to the object (your m-i-l) would be FALSE. The move of adding existence as a predicate disallows the possibility of the predicated object not existing (or existing with different predicates, i.e. being a different kind of thing) IN ADVANCE – as a premise – when that’s supposed to be the conclusion of the argument. It’s not only a logical error in the sense that it violates the grammar of the formal logical system in which it is stated (if you’re formalizing it), but it’s also bloody circular on the face of it.
Your follow-up post on Santa offers another way to illustrate the same point, really. In formal existential logic (roughly translated into English), one would talk about Santa and some of his his properties by saying “There exists an X such that X is a person (P) who lives at the north pole (N) and delivers toys to good girls and boys on Christmas (T).” Since there is no such person, this statement is false. But it would be semantic hash to add Santa’s imaginary status as another predicate in that sentence: “There exists an X such that X is a person (P) who lives at the north pole (N) and delivers toys to good girls and boys on Christmas (T) and does not exist (~E).” The whole “There exists an X such that… [X] does not exist” locution is semantically null, neither true nor false, because existence is used as a predicate as well as the basis for predication.
Your approach gets at the same general notion, but I doubt it can be formalized precisely. Normally I’m dubious about formalizing arguments in abstract logical form, but for some arguments it’s invaluable. Predicate logic, 2nd-order predicate logic, existential logic, modal logic, etc. are useful tools at least in part because it’s easy to show when they’ve been MIS-used – i.e. when a fast one is being pulled.
There are two things about Plantinga’s argument that strike me. One is the definition of God. If we are disallowing materialism, I don’t see how any god he is talking about could possibly be identified with any god in any religion we know of, since all of those gods behave in such a way as to commit themselves to the scope of the material world. They put themselves on the same level as electrons and unicorns – as things that could or could not be according to some physicalist or emergentist account. It would surely be an odd characteristic of religion that each one worshipped a god that was nothing like God. Since he wants to talk that tiresome possible worlds talk, it would be like identifying Aristotle in this world with a small baby seal in another possible world, the reflection of a lamp in a mirror in World 2, and so on. If the God of Genesis is the God of Plantinga, then I am the God of Plantinga – so are you. There are no descriptive qualifiers, here, that could possibly count you out.
The other thing, of course, is that possible worlds talk is truly screwed up. It has inflated to the point that Plantinga talk is as reasonable as Lewis’ realism about possible worlds. Somewhere, something in that line of thought went seriously wrong.
“It would surely be an odd characteristic of religion that each one worshipped a god that was nothing like God.”
Indeed. And yet that seems to be what we have, if we take the sophisticated accounts seriously. Very disorienting.