note: this discussion has turned for the better;read pgs/Where do the laws come from?

What you have written is important; I will reply later this week.

Why would I mention the proofs if I am not familiar with them? Of course I read them.
The only reason Aquinas called them "proofs" was because they were unrefutble during his time. Since Middle Ages, science advanced far enough to disprove / put in question the premises Aquinas used. You have to be pretty uninformed or ignorant if you think that his 800-year-old arguments, which are based on empirical knowledge, are still valid.
Just out of curiosity. If you support his philosophy, do you believe in king's divine right? Edited by Nutcase, : No reason given.Edited by Nutcase, : No reason given.

Are you asking did it have a begining?

Aquinas's method stood within the Scholastic tradition. This tradition regarded supernatural revelation as the base of all valid knowledge. One could arrive at further valid conclusions from this base through the use of proper syllogisms. Through this means Church authorities, it was thought, could arrive at conclusions that held the same authority as the original revelation.The whole approach owed much to Plato. One starts with the universals (ideals) and reasons down to the particulars.By the time Aquinas and Meister Eckhart were on the scene, the writings of Aristotle were gaining ground in Europe. Aristotle's approach was the opposite of Plato's: it started by collecting particulars, then reasoned from these details toward larger concepts. Aristotle's approach prepared the world for the scientific method.The biggest problem with reheating the arguments of Aquinas, unless one makes some major adjustments, is that the exercise treats empiricism (Descartes to Hume) and Kant (paradigm shift!) as if they never happened. But they did.Once something is seen it can't be unseen. Kant recognized the role of cognition in acquiring and shaping any kind of knowledge at all. Since his time cognition has become a fertile ground of research yielding a constant stream of discoveries.You can't wish away a paradigm shift. That's why any argument worthy of the name in the realm of ontology and epistemology has to come to terms with Kant._

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Whoa, I do not understand this claim. Under other circumstances I'd probably say something sarcastic, but your clarity of writing and level of understanding make me want to know if I have missed something.To my understanding Descartes set up Hume, who created the paradigm shift. One does not need Kant for anything more, who seems to be only a responder to Hume. His laborious writings do not reveal much beyond perhaps an attempted explanation of how things are done rather than how they ought to be done (in the field of epistemology). Further one of his more useful ideas, which could be applied to Ont and Esp but not necessarily drafted for those fields, can be invented rather easily without him.Perhaps this simply suggests that I had no use for him, and neither did my instructors. Since you find him eminently useful, and I value your input rather highly, I'm interested in finding out why you hold him as so important.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

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If there is no infinite regress there must be some basic level or reality which has no external explanation. I make no claim to know what it is but in my view it would be something very simple, with complexity produced by the interaction of simple elements.

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You are correct to say that there is no explanation on "the most basic level". Your view however, cannot be supported in light of this.As you say "elements"; there must be a reason for the existence of these elements."The most basic level" must be better defined. Yet what can be outside of defining?A God now becomes a much more plausible explanation.Edited by -messenjah of one, : left off the r in your

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You are correct to say that there is no explanation on "the most basic level".

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To be accurate I stated that there could be no explanation FOR the basic level of reality.

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Your view however, cannot be supported in light of this.

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I think that you will find that you are wrong.

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As you say "elements"; there must be a reason for the existence of these elements.

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You are absolutely wrong. Indeed, since these hypothetical elements would constitute the basic level of reality there can be no explanation. SImply demanding that anything other than your preferred answer must have an explanation is the exact strategy I identified as fallacious in my earleir posts - and here you are, using it again.

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"The most basic level" must be better defined. Yet what can be outside of defining?

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This comment makes no sense. Do you mean that we must describe the real "most basic level" more accurately ? Or are you still on the idea that reality requires external definition.

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A God now becomes a much more plausible explanation.

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You mean "remains a highly implausible explanation". A God is a complex ordered entity - precisely the sort of thing that should have an explanation. Certainly it is more in need of one than my preferred answer. Yet you demand an explanation for the latter - and not the former.In short your whole strategy of argument is rigged to come out with your preferred answer. There is no rational basis to it at all.

if it is the case then the laws are perfection. An expression of will. We just do not see it clearly. A child to a parent.Edited by 2ice_baked_taters, : No reason given.

Hume stands at the end of a line that begins with Decartes. His radical skepticism was the K-T event that ended the paradigm. Hume said--in a nutshell--that we don't really know anything. And he did a supremely effective job of destroying every argument that had been offered up to then to prove otherwise.Hume is the first reason no one can just trot out Aquinas again. The second is Kant.Kant realized that Hume had scorched the earth. He saw the need to build anew from more solid foundations if any form of human knowledge was to retain validity. The impressive thing is that he did exactly that.You could call Hume and Kant the one-two punch that knocked out the previous. Relative to our point in history Hume stands on the far side of the border and Kant on the near side, but they definitely mark the boundary.Kant recognized the importance of cognition in human knowledge. He said we can only know our ideas of things, never the Ding an sich--the 'thing in itself'. But this does not make our ideas invalid.

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The monumental Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) (1781, 1787) fully spells out the conditions for mathematical, scientific, and metaphysical knowledge in its "Transcendental Aesthetic," "Transcendental Analytic," and "Transcendental Dialectic," but Kant found it helpful to offer a less technical exposition of the same themes in the Prolegomena zu einer jeden knftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten knnen (Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic) (1783). Carefully distinguishing judgments as analytic or synthetic and as a priori or a posteriori, Kant held that the most interesting and useful varieties of human knowledge rely upon synthetic a priori judgments, which are, in turn, possible only when the mind determines the conditions of its own experience. Thus, it is we who impose the forms of space and time upon all possible sensation in mathematics, and it is we who render all experience coherent as scientific knowledge governed by traditional notions of substance and causality by applying the pure concepts of the understanding to all possible experience. But regulative principles of this sort hold only for the world as we know it, and since metaphysical propositions seek a truth beyond all experience, they cannot be established within the bounds of reason.

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The Philosophy Pages: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

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Kant provided a sound basis for pursuits of knowledge--science, philosophy, and the like--to continue. His notion of 'synthetic a priori ideas has significance for the formation of scientific theories. Theories in psychology--even its emergence as an area of study--owe much to Kant.Philosophers since Kant have brought us further variations on Kantian themes and critiques of his ideas but nothing like the wholesale revolution that occurred at that point.

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The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his "critical philosophy"[...] were his epistemology of Transcendental Idealism and his moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason. These placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science could never be accounted for merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions. It was instead the product of the rule-based [cognitive] activity of "synthesis". [....] Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it are dependent upon the mind. [....] With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity ” understood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as others ” as an end in itself rather than (merely) as means.

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These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis.[...]

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Wikipedia: 'Immanuel Kant'
(emphasis mine)

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There's no retreat. Anyone making a serious proposal in philosophy has to take account of the role played by human cognition in any system of knowledge and the implications of this for that sytem.For all that, you're not going to meet many people who say Critique of Pure Reason is their favorite book. Kant faced an enormous task in presenting his thesis; the thing was never going to be a breeze to read. But that it's an important book, there can be no doubt._

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Hmmmm, I was wondering if there was anything we'd end up disagreeing on. It appears Kant is it.I understand your "model" of development, and it is not so much invalid as it is inaccurate due to overstatement. Absolutely. Anyone reading Hume and understanding him realizes that he had scorched the earth (of knowledge). That is why I view him as the paradigm shift. Where Descartes attempted a blank slate approach, and indeed instituted his own scorched earth policy with his demon, Hume really broke the back of Descartes' attempt to build something new.What I don't find impressive is what Kant did. And I maintain that he, and his writings were unnecessary. The seeds... that our minds are what produce the order from experience... are within Hume's writings. The step of understanding that lack of Absolute Knowledge does not mean an end to Practical Knowledge (valid knowldge) is not that large.I'm also not sold on his discussion regarding a priori judgements. That's a bit of an exercise which we can leave alone in this thread, but I will state that it does not change how we have to view knowledge, or how we have to work to gain knowledge. The limits were set by Hume. I am interested in this claim, particularly the first sentence. That does not seem obvious to me, particularly because scientific theories were formed before Kant, which stand up to modern concepts of theories. And I don't feel hesitant in claiming that most scientists formulating theories today do so without knowledge of Kant or by using any of his arguments (even as hidden premises).I am sympathetic to the idea that psychology might have greater attachment to things he said, but that goes to what I was trying to state in my earlier post. To me he is more trying to describe the nature of acquiring knowledge, the way we actually do it, rather than come up with any new statements about what those limits are and so how they should effect our researches.I just don't see the revolution you are claiming. That to me stands in absolute disagreement with itself (a standing contradiction) as well as with what was just laid out by Hume.Let me put it this way. To my mind, Descartes started by destroying absolute knowledge and then tried to think his way past that problem to reinvent/recapture the knowledge and moral landscape he held prior to his experiment. Hume simply destroyed that capacity for absolute knowledge. That leaves us with practical knowledge alone.Kant, like Descartes, tried to think his way past that problem by reshaping absolutes as practicals in order to reinvent/recapture the knowledge and moral landscape he held prior to Hume's experiment. And worse (to my mind) he ends up appealing to Absolutes all over again... particularly in his moral philosophy... which are unable to be discussed according to the very points he had set out.The above is a perfect example. Instead of exploring the blasted landscape left by Hume, he wants to prop up something familiar. Good? Universal Law? These make no sense. I agree that because it exists and it is well known and it was an attempted answer to Hume, that people generally will have to address what it says. But that is not the same as saying that it delivered anything of high value and paradigm shifting with regard to knowledge.I read Hume wayyyyy before I knew of Kant and figured out where that left knowledge, as well as that it did not invalidate knowledge per se. I came to the same relative conclusion Kant did, only embraced the concept of subjective knowledge and moral reality rather than replaying Descartes' initial error.When I finally read Kant, I found no use for him. He added nothing to what I already understood, and in fact felt like a repeated error... though much more longwinded about it.I suppose one can argue that since Kant came before me, I received instruction in his answers to Hume (without knowing it) and so benefited from Kant's influence without having to read him. That I did not come up with my answer to Hume on my own at all.Eh, maybe so. I don't believe that to be the case, and I am not trying to blow my own horn, particularly as I don't believe that Kant's answer was that impressive. I believe it is rather obvious, once one meditates on the fact that after reading Hume one continues to get up each morning and put on one's pants. Or should I say appears to do so? Again, it seems to me the seeds are directly in Hume's work.I will say this though, I am thankful for this discussion as in researching (brushing up on) Kant, I did find something of his I had not read before and like. His essay "What is Enlightenment?" was interesting and inspiring.I will note that at the end of the Wiki entry on Kant you will see that some western philosophers prefer to draw their lineage to Hume and not to Kant. I understand that some would choose to go through Kant, I just don't believe anyone has to (which is why he is not the primary paradigm shifter), and I don't think I was influenced by him at all.

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

I don't think we disagree. I'm not endorsing Kant as my favorite philosopher. He isn't. The reason I mentioned his philosophy is because of its influence on Western thought.I do think it's important here to distinguish here between personal assessment--'nothing important there for me'--and a general assessment--'nothing important there in the history of Western philosophy.'One reason his thesis struck you as nothing special, I'm sure, is because the ideas have been so thoroughly absorbed and developed since they were presented. You suggested this possibility yourself. They seem as obvious to us now as a round earth: psychology goes about the business of understanding cognition, science justifies its methods on practical grounds, people accept that one can't prove or disprove anything in the realm of metaphysics.Kant's ideas are part of the air we breathe now. The picture would not be quite the same if the last word had been left with Hume. Absolutely. And that's not small change.If that endeavor seems ordinary, it's because we talk about the acquisition and nature of knowledge every day now. Teenagers log onto message boards today and talk like Kantians without even knowing it.It's hard to believe that in Kant's day the nature and importance of human cognition was virgin territory. No psychology majors existed then in any university in the world. The field did not exist. The research did not exist. The terms did not exist.The picture before Kant was mechanistic in its simplicity: we register sensory impressions and 'think' about them. Philosophers discussed what we think. But they spent little effort considering how we think and what that means in the world of ideas. The picture was simpler, more linear, more atomistic... in a word, more naive.For me this exchange feels a bit like encountering a clever scientist who finds Darwin's Origin of Species nothing special. 'No big deal. I already learned most of this myself. The writing is dull. The biology is rudimentary and I don't really buy that explanation of the giraffe's neck. The seeds of this idea were already out there, anyway. Someone would have thought of this if Darwin hadn't. Most of the best ideas about evolution really come from Mendel.'As a personal response this is not only valid, but perceptive, thought-provoking and entertaining. And every comment is accurate, too, when you get right down to it. All except one.Darwin's idea is still a big deal.
___If it's okay with you, holmes, I do want to get back to original purpose in bringing up that subject. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.Messanjah tells us he plans to prove the existence of God.It's an ambitious project. But he has time.And he's arrogant. That could work for him if he channels it. Projects of this magnitude are not completed by the humble.But he may as well know it doesn't do to reheat the old Scholastic arguments. There's been a paradigm shift since they were made. Whoever we credit for that shift--Descartes, Hume, Kant, Darwin, Hubble, Einstein, or all of them--it's there.The earth was scorched. New forests took root and grew tall and lush. Black gold can still be drilled out of Aquinas, but it's fossil fuel. The green growth stands elsewhere.Any idea intended for serious consumption has to take account of this.How would one go about this? What do you think a new 'proof for the existence of God' has to achieve now?_Edited by Archer Opterix, : Title.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : One more typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

You must be careful with your words now. Perhaps it is neither the fault of you or I because the discussion ended so abruptly due to my short suspension.Upon reading your post recently; the time at which I replied, I mistakenly took your term "elements" to mean the actual, physical elements.Your premise on what you coined the "most basic level" is inadequate. But this was entirely expected.
The "most basic level" must lack definition because those things that can be defined have origin.
The "most basic level" therefore must be devoid of any physical matter for matter must surely have origin.Now to your quibble when I wrote God.God is something that is beyond definition and human comprehension. God is an adequate explanation for the impetus of all things because it can not be defined or known. God represents that which has no origins that is outside of logic and human reason.In this description of "God" one finds an answer to origins.
One may find this as an "easy way out" but it surely is not. For this creates many more problems when one attempts to justify his/her existence.
In summation:
A God cannot have an explanation for it is outside the limits of our cognitive ability.This exchange is going well again and I thank you for it.

On reading your post it seems that you are just throwing out objections that make no sense at all

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Your premise on what you coined the "most basic level" is inadequate. But this was entirely expected.

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What premise are you referring to ?

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The "most basic level" must lack definition because those things that can be defined have origin.

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If I understand your usage of definition correcty this may be correct. However it is not relevant to my argument - it simply indicates that your earlier statement was incorrect:

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I will think that one would agree that there cannot be an infinite chain of causes. If this is so there had to be a beginning and there had to be some defining.
Now what would do this defining?

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The "most basic level" therefore must be devoid of any physical matter for matter must surely have origin.

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I disagree. If you accept conservation of mass/energy and if you asusme that the total mass/energy of our universe is non-zero it would imply that mass/energy had no origin.

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God is something that is beyond definition and human comprehension.God is an adequate explanation for the impetus of all things because it can not be defined or known

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If God is truly unknowable that God cannot be an adequate explanation for anything. We could never know what God would do - thus we could never reliably attribute anything to God. What you are saying is that we should be wilfully ignorant and simply accept your views as fact - because you say so.

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In this description of "God" one finds an answer to origins.

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On the contrary - all we find is a refusal to look for answers.

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A God cannot have an explanation for it is outside the limits of our cognitive ability.

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And there's just the tactic I referred to.

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This exchange is going well again and I thank you for it.

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No, it's completely non-productive. I identified the flaw in your argument right back at the start and you haven't got past it.

This is incredible Paul!I may not reply to you at anytime in the near future.I must let you know I am working on a novel right now that is a joyous celebration and I will be moving out of this character.Thank you for the conversation.

We can drop the debate on Kant, however your exit commentary was so strongly stated, that I feel compelled to clarify any misconceptions as well as set down a strongish statement of my own (and people can feel free to choose). I hope you won't take offense in that portion of this reply, even if it is meant to be left hanging. I recognize that Kant is important in that he ended up influencing a lot of people. His work was essentially the first solid reply to Hume. He had a lot of followers as well as people that went on to challenge his works and so he played a part in developing discussion within western philosophy.But influence, to my mind, is not the same as opening a whole new perspective that is a wholesale change in how we have to think and deal with things.To make matters worse, his writing is derivative or a synthesis of earlier writings (eg his ding an sich parallels with plato, berkely, and locke), which ultimately fail to answer the problem he was addressing, and others have/had to tackle the same problem all over again. Your commentary championing him, leaves out the fact that his solutions were not necessary and not really in use, even if some of his verbiage might be. Nice. I feel the barb. And indeed B. Russell (Hist. Wes. Phil. p#704) says "Immanuel Kant... is generally considered the greatest of modern philosophers. I cannot myself agree with this estimate, but it would be foolish not to recognize his great importance."Of course he also goes on to note regarding the topic I was discussing "Hume, by his criticism of the concept of causality, awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers - so at least he says, but the awakening was only temporary, and he soon invented a soporific which enabled him to sleep again."Let me suggest another analogy. Columbus was unquestionably important for those in Europe. A whole new world was suddenly available for exploration. Lewis and Clark were quite important to understanding the extent of the landscape for those venturing out into the western portions of that New World. While both were important for western world exploration, were both paradigm-shifters?Our exchange, to my mind, feels a bit like someone claiming how important Lewis and Clark were for Western exploration of the world, putting their work above Columbus's.Yeah people today end up discussing features L&C wrote about first, as well subsequent western explorers having taken the "route" they trailblazed, but this leaves out the fact that others had been there in some fashion before L&C, and would certainly have to discover those areas anyway. Eventually their discoveries were made moot or were overturned with later work, some not even having taken L&C into consideration.Because of this, one can get away with discussing important world exploration (from the point of view of Western interests) without discussing L&C but it is hard to do so without mentioning Columbus. It is hard to discuss historic epistemological and metaphysical explorations (which still hold meaning for the modern student) without discussing Hume, but one can do just fine without discussing Kant.So analogously, to me, L&C were important, incredibly important in that they shaped how the western US went on to be understood and discussed for a long time, but Columbus was the paradigm shifter.I will point out that Kant was not touted much in my own studies, and in a history of science class for psychology students which my gf just took, they did not include Kant. They did however cover descartes, hume, and locke. Locke's approach indeed seems more suitable to modern psych, which is gaining in mechanistic approaches, rather than Kant who would seem more suited to generalized cognitive approaches which do not emphasize what is happening. This oversight is not the case for Darwin in biology circles. Okay, back to the thread topic. I totally agree with this. And it is true that Kant supplied better critiques of "proofs of God" than Hume did, taking it on very directly. I think the very concept of a proof for the existence of God, flies in the face of having Faith. If Gods were so obvious from evidence or logic, religion wouldn't be considered "faith" at all... it wouldn't even be important in a conceptual sense, as it would be like everything else we deal with: a practical reality.It seems to me people have become less honest about the limits of what they know, or can know, and want to prop their rational doubts with pillars of seemingly sound argument, rather than rationally admit they don't know and so practice faith. (Note: your awesome post on creos exhibiting science envy may very well be addressing an extension of this phenomena).I found Kant's argument for accepting the existence of God pragmatic, yet ultimately Pascalian and flawed in the same way. Unfortunately it may very well be the best argument any individual theist will ever have... even if it falls short of a proof.Edited by holmes, : clarityEdited by holmes, : aborted attemptEdited by holmes, : typos n more

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holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)