{"id":8169,"date":"2014-01-30T17:00:34","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/01\/30\/an-anselmian-antilogism\/"},"modified":"2014-01-30T17:00:34","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T17:00:34","slug":"an-anselmian-antilogism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/01\/30\/an-anselmian-antilogism\/","title":{"rendered":"An Anselmian Antilogism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philosophy is its problems, and they are best represented as aporetic polyads.  One sort of aporetic polyad is the antilogism. <\/span> An antilogism is an inconsistent triad: a set of three propositions that cannot all be true.  The most interesting antilogisms are those in which the constitutent propositions are each of them plausible.  If they are more than  plausible, if they are self-evident or undeniable, then we are in the presence of an aporia<\/em> in the strict sense.  (From the Greek a-poros<\/em>, no way.)  Aporiai<\/em> are intellectual impasses, or, to change the metaphor, intellectual knots that we cannot  untie.  Here is a candidate:
<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1.  God is a perfect being.
<\/span><\/p>\n

2.  A perfect being is one that exists necessarily if it exists at all.
<\/span><\/p>\n

3.   <\/span>Whatever exists  exists contingently.
<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is easy to see that the members of this trio are collectively inconsistent.  So the trio is an antilogism.  Now corresponding to every antilogism there are three valid syllogisms. (A syllogism is deductive argument having exactly two premises.)  Thus one can argue validly from any two of the propositions to the negation of the remaining one.  Thus there are three ways of  solving the antilogism:<\/span><\/p>\n

A. Reject (1).<\/em>  The price of rejection is high since (1)  merely unpacks the meaning of 'God'  if we think of God along Anselmian lines as "that than which no greater can be conceived," or as the greatest conceivable being.  It seems intuitively clearly that an imperfect being could not have divine status.  In particular, nothing imperfect could be an appropriate object of worship.  To worship an imperfect being would be idolatry.
<\/span><\/p>\n

B. Reject (2).<\/em>  The price of rejection is steep here too since (2) seems merely to unpack the meaning of  'perfect being.'  Intuitively, contingent existence is an imperfection.
<\/span><\/p>\n

C.  Reject (3).<\/em>  This is a more palatable option, and many will solve the antilogism in this way.  If ~(3), then there are noncontingent beings.  A noncontingent being is either necessary or impossible. So if God is noncontingent, it does not follow that God is necessary.  He could be impossible.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the rejection of (3) is not without its problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion<\/em>)  I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon:  no matter what we think of as existing, we can just as easily think of as not existing.  This includes God.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Try it for yourself.  Think of God together with all his omni-attributes and then think of God as not existing.  Our atheist pals have no trouble on this score.  The nonexistence of God is thinkable without logical contradiction.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The Humean reasoning in defense of (3) rests on the assumption that conceivability entails possibility.  To turn aside this reasoning one must reject this assumption.  One could then maintain that the conceivability by us of the nonexistence of God is consistent with the necessity of God's existence.
<\/span><\/p>\n

The price of rejecting (3) is that one must deny that conceivability entails possibility.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is our antilogism an aporia in the strict sense?  I don't know. 
<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Existence and Essence: An Aporetic Dyad<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>A Being-Knowledge Antilogism<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Are All Genuine Problems Soluble? A Metaphilosophical Antilogism<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>A Tension in My Thinking: Hume Meets Parmenides<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Sense of Contingency and the Sense of Absurdity<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philosophy is its problems, and they are best represented as aporetic polyads.  One sort of aporetic polyad is the antilogism.  An antilogism is an inconsistent triad: a set of three propositions that cannot all be true.  The most interesting antilogisms are those in which the constitutent propositions are each of them plausible.  If they are more … Continue reading “An Anselmian Antilogism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,143,97,235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aporetics","category-god","category-hume","category-modal-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}