Tillich's Implied Ontologcial Argument

Paul Tillich.....................Duane Olson

What follows are examples of my own attempts and the attempts of others at making God arguments based upon Tillich’s ideas and implicit arguments. The first one is based upon Duane Olson’s idea of Tillich’s implied ontological argument. The second and third arguments are based upon my own first understanding of what Tillich was saying about God and being itself. This is the crude understanding I had leavening seminary. These are supposed to be examples of “talking points” not “proofs” of God’s existence. They are demonstrations of aspects of the depth of being, indications that being has depth. We can use this concept, indications that being has depth, as the orientation for God arguments, rather than “proofs” of “God’s existence.” Tillich never put these ideas together in this way to call them “arguments” but these are ideas I take from Tillich, although without being put over as “arguments.” In fact here they are not so much arguments as “points of embarkation” to move into the realization process. That is the process that leads to “realizing God.”

Several authors have tired to demonstrate that Tillich’s understanding implies a ready made ontological argument:

Paul Tillich’s name is not ordinarily included in a list of thinkers who have made a significant contribution to the ontological argument. Those who find affinity with Tillich’s thought have tended to overlook what he says about the arguments for God’s existence, influenced perhaps by Tillich’s sometime statements about the improper nature of such arguments.[1] Those who work with the arguments for God’s existence have tended to avoid Tillich’s ideas, perhaps for the same reason, or perhaps because his critique of the “existence of God” seems to belie a connection with arguments attempting to prove God’s existence. Despite this overlooking, I contend that Tillich made a significant contribution to the ontological argument and that it is important to examine this contribution for several reasons. 1) Tillich sought to reconceive the argument from its traditional interpretation in which the argument is understood as attempting to prove the existence of a theistic deity on the basis of an idea of this deity. [2]

In addition to Olson’s version there Is also John M. Russell at Methodist Theological School in Ohio.[3] I am only able to obtain the Olson article so that’s the one I’ll deal with. Olson argues that Tillich works with the classical correspondence theory of epistemology. Truth is correspondence between subject and object. “The focus of Tillich’s main argument is not on concrete judgments, or any truths in any field of knowledge, but on the fact that the subject has the capacity to make judgments about reality. This capacity involves applying a correspondence-norm, or a norm of truth, to a concrete subject-object interaction.”[4]

The indubitability of the norm of truth is shown by a reductio argument regarding the process of knowing. In different places and in different ways Tillich points out that denial and doubt in knowing presuppose the norm of truth.[17 in the article] I want to systematize Tillich’s reductio argument at this point to show that all major theoretical postures presuppose this norm.We can imagine four major postures taken by a subject to any theoretical judgment. One could affirm the judgment, claiming it corresponds with reality; one could deny the judgment, claiming it does not correspond; one could doubt, question, and debate the judgment; or one could claim a decision cannot be made about the judgment. All of the options presuppose the subject’s ability to apply a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth. Certainly one must apply a norm to affirm a judgment. One must also apply a norm, however, to deny a judgment. Any negative judgment presupposes and lives from the positive bearing of a norm of truth by the subject. One cannot deny that a judgment corresponds to reality without presupposing the subject’s ability to make judgments about reality. Doubting, questioning, or debating a judgment presuppose a norm of truth as well. One could not debate the veracity of a judgment without presupposing the capacity in the debaters to determine that veracity. Doubting or questioning a judgment is only meaningful under the presupposition of a norm that gives validity to that questioning and doubting. Finally, the claim that one cannot know whether a judgment is true presupposes the bearing of a norm to determine how or why a decision cannot be made.

It is important to note that the argument for a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth, is on a different level than arguments about the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object. The correspondence itself may be conceived in terms of naïve realism, idealism, or a multitude of positions in between. Every theory about the nature of the correspondence, however, relies on the presupposition of a correspondence-norm that would make it possible to formulate, and affirm, deny, debate, or declare uncertain that theory. Put differently, the theory of the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object is another field of knowledge that is subject to the ultimate criterion of knowledge, which is what is disclosed in the idea of a correspondence-norm.

To claim that the capacity to apply a norm is indubitable is the same thing as saying the subject bears an indubitable awareness of truth. In other words, when one analyzes the major postures toward judgments and shows how a norm of truth is presupposed as something borne by the subject in every posture, one is pointing out an awareness of truth the subject has, though it is something the subject may overlook, especially in doubting or denying particular truths. Through the reductio argument, one focuses attention on the fact that the subject bears a norm of truth, thus raising it to conscious awareness. I speak more below about the character of this awareness, but for now I simply affirm something Tillich presupposes, which is the identity between the affirmation that the subject bears a norm of truth and the subject’s awareness of this norm.[5]

The awareness of the norm of truth is the awareness of something transcendent and unconditioned, beyond the dichotomy of subject/object. This transcendent unconditioned is beyond both subjectivity and objectivity. But subject and object participate in the unconditioned, and it is a transcendent unity that makes possible all concrete affirmation, denial, down and uncertainty in the process of knowing. It is being itself appearing in the theoretical function as that which transcends subject and object. The norm of truth is not limited to subjectivity because it is used to judge the correspondence with objects. Since the subject bears it, it is not merely objective. It is not an object at all in the sense of being anything with which the subject can have a synthesis.

The subject cannot condition the norm of truth, but is conditioned by it. The subject can deny or debate or doubt any particular truth but cannot deny either her own capacity to apply a norm of truth itself. Nor can the subject down the concept of truth. The certainty about the norm of truth is different from any other contents of knowledge. The norm is grounded in necessary truth. One could not challenge the concept of truth except in terms of the untruth of truth, which implies a truth; the notion of truth, to be meaningful, but also contain the assumption that it’s opposite is untrue, and vice versa.[6]

As supplementary arguments Tillich asserts that the quest to know drives the seeker on toward an end goal of total knowing. The unconditioned nature of the norm of truth is implicit in all knowing and in the desire to know.

Let’s try to summarize what this argument is really saying by isolating and enumerating it’s most basic and necessary points. This is not an attempt at a formal presentation of logic, but merely a way of summarizing, a thumbnail sketch.

Remember from chapter 4 that Tillich identified God with truth based upon God’s eternally necessary nature and the eternal and transcendent nature of the Platonic forms and God’s self revelation in Exodus 3:

(1) Tillich understand’s God to be the unconditioned, eternal, transcendent, ground of all being;

(2) Truth is an unconditioned norm based upon the correspondence theory; truth is correspondence between subject and object.

(3) The norm of truth is self verifying sense; truth as a concept cannot be untrue unless the concept of truth is affirmed in contrast to the possibility of untruth. Any particular truth can be doubted but not the concept of truth itself.

(4) Due to this unconditioned, necessary, and indubitable nature the norm of truth is understood to be transcendent of subject and object, and transcendent of any particulars of nature.

(5) The transcendent unconditioned is equated with God in Tilich’s understanding of being itself (from 1); the existence of such a norm is demonstrated in the nature of the norm of truth.

(6) Therefore, we have a rational warrant for understanding the ground of being as synonymous with Tillich’s understanding of “the divine.”

Tillich basically makes the argument himself, in Theology of Culture where he talks about God construed as truth (see chapter 4, Augustine on Being itself). Then he says:

Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God. This is the ontological solution of the problem of the philosophy of religion. God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis.[7]

This is the part not quoted in previous chapter:

The Truth which is presupposed in every question and in every doubt precedes the cleavage into subject and object. Neither of them Is an ultimate power, but they participate in the ultimate power above them, in Being itself, in primum esse. “Being is what first appears in the intellect…” this being (which is not a being) is pure actuality and therefore Divine. We always see it but we do not always notice it; as we see everything in the light without always noticing the light as such.

According to Augustine and his followers the verum ipsum is also the bonum ipsum because nothing which is less than the ultimate power of being can be the ultimate power of good.[8]

Tillich never calls this “my ontological argument.” He may or may not hint that it is somewhere but I have not seen that. He does not, to my knowledge, put this over as a version of the OA. Yet I feel that it is and it’s essentially what Olson is talking about.

---

 [1] footnoe in the Olson article by Olsen where he states:
In one of the more significant recent monographs on Tillich’s thought, Langdon Gilkey flatly states “[Tillich] denied that an argument for the transcendent power and ground of being was possible” (Gilkey on Tillich (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 105).  Gilkey never discusses Tillich’s use of the traditional arguments.

[2] Duane Olson, “Paul Tillich and the Ontological Argument,” Quodlibet Journal vol. 6, no 3, July-sep 2004, online journal, URL: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/olson-tillich.shtml visited 8/4/10

Unfortunately this URL is no longer valid and the article cannot be found online.

Olson's wevb page: http://www.mckendree.edu/directory/duane-olson.php
lists this article as " reprinted in International Yearbook for Tillich Research, Band 1/2006"
Olson has two foot notes in this quotation which are important to examine:

1) “In one of the more significant recent monographs on Tillich’s thought, Langdon Gilkey flatly states “[Tillich] denied that an argument for the transcendent power and ground of being was possible” (Gilkey on Tillich (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 105). Gilkey never discusses Tillich’s use of the traditional arguments.” (2) “In his detailed and extensive volume on the ontological argument, Graham Oppy mentions Tillich’s name only once in the literature review, and he never analyzes any of Tillich’s statements (Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 275). To Oppy’s credit, he discusses a type of argument to which Tillich’s is related. I comment on Oppy’s analysis of this argument in the final section of this paper.”

[3] John M. Russell, “Tillich’s Implicit Ontological Argument” Sophia, Netherlands: Springer. Vol.2 No. July 1993, 1-16. Online: URL http://www.springerlink.com/content/q5324702874k2257/

visited 8/4/10

[4] Olson, Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, Olsen foot notes two sources at this point, in thinking of the indubitable nature of the norm. He sites Tillich’s Theology of Culture, 23, and the same source page 13, for the latter: This explains Tillich’s somewhat obscure statements that “God is the presupposition of the question of God,” and “God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis (Theology of Culture, 13).”

[7] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13

[8] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, op cit, 14

Olson's fn 17: 
He [Tillich] credits the insight that the norm of truth cannot be denied to Augustine (Theology of Culture, 12), and the insight that it cannot be doubted to Matthew of Aquasparta (Theology of Culture, 13).

Turth unconditioned and trancendnet

As I stated previously:

The awareness of the norm of truth is the awareness of something transcendent and unconditioned, beyond the dichotomy of subject/object. This transcendent unconditioned is beyond both subjectivity and objectivity. But subject and object participate in the unconditioned, and it is a transcendent unity that makes possible all concrete affirmation, denial, down and uncertainty in the process of knowing. It is being itself appearing in the theoretical function as that which transcends subject and object. The norm of truth is not limited to subjectivity because it is used to judge the correspondence with objects. Since the subject bears it, it is not merely objective. It is not an object at all in the sense of being anything with which the subject can have a synthesis.

The subject cannot condition the norm of truth, but is conditioned by it. The subject can deny or debate or doubt any particular truth but cannot deny either her own capacity to apply a norm of truth itself. Nor can the subject down the concept of truth. The certainty about the norm of truth is different from any other contents of knowledge. The norm is grounded in necessary truth. One could not challenge the concept of truth except in terms of the untruth of truth, which implies a truth; the notion of truth, to be meaningful, but also contain the assumption that it’s opposite is untrue, and vice versa.[vi]

As supplementary arguments Tillich asserts that the quest to know drives the seeker on toward an end goal of total knowing. The unconditioned nature of the norm of truth is implicit in all knowing and in the desire to know.

Let’s try to summarize what this argument is really saying by isolating and enumerating it’s most basic and necessary points. This is not an attempt at a formal presentation of logic, but merely a way of summarizing, a thumbnail sketch.

Remember from chapter 4 that Tillich identified God with truth based upon God’s eternally necessary nature and the eternal and transcendent nature of the Platonic forms and God’s self revelation in Exodus 3:

This is an exchange with spacemonkey on the Tillich implied OA

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Space Monkey

Yes, I'm explicitly endorsing a correspondence theory of truth. But I'm also pointing out that this doesn't commit me to anything beyond that. Objective reality =/= God (unless you want to trivialize "God").

Meta

I realize there is more to it than just correspondence theory = God. I never tried to pass if off as that simple. Yet since you do accept the basis of my concept of truth they can't argue as some have tried that the connection is a priori invalid that that point.

You are not dealing with the other assumptions that are made. you act this is the whole battle. If you don't buy that simple connection the argument is disproved, and that's just bunk.

Space Monkey

I certainly have answered that. You're the one who decided to start a new thread without addressing my previous replies. Reducing and trivializing "transcendence" in this way means that you cannot equate the outcome with God/being-itself (because objective reality =/= ground-of-being), without thereby also trivializing "God" to mean nothing more than "the universe" (which is the only needed ground of truth). I explained this all before. YOU didn't address it.

Meta:
here we see your usual MO. you assert dogmatically that I have "reduced" transcendence to a "trivial" part because you are not aware of the nature of 20th century theology and you don't know what theologian say about transcendence today. What you call "trivialized" is merely the modern view. Moreover, I suspect all you have to compare it to is the atheist straw man which never the Christian view anyway.

Space Monkey

Again, my point concerning objective reality is ontological, not epistemological. These comments aren't even relevant.

Meta:

bunk and bosh. you can't remove the importance of epistemology just saying your concerns are not epistemic, mine are. My argument is so and that makes it so.

Space Monkey

I am positing an objective reality other than god as the ontological ground of truth, but I don't need to claim anyone has anything more than a subjective access to that truth. I'm not abandoning philosophy, so kindly refrain from such absurd accusations.

Meta:
that's fine but you have to show how it makes sense to say that in light of the unconditioned nature of truth. you might have a point if were talking about a big man on throne up in the sky. Owing to the fact we are talking about the nature of being, eternal necessary primordial being, you have to demonstrate that it makes sense to talk about an ontological ground of truth apart form the unconditioned.

Space Monkey

Again, I'm not claiming that we are objective in addition to reality, that we don't need to use philosophy, or that objective reality as a concept isn't something we need to construct. All of this is wholly irrelevant to my point.

Meta:
your colleagues don't' think so. Or should I say "comrades?" DA?

Space Monkey

Do you really not understand what I've been saying? Or is it just that you realize you're unable to address it?

Meta:

I don't think you understand what I said. I also think the old"If you disagree with me you must be too stupid to understand me" Is beneath you. that's a dishonest approach. why can't you just deal honestly with my ideas?

Space Monkey

Because my point is a very simple one: We can account for truth simply as a correspondence grounded in an objective reality, and we can do so without elevating the latter concept in any way that would justify equating it with God in any sense other than that which would trivialize our conception of God by equating it with the natural universe.

Meta
Of course I would assume that. That would be the normal thing to think if one didn't understand Tillich. Tillich is uncovering a door to a forgeten knowledge. no one reads these Platonic guys now. Tillich put them in the 20th century and translated their ideas into modern phenomenology.

Once you understand the basis of the forgotten stuff the obvious nature of modern assumptions don't' seem so impregnable anymore. If you understand the forgotten stuff it just looks like someone who isn't up to date on modern thinking.


We can account for truth simply as a correspondence grounded in an objective reality

we can do than all that many unconditioned's floating about. To do your modern ontological razor job on truth you have to reduce to a point where it's not true anymore; realities it localize it, render it harmless and limited.

If it's unconditioned then it's transcendent. you can tried to deride and degrade the modern concept of transcendence but there's more to than than you are admitting.


The Tillich OA is deduced by Duane Olson, from an article in the Quodlibet Journal. Here is his take from that article on the nature of truth as implied by Tillich. The point is that he shows that you can't deny truth in the name of truth. He takes truth to be consistent with the correspondence theory of truth. To assert for it a naturasiltic grounding without the eternal necessary aspect of reality (ie God) is to assert a realitivised version of truth.

Olson:

Tillich works with the classical conception of knowledge or truth as correspondence between subject and object.[xvi] Knowledge consists of the subject making a correct judgment about reality, or more fully, making a correct judgment of the correspondence between subject and object, given the synthesis between them. The focus of Tillich’s main argument is not on concrete judgments, or any truths in any field of knowledge, but on the fact that the subject has the capacity to make judgments about reality. This capacity involves applying a correspondence-norm, or a norm of truth, to a concrete subject-object interaction.

The indubitability of the norm of truth is shown by a reductio argument regarding the process of knowing. In different places and in different ways Tillich points out that denial and doubt in knowing presuppose the norm of truth.[xvii] I want to systematize Tillich’s reductio argument at this point to show that all major theoretical postures presuppose this norm.

We can imagine four major postures taken by a subject to any theoretical judgment. One could affirm the judgment, claiming it corresponds with reality; one could deny the judgment, claiming it does not correspond; one could doubt, question, and debate the judgment; or one could claim a decision cannot be made about the judgment. All of the options presuppose the subject’s ability to apply a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth. Certainly one must apply a norm to affirm a judgment. One must also apply a norm, however, to deny a judgment. Any negative judgment presupposes and lives from the positive bearing of a norm of truth by the subject. One cannot deny that a judgment corresponds to reality without presupposing the subject’s ability to make judgments about reality. Doubting, questioning, or debating a judgment presuppose a norm of truth as well. One could not debate the veracity of a judgment without presupposing the capacity in the debaters to determine that veracity. Doubting or questioning a judgment is only meaningful under the presupposition of a norm that gives validity to that questioning and doubting. Finally, the claim that one cannot know whether a judgment is true presupposes the bearing of a norm to determine how or why a decision cannot be made.

It is important to note that the argument for a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth, is on a different level than arguments about the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object. The correspondence itself may be conceived in terms of naïve realism, idealism, or a multitude of positions in between. Every theory about the nature of the correspondence, however, relies on the presupposition of a correspondence-norm that would make it possible to formulate, and affirm, deny, debate, or declare uncertain that theory. Put differently, the theory of the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object is another field of knowledge that is subject to the ultimate criterion of knowledge, which is what is disclosed in the idea of a correspondence-norm.

To claim that the capacity to apply a norm is indubitable is the same thing as saying the subject bears an indubitable awareness of truth. In other words, when one analyzes the major postures toward judgments and shows how a norm of truth is presupposed as something borne by the subject in every posture, one is pointing out an awareness of truth the subject has, though it is something the subject may overlook, especially in doubting or denying particular truths. Through the reductio argument, one focuses attention on the fact that the subject bears a norm of truth, thus raising it to conscious awareness. I speak more below about the character of this awareness, but for now I simply affirm something Tillich presupposes, which is the identity between the affirmation that the subject bears a norm of truth and the subject’s awareness of this norm.

As Tillich shows, the awareness of the norm of truth is the awareness of something unconditioned that transcends the distinction between subject and object. It is, as he puts it, “the identity of subject and object,”[xviii] or that which “transcends subject and object,”[xix] or “something beyond subjectivity and objectivity.”[xx] It is a transcending unity in which both subject and object participate and which makes possible all concrete affirmation, denial, doubt, and uncertainty in the knowing process. It is being-itself appearing in the theoretical function as that which is beyond subjectivity and objectivity, but that in which they both participate, and which makes possible the judgments in that process.

The norm of truth cannot be merely subjective, because the subject uses it to affirm, negate, debate, or declare uncertain the correspondence with objects. To make possible these judgments about reality, it must be beyond mere subjectivity. Since the subject bears it, it is, of course, not merely objective. In fact, it is not an object at all in the sense of something the subject can have a synthesis with. It is that by which the subject is able to judge all possible objects of synthesis, or all possible contents of knowledge. Because it is that which makes it possible to judge the correspondence in the difference between subject and object, it must be an identity between subject and object, or a unity in which they share. It could be called a transcending identity, or a grounding identity, depending on whether one wants to use height or depth metaphors in the description. Something that transcends the difference between subject and object, but is not another object, appears in knowing and enables the determination of correspondence despite difference.

The subject cannot condition or determine the norm of truth. In fact, the relationship runs in the reverse direction. The subject is conditioned and determined by this norm, as evidenced by the fact that the use or application of the norm is indubitable. The subject can doubt, negate, debate, or declare uncertain the veracity of any concrete truths, but it cannot deny its own capacity to apply a norm of truth.

Since the bearing of the norm is indubitable, it is a necessary thought. Tillich claims there is “unconditional certainty” about it.[xxi] The certainty about this norm is different from the certainty about any content of knowledge, which can always be doubted. In fact, affirming the norm involves a paradox, since it is the affirmation of the first principle of knowledge. Claiming it is true that the subject bears the norm presupposes already the validity of the norm.[xxii] This means the truth of the norm and the certainty attached to it is not like the truth or certainty of any other contents of knowledge. What is affirmed is a grounding truth and grounding certainty. While Tillich does not use these terms, perhaps it is best to describe the affirmation of the norm as an assent or an opening of the subject to the presence of the norm. The subject takes note of and acknowledges the ground by which it is conditioned. At the same time, however, what the subject is opening to presents itself as a necessary thought that cannot be denied.

The two supplementary arguments Tillich gives focus respectively on the presence of the unconditioned in the subjective and objective side of knowing. Regarding the subjective side, Tillich claims numerous times in his work that the unconditioned appears as a “demand” for knowledge or for truth.[xxiii] The quest to know has an unconditional quality that drives the subject beyond every tentative grasp of reality and determines the scientific process. The subject is conditioned by the norm, rather than conditioning it. Part of that conditioning is not only that the subject bears and must apply a norm, but involves the bearing of a demand ultimately to break beyond any tentative grasp of reality to a full or complete one.

The objective side involves the grasp of the unconditioned in and through the contents in every field of knowledge. Tillich speaks of the “depth of reason,” or the presence of the unconditioned in the knowing process that he describes as “pointing to… the infinite power of being and of the ultimately real through the relative truths in every field of knowledge.”[xxiv] Here, positive correspondences in the knowing process function as symbols for that which transcends them and breaks through them. The norm that makes it possible to determine correspondence transcends, but remains present in the actual correspondences that make up the various fields of knowledge. This presence is not absolute, or there would be no criticism, and we have already seen that the norm bears the capacity to negate, doubt, and question.

With this full description, Tillich points to the presence of the unconditioned not only in isolated theoretical acts, as in the main argument, but in the knowing process as a whole. It is present as presence (the ultimately real in relative truths), and as demand (the inexhaustible drive for a complete unity of truth), in the totality of the knowing process.

Atheists Can't Handle Truth:massive confusion over Tillch's impied OA

Last week I made a post about Tillich's implied Ontological argument. I will now summarize. The concept of truth, X is "true" as opposed to being false, and the contradiction to X is fase by virtue of the fact that X is true, is the basis for understanding that being has depth. Its' not a proof that God exists, becasue in Tillich's view existence is a term we use for contingent things.God transcends existence but is being itself. So existence is less than being. Tillich opposed arguments that attempt to prove God exists because he saw them as objectifying God and turning him into a thing, an additional fact in the universe, rather than the ground of being.

The implied Tillich OA, rather than proving the existence of God actually demonstrates the depth of being. Remember Tillich said "if you know that being has depth you can't be an atheist." What he means by depth is there's more to being than just the surface level of things existing. So the idea of God as being itself is the idea that some aspect of reality's such that we can think of it as "holy." Or as John Macquarrie puts it "holy being."

The OA says there is a category of logic called truth and its contradiction is false. It's not limited to anyone particular truth, but all truth, the concept of truth itself. This concept is transcendent in that it can't be limited to any one place or time as long as we are using the same sense of the terms. In this sense it is unconditioned. Since God is also unconditioned in this way, being itself, apart form any particular example of being but the basis for all being then God is synonymous with truth.

The atheist throw a little tantrum because they want to control truth, without God. They want scinece to be the only source of truth. They say "how could 2+2=4 prove god?" The ides is not tha any given particular truth proves god, it's that the concept of a true answer and its contradiction is false, the fact that that category is universal, transcendent and unconditioned means that there is a transcendent unconditioned aspect of reality.

In the discussion on CARM two atheists in particular fell all over themselves reacting badly to this idea.

Discussion on CARM

Captain obvious

Science is truth... based on the available evidence at the time. It models and explains natural processes. When new discoveries are made, they replace or update previous theories. Knowledge grows incrementally, that is a thing.

Westvelitern

Two things can be contradictory and yet true in science. You should familiarize yourself with the Quantum world.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

you actually read that? did you notice it defines truth as fact!

so you can't argue against the concept of truth itself as unconditioned corrospnosense to what is.

Which was not the point in the first place. Man you are dense sometimes.


(but of cousre it was the point, it's my thread it's my point)


Can science be both true and not true? Sure, but you won't know what part is not true until something new that appears to be true updates it.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

look all that jazz has to assume ideas. Basque you talking language so you have to assume meaning to assume is to assume ideas.

Westveletern

you can't deny philosophy becuase it's the basis of scinece (natural philosophy).

Methodological naturalism is the basis of science.

Metacrock
of course that's not a philosophy is it? A little thing called Naturalism!

Westvleteren;

Still not getting the difference in scientific evidence and philosophical argument are you?

Metacrock
you arleady admitted that science is based upon philosophy. because naturalism is not a fact it's a philosophy. to have the concept of facts you have to have the concept o trut. this has been proven by the definitions from Websters.

you have contradicted yourself over and over. first you try to say that scinece gives facts. then you say facts have nothing to do with truth bu the dictionary fines truth by fact and fact by truth. then you say facts having nothing to do with the way he world is. then you scinece tells us the way the word is.

either the science of scinece is a systematic method for understanding th way things for or it' just a superstition. if the former then it is about true. it's in the category of truth telling.

You can't seal scinece off from the category of truth. you have tried to make it into it's own little category that is neither true nor false but you still want it to tell you facts and how the world is. That's tacitly accepting truth as a category.

I"m sorry you have never thought about this before. This is just part of the reason why scinece requires philosophy to make it make sense.

Westvleteren;

Methodological naturalism not philosophical naturalism

Metacrock
what do you think ethological naturalism is derived from? there's no fact in nature that says "this is natural." I don't see little tags on rocks and trees that say "natural tree." these are words, all words are constructs and all contracts are ideas.



Westvleteren;

Lets try to bring this down to the third grade level for you. Science explains facts

Metacrock
what is a fact? the dictionary says facts are part of truth. you deny scinece is truth. but here you are saying science accepts this idea that is part of truth.

Westvleteren;

That facts exist does not in any way lead to the existence of a god no matter what you definition of a god is. Do I need to try and bring that down to a kindergarten level for you?

Metacrock
Is what you just said true? how can it be true unless you accept a concept of truth? If you accept a concept of turth you must accept that there is a transcendent unconditioned, that correlates to God because that's what God is.

Westvleteren;

It is a method of explaining the world around us, nothing more or less.

Metacrock
O a method! ah I see, because it' sa method it just comes magically out of the earth we don't have to think about it right? methods aren't related to anything about ideas are they? Aren't methods derived form ideas? that makes them part of philosophy genius.

Westvleteren;

It does not tell us facts it explains facts, that seems to be hard for you to grasp. That explanation is never complete hence it changes over time as we gain further knowledge.

Metacrock
you have a concept of fact that's disjointed form truth even though the dictionary defines fact as truth and truth as fact. You admit it's not complete, which means to fit it into a larger understanding we have to augment it with ideas and constructs, the process of which is philosophy itself! But then you assert htat philosophy is cow dung and scinece doesn't' need it. You just showed us that it needs some sort of augmenting with thought.

I"m sorry you have never thought about this before. This is just part of the reason why scinece requires philosophy to make it make sense. (This is what I'm saying o you Westwhoseits)


Originally Posted by souper genyus

All knowledge is tentative and subject to revision or omission, but it is perhaps the only method of inquiry into contingent claims that has demonstrated that it can even get close to approaching the truth.

Metacrock
you have to have a category for truth to have an appraoch to truth. So that what you just said you have to tacitly accept the idea of truth. Which you did. Atheists throughout this thread have been treating the category of truth as though it's nothing more than some particular fact about things.

Westvleteren;

]if we can see it, touch it and test it it is natural.
Ditto for you.

Metacrock
I know you can't understand concepts. tis' not in a lab manual so you can't get it, but try to reflect a big for a sec ok? You can't look at something in nature an see "natural" written on it. you have to apply an idea in your mind. That idea comes form thinking not form facts or observations. You don't see 'naturalism' in nature, you have to apply a construct. That's philosophy.

the idea of Naturalism comes from a philosophical idea. Saying that about touching it that's just par to the idea. Touching it doesn't tell you it's natural in the way that book says "this is natural." You have to apply a concept.


Westvleteren;

Try reading for comprehension.

Metacrock
look who is taking. you say the word but you don't understand it. you are really looking for slogans and brain washing rather than actually think about what I'm saying. you are not really thinking about any of the things I'm saying you are completely brain washed.

Westvleteren;

Nonsensical gibberish that has no bearing on reality. If my kids came up with that nonsense I would have them committed.

Metacrock
To define reality you have to think about the concept. that is philosophy can't you get it? are you so dense you can't understand the difference in observing and thinking?

Westvleteren;

What part of evidence versus pure philosophical argumentation was lost on you?

Metacrock
the part where you can't understand Hume.. I'm sure you never read him but he say we don't see cause and effect we have to assume it. that means we are applying philosophy. the same with naturalism. natural is not a thing you see. it's a category of thought you impose.

what a genius can't even understand that!


Westvleteren;

Not what I said but then again your comprehension is abysmal.
Again not what I said Metacrack.

Metacrock
I'm not the one who can't think about what' being said. you contradict yourself everything you speak of methodology and naturism and then say it's not part of thinking.

you don't see methodology in nature. do you know that? [B]where is the methodology in nature. Is it in the desert in Arizona? where they do keep it?[/B]

These nonsense statements about "philosophical arguments are no good and "don't' mean nutt'n," have to stop. Nothing betrays an ignorance of the history of scinece more concretely than the attempt by scientism to rail road actual thinking.

First let's define scientism: the concept that scinece is the only form o knowledge, all other kinds f learning and knowing are invalid.Science is the only thing that tells us anything worth knowing.

How do we define Philosophy? There are a couple of answer that come up on Google which I think are simple and apt:

phi·los·o·phy/fəˈläsəfē/Noun
1. The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, esp. when considered as an academic discipline.
2. A set of views and theories of a particular philosopher concerning such study or an aspect of it. More »

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~phil/whatis/wsa.html

Philosophy's goal is nothing less than a systematic world view. Other fields study particular kinds of things. Philosophy asks how it all fits together. For example, if you want to learn about bodies, take a course in physics or biology. If you want to learn about minds, take a course in psychology. But if you want to learn about how minds are related to bodies, or how physics is related to psychology, then philosophy (of mind) is for you. Similarly, economics, political science, and art and music courses study different values (welfare, justice, and beauty). Then moral philosophers ask how these values are similar or different, when one may be traded off against another, and where any of these values fit into the physical world. Again, historians try to discover knowledge of the past and astronomers try to discover knowledge of stars and planets, but only philosophers ask what makes any of these beliefs knowledge, and how (or whether) we can have any knowledge at all. Such philosophical questions are very abstract, but that is what enables them to cover so many different fields at once.

you don't have to be doing academic philosophy to be philosophizing. This is why it's so incredibly ignorant for one to say thing like "philosophical arguments are no good." The same people turn right around and say "only scinece is worth knowing' spout all the slogans of scientific. Then when push comes to shove they demonstrate that they are doing philosophy in place of scinece!

Science's proper domain is the workings of the physical world. Science is a systematic methodology for understanding the working of the psychical world. As soon as you start making pronouncements to the effect that there is nothing else but the physical world, you are doing metaphysics (philosophy). Anytime you depart from the workings of the physical world to explain the bigger picture of what it means or what it entails or does not entail you are doing something else.

any kind of thinking about the nature of reality is by its nature philosophy. I argued with an atheist the other day who thought he was protected from philosophy by using a "science" word like "methodology." He says science is naturalistic methodology. He says "I said methodology not philosophy." He thinks because he used a slogan that's approved by his ideology that means it's not philosophical. That is so extremely naive.

Method is not something we observe in the world, we have to make it up. We make it up based upon theory, ideas, thinking, hypothesis testing. All of this is derived from philosophy. Science used to be called "natural philosophy." The idea of "natural" is a concept, it has to be learned, ot had to be made up. It's philosophy it's not scinece per se. It's been expropriated by scinece but it's not science. Method is derived from philosophical speculation.

At it's core science depends heavily upon philosophy and anytime one moves out from the micro level to the macro to understand the bigger picture one is doing philosophy. Philosophical arguments are fine and good and do they prove things, they are necessary to make. Even if they don't prove things per se they are necessary and they being done all the time by those who say they are no good. It's just that they dogmatically prescribe their version of philosophy and rule out versions that disprove their control over nature.

Tillich's Implied Ontologcial Argument

Paul Tillich

I am putting this up again (there's a previous version) in order to use for Monday. on monday I will have a more elaborate post that plays off of this idea.

What follows are examples of my own attempts and the attempts of others at making God arguments based upon Tillich’s ideas and implicit arguments. The first one is based upon Duane Olson’s idea of Tillich’s implied ontological argument. The second and third arguments are based upon my own first understanding of what Tillich was saying about God and being itself. This is the crude understanding I had leavening seminary. These are supposed to be examples of “talking points” not “proofs” of God’s existence. They are demonstrations of aspects of the depth of being, indications that being has depth. We can use this concept, indications that being has depth, as the orientation for God arguments, rather than “proofs” of “God’s existence.” Tillich never put these ideas together in this way to call them “arguments” but these are ideas I take from Tillich, although without being put over as “arguments.” In fact here they are not so much arguments as “points of embarkation” to move into the realization process. That is the process that leads to “realizing God.”

Several authors have tired to demonstrate that Tillich’s understanding implies a ready made ontological argument:

Paul Tillich’s name is not ordinarily included in a list of thinkers who have made a significant contribution to the ontological argument. Those who find affinity with Tillich’s thought have tended to overlook what he says about the arguments for God’s existence, influenced perhaps by Tillich’s sometime statements about the improper nature of such arguments.[i] Those who work with the arguments for God’s existence have tended to avoid Tillich’s ideas, perhaps for the same reason, or perhaps because his critique of the “existence of God” seems to belie a connection with arguments attempting to prove God’s existence. Despite this overlooking, I contend that Tillich made a significant contribution to the ontological argument and that it is important to examine this contribution for several reasons. 1) Tillich sought to reconceive the argument from its traditional interpretation in which the argument is understood as attempting to prove the existence of a theistic deity on the basis of an idea of this deity. [ii]

In addition to Olson’s version there Is also John M. Russell at Methodist Theological School in Ohio.[iii] I am only able to obtain the Olson article so that’s the one I’ll deal with. Olson argues that Tillich works with the classical correspondence theory of epistemology. Truth is correspondence between subject and object. “The focus of Tillich’s main argument is not on concrete judgments, or any truths in any field of knowledge, but on the fact that the subject has the capacity to make judgments about reality. This capacity involves applying a correspondence-norm, or a norm of truth, to a concrete subject-object interaction.”[iv]

The indubitability of the norm of truth is shown by a reductio argument regarding the process of knowing. In different places and in different ways Tillich points out that denial and doubt in knowing presuppose the norm of truth.[xvii] I want to systematize Tillich’s reductio argument at this point to show that all major theoretical postures presuppose this norm.

We can imagine four major postures taken by a subject to any theoretical judgment. One could affirm the judgment, claiming it corresponds with reality; one could deny the judgment, claiming it does not correspond; one could doubt, question, and debate the judgment; or one could claim a decision cannot be made about the judgment. All of the options presuppose the subject’s ability to apply a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth. Certainly one must apply a norm to affirm a judgment. One must also apply a norm, however, to deny a judgment. Any negative judgment presupposes and lives from the positive bearing of a norm of truth by the subject. One cannot deny that a judgment corresponds to reality without presupposing the subject’s ability to make judgments about reality. Doubting, questioning, or debating a judgment presuppose a norm of truth as well. One could not debate the veracity of a judgment without presupposing the capacity in the debaters to determine that veracity. Doubting or questioning a judgment is only meaningful under the presupposition of a norm that gives validity to that questioning and doubting. Finally, the claim that one cannot know whether a judgment is true presupposes the bearing of a norm to determine how or why a decision cannot be made.

It is important to note that the argument for a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth, is on a different level than arguments about the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object. The correspondence itself may be conceived in terms of naïve realism, idealism, or a multitude of positions in between. Every theory about the nature of the correspondence, however, relies on the presupposition of a correspondence-norm that would make it possible to formulate, and affirm, deny, debate, or declare uncertain that theory. Put differently, the theory of the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object is another field of knowledge that is subject to the ultimate criterion of knowledge, which is what is disclosed in the idea of a correspondence-norm.

To claim that the capacity to apply a norm is indubitable is the same thing as saying the subject bears an indubitable awareness of truth. In other words, when one analyzes the major postures toward judgments and shows how a norm of truth is presupposed as something borne by the subject in every posture, one is pointing out an awareness of truth the subject has, though it is something the subject may overlook, especially in doubting or denying particular truths. Through the reductio argument, one focuses attention on the fact that the subject bears a norm of truth, thus raising it to conscious awareness. I speak more below about the character of this awareness, but for now I simply affirm something Tillich presupposes, which is the identity between the affirmation that the subject bears a norm of truth and the subject’s awareness of this norm.[v]

The awareness of the norm of truth is the awareness of something transcendent and unconditioned, beyond the dichotomy of subject/object. This transcendent unconditioned is beyond both subjectivity and objectivity. But subject and object participate in the unconditioned, and it is a transcendent unity that makes possible all concrete affirmation, denial, down and uncertainty in the process of knowing. It is being itself appearing in the theoretical function as that which transcends subject and object. The norm of truth is not limited to subjectivity because it is used to judge the correspondence with objects. Since the subject bears it, it is not merely objective. It is not an object at all in the sense of being anything with which the subject can have a synthesis.

The subject cannot condition the norm of truth, but is conditioned by it. The subject can deny or debate or doubt any particular truth but cannot deny either her own capacity to apply a norm of truth itself. Nor can the subject down the concept of truth. The certainty about the norm of truth is different from any other contents of knowledge. The norm is grounded in necessary truth. One could not challenge the concept of truth except in terms of the untruth of truth, which implies a truth; the notion of truth, to be meaningful, but also contain the assumption that it’s opposite is untrue, and vice versa.[vi]

As supplementary arguments Tillich asserts that the quest to know drives the seeker on toward an end goal of total knowing. The unconditioned nature of the norm of truth is implicit in all knowing and in the desire to know.

Let’s try to summarize what this argument is really saying by isolating and enumerating it’s most basic and necessary points. This is not an attempt at a formal presentation of logic, but merely a way of summarizing, a thumbnail sketch.

Remember from chapter 4 that Tillich identified God with truth based upon God’s eternally necessary nature and the eternal and transcendent nature of the Platonic forms and God’s self revelation in Exodus 3:

(1) Tillich understand’s God to be the unconditioned, eternal, transcendent, ground of all being;

(2) Truth is an unconditioned norm based upon the correspondence theory; truth is correspondence between subject and object.

(3) The norm of truth is self verifying sense; truth as a concept cannot be untrue unless the concept of truth is affirmed in contrast to the possibility of untruth. Any particular truth can be doubted but not the concept of truth itself.

(4) Due to this unconditioned, necessary, and indubitable nature the norm of truth is understood to be transcendent of subject and object, and transcendent of any particulars of nature.

(5) The transcendent unconditioned is equated with God in Tilich’s understanding of being itself (from 1); the existence of such a norm is demonstrated in the nature of the norm of truth.

(6) Therefore, we have a rational warrant for understanding the ground of being as synonymous with Tillich’s understanding of “the divine.”

Tillich basically makes the argument himself, in Theology of Culture where he talks about God construed as truth (see chapter 4, Augustine on Being itself). Then he says:

Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God. This is the ontological solution of the problem of the philosophy of religion. God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis.[vii]

This is the part not quoted in previous chapter:

The Truth which is presupposed in every question and in every doubt precedes the cleavage into subject and object. Neither of them Is an ultimate power, but they participate in the ultimate power above them, in Being itself, in primum esse. “Being is what first appears in the intellect…” this being (which is not a being) is pure actuality and therefore Divine. We always see it but we do not always notice it; as we see everything in the light without always noticing the light as such.

According to Augustine and his followers the verum ipsum is also the bonum ipsum because nothing which is less than the ultimate power of being can be the ultimate power of good.[viii]

Tillich never calls this “my ontological argument.” He may or may not hint that it is somewhere but I have not seen that. He does not, to my knowledge, put this over as a version of the OA. Yet I feel that it is and it’s essentially what Olson is talking about.

---

[ii] Duane Olson, “Pual Tiillich and the Ontological Argument,” Quodlibet Journal vol. 6, no 3, July-sep 2004, online journal, URL: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/olson-tillich.shtml visited 8/4/10

Olson has two foot notes in this quotation which are important to examine:

1) “In one of the more significant recent monographs on Tillich’s thought, Langdon Gilkey flatly states “[Tillich] denied that an argument for the transcendent power and ground of being was possible” (Gilkey on Tillich (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 105). Gilkey never discusses Tillich’s use of the traditional arguments.” (2) “In his detailed and extensive volume on the ontological argument, Graham Oppy mentions Tillich’s name only once in the literature review, and he never analyzes any of Tillich’s statements (Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 275). To Oppy’s credit, he discusses a type of argument to which Tillich’s is related. I comment on Oppy’s analysis of this argument in the final section of this paper.”

[iii] John M. Russell, “Tillich’s Implicit Ontological Argument” Sophia, Netherlands: Springer. Vol.2 No. July 1993, 1-16. Online: URL http://www.springerlink.com/content/q5324702874k2257/

visited 8/4/10

[iv] Olson, Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid, Olsen foot notes two sources at this point, in thinking of the indubitable nature of the norm. He sites Tillich’s Theology of Culture, 23, and the same source page 13, for the latter: This explains Tillich’s somewhat obscure statements that “God is the presupposition of the question of God,” and “God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis (Theology of Culture, 13).”

[vii] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13

[viii] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, op cit, 14