tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post7093738302900971875..comments2024-03-29T01:14:19.030-07:00Comments on Metacrock's Blog: Best of all Possible Worlds?Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-18869225415254494582016-04-17T07:33:40.193-07:002016-04-17T07:33:40.193-07:00Eric I wish you would join my message board commun...Eric I wish you would join my message board community. I know you would like it because they are very intelligent and well read a no trolls. None of the usual message board BS/ But we need another atheist. We have some but they are not around right now.<br /><br />http://www.doxa.ws/forum/<br /><br />if you sign up let me know because I have approve and I get lots of spam bots so I need to know it's you. see mainly the adventure of faith board.Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-24188502868750030622016-04-16T23:07:28.461-07:002016-04-16T23:07:28.461-07:00The real problem for Leibniz is his commitment to ...The real problem for Leibniz is his commitment to the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), and I would suggest that anyone who accepts PSR thereby inherits Leibniz's headache, as well. So suppose you say, as Leibniz also did, that there must be a sufficient reason that explains the existence of the universe, and that an explanatory chain of sufficient reasons must ultimately terminate in a first explainer. If you accept PSR, it seems you have to reject the thesis that this first explainer is, itself unexplained. So something explains it. But it can't be explained by a prior explainer, because you've already committed to it's being the first, so the only option left is that it is both a first-explainer and also a self-explainer – a necessary being.<br /><br /><b>I don't think so., I have never understood why PSR is regarded with such disdain when all atheists see to explain everything and if you try to assertive can't know something they use that aws a weness so in effect everyone accepts PSR anyway.<br /><br />there is a sufficient reson for everything we have to always know what it is</b>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-52016694644545533522016-04-16T23:04:49.860-07:002016-04-16T23:04:49.860-07:00It will take me longer to address your longer comm...It will take me longer to address your longer comment. The issue of necessity vs certainty. Certainly I agree with that distinction. No one claims creation is necessary, God is necessary and creation is God's option. But then the question why do it at all can only be answered by the assumption that the calculations of God must prove or show that creation is the most loving act despite it's draw backs.Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-36193094297041637082016-04-15T06:51:26.686-07:002016-04-15T06:51:26.686-07:00The real problem for Leibniz is his commitment to ...The real problem for Leibniz is his commitment to the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), and I would suggest that anyone who accepts PSR thereby inherits Leibniz's headache, as well. So suppose you say, as Leibniz also did, that there must be a sufficient reason that explains the existence of the universe, and that an explanatory chain of sufficient reasons must ultimately terminate in a first explainer. If you accept PSR, it seems you have to reject the thesis that this first explainer is, itself unexplained. So something explains it. But it can't be explained by a prior explainer, because you've already committed to it's being the first, so the only option left is that it is both a first-explainer and also a self-explainer – a necessary being.<br />Now, here is where the real problem arises, and it hits exactly at the question of whether accepting PSR is a good idea to begin with. And it raises exactly the question that Joe suggests involves fallacious reasoning: If God is a necessary being, does it follow that all of God's actions are necessary? The problem PSR creates here is this: Consider any property P that God has. God either has P necessarily, or contingently. Suppose that God has P contingently. Now apply PSR, and you get the result that there must be a sufficient reason for God's having P. But the same reasoning by which you reject an infinite explanatory regress for the existence of the universe now leads you to reject an infinite explanatory regress for God's having P. So it looks like God's having P must ultimately rest on God's having some other property, N, which is not contingent, but necessary. But if N explains P, then we have to ask whether N necessarily explains P, or whether N only contingently explains P. Lather-rinse-repeat. We could call this the problem of higher-order explanation. And this was Leibniz's problem, exactly. The property is question was God's creation of this world in preference to other possible worlds he could have created instead. So what is the sufficient reason for God's creating this world in preference to the others? PSR says there has to be a reason, and Leibniz says it is because this world is better than the others, and God's goodness is part of his essence, so the certainty of God's creating BPW is grounded in God's essential goodness. But wait. God cannot fail to be good. God cannot fail to be perfect. So how can it make sense to say that God could have failed to create BPW? <br />So what are the options? It seems to me the only possibilities are to reject PSR altogether, or else to suggest some restricted or modified version of PSR that (non-arbitrarily) avoids the problem here. And I am unpersuaded that any such modified PSR-variant is in the offing. I know Alexander Pruss has proposed one, but I don't see how he avoids the problem of higher-order explanation.Eric Sotnakhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06162425851889399481noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-44862188123483483082016-04-15T06:50:00.914-07:002016-04-15T06:50:00.914-07:00Re. “(1) God would have to opt for the best possib...Re. “(1) God would have to opt for the best possible world if God is to be perfect and good and loving.”<br />Actually, Leibniz explicitly wanted to avoid the claim that God HAS to create the best possible world (BPW), i.e., that God's creation of the BPW is necessary. What he tries to claim is that God's creation of BPW is certain, but not necessary. What ensues in Leibniz's writings is an effort to distinguish certainty from necessity by invoking the principle that a proposition whose analysis requires an infinite number of steps to complete is contingent – a thesis that is bizarre, implausible, and also a bit ironic from one the inventors of calculus (given its use of infinite convergence). I am actually sympathetic to a reading of Leibniz on this point that suggests it isn't that contingency results from the infinity of the analysis, but rather that contingent analyses are infinite because they ultimately rest on divine free will, which is also very close to what I think you are suggesting. Now Leibniz had the problem here of what looks like a vicious circularity: contingency rests on divine free will, but divine free will presupposes contingency. I'm not sure you can avoid the same problem. What is the sufficient reason for God's freely choosing one way rather than another?Eric Sotnakhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06162425851889399481noreply@blogger.com