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Recent content by ashurbanipal

  1. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    Take your time responding; it'll likely be another week before I can return.
  2. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    Well, I think you need to make a valid argument first, before the onus would be on me to prove it bad absolutely. No valid argument can exist in which you can assert A and not-A. To mention but one point: a necessary being of the sort contemplated by Anselm, or especially by GP, would have no...
  3. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    No, that is not true--at least not if you mean to assert the antecedent and therefore the consequent, as certain cues within your phrasing seem to indicate (e.g. "(as it obviously is)" and "inescapably"--and then below you call the consequent a conclusion). The above proposition implies...
  4. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    I'm not so inclined to grant that solipsism the way ACC is urging it is possible. When we first started talking about worlds in which I am the only being, I was thinking of me floating in some kind of void. That seems possible. However, a possible world in which I am the creator of everything...
  5. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    And my immediately-above remarks notwithstanding, you've missed the point anyway: you're making a de re claim. That is, a claim about someone in the actual world, and what is possible for that someone. You're trying to apply de dicto rules to determine what is possible for that someone--which...
  6. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    But, with respect to this point, you weren't making any claims about logical impossibility. You needed there to be no nomic relations between a concept and its object. Pretty confident is enough to secure a nomic relation. To refresh your memory about this sub-point within the larger...
  7. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    The problem that confronts you, as I have been saying, is that you're making a de re claim--that is, a claim about this guy in the actual world, who is sitting in a chair typing out this response. For your conclusion to be about that guy (i.e. me), you cannot just define me any way you want...
  8. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    If you understood the point I was making about this, you'd realize that the only case in which "contingent" and "possible" come apart in meaning only helps my point. Yes, necessity implies possibility, because necessity implies actuality. But that doesn't license going back the other...
  9. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    Sure, though I do not see how that would make ACC's case go through.
  10. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    I'm pretty sure you understand quite well what I mean, which is that you have left yourself no way to offer a sound argument for your view. That is, if you accept the premises you have to accept for your view to be logically consistent, it is not possible to know that any premises you could...
  11. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    I should mention that I've got classes to prepare for next term. Not only am I running the pro-seminar, I'm also doing the review for the graduate comp students and teaching another class as well, not to mention that I've got two students nearing the point where they'll be defending their...
  12. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    I don't know why you'd think so. Do you think you actually were a wolf or a dragon, or were you a human dreaming he was a wolf or a dragon? I've had dreams where I was all kinds of things--doesn't mean that I actually was those things. To say "I was the wolf in that dream" isn't the same as...
  13. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    Well...argue away, if you can. I don't see that GP mentioning Occam's razor has that consequence.
  14. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    That won't work, as I've pointed out--what you're doing is akin to imagining a world in which "triangle" means something other than "three-sided closed planar figure" and then trying to use that world to say that there is a possible world in which a triangle has four sides. Ball you've done is...
  15. ashurbanipal

    The special pleading of the religionists

    No, you haven't established that. For that to be the case, you'd need to rule out that there is a necessary being and then also show that that possible world is the actual world. You've not even attempted either of those, as far as I can tell. Why would that be true? It seems pretty clearly...
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