sewi li lon anu seme ?

[loteni]

ni li toki utala tan ken tawa lon :

toki utala ni la sewi li jan pi pona ali.
toki utala ni la sewi li pana e pona ali lon ma ken ali
toki utala ni la sewi li lon tenpo ali

nanpa wan: ken la sewi li lon
nanpa tu: sewli li lon ken la sewi li lon ma ken wan
nanpa tu wan: sewi li lon ma ken wan la sewi li lon ma ken ali
nanpa tu tu: sewi li lon ma ken ali la sewi li lon ma pi mi mute
nanpa tu tu wan: sewi li lon ma pi mi mute la sewi li lon

tan ni la sewi li lon

[janKipo]

Well, I'm not sure that 'toki utala' is the right expression for this kind of arguments, which is more like a proof than a dispute. I would think something along the line of 'toki nasin'. That aside, this hangs together pretty well, though, of course, the first three premises (or definitions?) are immediately open to attack, except as "what the proponent of this argument believes" and thus the argument becomes circular, to put it kindly. Step number one is also questionable, even give some plausible meaning to "sewi', and step number three is unsupported as well. But you just want to show you can do this sort of argument, not necessarily present a good argument. You can.

[loteni]

Yes, I thought toki utala was not a great fit, it is kind of a misuse of the term. "toki nasin" is a much better fit, I much prefer that term

Right the first three statements are merely describing what I mean by sewi, in this argument. It is less, what the proponent may or may not believe, but more something like ; for the purposes of this argument... So it is not circular, it is deductive. The steps of the argument, ie propositions 2 and on, come naturally from what we mean here by sewi.

So proposition number one is the key thing in the argument; it this even "possible". If it is, then it logically follows that sewi exists.

Proposition number three just follows logically from the conception of sewi. Hence if sewi exists in one possible world, then sewi exists in all of them. This is a bit tricky to follow, but it merely follows from what we mean by sewi.

A good argument is normally thought of as one that is valid, and has propositions that are more likely to be true than false. Since the only "input" proposition of the argument is the first one; and that merely states sewi is possible. I personally think the argument is a good one. Although, if you really look consider the argument you see it kind of plays with word uses a bit and the first premise is not as light as it may at first seem, so maybe the argument is more a good exercise than necessarily persuasive.

[added abit later, before any replies]

The argument itself, I particularly like because it explains what we mean by sewi. Also given you understand what we mean, it just logically follows that such an entity exists. Unless what we mean here has some kind of internal contradiction, which it seems not to have, then understanding this meaning, we should that sewi exists.

A circular argument is different from a deductive argument, although circular arguments be logically valid. A circular argument is one in which extracts no new information, that is to say that, the only grounds given for believing a premise is that you already believe the conclusion. A good deductive argument on the other hand, extracts information already contained in the premises, using the rules of logical inference. Which is to say that we might already believe the premises and not yet realise that it follows we should also believe something else; the conclusion.

[janKipo]

Well, it is circular because the "definitions" of 'sewi' all presuppose existence, the third explicitly. Circular arguments are usually deductive, by the way-- that is not a good contrast. Step one is, of course, questionable -- it may be that the notion of a sewi as you lay it out is inherently self-contradictory. It is more likely, of course, that it is merely so hopelessly vague that whether it can be realized is not decidable. Prop 2 follows (in a good Kripkean system anyhow) from Prop 1. I see nothing in the definitions that helps Prop 3 to follow from Prop2. Even if sewi does help in every world (an opaque notion), it does not require sewi's existence there, only a transmission of the power to do good (just like Trump doesn't have to be in my room to turn my stomach). But Prop 4 follows from Prop 3. One questionable premise and one invalid steps. Not a good argument, but about par (or a bit above) for proofs of the existence of sewi.

[loteni]

Definitions here do not presuppose existence. They merely define something as if it exists, the question of existence itself is then what the argument seeks to answer.

Right either that definition is itself contradictory or it follows that sewi exists. Vagueness doesn't really matter, the entity such defined might be defined vaguely or more precise, eitherway that concept can be shown to exist or not.

I used pana in the definitions to imply "expresses" ie entity is there and expresses these characteristics. Maybe I should have presented that part less ambiguously.

So given that, no invalid steps, and the questionable premise being premise 1 ? Yeah I think this argument is more about expressing what is mean by "sewi" such that given you comprehend that, it is more likely that said entity exists than not.

[janKipo]

So, all these definitions are "if sewi exists, then ...'. But then, they are useless in the argument, since, even if it worked it would come down to "if sewi exists then sewi exists", which is as true Ialdabaoth as of Jahweh, and so of no use. Otherwise, nothing happens. sewi is the perfetly good thing, but there is no evidence that there is such a thing, just like a unicorn is a one-horned stag. Aren't any, so what is the point of the definition. And, if helping in every world requires being in every world, then again, there is no evidence that there is such a thing, so this is just a definition in The Book of Imaginary Beasts (as it would be even if helping didn't involve being there). "If something is perfectly good, it is sewi" is fine, but doesn't get us to sewi any more than "If something is sewi, it is perfectly good" does. And further elucidating the definitions just makes the "possible exists" premise less and less likely as more and more features are added on. Vagueness enters in when the issue is whether something that does exist is sewi. If the terms are vague enough, almost anything can qualify (The Quine-Goodman maxim:"this is the best of all possible worlds because it *is* all possible worlds".)

[loteni]

To define something or describe it, doesn't imply it exists. Some things have certain attributes in their definition which seem to imply existence, but they that is not the case. For instance we say a dragon is something that lives in caves, you could say that presupposes it lives at all, but that is not how that is intended. The point of the definition is outline in some greater or lesser detail the thing that we are going to talk about. Maybe we are going to define it so as to discuss its possible existence, maybe that is not important.

The definitions should not be thought of as logical implications themselves, they are merely properties of the object being defined. That it has certain properties that define it. Some thing might have the property of always being green, but clearly that doesnt mean that anything green is of that class, there are probably other green things. However we can extract from the definitions implications to reason about the object, thus; a thing1 is green, thing2 is not green, therefore thing2 is not an instance of thing1.

Something that we define doesn't have additional rules or constraints because it is of a class of things you personally have an issue with. We use the same rules in logical reasoning for all things, nothing is given any kind of privilege.

If some definition is too vague, sure it becomes uninteresting, since the concept covers too much and we can only say general, obvious things about that class of objects. However even things like this can be interesting if what we say about them uncovers something new. Likewise if we are too specific it can become uninteresting, since what we say about it covers just a tiny class of things, possibly just one thing.

The notion of sewi in these types of arguments tends to be vague enough to capture what most people mean when they use the word to differentiate that idea from other ideas. But also specific enough to not capture other concepts people generally do not associate with that concept.

Arguments for the existence of God, tend to use a very general notion of God. You might complain that that notion doesn't prove some other qualities of God that are described in various religious texts, but that is not their intention. Infact it is reasonable to start at the most general notions of a thing and slowly become more specific.

These arguments are generally utilised when we wonder; should I believe there is any type of entity like God, or should I believe that any type of entity like that does not exist, hence atheism / theism. Now if you think all the arguments at that level, support athiesm more, you would naturally be an atheist, and that is that. However if you think all the arguments at that level, support theism more, you would naturally be a theist, but then that is not the end of the matter. Then you look at arguments about more specific ideas about God, at that level you would look into the different religions, and consider their ideas.

So the order of these things I think is optimum.

Anyway so this argument just looks at this idea, that God is the greatest conceivable being, if you can conceive of anything better, than that would be God. Modernly, this works out in modal logic as a being that is maximally "great". To be maximally great is to be maximally excellent in all possible worlds... .etc... So it seems to encapsulate quite nicely what people mean by God. Other arguments, focus on the property of eternity, the basis of existence, or the creator of the universe, again all things generally agreed on by different people using the term. Anyway these kinds of ideas or notions of God are how God is generally reasoned about in Theology and Philosophy.

[janKipo]

ante la sewi li lon la on li pona ali li sona e ali li ken pali e ali. tan ni la sewi li lon la ike li kama la sewi li sona e kama ona la sewi wile kama ala lon e ona. sewi li lon la ike li kama la sewi li sona e ni. sewi li lon la ona li wile kama ala e ike la ike li kama ala. ike li kama. tan ni la sewi li lon ala.
toki nasin li pona ali.

[janKipo]

Ah, Anselm!. So, greatness is a scalar property (things have it more or less). It is a very vague property since it is not too clear what having more or less of it really involves, but this is an argument , not a lab. So, as a scalar property, we can imagine a scale for it, say 1 to 10. Then there is no trouble imagining that something gets 10 and is, therefore, something than which nothing greater can be conceived, since it has the highest possible greatness score. Of course, we can imagine that there are several such things and we might notice that some of them seemed greater than others, so our scale needs expanding. So imagine an open-ended scale. But then, it is always possible to conceive of something greater than any given thing: if the given gets n, then imagine something that gets n+1, as is always possible. That is, sewi as defined (that than which nothing greater can be conceived) doesn't exist.
One thing we know about greatness is that something that exists is greater (other things being equal?) than something that does not exist. So in figuring out how great something is, existence is already in the account. We can't get, in short, a 10 that doesn't exist and then imagine one that does and so is greater. So,presumably, all the 10s exist and thus sewi does. But these are imagined 10s so they exist in their imagined worlds, the worlds in which they were evaluated. One such world might be this one and, if there were a 10 here, it would exist here. But so far no one has been able to point to one.
Of course, the idea is not just that existence in the evaluating world adds to greatness, but existence in more than one world, and, I suppose, the more, the greater. But now we have jumped a language type here and are no longer evaluating objects in particular worlds but talking across worlds, so that a property here depends upon other properties in other worlds. And we don't generally have a way to do this at all. All we can do is shift to another level sententially and talk about the referents of words in other worlds and their properties in those other worlds. So, "a is maximally great here" if the referent (or the avatar, the argument is pretty much the same) of "a" exists and is great in more worlds than any other thing here(or some such. There are picky details to play around with). Of course, there ae worlds in which the referent of "a" doesn't exist at all and at least one in which it exists but is not great (unless that it is great a tautological property, in which case, why all this fuss?).
So, it doesn't work, either. The official doctrine of the Catholic Church used to be (I don't keep up) that no actually presented proof for the existence of God is sound but that there is a sound proof.

[loteni]

Well them kind of arguments for sewi not existing are not really used seriously anymore. I mean its quite trivially unsound. I want my child to tidy his room, I have the power to force him to do that, but for other reasons I choose to not act on that power and his room remains a mess. Ability to and desire of, doesnt necessitate the action would occur, other factors could be in play. You could define an entity such that it has no other mitigating factors, but people generally think of sewi as having various other reasons for doing things, etc...


Anslem originally presented this type of argument, but since then, various other more arguable forms of the argument have been devised, modernly this equates to the modal formulation from Plantinga. I don't think anyone much really considers that existance is really a property anymore.