Abraxas wrote:...Necessary must be able to overcome any conceivable circumstance, including time travel. Otherwise you are just left with a strong contingent...
I get what you're saying. Certainly we can conceive that our universe didn't need to exist at all; and even more, it is conceivable that no universe similar to ours needed to actually exist. I am happy enough to argue from the "strong contingent" that "a universe such as ours is conceivable." In some ways this is stronger than my initial assumption that "something exists," since that "something" has been replaced by a universe filled with "things." But in other respects it is a slightly weaker assumption: we are no longer saying that something does actually exist, but rather only that a universe such as ours is conceivable (whether or not it actually exists).
Abraxas wrote:...I've already granted existence...
Noted.
Abraxas wrote:...It feels wrong to me to say "it is a property of X that it is like/not Y". If anything is truly a property it should be intrinsic to the object itself, not a function of other objects...
Given the strong contingent that a universe such as ours is conceivable, it seems that we need to recognize (and give a label to) the very fact that differentiation is possible--i.e., that there may be some X that is not the same as some Y. Furthermore, it seems that no "thing" can exist independently, apart from a larger context of "things." I simply cannot conceive of a universe consisting entirely of the number 2. The number 2, apart from its context within the set of integers, seems entirely meaningless to me.
Abraxas wrote:...still not getting the non-contingency of Jesus and the Holy Spirit...What would their function be...
Whether or not one finds the Christian doctrine of the Trinity coherent, it is still a fact that the three "persons" have traditionally been claimed to be eternally co-existing, co-distinct, and mutually related in their Divinity.
Abraxas wrote:...Truthfully, I think Godel was using a weaker version of property than you are...Axioms 2 through 4 were, as you said, a filter system to try to reinforce axiom 1...the step you took was necessary to avoid the first series of objections, which, at the base, was said arbitrariness. By moving to necessary properties, you do create a solid, unambiguous basis by which we can say whether a characteristic is positive or not in reference to reality. While I don't think Godel had made that move, I think it was a move he had to make...You made the move that had to be made, and now we are left with trying to extrapolate from at least one thing existing to other characteristics about that thing...
Agreed. I guess you could say that my first attempt at understanding "positive properties" resulted in a list of "super-positives."
Abraxas wrote:...I don't think he would have denied, say, luminosity is not a property, he would have said it is a positive property created through presence of energy, darkness a negative property as it is characterized by absence...
As you pointed out earlier, the intensity of luminosity (within the context of a given spectrum); the temporal duration of that luminosity; and the initial available resources (e.g., hydrogen) for that luminosity all constitute elastic, arbitrary properties. Sort of like a rectangle: given a certain area size, you can increase its "length" (one "property" in the ordinary sense) only by decreasing its "width." I don't think Godel would have argued that length or width constituted a "positive" property within his argument. Perhaps he would have used "rectangularity" (e.g., four straight lines connected at right-angles) as a positive property, but even there I think he would more likely have argued that "rectangularity," "triangularity," "circularity," etc., are all "accidental" properties. A "positive" property for him would have been "regularity" or "identifiability" of shapes, as opposed to the negation of "haphazardness" or "randomness" or "indistinctness."
Abraxas wrote:...His argument makes a lot more sense if you accept the built in cultural assumptions that power is good and inherently its own characteristic, a lack of power is bad, knowledge is good, a lack of knowledge is bad, and so on. This is why he appealed to an objective moral aesthetic and this is why I think his argument doesn't work. Without demonstrating the moral aesthetic first, the judgments become arbitrary...
Whatever may or may not have been going through his conscious mind, I suspect he had a correct intuition, and I hope hope to flesh out that intuition in terms more congenial to our post-modern mindset.
Abraxas wrote:...to move the argument forward, I will grant your three positive properties. I want to see what the move from something necessarily existing that can be differentiated and related is to godlikeness.
Okay, so we begin with the assumption that "a universe such as ours is conceivable." There may be other conceivable universes as well, but none of these other "conceivable universes" is permitted to vacate the assumption that "a universe such as ours is conceivable." From there, for the sake of argument, we are agreed that
Existence,
Differentiation, and
Relationality are three (super)positive Godelian properties ("super-positive" properties in the sense that these particular three are properties of
all conceivable universes).
The next step is to see what other properties can be considered "positive" in the Godelian sense. I'm going to think about this and respond later...
