I am certainly not here to support Gödel, but I am also nowhere near a pure empiricist. I don't have time to read everything now, but, I believe your refutation of his Point 1 isn't itself on 100 percent pure ground. And your refutation of his Point 5 is on the wrong grounds. (And I hope this isn't part of your ground of attacking ontological arguments, either.) The better answer is that "existence" simply isn't a property.
Thanks for your comment. You don't say why you think my refutation of point 1 is wrong, which is unfortunate. I make several points, and they look correct to me.
First a counter-example: "Another example: If living things (φ) have the property of aliveness (P), and if death (ψ) is inevitable for living things (φ) (“from φ always follows ψ”), then death (ψ) has the property of aliveness (P)." If you don't like "aliveness" as a property (perhaps you think "aliveness" is like "existence"—not really a property) you can substitute "breathing" or "active" or whatever, and its still a good counter-example. If you don't think that death always follows life—or think it "biologically" follows life but doesn't "logically" follow life, then another point hammers you: the point of the argument (and any argument for God's existence) must be to prove that God exists in reality, that is the world outside our minds, and not just within our internal thoughts. Which means, for one, the premises of the argument should be applicable to biological reality. And I show repeatedly that they are not.
I also point out that most "properties" are third-party assessments ("aliveness" if accepted as a property of living things, is an exception to this). But the examples of "properties" presented in the Scientific American article are almost all third-party judgments, not innate to the things being judged (blueberries are delicious and fun to eat, etc.) Turns out that in many or most cases "properties" out in the real world are not what logic and mathematics pretend them to be. Thus I pointed out the obvious:
"Gödel’s first axiom may always be true in the world of logic, but that isn’t the case for the actual physical, ever-changing world. Which is why science has to be empirical rather than rational when it comes to reality. There is a place for rationality and logic: to insure that our models are self-consistent and communicable, but whether the model fits reality is always an empirical question, not a rational one. And if God is part of reality, the same applies."
As for Gödel’s 5th axiom, you think that I should have just quoted Kant to the effect that "existence is not a predicate." Without explicitly saying so, this is basically the argument that I made.
"According to the fifth axiom, existence is a positive property. I think most people would agree with that."
I responded by refusing to separate "existence" from things existing: "The existence of an arsenal of nuclear weapons is not a positive thing. From my perspective, the existence of disease-causing viruses is not a good thing. Nor earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes. I’m not keen on the existence of mosquitoes either." And I ended by saying, "Abstracting the word 'existence' from things said to exist—it seems to be a semantic exercise at most." But you're right—I could have just quoted Kant and been done with it.
Let me end with a point I neglected to make, but probably should have:
To be successful, an argument for God's existence must work not just for the supernatural "mind before matter" worldview (which presumes what the argument purports to prove), but also for the natural "matter before mind" worldview (which doesn't presume what such an argument purports to prove). Any argument for God's existence which can't meet this dual-worldview burden fails. If an argument only works when there are stated/unstated premises (of the "mind before matter" type) which logically entail a God, and doesn't work when such premises are not presumed, then it's an unsuccessful argument—one dependent on presuming what it needs to prove.
I am certainly not here to support Gödel, but I am also nowhere near a pure empiricist. I don't have time to read everything now, but, I believe your refutation of his Point 1 isn't itself on 100 percent pure ground. And your refutation of his Point 5 is on the wrong grounds. (And I hope this isn't part of your ground of attacking ontological arguments, either.) The better answer is that "existence" simply isn't a property.
Thanks for your comment. You don't say why you think my refutation of point 1 is wrong, which is unfortunate. I make several points, and they look correct to me.
First a counter-example: "Another example: If living things (φ) have the property of aliveness (P), and if death (ψ) is inevitable for living things (φ) (“from φ always follows ψ”), then death (ψ) has the property of aliveness (P)." If you don't like "aliveness" as a property (perhaps you think "aliveness" is like "existence"—not really a property) you can substitute "breathing" or "active" or whatever, and its still a good counter-example. If you don't think that death always follows life—or think it "biologically" follows life but doesn't "logically" follow life, then another point hammers you: the point of the argument (and any argument for God's existence) must be to prove that God exists in reality, that is the world outside our minds, and not just within our internal thoughts. Which means, for one, the premises of the argument should be applicable to biological reality. And I show repeatedly that they are not.
I also point out that most "properties" are third-party assessments ("aliveness" if accepted as a property of living things, is an exception to this). But the examples of "properties" presented in the Scientific American article are almost all third-party judgments, not innate to the things being judged (blueberries are delicious and fun to eat, etc.) Turns out that in many or most cases "properties" out in the real world are not what logic and mathematics pretend them to be. Thus I pointed out the obvious:
"Gödel’s first axiom may always be true in the world of logic, but that isn’t the case for the actual physical, ever-changing world. Which is why science has to be empirical rather than rational when it comes to reality. There is a place for rationality and logic: to insure that our models are self-consistent and communicable, but whether the model fits reality is always an empirical question, not a rational one. And if God is part of reality, the same applies."
As for Gödel’s 5th axiom, you think that I should have just quoted Kant to the effect that "existence is not a predicate." Without explicitly saying so, this is basically the argument that I made.
"According to the fifth axiom, existence is a positive property. I think most people would agree with that."
I responded by refusing to separate "existence" from things existing: "The existence of an arsenal of nuclear weapons is not a positive thing. From my perspective, the existence of disease-causing viruses is not a good thing. Nor earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes. I’m not keen on the existence of mosquitoes either." And I ended by saying, "Abstracting the word 'existence' from things said to exist—it seems to be a semantic exercise at most." But you're right—I could have just quoted Kant and been done with it.
Let me end with a point I neglected to make, but probably should have:
To be successful, an argument for God's existence must work not just for the supernatural "mind before matter" worldview (which presumes what the argument purports to prove), but also for the natural "matter before mind" worldview (which doesn't presume what such an argument purports to prove). Any argument for God's existence which can't meet this dual-worldview burden fails. If an argument only works when there are stated/unstated premises (of the "mind before matter" type) which logically entail a God, and doesn't work when such premises are not presumed, then it's an unsuccessful argument—one dependent on presuming what it needs to prove.
We see this again and again with the ontological and cosmological arguments. For example, see: https://atheology.com/2010/06/24/cosmological-arguments/
Oh god!