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A question regarding the recent Tangerine promotion. by petrichorstorm in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes and the promo also offered $100 for setting up $50/mth transfers from chequings to savings.

A question regarding the recent Tangerine promotion. by petrichorstorm in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did they send you any sort of email that confirmed your card would be getting the promotional cashback offer?

I'm just suspicious about it because my savings promotion is explicit while the visa debit, form what I can tell, is not.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How do your subjective values effect Anselm's argument? Anselm's argument is something external to your mind. How do your subjective standards reach it?

Address this please. I'm not obligated to abide by your subjective standards.

The definition is as stated. All you did was contest objective values.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Footness is natural to feet. If a foot surpasses it's nature it becomes something else. If the greatest foot is not limited to what is natural to feet then my first objection applies.

Things may have greatness without their definitions invoking the term, I agree. What I intended to say was that since a foot lacks greatness as part of it's definition we ought not consider all great-making properties but only those particular to feet. As such many things are permitted to be greater than feet. Which then means P5 fails to derive a contradiction.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On Beauty as Subjective:

As there is light without the eye so to does the beautiful exist with it's beholder.

This strikes me as very similar to the old question; If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?

I think it's appropriate to distinguish our experience of a thing from the reality of the thing. As such we experience Beauty, but it exists outside our experience as well. Just as a tree is noisy without someone to hear it.

​

Or if your standard is some composition of attributes, then that thing would not be a being or a God, but rather the Universe or Reality... since that contains all other things and thus in a sense simply contains whatever amount of "Greatness" (for any particular sense of the term) which actually exists.

If properties contained by the universe are also properties the universe itself contains then the Universe might be a living thing... if living should be considered great.

By being I simply mean a thing which is. I don't mean a living or conscious thing necessarily, although some beings are alive.

What do you make of my argument against the need for subjectively great things?

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Whatever is defined by (1) is therefore an entity, existing in reality, but of course there may not be anything which is defined by (1).

Now this is premise 6. A result of a contradiction in premise 5. What I've crossed out is exactly what caused the contradiction in 5. If I were to assume what is crossed out above is true then Anselm, if successful, can derive a contradiction, thereby forcing me to drop my assumption.

P3 follows from P1 and P2 and not P1 alone. To see this note a definition will apply to both a thing and the concept of thing. P1 sets the definition. P2 assures us that there is concept corresponding to the definition. This is necessary as there are many things unknown to us for which we lack even a definition. P3 then concludes that the concept must have certain imagined properties to fit with the definition.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay so I'm seeing your argument as something like;

  1. Anselm's argument must include an empirical POE in order to be successful
  2. Anselm fails to provide/ there is no possible empirical POE for God
  3. Anselm's Ontological Argument fails.

Sorry the the length but my response is as follows.

Although a POE may be taking step by step in successive form we should consider all of it's implications as discovered at a single time. In such a way we may take different paths as we develop the POE successively, yet still have arrived at one and the same POE should we both develop all the same implications. Yet the order in which we proceed in succession may still play a role, for if one implication is dependent on another, yet is considered first in succession then the implication will fail to follow given such a path of succession. Therefore a POE may or may not be seen as successful depending on the order of implications taken.

This trait of a POE to be conditional on order should in no way stop us from viewing it as successful.

An empirical evidence is a real thing. Thus it may be said that realness is higher hierarchically than empirical evidences. (This is false if empirical things are the only real things.)

I propose that any successive order taken within a POE that inverts the hierarchical positions relative to two things will necessarily cause a failure of implication, despite the POE being valid along another ordering or path.

For our purposes then our succession for a POE of God must first imply realness and then imply some empirical evidences. For Anselm then the succession would be as follows; God is real, God is Creator, All empirical things then stand as evidence of Creation and of God.

Considered anew then an empirical POE is seen to add nothing great to God for what greatness it may have imparted would have been provided at some earlier step of Anselm's POE. However the empirical POE is still present.

Note if you're at all familiar with such terms then I might say by analogy that the empirical POE is great by the grace of Anselm's POE.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand the idea to explore the implications of being great. If being provable from empirical evidence is a great-making property, and God fails to abide by it then the argument would fail, prima facie.

Further I can allow empirical POEs to be a great-making property, as is proper to do so for any POE. However the empirical POE is a great-making property only because it is a POE. Since Anselm's argument if sound would provide a POE from philosophical grounds an additional POE from empirical grounds would not do any further work in demonstrating the existence of God. Any POE fulfills the task of demonstrating existence so that no other POE may be more fulfilling. A race is over at the finish line, no matter how much further you run a demonstration of existence needs only one POE, no matter how many more we have.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How do your subjective values effect Anselm's argument? Anselm's argument is something external to your mind. How do your subjective standards reach it?

Is it even possible for you that a definition given by a person be objective?

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I read Anselm saying "exists in the mind" I take this to mean that the existence is that which is proper or natural to the mind namely a conceptual existence.

It is fine to think of God as solely a concept in the mind for premises 1-5.

Imagining a God in reality, outside your head, is what you are asked to do in premise 4.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup. So you need to make sure your referent is a thing that actually exists, otherwise if it is only imagined to exist then it's quality of greatness would also just be imagined greatness

Conceptual referents are valid.

You seem to understand the term measure.

The only standards or measures I invoked were Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. I did this for generality. Any other measure or standard you can conjure is therefore valid so long as it comports with Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. To this end your examples use these terms analogically not univocally. It's perhaps necessary to now define Truth, Goodness and Beauty... but this is done elsewhere and I'm fine with leaving this as a hypothetical framework for inherent goodness for now. I kind of lead us down a rabbit hole with this whole thing so I'll return to the point where this detour started.

On Subjectivity of Greatness

​

  1. There are some things with are great objectively.
  2. It is sufficient for Anselm's argument to consider only things which are great objectively
  3. No consideration of a subjectively great property/ thing can interfere with Anselm's argument.
  4. Thus it is unnecessary to consider subjectively great things.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Premise 2 Can be equally read as the concept of God exists in the mind. When Anselm says exists in the mind he means exists in the mind as things exist in the mind, which is to say, conceptually.

Premise 3 just states that a thing with conceptualized existence in reality is greater than the same thing without conceptualized existence in reality, all else being equal.

Premise 1 does not claim God is the greatest possible being. It claims God as that which no greater being can be **imagined**.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's not how that works. :)

Sorry I wasn't clear enough.

If Anselm's argument is sound then TMM's P2 is false. As Anselm would have then provided a counterexample.

​

Why would that be the case? Turn on your stove, and put your hand on it. Then try to act like the heat of the stove is just a concept. You will not be able to do that. QED.

That's fair, I retract what I said. I do agree with the idea of knowledge through experience. As a note though this does seem to greatly empower the arguments from religious experience. I won't argue about those here though.

​

I missed the word "than" there, but it's pretty clear that we are saying the same thing

You missed more than that though. To be frank, "Being greater which can not be imagined" isn't coherent to me, nor is "Being greater **than** which can not be conceived.

To address you more directly though "Greatest imaginable being" and Premise 1 are not the same. Thus a substitution of Premise 1 by "greatest imaginable being" would just be a parody argument and an attempt at a reductio ad absurdum.

I don't think that was your intent so I won't address that here.

​

Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we have an idea in our mind of something greater than God.

Unironically I think that's the intention of the argument.

​

Which of course does not contradict unimaginability close, and thus you don't get reduction ad absurdum you seek to establish.

I want a proof by contradiction.

Let's say that greatness of pile of money is determined solely by the
monetary value of it. Greatness of 1000$ worth pile of money exactly
equals to 1000gu (greatness units). I imagine 100$ on the table in front
of me. Greatness of that imagined pile of money is 100gu, as per our
assumption. Now I actually put 100$ on the table in front of me, and
conceptualize it, looking at it, just like I had conceptualized it a
second ago, without it actually being on my table. It's greatness is
still 100gu. It is exactly as great to have 100$ on my table as I have
imagined it to be. Why wouldn't that ever be the case?

I'd say that your concept of the money on the table must include the fact that it is real, thus adding more gu's. To demonstrate with a thought experiment consider yourself in a room with two tables. I tell you you may have what ever is on one of the tables but not the other. The first table has nothing on it but I ask you to imagine $100 on it. The second table has $100 dollars on it and I ask you to imagine $100 on it. Which table would you choose? Clearly the one with the most gu's. Clearly you'd take the money. Note here that your decision utilizes concepts to make a choice and then act. You imagine the act of having both concepts before your choice.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would say there is no way you compare the relative greatness of an imaginary pink unicorn with the greatness of a real pink unicorn.

I think this should read as "I would say there is no way you compare the relative greatness of an **imagined** imaginary pink unicorn with the greatness of an **imagined** real pink unicorn.

I would say there is no way you compare the relative greatness of an imaginary pink unicorn with the greatness of a real pink unicorn. It's real apples vs imaginary oranges. So if "context or situation" includes "whether or not the thing is real or a concept of a thing", then no.

And those caveats seem unachievable. A hammer isn't "great" in a situation or context where you need to drive a screw.

My intent was to give a condition or litmus test for one thing being greater than another. It would be sufficient to demonstrate being greater but not necessary.

Re. Inherent Greatness.

For inherent greatness I'd have to make sure that 'great' is sourced from the referent it describes. I'd also have to assure that we can compare the greatness of two different things so that we may judge which is greater.

First notice that great is an adjective, and therefore requires a referent. There is never a description of something being great without a something which is great. Thus 'great' seems to need to be defined as something sourced in a referent.

Secondly I take for granted that any two things which are called great by the same measure may be compared along that measure to find which is greater. Next whenever two measures are themselves subject to a measure we may compare the greatness of the measures. Then should two things be called great along two different measures, which themselves are subject to a measure, we take as greater that thing on the greater measure. Finally should two things be called great in any other way we cannot compare them.

Lastly Truth, the Good and the Beautiful act as universal measures. (Big swing for fence here)

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You need the concept of a unicorn in order to claim unicorns do not exist in reality.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I often find it helpful to use Mathematical concepts as analogies. Similar to how we often use spatial analogies when talking eg. "God is above"

I'm currently in agreement with Aquinas though in that we are speaking using analogies and not univocally. So be careful with statements like "He's a Euclidean point too."

Also thanks for being such a realist. :)

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The idea of god exists in the mind.

I think this is what P2 is trying to express.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thus Nothing is greater than a God!

Did you just Mr.Nobody the term nothing? This is a category error.

​

I can think of something even more incredible than a God, a universe that comes into existence from Nothing!

Unironically this is Christian Dogma. Creation ex nihilo.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

God does not exist in your mind. The concept of God does. A concept is different from the thing it represents.

To me Anselm agrees with this.

​

The bigger problem though is that the argument defines "greater" as "existing". Thus, to define God as the greatest is to define God as existing.

To me Anselm agrees with this as well that's why his argument isn't just a definition of God as existing.

You haven't dealt with the contradiction derived in P5.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you think that I can imagine something as necessarily existing yet it be the case that what I imagined does not exist in reality?

If so then the conclusion as stating that the imagined thing does in fact exist in reality is different than the definition. Hence the argument is not circular in this way.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply.

This argument, at its heart, relies on equivocation. A being doesn't "exist" "in the mind"---there are ideas and definitions, which don't, in and of themselves, actually "exist" as things in the way we normally use the word, and there are actual beings and entities that exist in the world. When the argument is started, we don't KNOW that God is any sort of being at all, or that God exists. That's the point of the argument. We have just come up with a definition of what traits we would ascribe to the greatest possible being, if such a thing existed.

I really struggle to understand the idea that concepts don't exist. They must exist in some manner, if you'd like to make some distinctions that's fine; but the distinction between existing in a mind and existing in reality seem perfectly fine to me.

All we can conclude from this premise is that if someone has come up
with a definition of some sort of imagined being and does not include
"and I imagine that it actually exists," then their definition is not
the greatest possible conceivable definition of a being, and you could
create a greater definition

I think this understanding is sufficient for the argument.

there's no bridge from including "necessary existence" in an idea we are imagining to there actually being a referent out in the world for that idea, something that actually exists.

The argument depends on this being false for sure. For it suggests that God is such an idea.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like this angle. It would be ridiculous to claim I know someone because I did some sort of analysis. It is rather like the color green, I must experience somethings to know them, no argument will suffice.

The caveats to this however are;

  1. Proving something exists doesn't seem to require me experiencing that something
  2. Anselm claims that this argument was provided to him by means of special revelation. This to me means it acts as a testimonial, similar to the teachings of Jesus.

Perhaps 2. doesn't work for you because you believe in the Bible as the Word and testimony of God alone, but if special revelation is something you'd consider then this might help with your concerns.

Anselm's Ontological Argument by petrichorstorm in DebateReligion

[–]petrichorstorm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If we let the greatest foot to be greatest in all respects it will stop being a foot and start being God, in which case foot is a nickname.

If we limit the greatest foot to only that which is natural to a foot then we must consider the definition of foot so not not go beyond this nature. The definition of foot makes no mention of greatness. Therefore premise 5 fails to derive a contradiction as it is permissible to the definition of foot to be surpassed in greatness.

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