I can definitely get behind some of Josh's project here. I think it's useful to have people exploring the connections between contemporary ideas in philosophy and their religious traditions. That said, though, I think the questioner at 1:31:30 illustrates something unfortunate about these conversations when had in public spaces: It's very clear he had not followed the presentation whatsoever, and I think that's should be a cautionary tale against wheeling out these types of arguments in conversations with laypeople.
@Awesome Wrench I never said that they can be confirmed. They can be evaluated using the normal criteria in theory comparison (used in philosophy of science and metaphysics). That was summarised quite nicely in the video, with principles such as parsimony, and how well the data is explained (per Baysian reasoning).
Heyoooooo gangggg I figured that I would get comments about my PFP when this was eventually uploaded so here’s a little explanation… I’m an animation major attending a small college where my philosophy prof helped to set this discussion up. My animation classes overlapped with the time that this was set up for and therefore I had to join via zoom to get credit for being there while I was in my other class. Shout out to the philosophers being more chill than any of the folks in the comments here. I’m a pretty chill person if you get to know me. 💜
@@cazzac4817 this is the funniest reply comment thus far thank you hahaha my whole department knows that I’m a furry, what’s funnier is I got scholarships to this college with furry art too. It’s so funny to me.
It seems that there are three types of "cosmological" argument: 1) Cosmological arguments like the Kalam. They seek to establish the existence of an uncaused first cause. The type of relation in this case is that of temporal causation, where cause x causes effect y. 2) Contingency arguments like the Leibnizian one. They seek to establish the existence of a necessary being. They type of relation in this instance is that of dependency. 3) Finally, (which is why this new argument is so cool) we have a new type of argument - the grounding argument. This uses the grounding relation. Does this compartmentalisation make sense?
Well, I think that your classification is a bit flawed. Case in point: the uncaused cause and necessary being are the same thing. The difference would be the attributes you give to that being but that difference is not as great as the similarity. But on a separate point, I think there are a lot more "types" of cosmological arguments than you listed here.
@@Kristian-ql8zw Are all Uncaused causes Necessary? I mean, something could be uncaused and can cause other things due to pure chances or randomness whereas that doesn't necessarily mean that it's necessary 🤔
@@Djdu7228xnxj the answer depends on the principles you yourself accept. Someone who doesn't accept PSR might think that the first uncaused cause is not necessary (say, it is just an eternal contingent first creator through the Kalam), but someone who accepts PSR like me will say that any uncaused cause is necessary.
You might be surprised.. There's a physics professor at Oxford whose entire Twitter feed is My Little Pony. He even makes MLP-themed videos and images about physics.
Whoops that’d be me HAHAHA I had to zoom in for class that day because the discussion overlapped with another class of mine… posting this to multiple folks who asked…
Professor Oppy, I have a question on 'brute' and 'necessity'. I already posted this as a reply to you in a thread below. But apparently my comment was deleted. So i'll post it here as a comment instead. @Graham Oppy "Perhaps you might say that I think that necessity is brute." - "Brute" i take to be something that just is, something inexplicable or without or requiring an explanation (ontologically speaking). I remember the conversation between Carroll and Barnes where Carroll in the end appealed to natural brute facts at the bottom of reality. Explanation ends there. There is just no more explanation at that level, and it's no longer necessary to ask for explanations. "In the following sense: there is no explaining why things that are necessary are necessary. What is necessary is so no matter what." - I'm not sure i follow this. It's perhaps here that a distinction can be made between simply an appeal to "brute" and the need for "necessity". Let me try to unpack my thoughts (this will be rough): Brute can simply be appealed to ontologically, eg., the way Carroll appealed to brute facts at the bottom of reality, ie., there are just things (that we don't know and perhaps can't) that happen to be at the very bottom of all things, and explanation ends there. There is no necessary logical relation between the thing that needs explaining and the appeal to brute facts. IOW it's a "blind" appeal, a shot in the dark. His thoroughgoing naturalism (his chosen axiom) allows him to simply assert the possibility of brute entities requiring no explanation. Naturalism all the way down, and brute entities (whatever they are) will do. But "necessity" may require the force of logical relations (causal relations for example). For example: x exists. The nature of x logically necessitates some entity y as the cause (without y, x would not logically obtain). Entity y logically necessitates some entity z as the cause (without z, y would not logically obtain). But then for z to be logically possible -- and indeed the whole chain of causality -- requires an explanation that breaks that chain of causal explanations (or else it falls into an infinite regress with no end in site and thus explains nothing or devolves into incoherence). Logic then necessitates a particular "necessity", say O -- a necessity that must have certain features and properties capable of producing and explaining the causal chain -- if z and the entire entourage of causation can obtain. To say that it's just "brute" will not do; the explicandum necessitates a particular kind of "necessity" -- O -- or something like it as the causal origin of the whole show. So here, you're not simply blindly appealing to something "brute", and you don't necessarily start with an axiom. Rather, the O as the particular "necessity" is logically deduced inductively from x, y, and z. One way of putting it is that compared to an appeal to brute entities, O better explains (has more explanatory power) the reality of x, y, and z by inference to best explanation. I'm thinking out loud here professor Oppy. Hopefully I'm making sense. Your response would be helpful.
The problem that I've always had with the notion of metaphysical necessity is that epistemically it is 100% indistinguishable from brute facts. Both physical necessity and logical necessity can be explained (i.e. something is physically necessary if its negation would violate the laws of nature, and something is logically necessary if its negation is logically incoherent, which simply means that the description is self-contradictory). But when it comes to metaphysical necessity, at least when it is somewhere in between physical and logical necessity, it basically just seems like blind faith. I can easily conceive of a possible world where God (especially any specific God of a religion) does not exist, and most honest theists agree. Yet, they also nevertheless claim that God exists necessarily. Like, how is that different than just saying God is a brute fact?
@@fanghur "somewhere in between physical and logical necessity, it basically just seems like blind faith." -- Aristotle pursued his logical observations and analysis of things and reached the conclusion that a Prime/Unmoved Mover exists by necessity (to make sense of everything else). Whatever Aristotle was doing, "blind faith' it was absolutely not. Aristotle's approach is essentially similar to the modern philosophical arguments tapping into cosmology (Leibniz and kalam et al) and other fields of empirical data. To characterize such careful philosophical analysis of various strands of (empirical) data "blind faith" is simply prejudice. You may not accept the metaphysical conclusion, sure. But "blind faith"? Nah. If so, belief in a multiverse (and a host of other "exotic" proposals dressed up in scientific terms) would also be "blind faith", for as the theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder recently argued, believing in the multiverse is more religion than science. ruclips.net/video/-dSua_PUyfM/видео.html "I can easily conceive of a possible world where God (especially any specific God of a religion) does not exist" -- But we're not living in that "possible world", we're living in THIS world, our world, and we have to deal with the realities of THIS world we're living in.
@@edgarrenenartatez1932 Read my original comment again. I was referring specifically to the concept of metaphysical necessity and how by all appearances it seems to just be brute facts by another name. Something that you seemed to tacitly acknowledge, presumably unintentionally, by accepting that God does not exist in all possible worlds. If something doesn't exist in all possible worlds, then by definition it is not necessary in the relevant sense. And the point I was making was that given the fact that it seems trivially easy to conceive of possible worlds with no God, or with different Gods, then if someone wants to claim that nonetheless their God is 'necessary', I don't see how that can be anything other than blind faith. Again, that's why I pointed out that the term 'metaphysical necessity' just doesn't seem like an epistemically meaningful term, since it's indistinguishable from just saying that God's existence is a brute fact.
@@fanghur "I was referring specifically to the concept of metaphysical necessity and how by all appearances it seems to just be brute facts by another name." - There's a whole lot of debate on 'metaphysical necessity', thus nuances should be considered. I think it can be argued that there is a significant difference between an appeal to 'brute fact' simpliciter and a philosophically articulated 'metaphysical necessity' (i would imagine though that in some respects there would be overlaps). "Something that you seemed to tacitly acknowledge, presumably unintentionally, by accepting that God does not exist in all possible worlds. - Was not necessarily conceding to anything (at least not yet). My response was to make a particular point re we're dealing with the world we live in. It seems more fruitful to argue from this context instead of in the purely abstract. But Swinburne will not have a problem with this. Theistically, he prefers existential necessity as an explanation. Also Plantinga, he argues for God in terms of causal necessity. Both positions do not necessarily posit God as existing in all logically possible worlds. (I'm no expert on their views.) "If something doesn't exist in all possible worlds, then by definition it is not necessary in the relevant sense." - But we have to make a distinction between epistemically imaginative and epistemic possibility. What you're appealing to is the epistemically imaginative ie., it's possible to imagine it. "given the fact that it seems trivially easy to conceive of possible worlds with no God... then if someone wants to claim that nonetheless their God is 'necessary', I don't see how that can be anything other than blind faith." - Well, the "claim" of that "someone" may come in different contexts (purely abstract, or in the context of natural theology), and i think the context of the claim will be relevant in considering whether it's just "blind faith" or a reasoned argument for God as "necessary". Also, to be meaningful and in order for me to give a meaningful response, you have to define exactly what you mean by "blind faith". As i've argued previously, the work of Aristotle along this line (and more modern examples) can never be described as "blind faith" (by my lights at least). "I pointed out that the term 'metaphysical necessity' just doesn't seem like an epistemically meaningful term... indistinguishable from just saying that God's existence is a brute fact." - I'm not sure about this. You can get brute facts via "blind faith" (i think Carroll was guilty of this - 'Well, since nature is all that exists (the axiom of naturalism), then we have to conclude that whatever is at the bottom would be natural brute facts, and explanation ends there', summarizing here.), maybe some theists think so too (perhaps a presuppositionalist?). But natural philosophers/theologians argue from the ground up, ie., from the world of nature, looking at the empirical data and human experience and move toward the hypothesis that God is a necessary Being. I may have misunderstood your points still. But anyway, that's part of the conversation.
If I'm to understand correctly, if I'm to take a reductionist approach to the examination of aspects of reality, such as with cosmology, biology, mind and consciousness, and morality, at a certain point I'll come to a non-derived point, a point at which a physical aspect cannot be further reduced, which then requires a metaphysical necessity, or explanation. That metaphysical necessity would be a grounding point of, and the same for all aspects of reality. It seems to me such an argument, as explained, is intuitive. Or, confirms an intuition. Great discussion and show. God Bless
@Awesome Wrench , You should learn your words better. My snappy sarcastic valedictions are not a fetish but a further commentary on one's comment. And, you're further demonstrating your reading comprehension difficulties since I plainly stated that when a non-derived point is reached then aspects of reality requires a metaphysical necessity, or explanation. Thanks for playing butthurt.
No, I don't think that's what he's saying. He's saying that there is a grounding relation between aspects of reality and if there is such a relation, then there would have to be a foundational ground for that and the best explanation of the grounding relation and foundation would be a theistic one.
why is God limited to logic?? can an ALL powerful(omnipotent trope) entity be limited to logic and if he is, can he still be called ALL powerful and not be called SOME powerful being? even I chose to allow for the sake of argument, in the end it still doesn't follow that an ALL powerful can be limited to logic? Can an ALL powerful being make illogical premises turn (for some reason) to become logical? I have difficult time processing this kind of logic. Please help me.
Logic is really a limit on us. Basically the idea is that we express omnipotence as the ability to do whatever is logically possible. So we can’t say that God can make a married bachelor because married bachelors cannot exist. It’s not that God can’t do it, it’s that it’s not even a thing. It’s no different from saying God can’t make “dkldeunzGoolhjh.” But if you want to insist that omnipotence includes the ability to do the logically impossible, then fine, we can just dispense with logic altogether and say God can make a married man who is unmarried and there is no problem. We grant that God, in his omnipotence, can do the logically impossible, so now we can’t use contradictions to object to it.
@@mjdillaha but the question remains that a married bachelor is static. Maybe he'll marry in the future? Maybe God is illogical? Idk. Married bachelor might be a contradictory static thing but that illogical static thing may make god marry that bachelor? Maybe it's circular reasoning. Maybe an ALL powerful god is limited to logically possible things.
@@mhakoyMD I’m just referring to a man who is simultaneously married and unmarried. That’s a contradiction, which is logically impossible. You might also think of a triangle with 4 sides, or 2+2=5. These are logical impossibilities. It’s not that God can’t create them, it’s that they are not things which can exist, they are as meaningless as “37$;:&&),,/5&&$’” Like I said, if you want to insist that omnipotence actually includes the ability to create these things, then you’re the one who is dispensing with logic, and then you have no objection to the claim that God can do the logically impossible because you’ve already dispensed with the framework which would allow you to make such an objection.
@@mjdillaha I won't insist thank you for explaining those contradictions even though the simultaneity of the subject matter is very contradicting like square circle or married bachelor.
This is a mystery I can solve! The building in which I work is being renovated. The renovation will take several years. During that time, I will be moved at least three times. To save myself trouble, I have moved all my books home. So I will have empty shelves behind for me quite a while to come.
@@grahamoppy9196 Going to take a stab in the dark; I’m not sure how to put together my question. Would it be fair to consider your comments on “necessity” to contain, or be connected to some degree, with the word “brute”? I’ve heard some philosophers use the term.
@@316350 Perhaps you might say that I think that necessity is brute. In the following sense: there is no explaining why things that are necessary are necessary. What is necessary is so no matter what. Offering an explanation of the necessity of necessary things would be precisely to try to offer a "what". Of course, you can show that it is a logical consequence of some things being necessary that other things are necessary. But this does not explain the necessity of any of these things. This means that, from the standpoint of theorising, the only "brute" necessities are the ones that are not logical consequences of other necessities in your theorising. (To give an example: in arithmetic, you need only suppose that your axioms are "brute"; all of the theorems come along for free, since you get them by logical consequence. But, to explain the necessity of the theorems, you would have to appeal to the necessity of the axioms--and, in my view, there is no explaining the necessity of the axioms.)
If God is simple and identical to God's attributes and identical to each other, then God is the good. Later, the speaker argues that good is diffusive. But this isn't necessarily so. If God's nature is the good, then if God was not diffusive then lack of diffusivity would be the good. God could instantiate or not instantiate anything at all and this would necessarily be good. Thus,the proposed form of theism lacks any predictive power.
Whoops that’d be me HAHAHA I had to zoom in for class that day because the discussion overlapped with another class of mine… posting this to multiple folks who asked…
Everything that exists has structure. The structure is one of the ways of interpreting something existing. Water is a water molecule and it is a hydrogen atom and it is a proton and it is a quark, all at the same time. Our gaze determines the level of interpretation, but each level of interpretation is not a different ontological level. If this interpretation were true, all we see is god. Everything that exists and everything we do is God. This being the case, God means nothing.
@Eduardo Rodriguez: I think your comment about structure is true, so far as it goes, but your further conclusion seems to require that it isn't merely "one of the ways of interpreting" something existing, but also that neither structure, nor anything else, gives us clues to forms of existence apart from the physical. Structure is indeed a thing we can analyze about (or, a "way of interpreting the existence of") a material, spatio-temporal entity, if it's composed. And any entity which is composed has some principle in virtue of which its parts are united into a whole (else, we wouldn't call it an entity composed of those parts, but rather a bunch of discrete entities). If (and I say "if" because it can't be assumed) that principle is NO MORE THAN a matter of physical arrangement in spacetime -- if that is what you mean by "structure" -- then your observation about "structure" is a generally-valid observation about composed material entities. However, physical arrangement doesn't exhaust all the types of explanation of an entity, even if that entity is both material and composed. If you're pursuing an exhaustive explanation of a baby, you don't say: "Well, its arms are here and its legs are there and the torso's in the middle and the head's on top; The End." Generalizing more widely to "grounding" allows us to include broader range of explanatory types. But by going outside of arrangement in space, or "structure" in general, it includes a range of interrelated realities not covered by your initial paragraph. Your initial paragraph does not argue, but seems to assume, that the ONLY form of interrelation between entities is physical structure. If that were the case (if, as you say, "this interpretation were true") then, yes, all ultimate grounding would be mere structural relations of physical objects in space, and if "ultimate grounding" were taken to also be the definition of "God," then the term "God" would be a synonym for "mere structural relations of physical objects in space." That wouldn't make the term "God" mean NOTHING; but it would make the term "God" redundant. Alternatively, if we define God as the "ultimate grounding" but at the same time assert that it refers to some kind of grounding OTHER THAN mere "structural relations of physical objects in space," then in your interpretation (which assumes that no grounding exists apart from those structural relations), the term "God" would point to a null set. Either way, the question is whether the interpretation you assert is true. But Dr. Sijuwade obviously argues otherwise: There are many other forms of grounding, they don't all reduce to spatio-temporal structure, and they also require some kind of grounding unless one of them doesn't require any further groundedness but, in a principled way and by logical necessity, just is ultimate grounding. And even Dr. Oppy agrees, to a certain extent, because he acknowledges identity as a non-spatiotemporal relation, and takes pains to eliminate it from the list of grounding-types that Dr. Sijuwade uses in arguing a hierarchy of grounding, by saying that the identity of Entity X just IS Entity X of necessity, requiring no further explanation. Anyway, since Dr. Sijuwade does argue (successfully or not) for more kinds of grounding than you allow for, and for the need to ultimately ground at least some of them in a single source of grounding, I think you can't just assert the claim, "no, the only kind of grounding that's real is physical structure." I think you have to argue that point and counter-argue his arguments. Until that's done, "God" isn't yet shown to be either a redundant term for structure, or a pointer to nothing.
@@cw-on-yt The phenomenon exists. Structure is a conventional interpretation. To the extent that we are distinguishing the extension of the observed phenomenon, we are expanding the structural concept. It is only an interpretation that allows a differentiated understanding according to either the need for compression or the need for agency on the phenomenon. No. A baby is a certain combination of elements that, due to their particular arrangement, have certain functions and interact in a particular way with their environment. For example, he forms patterns that correspond to causal relationships that he distinguishes in the environment. A touch on the lips corresponds to the sucking reflex. Yes. But I can put it explicitly. There are only natural interactions in reality. Everything that interacts with something can be considered existing and what does not interact with anything, it is not rational to consider it existing. My point is that there are not distinct relations between structures. There are different relationships between elements and to distinguish "structures" is to observe maps with either different degrees of resolution or different interpretations of the same phenomenon. It is not true that there is a relationship between the "Wave" structure and the "Water Molecule" structure. Distinguishing a pattern in reality does not make that pattern an entity. The wave is not an entity. That Oppy recognizes that identity is a non-spatiotemporal relation does not mean that identity is a non-spatiotemporal relation. There is nothing that is a non-spatiotemporal relation. Something non-spatiotemporal (a fantasy) does not interact with anything and therefore it is not logical to consider it existing, much less knowable. It is not true that X is equal to itself. Nothing is equal to itself beyond an instant. If X exists in reality, in the next instant, X no longer has the same duration, physical location, relation to the rest of the elements of reality (which are as mutable as X and affect it), etc. Identity is an illusion and a convention. It does not correspond to a real phenomenon. God is a psychological pattern. Giving that pattern a metaphysical spin is a futile task. I accept all grounding that results from effective and proven interactions in reality. Saying Grounding doesn't mean anything ontologically. God cannot be based there.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd: Thanks for your reply. Some of what you say here seems, as before, to be asserted rather than argued. But the video includes reasons to think otherwise; and one must first falsify those arguments, and then base one's own conclusions on premises shared with your interlocutor, and then show that the conclusions follow from the premises. Re: the baby example: I can agree to your entire paragraph; but the point of the baby example is that while those items may be true, and nothing but the truth, they fall short of the whole truth in all its aspects. They are part of, but do not exhaust, our descriptive and explanatory requirements. You say, "There are only natural interactions in reality." But, there are plenty of arguments to the contrary. Dr. Sijuwade's are far from the only ones, but since they're in the video and the others aren't, it seems reasonable to only require a refutation of those, when expressing an alternative view. (Also, I find myself wondering how you define "natural," and thus "nature," in that sentence.) When you say, "there is nothing that is a non-spatiotemporal relation" it looks like you're going all-the-way to eliminative materialism, a la Alex Rosenberg and Paul Churchland. But I think Searle's Chinese Room, Kripke's quus function argument, and James Ross's adaptation of it, demonstrates that determinative meaning in mental processes (and thus in the intended meaning one attempts to convey in any exercise of language-use) is necessarily non-material, and cannot be causatively exhausted by any finite material substrate without radically redefining what one means by "matter." Add Nagel's musings on qualia to that, and there are far too many arguments against the Rosenberg/Churchland stance to treat it as a kind of assumed default. On the contrary, I think that view is defeated until/unless its defenders produce better arguments. I would, however, agree to the verbiage (if not the intended meaning) of your statement, "I accept all grounding that results from effective and proven interactions in reality." I just come to the phrase "effective and proven interactions in reality" with a longer list of examples. "There are more things, Horatio...."
@@cw-on-yt Regarding the baby, I do not see that reality allows us to build a complete conceptual model of this phenomenon. Or any other phenomenon. But that does not allow us to consider unfoundedly that the baby is made up of something else that is in it but does not interact with anything. It may sound like a statement without arguments but if you look closely you will see that it will not be possible for you to suppose that the baby (or anything) is made up of things with which no one or nothing interacts and yet you know about them. If you think those things interact with anything, it would contradict your point and if you don't, there's no reason to assume they exist. It is only valid, then, to consider that the baby is made up of natural elements and relationships. That the model of the baby does not exhaust all its dimension does not make it valid to speculate non-natural components. Natural is everything that interacts with other elements of reality. If it doesn't interact with anything, it's a fantasy. Do you suppose I should give an argument for this position? I do not agree with you that language carries non-spatiotemporal meanings. It's a long topic. Our ability is to build conceptual models of reality. This is the basis of the effectiveness of our agency. Communication is probabilistic. One selects or assembles a model of the part of reality that one wishes to communicate and using symbols, tries to hit (similar to when someone throws darts) in the areas that we suppose have correspondence, in the receiver, in his mental models. One says: "The dog eats bone" trusting that the receiver has already internally armed the concepts "dog", "eat" and "bone". In the Chinese Room, the statement means nothing because the Chinese Room does not have a pattern recognizer that triggers neurochemicals at certain symbols. If the Chinese Room had a symbol scanner and had programmed that with one of the symbols needles are stuck in the one that receives and returns the symbols, then we would have a meaning. If upon receiving the communique "The dog eats bone" my pattern analyzer bathes my body with adrenaline and I start to run away, then that communiqué has meaning for me. The communication could be made up of any material and with any agreed grammatical structure. Horacio is very skeptical and he wants an example of an existing entity that does not interact with anything and wants to know how you have come to know about it.
I love Dr. Joshua Sijuwade ❤️
His work on Trinity is literally what saved my faith! 🙏🏻
An Indian interested in natural theology. That's interesting. Are you based in India?
@@Asura_vithu I'm from Kerala. Wbu? The name Biju seems like you're from Kerala too 😁
@@Djdu7228xnxj I am from Kerala too. Orthodox Christian?
@@Asura_vithu No, I'm a Catholic. What about you? Are you an Apologist?
@@Djdu7228xnxj professionally no.
This was great. Downloaded his paper to fully understand. Thank you for sharing!
I can definitely get behind some of Josh's project here. I think it's useful to have people exploring the connections between contemporary ideas in philosophy and their religious traditions. That said, though, I think the questioner at 1:31:30 illustrates something unfortunate about these conversations when had in public spaces: It's very clear he had not followed the presentation whatsoever, and I think that's should be a cautionary tale against wheeling out these types of arguments in conversations with laypeople.
Petition for a shirt that says btw, metaphysically simple omnipotence trope exists. Would insta buy lol
Quick tip people - Don't skip section 1 (Explanatory Framework).
It is a great explanation of how to compare and evaluate metaphysical hypotheses.
@Awesome Wrench I never said that they can be confirmed. They can be evaluated using the normal criteria in theory comparison (used in philosophy of science and metaphysics). That was summarised quite nicely in the video, with principles such as parsimony, and how well the data is explained (per Baysian reasoning).
Heyoooooo gangggg I figured that I would get comments about my PFP when this was eventually uploaded so here’s a little explanation… I’m an animation major attending a small college where my philosophy prof helped to set this discussion up. My animation classes overlapped with the time that this was set up for and therefore I had to join via zoom to get credit for being there while I was in my other class. Shout out to the philosophers being more chill than any of the folks in the comments here. I’m a pretty chill person if you get to know me. 💜
Thanks for explaining- sorry about the toxic people here :)
I think people were just confused. You're alright.
Express yourself! it's a super chad move to use your fursona as your pfp.
@@cazzac4817 this is the funniest reply comment thus far thank you hahaha my whole department knows that I’m a furry, what’s funnier is I got scholarships to this college with furry art too. It’s so funny to me.
alv un furro
Many debates I’m just waiting through the theist’s side, rolling my eyes. This theist was a good speaker :)
As articulate as WLC without the smell of used car salesman. Engaging :)
I was worried he was going to be talking about earthing (sometimes called grounding) for a second lol.
I thought that too 😂
The furry avatar killed me . . .
🥶😂
Thanks 😌
what time does it show up?
I have great respect for both men as philosophers. Looking forward to this.
This was very informative! I recommend that people take notes to aid memory :)
It seems that there are three types of "cosmological" argument:
1) Cosmological arguments like the Kalam. They seek to establish the existence of an uncaused first cause. The type of relation in this case is that of temporal causation, where cause x causes effect y.
2) Contingency arguments like the Leibnizian one. They seek to establish the existence of a necessary being. They type of relation in this instance is that of dependency.
3) Finally, (which is why this new argument is so cool) we have a new type of argument - the grounding argument. This uses the grounding relation.
Does this compartmentalisation make sense?
Well, I think that your classification is a bit flawed. Case in point: the uncaused cause and necessary being are the same thing. The difference would be the attributes you give to that being but that difference is not as great as the similarity. But on a separate point, I think there are a lot more "types" of cosmological arguments than you listed here.
@@Kristian-ql8zw Are all Uncaused causes Necessary? I mean, something could be uncaused and can cause other things due to pure chances or randomness whereas that doesn't necessarily mean that it's necessary 🤔
@@Djdu7228xnxj They are the same in the case of Leibniz's argument and the Kalam.
@@Kristian-ql8zw I'm not sure.
@@Djdu7228xnxj the answer depends on the principles you yourself accept.
Someone who doesn't accept PSR might think that the first uncaused cause is not necessary (say, it is just an eternal contingent first creator through the Kalam), but someone who accepts PSR like me will say that any uncaused cause is necessary.
Hello fellow travelers , you can rest here for a while .
Alabama
Virginia. Odd place. But current Governor was right about CRT…
@@TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns What is CRT and how was the current governor right about CRT?
Illinois
Exciting!!
53:51 the furry 🤣
i love that someone has a furry profile picture next to Dr Oppy while he discusses metaphysical grounding LOL
Whoops that’d be me HAHAHA I had to zoom in for class that day because the discussion overlapped with another class of mine…
53:50 Is that Rasmussen on the bottom left?
Letting that business major ask a question may have been a mistake, haha
Is there really a person with a Fury avatar? Really?
I was about to ask the same question
You might be surprised.. There's a physics professor at Oxford whose entire Twitter feed is My Little Pony. He even makes MLP-themed videos and images about physics.
Whoops that’d be me HAHAHA I had to zoom in for class that day because the discussion overlapped with another class of mine… posting this to multiple folks who asked…
Professor Oppy, I have a question on 'brute' and 'necessity'. I already posted this as a reply to you in a thread below. But apparently my comment was deleted. So i'll post it here as a comment instead.
@Graham Oppy "Perhaps you might say that I think that necessity is brute." - "Brute" i take to be something that just is, something inexplicable or without or requiring an explanation (ontologically speaking). I remember the conversation between Carroll and Barnes where Carroll in the end appealed to natural brute facts at the bottom of reality. Explanation ends there. There is just no more explanation at that level, and it's no longer necessary to ask for explanations.
"In the following sense: there is no explaining why things that are necessary are necessary. What is necessary is so no matter what." - I'm not sure i follow this. It's perhaps here that a distinction can be made between simply an appeal to "brute" and the need for "necessity". Let me try to unpack my thoughts (this will be rough):
Brute can simply be appealed to ontologically, eg., the way Carroll appealed to brute facts at the bottom of reality, ie., there are just things (that we don't know and perhaps can't) that happen to be at the very bottom of all things, and explanation ends there. There is no necessary logical relation between the thing that needs explaining and the appeal to brute facts. IOW it's a "blind" appeal, a shot in the dark. His thoroughgoing naturalism (his chosen axiom) allows him to simply assert the possibility of brute entities requiring no explanation. Naturalism all the way down, and brute entities (whatever they are) will do.
But "necessity" may require the force of logical relations (causal relations for example). For example: x exists. The nature of x logically necessitates some entity y as the cause (without y, x would not logically obtain). Entity y logically necessitates some entity z as the cause (without z, y would not logically obtain). But then for z to be logically possible -- and indeed the whole chain of causality -- requires an explanation that breaks that chain of causal explanations (or else it falls into an infinite regress with no end in site and thus explains nothing or devolves into incoherence). Logic then necessitates a particular "necessity", say O -- a necessity that must have certain features and properties capable of producing and explaining the causal chain -- if z and the entire entourage of causation can obtain. To say that it's just "brute" will not do; the explicandum necessitates a particular kind of "necessity" -- O -- or something like it as the causal origin of the whole show.
So here, you're not simply blindly appealing to something "brute", and you don't necessarily start with an axiom. Rather, the O as the particular "necessity" is logically deduced inductively from x, y, and z. One way of putting it is that compared to an appeal to brute entities, O better explains (has more explanatory power) the reality of x, y, and z by inference to best explanation.
I'm thinking out loud here professor Oppy. Hopefully I'm making sense. Your response would be helpful.
The problem that I've always had with the notion of metaphysical necessity is that epistemically it is 100% indistinguishable from brute facts. Both physical necessity and logical necessity can be explained (i.e. something is physically necessary if its negation would violate the laws of nature, and something is logically necessary if its negation is logically incoherent, which simply means that the description is self-contradictory). But when it comes to metaphysical necessity, at least when it is somewhere in between physical and logical necessity, it basically just seems like blind faith. I can easily conceive of a possible world where God (especially any specific God of a religion) does not exist, and most honest theists agree. Yet, they also nevertheless claim that God exists necessarily. Like, how is that different than just saying God is a brute fact?
@@fanghur "somewhere in between physical and logical necessity, it basically just seems like blind faith." -- Aristotle pursued his logical observations and analysis of things and reached the conclusion that a Prime/Unmoved Mover exists by necessity (to make sense of everything else). Whatever Aristotle was doing, "blind faith' it was absolutely not. Aristotle's approach is essentially similar to the modern philosophical arguments tapping into cosmology (Leibniz and kalam et al) and other fields of empirical data. To characterize such careful philosophical analysis of various strands of (empirical) data "blind faith" is simply prejudice. You may not accept the metaphysical conclusion, sure. But "blind faith"? Nah. If so, belief in a multiverse (and a host of other "exotic" proposals dressed up in scientific terms) would also be "blind faith", for as the theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder recently argued, believing in the multiverse is more religion than science. ruclips.net/video/-dSua_PUyfM/видео.html
"I can easily conceive of a possible world where God (especially any specific God of a religion) does not exist" -- But we're not living in that "possible world", we're living in THIS world, our world, and we have to deal with the realities of THIS world we're living in.
@@edgarrenenartatez1932 Read my original comment again. I was referring specifically to the concept of metaphysical necessity and how by all appearances it seems to just be brute facts by another name. Something that you seemed to tacitly acknowledge, presumably unintentionally, by accepting that God does not exist in all possible worlds. If something doesn't exist in all possible worlds, then by definition it is not necessary in the relevant sense.
And the point I was making was that given the fact that it seems trivially easy to conceive of possible worlds with no God, or with different Gods, then if someone wants to claim that nonetheless their God is 'necessary', I don't see how that can be anything other than blind faith. Again, that's why I pointed out that the term 'metaphysical necessity' just doesn't seem like an epistemically meaningful term, since it's indistinguishable from just saying that God's existence is a brute fact.
@@fanghur "I was referring specifically to the concept of metaphysical necessity and how by all appearances it seems to just be brute facts by another name." - There's a whole lot of debate on 'metaphysical necessity', thus nuances should be considered. I think it can be argued that there is a significant difference between an appeal to 'brute fact' simpliciter and a philosophically articulated 'metaphysical necessity' (i would imagine though that in some respects there would be overlaps).
"Something that you seemed to tacitly acknowledge, presumably unintentionally, by accepting that God does not exist in all possible worlds. - Was not necessarily conceding to anything (at least not yet). My response was to make a particular point re we're dealing with the world we live in. It seems more fruitful to argue from this context instead of in the purely abstract. But Swinburne will not have a problem with this. Theistically, he prefers existential necessity as an explanation. Also Plantinga, he argues for God in terms of causal necessity. Both positions do not necessarily posit God as existing in all logically possible worlds. (I'm no expert on their views.)
"If something doesn't exist in all possible worlds, then by definition it is not necessary in the relevant sense." - But we have to make a distinction between epistemically imaginative and epistemic possibility. What you're appealing to is the epistemically imaginative ie., it's possible to imagine it.
"given the fact that it seems trivially easy to conceive of possible worlds with no God... then if someone wants to claim that nonetheless their God is 'necessary', I don't see how that can be anything other than blind faith." - Well, the "claim" of that "someone" may come in different contexts (purely abstract, or in the context of natural theology), and i think the context of the claim will be relevant in considering whether it's just "blind faith" or a reasoned argument for God as "necessary". Also, to be meaningful and in order for me to give a meaningful response, you have to define exactly what you mean by "blind faith". As i've argued previously, the work of Aristotle along this line (and more modern examples) can never be described as "blind faith" (by my lights at least).
"I pointed out that the term 'metaphysical necessity' just doesn't seem like an epistemically meaningful term... indistinguishable from just saying that God's existence is a brute fact." - I'm not sure about this. You can get brute facts via "blind faith" (i think Carroll was guilty of this - 'Well, since nature is all that exists (the axiom of naturalism), then we have to conclude that whatever is at the bottom would be natural brute facts, and explanation ends there', summarizing here.), maybe some theists think so too (perhaps a presuppositionalist?). But natural philosophers/theologians argue from the ground up, ie., from the world of nature, looking at the empirical data and human experience and move toward the hypothesis that God is a necessary Being.
I may have misunderstood your points still. But anyway, that's part of the conversation.
@@edgarrenenartatez1932 you should email Dr Oppy he often reply to emails
What’s the background noise?
Bruh, what's up with the furry
Some of us have to go to class for a grade okay 😭😂
Is Dr. Joshua Sijuwade positing a TAG (transcendental argument)?
If I'm to understand correctly, if I'm to take a reductionist approach to the examination of aspects of reality, such as with cosmology, biology, mind and consciousness, and morality, at a certain point I'll come to a non-derived point, a point at which a physical aspect cannot be further reduced, which then requires a metaphysical necessity, or explanation. That metaphysical necessity would be a grounding point of, and the same for all aspects of reality.
It seems to me such an argument, as explained, is intuitive. Or, confirms an intuition.
Great discussion and show.
God Bless
@Awesome Wrench,
That's not what I wrote!
Maybe get some reading conprehension lessons.
Thanks for playing without a clue.
@Awesome Wrench ,
You should learn your words better.
My snappy sarcastic valedictions are not a fetish but a further commentary on one's comment.
And, you're further demonstrating your reading comprehension difficulties since I plainly stated that when a non-derived point is reached then aspects of reality requires a metaphysical necessity, or explanation.
Thanks for playing butthurt.
No, I don't think that's what he's saying. He's saying that there is a grounding relation between aspects of reality and if there is such a relation, then there would have to be a foundational ground for that and the best explanation of the grounding relation and foundation would be a theistic one.
@@Kristian-ql8zw,
Seems that's pretty much what I said, but thanks anyway.
why is God limited to logic?? can an ALL powerful(omnipotent trope) entity be limited to logic and if he is, can he still be called ALL powerful and not be called SOME powerful being? even I chose to allow for the sake of argument, in the end it still doesn't follow that an ALL powerful can be limited to logic? Can an ALL powerful being make illogical premises turn (for some reason) to become logical? I have difficult time processing this kind of logic. Please help me.
Yet these same people say its logically possible to walk on water, rise from the dead and turn water into wine.
Logic is really a limit on us. Basically the idea is that we express omnipotence as the ability to do whatever is logically possible. So we can’t say that God can make a married bachelor because married bachelors cannot exist. It’s not that God can’t do it, it’s that it’s not even a thing. It’s no different from saying God can’t make “dkldeunzGoolhjh.”
But if you want to insist that omnipotence includes the ability to do the logically impossible, then fine, we can just dispense with logic altogether and say God can make a married man who is unmarried and there is no problem. We grant that God, in his omnipotence, can do the logically impossible, so now we can’t use contradictions to object to it.
@@mjdillaha but the question remains that a married bachelor is static. Maybe he'll marry in the future? Maybe God is illogical? Idk.
Married bachelor might be a contradictory static thing but that illogical static thing may make god marry that bachelor? Maybe it's circular reasoning. Maybe an ALL powerful god is limited to logically possible things.
@@mhakoyMD I’m just referring to a man who is simultaneously married and unmarried. That’s a contradiction, which is logically impossible. You might also think of a triangle with 4 sides, or 2+2=5. These are logical impossibilities. It’s not that God can’t create them, it’s that they are not things which can exist, they are as meaningless as “37$;:&&),,/5&&$’”
Like I said, if you want to insist that omnipotence actually includes the ability to create these things, then you’re the one who is dispensing with logic, and then you have no objection to the claim that God can do the logically impossible because you’ve already dispensed with the framework which would allow you to make such an objection.
@@mjdillaha I won't insist thank you for explaining those contradictions even though the simultaneity of the subject matter is very contradicting like square circle or married bachelor.
Why is it always red? Blue is better.
Why is there a furry on the panel
Because I’m cool like that
The BIGGEST mystery is why a scholar of Dr. Oppy's stature has a lack of books in his bookcase. ;)
This is a mystery I can solve! The building in which I work is being renovated. The renovation will take several years. During that time, I will be moved at least three times. To save myself trouble, I have moved all my books home. So I will have empty shelves behind for me quite a while to come.
@@grahamoppy9196 Going to take a stab in the dark; I’m not sure how to put together my question.
Would it be fair to consider your comments on “necessity” to contain, or be connected to some degree, with the word “brute”? I’ve heard some philosophers use the term.
@@316350 Perhaps you might say that I think that necessity is brute. In the following sense: there is no explaining why things that are necessary are necessary. What is necessary is so no matter what. Offering an explanation of the necessity of necessary things would be precisely to try to offer a "what". Of course, you can show that it is a logical consequence of some things being necessary that other things are necessary. But this does not explain the necessity of any of these things. This means that, from the standpoint of theorising, the only "brute" necessities are the ones that are not logical consequences of other necessities in your theorising. (To give an example: in arithmetic, you need only suppose that your axioms are "brute"; all of the theorems come along for free, since you get them by logical consequence. But, to explain the necessity of the theorems, you would have to appeal to the necessity of the axioms--and, in my view, there is no explaining the necessity of the axioms.)
@@grahamoppy9196 Thank you for your response. 🙂
I just subscribed to your channel; do you have plans to make videos?
@@316350 I'm his OTHER subscriber. 🤫
Was there a furry in attendance lol
What I’m God’s name is the background noise?!!! Sounds like someone is getting killed back there. Lol
Was there a domestic violence incident about an hour through this discussion? 😂
46:23 Principle of Unrestricted Composition.
Is there a woman screaming at random moments later on? Knock it off!
I understand nothing
Brussel 🌱 s taste so much better than stupid chocolate cake.
If God is simple and identical to God's attributes and identical to each other, then God is the good.
Later, the speaker argues that good is diffusive. But this isn't necessarily so. If God's nature is the good, then if God was not diffusive then lack of diffusivity would be the good. God could instantiate or not instantiate anything at all and this would necessarily be good.
Thus,the proposed form of theism lacks any predictive power.
Dr. Sijuwade reminds me of Idris Elba
Why the furry
Whoops that’d be me HAHAHA I had to zoom in for class that day because the discussion overlapped with another class of mine… posting this to multiple folks who asked…
@@acethepirate9835 haha thanks for the clarification
Sijuwade is just black swinburne plus feser?
jacked black swinburne plus feser
Everything that exists has structure. The structure is one of the ways of interpreting something existing. Water is a water molecule and it is a hydrogen atom and it is a proton and it is a quark, all at the same time. Our gaze determines the level of interpretation, but each level of interpretation is not a different ontological level.
If this interpretation were true, all we see is god. Everything that exists and everything we do is God.
This being the case, God means nothing.
@Eduardo Rodriguez:
I think your comment about structure is true, so far as it goes, but your further conclusion seems to require that it isn't merely "one of the ways of interpreting" something existing, but also that neither structure, nor anything else, gives us clues to forms of existence apart from the physical. Structure is indeed a thing we can analyze about (or, a "way of interpreting the existence of") a material, spatio-temporal entity, if it's composed. And any entity which is composed has some principle in virtue of which its parts are united into a whole (else, we wouldn't call it an entity composed of those parts, but rather a bunch of discrete entities). If (and I say "if" because it can't be assumed) that principle is NO MORE THAN a matter of physical arrangement in spacetime -- if that is what you mean by "structure" -- then your observation about "structure" is a generally-valid observation about composed material entities.
However, physical arrangement doesn't exhaust all the types of explanation of an entity, even if that entity is both material and composed. If you're pursuing an exhaustive explanation of a baby, you don't say: "Well, its arms are here and its legs are there and the torso's in the middle and the head's on top; The End."
Generalizing more widely to "grounding" allows us to include broader range of explanatory types. But by going outside of arrangement in space, or "structure" in general, it includes a range of interrelated realities not covered by your initial paragraph. Your initial paragraph does not argue, but seems to assume, that the ONLY form of interrelation between entities is physical structure.
If that were the case (if, as you say, "this interpretation were true") then, yes, all ultimate grounding would be mere structural relations of physical objects in space, and if "ultimate grounding" were taken to also be the definition of "God," then the term "God" would be a synonym for "mere structural relations of physical objects in space." That wouldn't make the term "God" mean NOTHING; but it would make the term "God" redundant.
Alternatively, if we define God as the "ultimate grounding" but at the same time assert that it refers to some kind of grounding OTHER THAN mere "structural relations of physical objects in space," then in your interpretation (which assumes that no grounding exists apart from those structural relations), the term "God" would point to a null set.
Either way, the question is whether the interpretation you assert is true. But Dr. Sijuwade obviously argues otherwise: There are many other forms of grounding, they don't all reduce to spatio-temporal structure, and they also require some kind of grounding unless one of them doesn't require any further groundedness but, in a principled way and by logical necessity, just is ultimate grounding. And even Dr. Oppy agrees, to a certain extent, because he acknowledges identity as a non-spatiotemporal relation, and takes pains to eliminate it from the list of grounding-types that Dr. Sijuwade uses in arguing a hierarchy of grounding, by saying that the identity of Entity X just IS Entity X of necessity, requiring no further explanation.
Anyway, since Dr. Sijuwade does argue (successfully or not) for more kinds of grounding than you allow for, and for the need to ultimately ground at least some of them in a single source of grounding, I think you can't just assert the claim, "no, the only kind of grounding that's real is physical structure." I think you have to argue that point and counter-argue his arguments.
Until that's done, "God" isn't yet shown to be either a redundant term for structure, or a pointer to nothing.
@@cw-on-yt The phenomenon exists. Structure is a conventional interpretation. To the extent that we are distinguishing the extension of the observed phenomenon, we are expanding the structural concept. It is only an interpretation that allows a differentiated understanding according to either the need for compression or the need for agency on the phenomenon.
No. A baby is a certain combination of elements that, due to their particular arrangement, have certain functions and interact in a particular way with their environment. For example, he forms patterns that correspond to causal relationships that he distinguishes in the environment. A touch on the lips corresponds to the sucking reflex.
Yes. But I can put it explicitly. There are only natural interactions in reality. Everything that interacts with something can be considered existing and what does not interact with anything, it is not rational to consider it existing.
My point is that there are not distinct relations between structures. There are different relationships between elements and to distinguish "structures" is to observe maps with either different degrees of resolution or different interpretations of the same phenomenon.
It is not true that there is a relationship between the "Wave" structure and the "Water Molecule" structure.
Distinguishing a pattern in reality does not make that pattern an entity. The wave is not an entity.
That Oppy recognizes that identity is a non-spatiotemporal relation does not mean that identity is a non-spatiotemporal relation. There is nothing that is a non-spatiotemporal relation. Something non-spatiotemporal (a fantasy) does not interact with anything and therefore it is not logical to consider it existing, much less knowable. It is not true that X is equal to itself. Nothing is equal to itself beyond an instant. If X exists in reality, in the next instant, X no longer has the same duration, physical location, relation to the rest of the elements of reality (which are as mutable as X and affect it), etc. Identity is an illusion and a convention. It does not correspond to a real phenomenon.
God is a psychological pattern. Giving that pattern a metaphysical spin is a futile task.
I accept all grounding that results from effective and proven interactions in reality.
Saying Grounding doesn't mean anything ontologically. God cannot be based there.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd:
Thanks for your reply. Some of what you say here seems, as before, to be asserted rather than argued. But the video includes reasons to think otherwise; and one must first falsify those arguments, and then base one's own conclusions on premises shared with your interlocutor, and then show that the conclusions follow from the premises.
Re: the baby example: I can agree to your entire paragraph; but the point of the baby example is that while those items may be true, and nothing but the truth, they fall short of the whole truth in all its aspects. They are part of, but do not exhaust, our descriptive and explanatory requirements.
You say, "There are only natural interactions in reality." But, there are plenty of arguments to the contrary. Dr. Sijuwade's are far from the only ones, but since they're in the video and the others aren't, it seems reasonable to only require a refutation of those, when expressing an alternative view. (Also, I find myself wondering how you define "natural," and thus "nature," in that sentence.) When you say, "there is nothing that is a non-spatiotemporal relation" it looks like you're going all-the-way to eliminative materialism, a la Alex Rosenberg and Paul Churchland. But I think Searle's Chinese Room, Kripke's quus function argument, and James Ross's adaptation of it, demonstrates that determinative meaning in mental processes (and thus in the intended meaning one attempts to convey in any exercise of language-use) is necessarily non-material, and cannot be causatively exhausted by any finite material substrate without radically redefining what one means by "matter." Add Nagel's musings on qualia to that, and there are far too many arguments against the Rosenberg/Churchland stance to treat it as a kind of assumed default. On the contrary, I think that view is defeated until/unless its defenders produce better arguments.
I would, however, agree to the verbiage (if not the intended meaning) of your statement, "I accept all grounding that results from effective and proven interactions in reality." I just come to the phrase "effective and proven interactions in reality" with a longer list of examples. "There are more things, Horatio...."
@@cw-on-yt Regarding the baby, I do not see that reality allows us to build a complete conceptual model of this phenomenon. Or any other phenomenon. But that does not allow us to consider unfoundedly that the baby is made up of something else that is in it but does not interact with anything. It may sound like a statement without arguments but if you look closely you will see that it will not be possible for you to suppose that the baby (or anything) is made up of things with which no one or nothing interacts and yet you know about them. If you think those things interact with anything, it would contradict your point and if you don't, there's no reason to assume they exist. It is only valid, then, to consider that the baby is made up of natural elements and relationships.
That the model of the baby does not exhaust all its dimension does not make it valid to speculate non-natural components. Natural is everything that interacts with other elements of reality. If it doesn't interact with anything, it's a fantasy. Do you suppose I should give an argument for this position?
I do not agree with you that language carries non-spatiotemporal meanings. It's a long topic.
Our ability is to build conceptual models of reality. This is the basis of the effectiveness of our agency.
Communication is probabilistic. One selects or assembles a model of the part of reality that one wishes to communicate and using symbols, tries to hit (similar to when someone throws darts) in the areas that we suppose have correspondence, in the receiver, in his mental models. One says: "The dog eats bone" trusting that the receiver has already internally armed the concepts "dog", "eat" and "bone". In the Chinese Room, the statement means nothing because the Chinese Room does not have a pattern recognizer that triggers neurochemicals at certain symbols. If the Chinese Room had a symbol scanner and had programmed that with one of the symbols needles are stuck in the one that receives and returns the symbols, then we would have a meaning.
If upon receiving the communique "The dog eats bone" my pattern analyzer bathes my body with adrenaline and I start to run away, then that communiqué has meaning for me. The communication could be made up of any material and with any agreed grammatical structure.
Horacio is very skeptical and he wants an example of an existing entity that does not interact with anything and wants to know how you have come to know about it.
Why the furry? It's kinda creeeeepy
No u
Oppy's biggest fan
Slumdog more like object oriented programming
Hey, Cam. Could you have Richard Carrier for an interview/discussion?
Hahahaha!
Please NO!
Little Dick Carrier has about as much credibility as Will Smith having a rational reason for slapping Chris Rock.
😂
😂