The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God

Jumping right into it: Con: "this would be true using the correct definition of conceptual, however TAG did not show that logical absolutes met this definition. What it did show was that they are "not dependent on space, time, physical properties, or human nature" and called this conceptual.: Actually if you take a look at what Slicks says here in his expanded argument: "Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature. 1. Logic is a process of the mind. Logical absolutes provide the framework for logical thought processes. Therefore, Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature. " [1] And you look at the definition of concept again: "–noun 1. a general notion or idea; conception. 2. ***an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct.**** 3. a directly conceived or intuited object of thought." [2] It would seem that Slick did have the correct, or similar, definition in mind of what concept or what conceptual means. What he was doing is going beyond the definition and doing a conceptual analysis and drawing out the consequences of what it means for something to be "conceptual in nature". Con: "Pro refutes my hypothetical argument by saying that if logical absolutes are non-conceptual we could never know them. The problem is that we can have a concept of something that is non-conceptual. For example, an apple is not a concept, but I still have a concept of an apple." That is not exactly what my argument was. What I said is that Con's position commits him to some kind of Platonism if he's going to deny that logical absolutes are conceptual. Then taking the position of Platonism that would entail that we could never know what logical absolutes are if they exist in the platonic sense. But obviously we do have knowledge of logical absolutes therefore Con's position is incoherent and logical absolutes most be conceptual. In any case, Con's rebutting analogy is really disanalogous because an apple would is a concrete object [3] - not an abstract object. So we could have knowledge of that even if it is non-conceptual. Con: "can you explain how i demonstrated there would need to be an ultimate, transcendent mind." Con demonstrates this by leaving only one option besides conceptualism. Platonism. But platonism about abstracta is incoherent so we only have one option left to choose when considering the ontology of abstract objects. Con: "I would like to close with 2 questions for con." I'm assuming he meant Pro here. Con: "1. Is it possible for a universe with no minds to exist." Not if we accept that the laws of logic are necessary truths and exist in all possible worlds. For example, it wouldn't make sense to say that the law of non-contradiction doesn't apply or can't apply in other possible worlds because we have to presuppose the law of non-contradiction in order to deny it! Part of what it means to say anything is to imply that the opposite is not true. If I say "the cat is on the mat" it is implied that cat isn't not (yes, double negative) on the mat at the same time in the same sense. It would seem that the laws of logic apply in every possible universe. If we accept that claim and that they are concepts (as I argued that we have to in the preceding paragraphs) then it follows that a universe where no minds exist is impossible. We would need a mind that exists in all these possible universes to instantiate the laws of logic. This sounds a lot like what theists say when they claim that God is a necessary being who exists in all possible worlds. [4] Con: "2. In this hypothetical universe, is a cloud a rock." No. Because if we accept the the preceding arguments that it is: a) impossible for the law of identity not to hold in any possible universe and b) impossible for a universe with no minds to exist then it is not possible for a cloud to be a rock. Thanks for the debate, Con! ========== Sources ========== [1] http://www.carm.org... [2] http://dictionary.reference.com... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] http://plato.stanford.edu...