Mormonism's OA and the mighty F-S chain

[Limnor]

True -- but I can't tell if you're saying this is uniquely a Mormon problem.

Frankly I was sort of avoiding the trinity thing because I wasn’t sure where you were going. But I’ll put some thought into it.

I’ll fess up that creedal Christianity has its own complications but I’m willing to discuss.

[Limnor]

Gad: I’m going to read chapter X of Plantinga’s “The Nature of Necessity” for basic groundwork.

[Philo Sofee]

Here is my second question and idea and Chat's response. You guys have already gone far beyond.....lol.......but I'm still gonna share. -
CHAT HAD SAID
Casualty 1: Deification collapses

You can “become a god,” but:

Never the greatest conceivable being

Always derivative

Always patronized

Godhood becomes honorary, not ontological. -

KERRYS QUESTION: That's not due to resurrected bodies for everyone is it? He never touches Joseph Smith's idea that intelligences are as eternal as God and were never created. Sirits were potentially born spiritually before this earth life, but that means they had a beginning. Intelligences didn't, so that is God already isn't it?

Great question—and you’ve put your finger exactly on the pressure point Gadianton doesn’t fully engage, even though it’s sitting right there in Joseph Smith.

Let’s slow this down and be very precise, because there are three different ontological layers in Joseph Smith’s thought, and Gadianton collapses at least two of them.

*snip

Philo, are you using AI in your response?

Regards,
MG

Oh crap! I thought this was the megathread Artificial Intelligence thread, I am SORRY. Hey can a MOD move this to the proper thread. Sorry about that, I shall try to watch it more carefully.

[Gadianton]

Gad: I’m going to read chapter X of Plantinga’s “The Nature of Necessity” for basic groundwork.

okay. but, getting to rock bottom necessity may be an overshoot for this conversation. In short, I don't think Mormonism reveals a position on metaphysical necessity.

also think about more basic ontology:

Let's say I show you a potato, a rock, and a dog, and I'm telling you that what I'm showing you is one thing. What are the options for making those three things really one thing?

Kingdom, order, phylum, class, genus, species. think about the tradeoffs in creating or eliminating categories to classify life. Also, I mentioned Duns S. (Shades makes it difficult). Take a quick look at the debate between Duns and William of Ockham. Since people talk about "Ockham's razor" all the time, that's the perfect starting point for thinking about ontological cost.

[Philo Sofee]

Gad: I’m going to read chapter X of Plantinga’s “The Nature of Necessity” for basic groundwork.

okay. but, getting to rock bottom necessity may be an overshoot for this conversation. In short, I don't think Mormonism reveals a position on metaphysical necessity.

also think about more basic ontology:

Let's say I show you a potato, a rock, and a dog, and I'm telling you that what I'm showing you is one thing. What are the options for making those three things really one thing?

Kingdom, order, phylum, class, genus, species. think about the tradeoffs in creating or eliminating categories to classify life. Also, I mentioned Duns S. (Shades makes it difficult). Take a quick look at the debate between Duns and William of Ockham. Since people talk about "Ockham's razor" all the time, that's the perfect starting point for thinking about ontological cost.

OK, my third Response to AI on your argument is posted in the AI thread Gad. I am enjoying this!

[MG 2.0]

Oh crap! I thought this was the megathread Artificial Intelligence thread, I am SORRY. Hey can a MOD move this to the proper thread. Sorry about that, I shall try to watch it more carefully.

Good catch. You're a better man than I have been. After being in exile I've had to repent. There is nothing like enforced free agency.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

Oh crap! I thought this was the megathread Artificial Intelligence thread, I am SORRY. Hey can a MOD move this to the proper thread. Sorry about that, I shall try to watch it more carefully.

Good catch. You're a better man than I have been. After being in exile I've had to repent. There is nothing like enforced free agency.

Regards,
MG

Mentalgymnast is "forced" to repent. After telling us he testified to his stake pres he is honest in ALL his dealings with his fellow humans. The irony.

[Limnor]

Ok gad, first hack at my understanding.

Constraint: God is “that which nothing greater can be conceived.” If you can conceive of something greater than your current concept of God, then that wasn’t God. Plantinga expands this by saying the idea is maximal greatness across possible worlds but the intuition is that God must be maximally perfect.

Definition: A maximally great being would be omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and necessary—meaning the being cannot fail to exist.

If love is a maximal perfection, then God must be perfectly loving. And if love has a relationship—the one who loves, the one who is beloved, and the bond of love between them, and that love must extend backwards into eternity, then God must reflect this, because a unitary being cannot express love relationally without creating something—because God must lack nothing and depend on nothing.

So the Trinity can be seen as the self-fulfilling of maximal greatness.

Trinity: God is one essence, three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit. Not three gods, not one person wearing masks, but one being whose nature is love. So in Trinitarian thought, the Father eternally loves the Son, the Son eternally loves the Father, and the Spirit is the eternal bond of that love.

So if you accept that God is maximally great, love is a perfection, and dependence is imperfection, then a solitary deity doesn't seem as compete as this model.

[Limnor]

One part Augustine, a tablespoon of Anselm, and a dash of Plantinga.

[Gadianton]

You summary of Plantinga looks about right from what I know. In my post, I'm not concerned with fundamental ontology. That's the second move of an OA, the part I'm disregarding. I'm using the first part pragmatically. Let's ignore my stuff for now.

On the one hand, you have an a priori framework that asserts maximal greatness is necessary*. A priori truths are like, 1+1=2. So on the left, maximal greatness is defined by logic alone. On the right, I have the Bible, a book of the adventures of a "man of war" called Jehovah, Jesus, God made flesh who ascended as flesh, the Holy spirit, a mighty wind, and a Spirit called the Father. Now we're going to do two things, a) stipulate a "trinity", a single being made up of these other beings as described in the Bible, and b) stipulate that the trinity equates to maximal greatness.

In one possible world, I imagine there are no planets, only turtles swimming in space. In this world, 1+1=2, and Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and the Father, and attributes they assumed from the jealous warrior Jehovah are also there. It's a little easier to understand "necessity" as in the law of non-contradiction holding in this turtle world because it would be really hard for me to describe a turtle world while violating the law of non-contradiction. It's a head-scratcher to see why Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit must also be there. Any time you're bridging the a priori world to our real world it will not be a clean fit.

I could likewise stipulate my rock, potato, and dog exist in all possible worlds, by equating them with abstract properties I've decided must exist. Further, I can stipulate that my rock, potato, and dog are all one entity.

*In Kripke's metaphysics, necessity is defined as a truth that exists in all possible worlds. 1+1 is necessary because 1+1 just happens to be true across all possible worlds. If "maximal greatness" exists in every possible world, then maximal greatness is necessary.