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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/13/2008 7:27:53 AM | I once had someone ask me, a Judeo/Christian paradoxical question...
Could the creator make a rock, that they could not lift?
It would seem this question would be easier to answer from a 'meta' (beyond/after) perspective as opposed to the popular 'omni' (all) point of view.
Which raises the question... is the prefix 'omni' a limitless limitation or an attribute?
What do you think? | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/13/2008 7:46:56 AM | | It's not a real paradox! If God is a being with logically necessary upper limits, then the fact that God would not, by definition, transgress basic logical principles doesn't alter the fact that God can still consistently be referred to as omnipotent. "Meta" has a range of meanings, few, if any, of which carry the spiritualist connotations you are invoking! Some have argued that Aristotle's Metaphysics for instance, is supposed to be the treatise which came "after" (meta) the Physics. The treatise which is about principles that are not physical came after the treatise named the Physics. Having said that, I think Aristotle also meant metaphysika in the sense of the principles upon which everything else is based also... | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/14/2008 5:58:48 PM | "Meta" has a range of meanings, few, if any, of which carry the spiritualist connotations you are invoking!
Actually, I was thinking along the lines of the problem that an absolute creates, when attempting to articulate a limitless construct. It seems the idea of 'all' (omni) of anything, presents a limit even if it is a unquantifiable one, because it is absolute. This could make the 'meta' option more attactive. As a means of answering the creator question it could be a Ockham Razor. Maybe, the answer is argument for string theory perhaps? | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/14/2008 6:54:55 PM | The two posts above answered your question.
Moreover I'm not sure how anything could "be a Ockham Razor". I'm not even sure how Ockham's razor applies here, there is no difficulty. | |
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Posted: 5/14/2008 11:07:54 PM | The two posts above answered your question.
Actually, it appears those posts answered a different question. The question uses the "Omnipotence paradox" (yes it is a real paradox...do a google search) as a context to compare that which is infinitely absolute (all/omni) with that which is infinitely limitless (beyond/meta). Infinity in this context implies a quantative comparison. Therefore, that which is infinitely limitless is likely an Ockham's Razor (at least in regard to attempting to solve the given paradox).
The phrase "limitless limitation" is a contradiction of terms.
The context of this phrase (to be more specific) is not denotive (literal), it is connotive (metaphor). | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/15/2008 4:24:24 AM | I don't need to to a google search on it. It's a false paradox. I've done professional research on it and worked with Dr. PJ McGrath for a semester on debunking this and other false dilemmas (He wrote a well known philosophy book on various different misconcpetions that arguments for and against religious belief suffer from...this was one of the easier ones to dismiss...he discusses this one in particular in "Believing in God").
Do you not know what Ockham's Razor is because you keep misusing the phrase which loosely understood is a strategy for choosing between competing/alternative explanations or arguments for the same event/phenomenon. According to Ockham's razor one should always choose the explanation that involves the least number of assumptions.
Again, I think I mentioned it clearly enough above...you are labouring under an illusion as to what the technical prefix "meta" involves. | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/15/2008 4:28:44 AM | | Limitless limitation is a pretty clumsy phrase by the way... | |
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Posted: 5/15/2008 4:57:30 AM | | I have a feeling that these types of questions are our attempts at avoiding the inevitable futility of defining anything to be an absolute. A cycle of endless relativity doomed to never know true definition for more than a cosmic blink, unless we resign to never look closely at something enough. And then definition is an illusion. | |
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Posted: 5/15/2008 7:58:17 AM | I do not disagree with any assertions (I do not believe in disagreement...it hinders dialogue), I just do not share them, if they are out of context.
The prefix 'meta' can contextually suggest a connotation or even a abstraction. When denotation (that which is technical) is used to interpet connotation (that which is implicated) than 'illusion' will be perceived. The given paradox as it is known (it has not been universally identified as 'false') was used in a connotative context.
As with any paradox an example must be given. The 'creator ' is an example neither arguing for or against deitism in this given context. Which is why this paradox could just as well suggest a metaphor for a abstract phenomenon (string theory).
Regarding the phrase "limitless limitation", I would agree it is absurdly clumsy, if the intended context were denotive (rather than this case... connotatively questioning, a possible flaw in human perception of a construct, of that which is unquantifiable). | |
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Posted: 5/15/2008 4:05:56 PM | | The problem is, and I don't mean to sound rude, but I don't actually think you are saying anything...it's logorrhea... | |
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Posted: 5/15/2008 5:28:56 PM | The problem is, and I don't mean to sound rude, but I don't actually think you are saying anything...it's logorrhea...
I don't deny this assertion, I just don't share it. The one of the likely reasons why xenophobia exists (in addition to debate, argument, altercation and war), is failure to ask this question... "What do you mean?" Dialogue does not require critique, only curiosity, perception and respect for it.
That noted... the context given for the thread ponders the problem of perception posed by the "Omnipotence paradox" (if no problem is perceived than critique is moot). Argue and/or critique a different context other than the given one, the result will be as it has been so far... assumption and/or speculation. | |
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Posted: 5/16/2008 2:07:46 AM | | Dialogue as a philosophical form was immortalized by Plato more than anyone else and he would refute your claims as to what is involved in dialogue. It is about the "contestation" of ideas. It involves the rejection of false assumptions, phony wisdom, misuse of language. The Socratic dialogues typically involve Socrates examining a piece of conventional 'wisdom' discussing it with characters who make various claims as to x,y or z and Socrates REJECTING many of their claims with reductio arguments. I REJECT your claims, your misuse of language and your false assumptions as to this being a paradox! | |
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Posted: 5/16/2008 6:05:05 AM | Dear meridian_blue, I don't think the problem of creating a stone that He Himself can't lift is a negation of the Almighty's omnipotence; rather, it is a negation of the notion of "omnipotence" itself.
What you say about inclusivity of infinite sets, can be broken down into the simple problem of sets. If we say "Every bucketful's worth of empty space to the left of me" includes an infinite amount of something, which we can neither imagine nor visualize. That's because our brain is fininte. But the human brain is capable of creating and understanding mega-concepts, such as infinity. We have short-cuts to denote infinite amounts; that's done through the language. So when one refers to a mega-concept, of, for instance, all the neurons in galaxies other than ours, we need not think of each and every neuron; our built-in capacity to reduce quantities into a unit and a multiplier of it, and our ability to accept the multipier "infinity" has helped us imagine or conceptualize infinite sets or mega-sets. | |
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Posted: 5/16/2008 7:43:20 AM | I think I understand your problem, OP. It's a very simple problem. So let's break it down. Your question seems to be:
"Could the creator make a rock, that they could not lift?"
However, the Creator is the person who created things. Doesn't imply that the Creator has the omnipotence to lift anything. So the question is really concerned with Omnipotent beings. So then we need to ask:
"Could an all-powerful being with the ability to create anything, make a rock, that he/she could not lift?"
If an all-powerful being with the ability to create anything, does make a rock, that he/she could not lift, then he/she is no-longer all-powerful any more. So our question is really:
"Could an all-powerful being with the ability to create anything, make himself/herself not all-powerful?"
We clearly don't need the ability of creation to state this, so we'll take that out. So we are left with:
"Could an all-powerful being, make himself/herself not all-powerful?"
The answer is clearly YES.
But then the being would no longer be all-powerful, according to our understanding of Aristotle's famous Law of Non-Contradiction, that something cannot be true and false at the same time.
In reality, this only applies to finite and transfinite concepts. There is something that can be true and false at the same time. Oddly enough, this thing is something that is all-powerful, and is a logical conclusion of Cantor's Theorem. However, it was so mind-boggling to Mathematicians, Scientists and Philosophers, that we redefined the Western system of logic to exclude this thing, by the Zermelo-Fraenkel Axioms.
So an all-powerful being can create something that he cannot lift, and still be all-powerful, but the concept of this is beyond the understanding of Western Scientific Thought.
If you post me or email me that you want me to explain why, then I will post again. But it's above most people's heads, and really confuses people. So I don't want to post the answer and confuse people, unless I'm requested. | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/16/2008 8:03:59 AM | | Actually if you simply define what a supreme being is, i.e., a being with LOGICALLY necessary upper limits, the paradox dissolves itself...If God were not a being with logically necessary upper limits, then it would not be God... | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/16/2008 9:03:40 AM | Dear meridian_blue, I don't think the problem of creating a stone that He Himself can't lift is a negation of the Almighty's omnipotence; rather, it is a negation of the notion of "omnipotence" itself.
Cheers... Well said. It seems however, one feature of this paradox suggests an absolute, something absolute suggests a total, something total suggests a quantative limit, even if a undefineable one. If it were called the "Metaomnipotence paradox" it would be a false paradox because 'meta' is not absolute so no problem would be posed. Hence, my allusion (not illusion as some would spectulate) to the metaphor of a "limitless limitation" because 'omni' is unquantifiable yet absolute.
If you post me or email me that you want me to explain why, then I will post again. But it's above most people's heads, and really confuses people.
Interesting!!! Indulge me... Is it a argument favoring string theory perhaps? | |
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Posted: 5/16/2008 4:23:23 PM | In one of my ideas for a science fiction story the main character and their little armbrace tool slowly uncover higher laws of physics and eventually define what the armbrace's A.I. refers to as Transcendent Physics.
The little armbrace immediately tells the main character it has activated a mechanism intended to annilihate both of them. When asked why, it answers because it had to. Because it doesn't lead to anything except the process of starting everything over again.  | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/16/2008 5:11:37 PM | Because it doesn't lead to anything except the process of starting everything over again.
Reminds me of the dualist concept of all extremes leading to it's opposite or the zen metaphor of striking something down when it is complete from "The Family Traditions On The Art Of War". Sounds somewhat Clausewitzian even... if that was the context. | |
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Posted: 5/16/2008 5:16:58 PM | I'll have to read up on that when I get home. I might find it really interesting.
Thanks for mentioning that.  | |
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Posted: 5/17/2008 4:39:50 AM |
Interesting!!! Indulge me... Is it a argument favoring string theory perhaps? It's based on Cantor's Theorem, which was published by Cantor in 1891, and which shows that for every set, there is a bigger set, that contains all the subsets of the original set, called a power set, and that this will apply even to infinitely-sized sets. Based on this, mathematicians concluded that for each infinity, there must be a set whose size is infinity, and therefore there must be a bigger set, which has an even bigger infinity. So there are multiple infinities without end.
Now, if you consider the set that contains all sets, called the Set of All Sets, this would be the biggest set, and its size must be the biggest number possible.
But according to Cantor, there must be a bigger set, its power set. So if we call the size of the Set of All Sets as S0, and the size of its power set as S1, then S0 must be less than S1, and S0 cannot be equal to S1. But by definition, the Set of All Sets is the biggest set there is. Hence, they must be the same set, and so S0 must be equal to S1. So when we look at the Set of All Sets, and its power set, we can say that S0 = S1, is both true and false, at the same time.
If we were to try and quantify the power of any omnipotent being, then that being's power would be measured as the biggest number possible. So the same logic holds. If the power of an omnipotent being is S0, so there logically must be an S1, which is the power required to lift everything that the omnipotent being could lift, and an object which the omnipotent being created which he/she cannot lift. So S1 is greater than S0, and so not equal to S0. But S0 is the biggest number possible. So S0 must be equal to S1. But if S0 is equal to S1, then the power of the omnipotent being must also be S1, and hence the omnipotent being must have the power to lift everything that is defined by S1, including the object which the omnipotent being created which he/she cannot lift.
As the size of the Set of All Sets must be the biggest number possible, it is clear to me that the power of any omnipotent being would be comparable to the Set of All Sets. So it only makes sense to me that when you look at the power of any omnipotent being, there would be some statement that would be both true and false at the same time.
Cantor's Theorem was very controversial when it came out. Some mathematicians stated that you cannot deduce anything about infinity, because it doesn't exist. However, Hilbert recognised it as being valid, and it is largely accepted.
The mathematicians who rejected Cantor's Theorem developed Constructionist Mathematics and Intuitionistic Mathematics, in order to describe Mathematical proofs without relying of the existence of an infinity, which is basically Classical Mathematics but without the Law of the Excluded Middle, that nothing can be true and false at the same time. So according to those mathematicians that disagree with Cantor's Theorem, they would claim that anything can be true and false at the same time. So they would claim that an omnipotent being could not lift infinite mass, because there can be no infinite mass. But such a being could lift the whole mass of the universe, because the whole mass of the universe cannot be infinite, and because they don't use the Law of the Excluded Middle, it's possible that any omnipotent Creator can create something that He/She cannot lift, and still be able to lift it, because they believe that it's possible for something to be true and false at the same time.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_Cantor%27s_theory
So this whole question can only be posed about a being who is much, much stronger than us, maybe even infinitely strong, but nevertheless is non-omnipotent.
The basis of Cantor's Theorem is also the same as Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, and many paradoxes, including Russell's Paradox, so it has great significance. | |
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/17/2008 5:43:31 AM | And then definition is an illusion.
Eastern thought is based on relativist metaphor (construct). Western thought is based on dogmatic consensus (definition). The former sees us as a product of nature . The latter sees nature as a product of us. The latter view of nature, brought us global warming and nuclear proliferation. Eastern thought asks "why?" and Western thought asks ''why not?"...
@ scorpiomover... Interesting! Can this application be used in string theory?
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| Omni or Meta???
Posted: 5/17/2008 6:05:01 AM | "Eastern thought is based on relativist metaphor (construct). Western thought is based on dogmatic consensus (definition). The former sees us as a product of nature . The latter sees nature as a product of us. The latter view of nature, brought us global warming."
Whoa. Wait a second. Global warming was not brought on by a philsophical direction. It was brought on, if indeed it has been instigated by man, by overpopulation. I don't believe for a second that any philosophical direction or ethical system has ever affected the basic behaviour of man in any material way. Easterners and Westerners both like sex, their children, collecting supplies and amassing wealth (some call it greed), striving for feeling happy, healing sick people, and making each other thrive in societies. Aside from that, we all enjoy intellectual pursuits, which range from sports betting to posting on Forums to tormenting yourself through Wagner.
Philosophies are not powerful enough to change man's basic behaviour. You cannot put the blame for a global effect that supposedly was brought on by man only on part of humanity, and if you can, then the division must not be placed on philosophical views. | |
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Posted: 5/17/2008 6:23:35 AM | Whoa. Wait a second.
The context of that analogy, is not blame only observation of a result. Reference to East and West is not geographical it is idealogical. The prevailing idealology, that influenced the 20th century technology, that created the nightmare scenarios mentioned is Western... regardless of who embraces it (China has the bomb too and is currently one of the greatest producers of pollution).
Man is mass producing real paradoxes faster than the theoretical ones. Perhaps, Eastern thought should be revisited... "Meta" anyone? | |
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Posted: 5/17/2008 6:51:26 AM | | You're painting with very broad and messy strokes Meridian. What you are alluding to, badly, is a very tendentious and poorly conceived version of a populist understanding of Heidegger's account of Western productionist metaphysics. It is a far more complicated and nuanced story than what you are trying to scratch at! And then you just throw around the Greek prefix again as if it means something used in that way... | |
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I don't consider that a paradox. It's more like circular logic.
Like in the Star Trek episode "I, Mudd" when Kirk said to Norman, "Everything Harry tells you is a lie." Harry then says, "I'm lying." Norman then blew a fuse.
I would have to say attribute. The phrase "limitless limitation" is a contradiction of terms.
