100 Treatises

7 Responses to “Existence of God, Part 2: The Paradox of Omnipotence 2”

1. anna missed

   One possible resolution to the logic issue was posited by German philosopher Gottlob Frege, although he did it for reasons other than religion. Frege said that the world of mathematics and logic were to be proclaimed as a “third realm” in which they should be considered as a type material thing. In that world god would not be constrained by logic, but would have created it as another kind of material thing. Or at least as the product of a material (person) thing.

   Comment on Mar 28th, 2010 at 5:50 am   
2. Justin

   Thanks for your comment, Anna.

   So this is very interesting. God indeed created logic. So therefore god is not constrained by logic, because god created it. Therefore god can do that which is logically impossible, right? And the upshot of that would be that god can create an uncreated thing, therefore god can create god, therefore the ability to create god exists, etc… and back to my thoughts in Part 1. Please let me know if I am off in my interpretation.

   Comment on Mar 28th, 2010 at 1:59 pm   
3. Daniel Pech

   All demonstrable power, or ability, is known to some primitive peoples as ‘juju’. Of course, their impressions of power are sometimes superstitious. In any case, to them, anyone who seems able to identify and access a ‘higher power’ is said to have ‘powerful juju’.

   For some reason, we humans are bent on trying to identify the greatest meaningful scope and degree of power. Whatever the reason, that effort might seem most naturally begun by finding every kind of thing over which it meaningfully can be imagined to have power. After all, power is another word for agency: the ability to ‘bring something about’, whether an object, event, condition, or other kind of outcome.

   But, simple agency is not the only concept of power. For example, look at the simple power to hammer a nail. While it naturally means having power over the nail, it more naturally means something with that kind of power: a hammer, and the hammerer. In other words, to think of the power to hammer a nail is also to think of the powers of a hammer and the person wielding it. The hammer is a kind of power, and so is the person. So, in trying to identify the greatest meaningful scope and degree of power, we more naturally would have to find every kind of power.

   Of course, it is possible to think of power simply as agency: the ability to bring something about. But, to say that this is what power most essentially is is actually to say nothing at all about it. This is because our concept of power as ‘simple agency’ is actually a generalization from kinds of powers. We abstract this generalization similar to how we abstract generalizations of mathematics: whether we are adding two pairs of shoes, two pairs of socks, or one pair of each, the singular sense is always that there is four items. Likewise, whether we observe the hammer as it strikes the nail, or the nail as it goes into the wood, the most singular sense is always the same: something brings something about.

   But, our ability to abstract this singular sense of power does not mean that that sense is the very essence of power. That abstraction certainly is coherent, but we would be mistaken to believe that it best represents the nature of power. Because, if we imagine that simple agency is the total essence of power, then we would be imagining that any kind of power would have every kind of power over every imaginable thing in every imaginable way: it could stop, or increase, all kinds of powers, including itself; and it could change, or ignore, all essential things such as mathematical necessity.

   So, there are two concepts of power. There is the generalized concept, which is in view of the singular sense of agency. And, there is the deeper concept, which is in view of certain kinds power having certain kinds of applications. Both concepts are useful, each in it’s own way.

   HINTING AT THE TRUTH

   It is entirely natural to have a simple, notional sense of the greatest meaningful scope and degree of power. This is like having a simple sense of power as mere agency. But, to define, or conceive, of the greatest meaningful scope and degree of power is another matter. This is because there are two possible concepts of power to work with. One of them may not be right for the job.

   The initial difficulty of the problem of identifying, not to mention accessing, the greatest scope and degree of power is exemplified by the article, ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ (Majid Amini, 2009. Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy). The author seems unaware that there are two concepts of power. And, he is using the one that appears not to be right for the job. The article is preoccupied with showing that the greatest scope and degree of power cannot be coherently defined, so it ignores the task of even partially defining the greatest scope and degree of logically possible power. One might get the impression he is motivated to deny that an entity of the greatest scope and degree of possible power can possibly exist.

   Anyway, the central position of the article is to reject the traditional, Thomist conception of omnipotence. The Thomist conception says that the meaningfully greatest scope and degree of power is the power to do anything that is logically possible. The article uses questions such as ‘can an omnipotent being create a rock too heavy for it to lift?’ and ‘can an omnipotent being create another omnipotent being?’ If a power cannot change or abolish logic, then, the thinking goes, logic is something which that power has no power over, and, thus, that that power is not quite the greatest scope of power. The author seems to think that such questions are reasonable to ask. The reason he thinks this is because, at least in regard to defining omnipotence, he thinks of power as simple agency. One might get the impression that he even wishes he had, or could otherwise access, such agency. Because, if he could access it, then he could arbitrarily get rid of the problems of his life. He could even save the world from the consequences of it’s own wrong ways.

   It is necessary to construct a mental model of omnipotence from the bottom up. But, ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ assumes that power is most meaningfully understood as a mere generalization of agency. So, the author attempts to build a model of omnipotence from a purely numeric-and-negation basis: he enumerates various essential kinds of things in turn and, in turn, sees what happens when he negates them by the supposed ‘omnipotence’. This is a bit like identifying an elephant by noting it’s various features in turn and, in turn, rejecting each feature noted since none of them alone is an actual elephant.

   ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ seems to conclude that there is no such thing as an omnipotent being. This is a bit like concluding that, since the Creator God is infinite and man is finite, then the Creator God cannot become a man. But, if we pose the Creator God alone as the primary and originating category, then for ‘God to become a man’ cannot sensibly mean that infinity trades itself for a finitude. Rather, it must sensibly mean that The Infinite has added to itself a finitude. So, it is not like saying that ‘a dog becomes a tree’, or ‘a bushel of fruit becomes a single ten-ton whale.’ Rather, it is like saying that an imperceptible door, in an otherwise impenetrable mile-wide wall in total darkness, becomes luminous red.

   HOW WE THINK IS WHO WE ARE

   We certainly can imagine that the greatest meaningful scope and degree of power is potentially ourselves. But, we also can imagine that, in strict contrast to ourselves, such power is truly a ‘higher power’. Either way, a central question for us humans is just how we determine it’s potential. Some people may give up by ‘concluding’ that we cannot ever determine it. But, our initial sense is that this ‘conclusion’ not only is unproved, it is unprovable, and, furthermore, is palpably false. So, it seems we are bound to an effort to disprove it. In that effort, we most naturally must seek to exhaust all possible questions regarding how it may be false. We do this by trying to find how some kinds of powers may be truly beyond ours.

   To determine what is, and is not, the meaningfully greatest scope and degree of power, we must make some use of each of our human tools: feeling, belief, observation, reason, technology, and behavior. The critical problem is that, even when we mistakenly believe that we have determined at least something of what is—and thus what is not—the greatest power, we for some reason often feel that our tools for determining it are very powerful indeed: ‘Powerful juju.’

   Our human tools are very effective for the practical, ever-day purposes for which we constantly must put them: ‘How shall we afford to feed, cloth and educate our children?’ ‘How do we figure enough firewood for the winter?’ ‘Is there enough gas in the tank to get us to work and back?’ But, all these purposes have finite ends. This begs the question of whether our tools are quite adequate to ‘higher purposes’. And, the highest purpose is acquiring essential knowledge of, and accessing, the greatest possible power.

   If the greatest possible power is infinite in some way, then how can we determine that this is so? Or, if all that exists is summed up as a simple finitude, then by what mysterious juju can we conjure a thusly mere fictional image of infinity? Is our act of imagining infinity an act of contradicting ourselves?

   But, if imagining infinity is to contradict ourselves, then from what vantage point can we say that we are fools for imagining it? Because, if the greatest scope and degree of potential—of power—is finite, then how can we be certain that we have measured its particular finitude? Shall we say that all our current knowledge of everything that exists is basically complete, so that, like a simple, finite math problem, we have only to ‘calculate the few final digits’? How many times have we each thought that we had conscious knowledge of basically everything, only to find out that we were wrong?

   We can’t measure our temperature with a yardstick. Nor can we measure our height with a thermometer. How, then, can we measure the greatest possible power with all our tools combined? So, it seems we face a daunting problem in how to measure a power which seems clearly greater than our current selves, if not inherently greater even than our potential selves. If we, by our very nature, do not possess the greatest scope and degree of power, then it seems we never can, no matter how we may imagine it. Yet, we feel that we must, in some way, be able to define it, to identify with it, and thus to access it.

   If a tree, as such, is made of various things, then what about the greatest power? Or, if hammering a nail involves the powers of hammer, nail, and hammerer, then what about the greatest power? Is the greatest power like that of a running automobile engine: made of many kinds of things so that, when these are put together in a certain way, the result is a motive force? Or, instead, is it more like a living-and-growing tree, which is made not simply of its ‘own’ basic constituents, but is, in some way, made also of the sun, the air, and it’s own parent tree? If it is prior to all these things, then is it still in some way comprised of various kinds of more essential things?

   In our toilsome lives, we sometimes tend to assume that the concept of pure agency represents a meaningful understanding of power. That assumption is based, in part, on our own most basic power: the power to make functionally full dissociations between, and synthesis of, material objects. We can get strong iron from iron oxides in rocks, and seeds from fruit; and from these we can make nails and houses, and can grow new trees and other plants.

   Even the reason we easily can think of the three dimensions of space separately seems to have to do with our own most practical power. Physical matter, at least on the primitive, macro-level, usually is rather indifferent to how we divide it, and how we trade one piece of it for another. A nail may go almost anywhere into a piece of wood, and a hammer or ax may be used effectively to strike, break, or divide various rigid objects. So, such thinking is natural to us even when we begin to consider the details of other, seemingly non-synthetic things such a gravity or time. We tend to ask why these other things are exactly the way they are. What makes the force of gravity go toward a mass instead of away from it? What makes time have past, present, and future? The three dimensions of space seem to be a single, indivisible entity, but we can ask what makes it so. But, if these other things are truly beyond our powers, or are indivisible, then such questions have no answer in the kinds of terms by which our minds naturally work.

   As I seem to recall, Einstein theorized that space and time may also be mere features of one indivisible entity: spacetime. If this view of space and time is correct, then our notion that either space or time can be conceived apart from the other is, on some subliminal level, merely an abstraction. And, while time may seem to flow simply from one duration to another, the past is somehow absent, and the future is not yet present. So, it seems past and future may actually be kinds of mysterious properties of the ever-present non-durational, non-extensive point which Einstein theorized merely as the beginning of all of spacetime and it’s material content.

   If it is a mistake to think we can fully conceive the dimensions of space—or spacetime—separately, then it may be a mistake to think we can fully and properly conceive various essential kinds of powers separately. It certainly can be theorized that all the essential kinds of powers actually are mere features of one indivisible power. If this theory of power is correct, then our notion that any essential power can be fully conceived apart from the others is, on some subliminal level, merely an abstraction. In any case, it seems important to assume that there is a certain danger in achieving a high level of abstraction and otherwise mental dissociative ability: we might convince ourselves that our abstractions are actually objects that exist apart from our own thinking, and thereby stunt our reasoning about essential things.

   In regard to things the natures of which are quite deep for, and obscure to, us, we so easily tend to think in a way that reflects our own most basic, practical power. As I said, we sometimes tend to assume that the concept of pure agency represents an immediately meaningful understanding of power. But, in regard to ultimate power, to reason from that assumption is to contradict ourselves. Ultimate power as pure agency does not exist, because without a nature in itself, it cannot effect other, real, things. In fact, in our effort to reason about the nature and definition of power, we presuppose that our reasoning has a nature in itself by which it can effect our level of knowledge about power: we learn.

   To believe it sensible to think that all essential powers are mutually fully dissociable is to contradict ourselves on a very deep, if not also obscure, level: it presupposes a power capable of so dissociating them, which implies that they are not fully dissociable; they have in common a relation to that one power. As I already pointed out, there is no such thing as a power which has no nature in itself. Since the conception of power-as-such is an abstraction from a knowledge of actual kinds of powers, all powers must have natures apart from the natures of the things over which they have power. And, like our reasoning and it’s consequent increase of our knowledge, the natures of those powers must be congruent with the natures of the things over which they have power.

   Who we are is shown by how our finite, transient reasoning both about finite things and the infinite. Oddly, while the human sense of transience is found in the present as it passes, our sense of infinity is found there also.

   To the human mind, the initial sense of infinity is about continued existence. This sense seems both inherently true and immediately apprehended. The sense is that something exists, and must always exist. The reason it must is similar to that for the law of motion: any object, whether in state of motion or rest, continues in that state unless a force changes its state. (Just like for our initial sense of infinity, this law of motion seems both inherently true and immediately apprehended.) Thus, for a given thing to cease to exist, another thing must cause it to cease to exist. Therefore, since something exists, something always exists.

   But, our normal sense of ‘always’ is in regard to an infinite future number of finite durations of present time. And, our normal sense of present time is that, since it seems to flow smoothly from one moment to the next, it is made up of moments that have no duration. This, too, seems both inherently true and immediately apprehended.

   In any case, time is a strange thing to our dissociation- and synthesis-prone minds. The ever-passing present becomes a past which, in some real sense, ceases to exist. And, the future does not yet exist. It may be supposed that future events occur within an as-yet empty framework of time, but this assumes that that framework already exists. If there is a framework of ‘empty’ future time, there yet seems no framework for the past. Time goes one way, and the past no longer is present, while the future at any point beyond the present moment seems yet to exist. So, time, as a flow of finite present durations, seems transient. But, without a present, there can be no future or past, because the past once was the present, and the future shall be the present. So, it seems that both past and future time are not frameworks at all, but are anchored to an ever-present moment that has no duration.

   In keeping with our first sense of infinity, and to it’s being anchored in the present, there is the immediate sense that time, and also matter and space, are infinitely divisible. If there is an infinity of the future, then there can well be an infinity of smaller and smaller parts of time, and thus also of matter, motion, and space. It seems we naturally have a notion that there is a mere point of space: having no extension. Likewise, that there is a mere point of time: having no duration, and a mere point or matter and motion: having no mass or motion. This notion seems to be based on our sense that the exact present point in time has no duration. In fact, without an actual such point, it seems unlikely that we could have a notion of infinity. Moreover, an infinity seems impossible without some kind of such point. For example, the ability to sense that there can be an infinity of smaller and smaller expanses of space cannot represent the reality of space unless there is an actual expanse-less point. Because, without such a point, the divisions in a given expanse of space would go down in size to a certain actual size and then stop going further down. There could be no smaller expanse of it.

   The only apparent problem with the notion of an infinity of smaller and smaller physical things is that by itself it poses an infinite regress of causes. This infinite regress is contrary to our sense that something must always exist, specifically, something intransient unlike the present. But, this problem goes away when, as it quite natural to us, it is supposed that there is a transcendent creator who alone is the cause of all this infinite regress. So, the notion of an infinite regress of physical causes of physical things does not compel itself to be rejected. Rather, it is rejected only if one also rejects—or otherwise fails to include in the equation—a transcendent creator. In fact, if there is such a creator, and if that creator is the essence of goodness, then it would have created this infinite regress in order to best represent itself by allowing us a never ending journey of discovery, utilization, and enjoyment.

   SOME ESSENTIAL KINDS OF POWERS

   The ability to acquire knowledge is a kind of power. In fact, since the ability to acquire knowledge is a kind of power, then so is the actual possession of knowledge. And, since the actual possession of knowledge is a kind of power, then so is the possession of a knowledge of a ‘higher power.’ And, since knowledge presupposes a knower, a knower is a kind of ‘higher power’…

   …At least, potentially.

   Whether there is a power higher than our own potential ourselves, our ability to imagine one is a kind of power. In regard both to fictional and to real things, the ability to imagine them is a kind of power. So, whether in it’s mere potential, or in it’s act, to imagine things is to have, and exercise, power.

   As I already noted, we have the power to acquire knowledge. But, the ability to acquire even a little knowledge about a thing is to know something about it for what it really is. This implies that the ability to acquire knowledge is a very great power indeed. Some people might even say that it is the greatest and most essential power there is (more on that in a moment).

   The greatest part of our ability to acquire knowledge is our power to reason. While we can, by direct experience, come to know that there is a real oasis somewhere in the vast deserts of Earth, it is by our power to reason how it is there that our direct experience comes to be worth so much more.

   Yet, even though our power to reason may be the greatest part of our power to acquire knowledge, it seems so easily tripped up, so easily flawed. After all, the world is full of disagreement about everything: from how fast is safe to drive, to what love is, to whether the senses of charity, justice, and mercy are necessary for human life in a less-than-perfectly harmonious world.

   We have many powers besides the abilities to imagine and to acquire knowledge. We have powers over the physical world: to manipulate objects in space and time. We have powers in the social world: to make friends and influence people. And, we have powers in the mental world: to observe, and probe the basis of, our own and others’ reasoning and point of view.

   While that last power—the power to observe and probe our reasoning and point of view—may be viewed simply as the power to reason, it actually is a very special part of the power to reason. It is a power to know the nature of the reasons for why we reason the way we do. In fact, this is the power to know the deepest, and most important, things about ourselves, not only about our own ‘intellectual’ reasoning, but about the relationship between that reasoning and all other deep things about ourselves. In fact, we use this power all the time—or, at least, we wish to. I’ll return to that last thought a little later in this article.

   A very interesting thing about our power to acquire knowledge is that, if the greatest scope and degree of power is limited, then our power to acquire knowledge is not, in and of itself, a kind of power. This is because, if the highest scope and degree of possible power is, in all ways, limited, then to acquire it would constitute the sum of knowledge, and, thus, the end of the possibility of our acquiring more. In other words, the power of actually knowing essentially everything is greater than the power to acquire knowledge-as-such…

   …unless there is no end to the basics of everything, and to every power, that exists.

   But, in saying that a finite greatest scope and degree of power implies that the power to acquire knowledge is not of itself a kind of power, I do not mean to imply that the converse of either of these things imposes the converse of the other. That is, if the greatest scope and degree of power is infinite, this does not imply that the ability to acquire knowledge is a power as such. For, in imagining an infinite power, we are not necessarily imagining that we currently are that power. And, if we currently are not that power, then there is some doubt that we ever can be. You see, if we cannot exhaust an infinity by our finite steps of acquiring knowledge and other kinds of power, and if the greatest possible scope and degree of power is, in some sense, actually infinitely beyond our current powers, then we inherently are not, and cannot ever be, that infinite power. If you doubt this, then imagine, for a moment, that we possess an actual—not potential—infinite power. That is, imagine we are looking down from the ‘point of infinity’ onto the finite. We then would know everything, since knowledge is a kind of power. And, in so knowing, the power to acquire knowledge would be meaningless for us. So, regardless of whether the greatest scope and degree of power is finite or infinite, the lack of the power to acquire knowledge is a genuine lack of power only for knowers who do not possess every essential knowledge.

   So, when I said, near the start of this chapter, that ‘since the ability to acquire knowledge is a kind of power, then so is the actual possession of knowledge’, I did not mean that the power to acquire knowledge is a more powerful power than the possession of knowledge; in no way is it an essential kind of power. Nevertheless, if we imagine that every kind of knowledge is initially unknown to every kind of knower, then we shall imagine also that my statement implies that the power to acquire knowledge is, in some real—but entirely trivial—way, prior to the power of actually possessing knowledge.

   As interesting as it is to note that our power to acquire knowledge may not, in itself, be a power, it is even more interesting to note that our ability to imagine things is a kind of power no matter whether we have acquired all knowledge or not. This is because the ability to imagine things, whether real or fictional, and whether sensible or nonsense, is based not on what already exists, but rather on two other—and most interesting—things: what cannot ever exist, and what can exist but does not. Our potential to learn and grow is our own most familiar example of this. We are not yet such-and-such, but we know that we can be; whether as individuals who grow from conception to birth to adulthood, or as a society, or as a global population. And, as we know by our power of physical technology, we have the power to bring into existence at least some kinds of things which can, but do not, exist.

   And so, the two central questions thus far in this discussion seem to be: Does the greatest possible scope and degree of power already exist as one entity? And, if it does, then does it imagine things?

   Our ability to imagine something beyond our current selves is an ability which is based on something other than itself: either there is a ‘higher power’, and thus we have some initially unarticulated way of knowing it, or we are that power and thus we are observing merely our own ‘potential’ to increase, add to, or augment, our own various powers. In short, the notion of a ‘greater power’ does not ‘come about’ from nothing. While we are, at least in some ways, agents of our own potentials, our potentials are not nothings. And, if our current knowledge can be added to, then there must be some kind of current reality within which, and toward which, our potentials have room to grow.

   But, unlike the greatest scope and degree of power, which either already exists as some kind of God, or merely can exist as our future selves, we face the possibility of death or disability which cuts short our potential to attain to a greater level of power, if not to a true maturity. The worst of all disabilities is the self-inflicted one of evil arrogance. Arrogance is not just a sentiment—if even that—it is a selfish sentiment based on the belief that something which cannot exist does, in fact, exist; or which potentially can exist, either by our own power, or by the power of another. For example, charging someone with having deliberately dinged your car in the parking lot is arrogant if, in fact, they did it on accident, or if they otherwise unwillingly could not help but do so. Another example is to have made this arrogant charge while also having, by prior arrogance, caused the person to have the accident. These two examples are, in fact, what we all do to each other. All the time. And that is a huge problem.

   If the greatest power is infinite in some way, then how can we determine that this is so? Or, if all that exists is summed up as a simple finitude, then by what mysterious juju can we conjure a thusly mere fictional image of infinity? Is our act of imagining infinity an act merely of contradicting ourselves? Yet, if, to imagine infinity is an act merely of contradicting ourselves, then from what vantage point can we say that we are fools for imagining it? Because, if the greatest degree and scope of potential—of power—is finite, then how can we be certain that we have measured its particular finitude? Shall we say that all our current knowledge of everything that exists is basically complete, so that, like a simple, finite math problem, we have only to ‘calculate the few final digits’? How many times have we each thought that we knew basically everything, only to find out we were wrong? The fact is that, if we can’t measure our temperature with a yardstick, nor our height with a thermometer, then how can we measure the greatest power with all our tools combined?

   So, it seems we face a daunting problem in how to measure a power which seems clearly greater than our current selves, if not inherently greater even than our potential selves. Can we extrapolate the greatest power similar to how we use spectroscopy to extrapolate the chemical composition of stars? Can we triangulate it similar to how we triangulate the distance to the stars? Can we see it in our mind’s eyes, know in our hearts, or, in the end, effectively appeal to it in our states of distress?

   Comment on Jun 24th, 2010 at 8:26 pm   
4. Daniel Pech

   LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

   It seems reasonable to suppose that we can have a coherent definition of infinity. In purely mathematical terms, an infinite set is a set from which can be taken any finite set, or any finite set of finite sets, without diminishing the original set; and to which can be added any finite set, or any finite set of finite sets, without increasing the original set; and thus which cannot be defined in, but merely inferred from, a finite propositional. This definition of infinity is clearly coherent as applied to finite sets. But, this very definition of infinity also is a finite propositional. So, either this definition of infinity applies to itself and thus is incoherent, or it defines only that aspect of infinity which pertains to finite sets. So, it seems here that either we can understand something about infinity for what it really is, or there is no such thing as infinity. But, since we have here what seems to be a coherent definition of infinity as it pertains to finite sets, there is, currently, an actual infinity which makes possible that coherent definition.

   In any case, there either is an infinite number of basic kinds of things, or there is only a finite number of them, and either way there seems to be an infinity of at least something. For example, if there is not an actual infinity of future times, and their respective places and objects, then it seems there shall eventually cease to be anything at all. This does not have to mean that the future itself already exists, but that something exists which allows the future to continue without end.

   Obviously, we cannot comprehend—understand all about—an actual infinity unless we are an actual infinity. An actual infinity is an infinity which can be acted on by us, and which, if itself is an actor, can act on things other than itself (such as the future). And, since we can act on infinity by defining, and applying, a coherent definition of how infinity relates to finitude, there must be an actual infinity. It is not an arbitrary kind of thing like the fictional Christopher Robin’s ‘Heffalump’ in the Winnie the Pooh books, nor is it’s definition arbitrary like what one might imagine Christopher Robin defining as the habits of his ‘Heffalump. The fact that we cannot fully define actual infinity in itself does not mean that there is no actual infinity, nor that it is impossible to make a coherent definition about infinity.

   While it is possible to make an incoherent definition of a thing, whether of an impossible thing, a possible thing, or an actual thing, such a definition, while itself an actual thing, is not actual in the sense in which a coherent actual or possible thing is actual. Nor does it set a president for defining what good definitions are, much less for what ‘possible’ means in regard to things which are not definitions. An incoherent definition is actually incoherent, so that, when acted upon, shows itself to be incoherent: it is ineffective for the purposes for which it’s author intends, unless, for example, it’s author intends it merely as an example of an ineffective definition. For an impossible thing, it’s incoherent definition is synonymous with it: it is pure fiction. For a possible thing, it’s incoherent definition is mistaken, but, also, as seen by the definition of infinity, not necessarily exhaustive. For an actual thing, it’s incoherent definition is the act, on the part of the definer, of contradicting himself.

   All actual things are possible things, but not all possible things are actual things. The definition of a possible-but-not-actual thing is any thing which does not exist but which it is possible to make or otherwise bring into existence in the sense in which it exists.

   For example, a thousand years prior to the advent of the petrol-powered, internal-combustion-engine-driven automobile, such automobiles were strictly, or potentially, possible, but there was no such automobile yet to act on as such. And, without at least knowing the basics of which such a machine is made, one could not even imagine such a machine. Nevertheless, the concept of automobiles as such, regardless of what drives them, is possible even without there yet being any automobiles, since, without such a concept to begin with, one could never invent an actual automobile. In other words, the concept of an automobile is some kind of basic concept founded in at least some of the ways in which material things actually behave.

   Another example of possible things which are not actual in every sense are things which are intended as nonsense. Sentences such as, ‘please verb under-understand contra-hoopeejoopeeroobafooferrus’ are often intended as nonsense, yet are made, at least partly, of some actual words. Of course, since seeking meaning is normally what our minds do, we do not long stand for nonsense. For example, while sentences like ‘Never, however, undertake to noun a nothing’ and ‘The verbs nouned the adverbs, and the nouns lost’ may be intended as nonsense, one may be disposed to find how these may be used by oneself to express something about other things. A string of intended-nonsense sounds, such as what infants may produce just for the fun of practicing noises with their vocal apparatus, are a still lower level of nonsense which nevertheless still have some kind of sense other than the full scope of abstract ideational denotation which is language. Such nonsense statements as ‘This statement you are currently reading is self-contradictory’, while most naturally taken by proficient readers initially in a sense of irony, still may be taken in a sense of pure meaninglessness: either by purposely dissociating in one’s mind the normal meaningfulness of it’s individual words and distinct phrases; or, by being such a poor or novice reader that one is unable, by the unpracticed difficulty of reading an entire sentence, to keep track of the meaning of each word or phrase immediately after reading it.

   The usual definition of possible is simply this: coherent, non-self-contradictory. The very term ‘possible’ is based on the root word from which we get terms such as ‘position’ (POSition), ‘proposition’ (proPOSition), and ‘presupposition’ (presupPOSition). A presupposition is a position which is unstated, and a position is a belief about something. A propositional is any statement about something, and which can be used by oneself to represent one’s own belief, or to represent a belief which oneself does not believe but which it is possible for someone to believe. All beliefs are, in themselves, possible to be believed, but not all beliefs are accurate or even true. This is because, while all beliefs are necessarily based on some actual or even possible things, not all things which are possible are actual, and not all actual things are essential to things a such.

   An example of a fallacious belief which is not, in itself, self-contradictory is to, while out walking while under the willful influence of intoxicants, mistakenly believing oneself to be followed by a semi-transparent pink elephant. All the parts of this belief are each possible in themselves, but, when combined into one belief, are generally rejected as the fiction known as a chemically-induced illusion. One can make fictions on purpose, and intending to have them understood by other persons as fictions. But, an illusion is a fiction which is taken to be an actual thing, either as a purpose of another person, or as a purpose of oneself or of some of one’s own neuro-chemically dependent perceptions. Having the illusion of seeing a semi-transparent pink elephant because of having willfully ingested a substance which one knew could cause such illusions is called a ‘self-induced illusion’, in that the ‘self’ in ‘self-induced’ is neither the illusion nor the substance, but is one’s own very self. An illusion cannot induce itself; and, a substance can neither constitute or experience an illusion, nor ingest itself.

   An example of a self-contradictory belief is when, while sitting there reading this while under the willful influence of intoxicants, one believes that oneself IS an illusion. Such a belief is based on the mere fact that oneself has lost some sense of oneself, and that, while presupposing that a someone is not an illusion, that non-illusionary someone nevertheless is not oneself.

   So, an actual belief is a belief as such, whether or not it is accurate, or even coherent. If, while under intoxicants, you believe that you actually can fly like the fictional superman, then you may have some motive to actually test it out in a manner which, in actual fact, would most likely end in your death.

   The fictional boy in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon is often seen with his tiger pal, Hobbes, riding a little red wagon down a hill, picking up speed, and Calvin dispassionately discussion what happens if they choose to go down the roughest route possible. In another issue of the cartoon, Calvin observes, “Verbing weirds language”, and Hobbes replies, “Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.”

   PINNING DOWN LOGIC

   As I pointed out near the start of this article, the concept of power-as-such is an abstraction. In order for there to be any powers at all, there must be kinds of power. So, our concept of power-as-such is not a thing in itself. The same is true of logic: it is an abstraction.

   We humans presuppose that essential, or necessary, existence is apart from us. And, we presuppose that ‘logic’ includes the concept of such existence. But, as I explained in the second section of this article, our thinking has some tendency to be in dissociative and synthetic terms. So, we have some tendency to think as if ‘logic’ is separate from our own minds, and thus that logic, as such, is synthetic to power. The fact is that whenever we mentally so dissociate ourselves from ‘logic’, all we are doing is dissociating ourselves from our own reasoning, because logic and reasoning are the same thing, and they presuppose both knowledge and the knower.

   So, when it says that omnipotence is properly thought of as the power to do anything that is logically possible to do, the Thomist position on omnipotence presupposes that logic is not any thing in itself and thus poses no constraint.

   On the mere face of it, there is nothing incoherent to the claim that omnipotence includes the power to create another instance of itself. But, look here again at the ‘concept’ of ‘no constraints’ as applied to the notional sense of ‘the ultimate conceivable power’: if anti-qualified power has the power to create another one (instantiation) of itself, then this means that that very power ‘actively’ constitutes a negation of any and all propositions and concepts regarding it, including necessity, contingency, multiplicity, singularity, sequentiality, staticality, etc.. In other words, there is no such concept as anti-qualified power. In short, anti-qualified agency, by definition, has no constraint, including not only the very notion of ‘no constraint’, but the notion of agency. It’s nothing but meaninglessness abstracted.

   Some defenders of omnipotence, such as Farrington, C. (2005), wish to remove all ‘constraints’ from their Belovedly Vindicating God by arguing that God’s power can, in fact, overrule logic. Despite his seeming denial that God exists, the author of ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ rightly rejects this anti-logic defense of omnipotence, because such arguments have virtually nothing preventing them from being fully abominable in both pure and applied senses. While it may be that not all anti-logic defenders of omnipotence hold their position for strictly vindictive reasons, all of them reason that, in order for God’s will-and-mind to be effectively associated with God’s power, God’s will-and-mind must be defined as being impossible even to seem to humans to be challenged by the human rational faculty. Farrington, for example, argues that logic is not a thing in itself, yet he does so by proposing a seemingly theo-centric ‘metalogic’ which allows God’s power, but not God’s current will-and-mind, to ‘do everything’ which can be proposed as possible for everyone else. For Farrington, this ‘do everything’ includes deliberate suicide, but not initial accidental death or accidental illogic. Farrington grants that God is necessarily perfect in Knowledge, Beneficience, etc., but his anti-qualified notion of God’s power, if used to define what ‘perfect’ is, would make an abominably unidentifiable mess of God’s Knowledge and Beneficience. In other words, while he wishes to preserve God’s perfect goodness as something with which he can identify, he contrarily reasons that both God’s own ‘logic’ and God’s own power must be anti-qualified lest humans become proud of their own rational faculties. Such contrary reasoning presupposes that God’s own ontology (that is, God’s own nature as Necessary Perfection and Transcendence), must be defined, at least fractionally, if not mainly, in terms of a contingency such as human pride. The simplest fact is that God’s own very being does not need to be protected from anyone’s pride, no matter how proud they are. So, this begs the question as to the primary motive of those, like Farrington, who defend it by posing logic as a mere plaything for God’s power. The answer is equally as simple: arrogance.

   Both Farrington and the author of ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ seem to presuppose that the meaningfully greatest power is a power which must be juxtaposed to all other kinds of possible things. In other words, these authors presuppose that the concept of power a such actually represents the nature of power: an actual thing which can effect any conceivable or even imaginable thing, including itself. Such a presupposition is an example of what is called ‘the omnipotence of thought’.

   For example, imagine, for a moment, that you sincerely believed that logically anti-qualified ‘power’ is the necessary conception of omnipotence. If I then asked you: ‘Can an omnipotent being create a being whose power is a qualitatively infinite nothing, and by whose power the omnipotent being has already been both created and made infinitely more omnipotent in an infinitely greater number of essential qualities?’, you would at first have to think ‘no’. But, then, if you were motivated to keep your conception as the ‘logically’ necessary one, you would have to conclude ‘yes’; and, either way, you would have contradicted your own conception. In other words, in order to ‘maintain’ your ‘position’, you would have to negate that very position every time it is pushed further than you had expected it could go. Whether paired with a pro- or ant-theist conclusion, your ‘position’ on ‘omnipotence’ would beg the question of what presupposition, on your part, could motivate you to ‘maintain’ it? Knowledge is a kind of power, so, some people might be impressed—correctly or not in your regard—to construe your effort as an instance of the deepest kind of arrogance.

   If essential knowledge of a thing is a kind of power, and if it is reasonable to ask these deeper kinds if questions of the so-called concept of omnipotence, then it is reasonable to propose that an omnipotent being already knows that these other things already exist. In other words, if an omnipotent being, by ‘definition’, can create a rock too heavy for it to lift, then there already is an even more omnipotent being that can lift it. The question is how one even arrives at a position of one’s own which one nevertheless is forced to admit is essentially self-contradictory. The fact is that an abstraction is a kind of thought which is made by your mind. So, how is it that a self-contradictory abstraction is thought of as a thing in itself, so that, rather than your own thinking, it is the abstraction which is self-contradictory?

   Let me push the ‘concept’ of anti-qualified ‘omnipotence’ still further, just so you can see how much that ‘omnipotence’ really is nothing but a person’s own self-contradictory thinking. Can an omnipotent being make all of the following conditions obtain simultaneously: 1, the omnipotent being does not exist, per logic; 2, the omnipotent being DOES exist, per those who wish it to exist despite the ‘power’ of ‘logic’; 3, the omnipotent being ceases to exist, consequent to having created the first logic; 4, the omnipotent being exists anyway; 5, the omnipotent being never existed in the first place, per the human power merely to imagine that it is like the fictional cartoon Shrek’s ‘onion’ analogue to an Ogre; 6, the omnipotent being is made infinitely MORE omnipotent, PER those persons who think that ‘logic’ is a ‘constraint’ on omnipotence; and 7, said persons become such that they once were that omnipotent being in a past life but now are mere illusions of real persons being had by some inherently totally unidentifiable (I said totally unidentifiable) random grapefruit.

   Naturally, in order to have an objection to a given position, one must first have a position of one’s own, even if only implicitly. And, in order to have a valid objection to a given position, one’s own position must be coherent. While the author of OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE plainly states part of his own position, namely that ‘the necessary conception of omnipotence includes the power to overrule logic’, the article constitutes the argument that that very position is incoherent. The question, then, is how, on Earth, he arrived at that ‘position’ to begin with.

   There is no such concept of omnipotence as a non-referented, or anti-qualified, agency, since any means of defining it is automatically to place a limit on what it ‘can’ do. Compared to some of the preceding questions, asking whether such an ‘omnipotent’ agency can create a rock which it then cannot lift is rather straight-forward. But, even those other questions are straight-forward compared to these: Can an ‘omnipotent’ being accidentally commit a logical error? Can it accidentally stub it’s toe? Can it accidentally do any of the other things which it is possible for us fallible and otherwise decrepit beings to do? Can it die of old age? Can it be born with mental retardation? Can it, by it’s arrogance and superstition, make itself look like an utter fool and still not know it?

   The traditional Thomist conception of omnipotence is viewed by some thinkers as an attempt to justify belief in God. But, if logic is not any thing in itself, then the Thomistic argument is foremost an attempt to clarify as to what is the necessary conception of the ‘greatest epistemically necessary power’. In other words, the traditional Thomist conception of omnipotence is an inherently—that is, logically—necessary basis of reasoning from the initial, notional sense of omnipotence.

   Any incomplete conception, and any misconception, of a given real, practical, or actual entity, when this is used to refute assertions that that respective entity exists in the sense of its own nature, allows a formal proof which mistakenly concludes that that entity does not and, or, cannot, exist in that sense. Such misconceived refutation is sometimes called the ‘straw man’ fallacy, a term picturing someone who, in making a straw man and then assuming it is an actual man, concludes that there is no such thing as a man since the ‘man’ which has been made is nothing but straw.

   Ironically, the position that ‘since the necessary conception of omnipotence includes the power to overrule logic, there is no such thing as omnipotence’ is a case in which this ‘straw man’ fallacy is being committed by that position upon it’s very own self. While defenders of omnipotence who defend it by asserting that it is anti-qualified are ‘in way over their heads’, those who make that assertion while denying that God exists are like people who, in knowing they have never tasted a real orange, ‘conclude’ that since they have tasted artificial orange flavor, there is no such thing as an orange.

   Our ability to reason about anything, in regard even to one simple if-then proposition, depends on various presuppositions about various kinds of real or practical things: ontologic necessity/agency/power; reason/logic/necessity/if-then, effect/contingency, epistemic possibility/impossibility, physical impossibility/possibility, actual physical infinity, infinity of ontologic necessities, various kinds of limitation, etc.. These things are not subject even to a moment’s respective negation, whether actually or in mere imagination, without resulting in the very meaninglessness which anti-qualified ‘omnipotence’ itself constitutes.

   So, if logic were a thing in itself, then it could indeed require that the concept of omnipotence be an incoherent and self-contradictory conception. This would mean that such ‘logic’ is identical to the anti-logic notion of omnipotence since, like such ‘omnipotence’, it has the ‘power’ to contradict itself-and-everything-else while having neither inherent referents nor actual presuppositions. So, if logic, which is actually the catch-all abstraction of actual and real things, is a thing in itself, and thus, unlike actual and real things, subsuming no referents, then ‘logic’ cannot be identified in terms of, nor abstracted from, any of its referents, and thus we can neither relate to (identify) any of its ‘truths’ nor unwittingly mis-apply them since they have no relationship to anything that we do know and can make sense of.

   One of the most generalized logical abstractions is the so-called ‘law if identity’. According to some ancient Greek secular thinkers, the ‘law of identity’ is, in effect, some kind of ‘glue’ that holds the rest of reality together. But, the ‘law of identity’ does not, and cannot, be such ‘glue’, because the ‘law of identity’ is itself an abstraction of actual and real things. In other words, the ‘law of identity’ is nothing but an admission, on the part of the contingent, synthetic, sentient agent’s mind, that things exist, and that a thing is what it is. To admit that things exist, and that ‘a thing is what it is’ does not create, or identify, a ‘law’ under which the thing either exists or is what it is. The ‘law of identity’ is actually the creature’s own mind observing itself (metacognition) even when that mind is unaware that that is what it is doing. Whatever all is not an abstraction, and which also is ontologically (being) and epistemically(knowledge) necessary, that is what holds all (other) things together.

   There are many abstractions that are equal to that of ‘logic’. One of them I just mentioned: ‘existence’, or ‘presence’. Presence is an act of abstracting from whatever exists, or ‘has’ presence. In so abstracting, the mind is presupposing that there is something which is present, which exists. And, power—agency—-exists. In their ‘position’ on omnipotence, both Farrington and the author of ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ get the impression that logic is a thing which, in some obscure but real way, is inherently prior to the very thing which they assert is itself inherently required be self-contradictorily ‘defined’. They never state, much less define, exactly what that real thing is which requires omnipotence to be so defined. But, of these two authors, only Farrington seems unaware that it is by that very ‘logic’ which he has been compelled to so ‘define’ omnipotence. So, the supposedly ontologically necessary thing called ‘logic’ is ‘present’ to Farrington but nevertheless is capable of being ignored as a mere contingency since God’s ‘power’ is supposed not to be able to be ‘limited’. And, for the other author, that ‘presence’ is somehow even more palpable. Of all possible presences, or things which exist, logic surely is not one of them. So, people who reason as do these two authors are merely the agents, or powers, of their own flawed ‘logic’.

   The reasoning—or ‘logic’—about logic—which is used in ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ is incoherent in various ways. In addition to it’s failed reasoning about the correct conception of omnipotence, it argues that, ‘according to the Paradox of Mathematical Necessity, even an omnipotent being cannot change the truth or falsity of mathematical statements. The paradox can be satisfactorily handled by the logical impossibility constraint only if one subscribes to some heavy-duty logicism that mathematics[,] in some unequivocal and significant sense[,] is reducible to logic. However, should one happen to reject strict logicism, one would be facing an additional type of necessity, viz. mathematical necessity, that cannot be circumvented by…imposing the logical restriction. One is thus forced to admit one other type of impotency in the concept of omnipotence.’

   Here the author of ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ claims that logic and mathematical necessity are two identifiably different things, which is mostly true. But, since he has asserted that the ‘necessary conception of omnipotence’ includes ‘the power to overrule logic’, his statements here about mathematical necessity imply that he assumes that logic is equal to, if not greater than, mathematical necessity. Most pure mathematicians would argue that logic(al necessity) not only is not equal to mathematical necessity, but is inferior to it, if not based on it. Logic is an abstraction with no inherent content, whereas mathematical necessities have actual content; logical propositions can be constructed about nothing at all, and are thus prone to misapplication, while mathematical propositions have a content beyond their own logical forms. Einstein said that ‘mathematics cannot tell you anything about the world’; by which he meant that pure mathematics cannot say anything about anything but itself, so that whatever else there is about the world besides its mathematical nature, mathematics knows nothing. So much more is this true of logic.

   Any number of self-contradictory ‘concepts’ can be constructed, including those pertaining to non-ultimate entities; For example, does ‘omniprocrastination’ mean that the human ‘omniprocrastinator’, who is said to ‘procrastinate about everything’, procrastinates even about his procrastinating, such that he really never stops doing and accomplishing things? Another example is the person, or else computer, who/that ‘always lies’ such that either he/it is incapable of representing a truth, or that any statement he/it makes, no matter how true, ‘proves’ the statement false. Of course, a non-sentient computing machine has no actual power to mean anything, it is just an object-manipulation/storage device the human interface for which is interpreted by humans as having meaning.

   That latest statement, about the limits of artificial computers, is the essence of my argument against ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’. It’s title use of Bertrand Russell’s ‘vicious circle principle’ subsumes not only ontological necessities, but even sentient beings as such, to that part of logical abstraction which is called ‘Set Theory’. The usual manner of Set Theory is to presuppose something and then to use a formality of classification to better understand it. But, Set Theory can be misapplied, by treating it as the lone ultimate tool of reasoning and knowing. For example, when I asserted earlier that nothing is, nor can be, anti-qualified, someone can change that assertion into a non-referented formality so as to convince themselves, and to try to convince me, that my assertion is self-contradictory by turning it on, or applying it to, itself. But, the assertion that nothing is, nor can be, anti-qualified, is not itself even so much as a rule about anything, because it has no content in itself and refers to no particular thing. It implies things, and thus it’s meaning, and formal limitations, ought to be clear to anyone who knows anything about real things. One does not expect to have one’s sensible statements turned into nonsense by normal people who know many things as such, nor to have to program them to understand one’s sensible meaning as if they were a computer, since they wish merely and ever to find fault with you for stating it.

   Rules, as such, have no rules about how to make rules in the first place, including rules about themselves, because rules, as such, are not about any thing at all. One cannot have even a notion of ‘rules a such’ without knowing some real rules about real things to begin with. And, the world is much bigger than one’s favorite sub-set of the world’s rules. Rules, logic, the same thing. Logic, as such, is not any thing at all. It is this so-called ‘logic’ which the author of ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ has used to pose an incomplete conception of omnipotence against itself, by supposing that an ‘all’-power kind of ‘most basic, self-existent power’ is required by this ‘logic’ to be inherently dissociated not only from any being which somehow possesses it, but from itself. Such a ‘concept’ of power is pure nonsense: it is no concept at all. It is nothing—no thing. It cannot be located, identified, defined, or recognized.

   The only two positions on omnipotence that can be argued from a least sense of even merely linguistic coherence are: 1) that mathematical and ‘logical’ truths are ontologically necessary, and thus are properly inherent to ultimate ontologically necessary power; or, 2) that mathematical and ‘logical’ truths are ontologically contingent, and thus pose no constraint to such power anyway. But, since humans are not the senseless object-manipulation devices (artificial computers) onto which certain of them wish to project a potential sense of sense, only one of these positions is sensible on a level deeper than that of a most shallow-and-abstracted sense of language.

   By contrast to the notion that ontologically necessary power is inherently mutual to all other ontologically necessary things, the human rational(istic) faculty demonstrably either is, or is not, inherently mutual to mathematical, and otherwise logical, necessities. If mathematical and logical truths are not inherent properties of the human rational faculty, then it can be expected that the human rational faculty has the ‘power’ to make mathematical and logical errors in terms both of process and concept. In other words, per the factual position that omnipotence is genuinely conceived as anti-qualified power, the human rational faculty is demonstrably synthetic, both with respect to its constituents, and with respect to the Ontologically Necessary Entity (ONE).

   No concrete or otherwise real thing, no rule about real things, and no genuine concept, is anti-qualified. So, my assertion is an abstraction, or generalization, about all real things, and about rules that are about real things. To turn it upon itself is to have done nothing about anything, except to attack the person’s ability to reason. Though Amini has recognized a small part of it for what it is (nonsense) he has supposed that logic requires that that nonsense be taken as the genuine sense. In so doing, he has most basically done to ‘logic itself’ what the title of his article implies should never be done: he has turned ‘logic itself’ on itself. In other words, his entire article implicitly makes the proposition that, ‘logic requires that, in order for the conception of omnipotence to mean anything that can be used by logic to determine that conception’s validity, logic cannot mean anything to that omnipotence.’ If this were the correct, or (most) meaningful conception of omnipotence, then it would mean either that omnipotence is correctly reduce-able to ‘nothing but power’; or that power as such is properly conceived as dissociated from all other ontologically necessary things—including mathematical necessities. But, if power as such is dissociated from (synthetic to) all other ontologically necessary things, then the ontologically necessary entity—sentient or otherwise—has no power to begin with by which to bring all contingent entities into existence. And, if omnipotence is reduce-able to ‘nothing but power’, then there is nothing inherent in it, including ‘logic’, by which to disprove its existence.

   So, the central question is whether an ontologically necessary power is inherent to anything at all. Because, if it’s not inherent to anything, then whatever ontologically necessary power exists, it surely exists as perfectly dissociated from a mere abstraction called ‘logic’. But, if there is any kind of power which is inherent to something at all, then that power, not ‘logic’, is what determines what the correct conception of omnipotence actually is. In other words, the only things here that can be proved are correct positives and their respective negations, and Amini’s conception of omnipotence is essentially a negation.

   If logic is not a thing in itself, then this implies that the way in which a person at once posits that ‘the necessary conception of omnipotence includes the power to overrule logic’ and rejects that very position is by presupposing that logic is, at least in effect, a thing in itself. This is the actual, implicit, position of the aforementioned ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’. And, the motive for that (presup)position seems to be that its author is impressed to believe that the ability to reason with logic makes logic, in effect, a thing in itself, and thus, by the ‘power’ of which, all other power which it is possible for humans to attain is to be attained. The notion of having ‘powerful juju’ has never been more superstitious.

   Comment on Jun 24th, 2010 at 8:30 pm   
5. Daniel Pech

   If you admit that yourself is a finite entity, then you admit to the incapacity to comprehend a realistically greatest possible power, which is an infinite power. But, if, while admitting that yourself is finite in certain ways, you also assert that your mind is potentially equal to comprehending the meaningfully greatest possible power, then you are logically allowing that you potentially have power over life and death, since both life and death are kinds of powers. If you are essentially equal to the powers of life and death, then your power is essentially infinite, since, short of dying prior to attaining such a transcendent state, you shall live forever in perfect bliss and nothing shall harm you. But, if may the least thing be infinite in span of forward existence, then already may so be the greatest thing in all directions and qualities, which means that you are necessarily as the least thing in power compared to it.

   But, if there is no measure by which a power’s finitude can be ascertained, then there is no measure by which to ascertain that a greater power does not exist, including an infinitely greater power. But, if there is no proper conception, on the part of a creature’s mind, of the greatest possible power, then there is no proper conception of power as such. Yet, power exists, and there is an ontologically necessary power, meaning that a creature is unable to comprehend power as such (can understand it only to a limited degree and scope), meaning, in turn, that nothing and no one has any true power expect the ONE.

   If may the least thing have no progressive limits on the degree and scope of its valuable improvement, then already may the greatest have infinitely greater degree and scope of value, and thus there is an infinite extension into which to increasingly improve. If there be any infinite extension, then there is omnipotence. But, if there is no infinite extension, then all shall eventually cease to exist, including ‘logic’ and it’s referents. If all that is shall eventually cease, so that there then ‘is nothing’, and this nothing ‘continue forever’…then by what mystery is infinity conceived, and by what power is this forever-ness maintained? More so, by what power are all powers brought to cease? So, if infinity is not an incoherent thing of the contingent entity’s mind, but is an actual-state property of the ontologically necessary power, then the greatest possible power is a power which has created an infinity of extension-and-being in the face of which…you are finite, but also because of which you shall live forever as an image of that greatest power.

   CONCLUDING POINTS: THE EAGLE AND THE SQUID

   The concepts of both power and logic are abstractions. And, abstractions are properties exclusive to sentient agents, that is, to knowers. But, if it is imagined that pitting them against each other is meaningful, then there must also be a neutral standard for judging the contest. There is no such standard. And, they are not ultimately separate things. Only in the minds of those who entertain only the sense that the non-sentient material world is the basis of all else do power and knowledge seem separable. And, oddly, for nearly all such persons, they assume that power is the prior entity.

   But, if you are someone who is determined to think of power and logic as inherently or ultimately separate, then at least imagine them as a squid and eagle, respectively. Neither animal can win against the other in it’s own domain. The eagle cannot dive to the bottom of the ocean, nor swim well compared to the squid. And the squid cannot breath air and clamor around on land, much less fly up to where the eagle sees all that appears on the surface of everything. So, in the ocean, the eagle would lose to the squid; and, on land and air, the squid would lose to the eagle. You can’t pit them in a contest against each other as such, because they each of them has it’s own domain.

   In any case, there seem to be exactly two most important facts that we need to be aware of while both living and thinking:

   One, the human rational faculty has the ability to construct any fiction. At least part of the reason for this ability is that humans need to understand, and adapt to, their own very material world. While we automatically apply this ability to the tasks of modeling factual circumstances and events, and contingent entities, it is demonstrably not foolproof for modeling anything at, much less for a sensibly ultimate entity.

   Two, there is every imaginable kind of disagreement in the world. So, in light of the first fact, when we engage in any task defensively, that is, with anxiety about losing either intellectually or socially, we risk erring in our judgment, because we really so easily err in the assumptions and other reasoning that leads up to it.

   So, the task of identifying, and understanding, notions of ontologically necessary entities is especially problematic. The human ‘power’ to make mental models of dissociations amongst various ontologically necessary entities does not prove that these entities are dissociated. In fact, if some kind of power is ontologically necessary, then oneself is proper to suppose that this power is inherently mutual to all other ontologically necessary things, and that the burden of proof is on the position that ontologically necessary power is dissociated from mathematical, and otherwise logical, necessities.

   Shall an abstracted generalization called ‘logic’ not grant to an abstracted generalization called ‘agency’ the right to be based on an actual or real agency and which has a nature apart from that abstraction? Shall the Army not grant the reality of it’s officers’ humanity for not having issued them opposable thumbs? Which is essentially prior to which? To pit such ‘logic’ and ‘agency’ against each other is nonsense, and even more so if one or the other is deemed singularly fit to set the rules and standards of the contest.

   The arguments made both by the author of ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ and by Farrington fail to address actual omnipotence: they lack any genuine juju, and thus lack any real logical traction (basic reasoning) in the debate. Actual, meaningful omnipotence is coherent, if not also logically necessary. If these authors’ conception-of-conception is the standard of conception, then there is no way to prove that anti-qualified power does not exist, and, further, that this power has not, in fact, created the ‘logic’ by which they are compelled to ‘conceive’ that itself is the genuinely meaningful concept of ‘ultimate power’. An abstraction called ‘logic’ lacks the ability to determine anything about anything. If logic is a thing in itself, then so is power a thing in itself; and then, as Farrington wishes, there would be reason to suspect that there really does exist an anti-qualified power. The problem is that, if such a power exists, then it can have created a self-contradictory thing-in-itself standard (‘logic’) so as to have the last laugh, by making one person believe that omnipotence cannot be defined both meaningfully and coherently, and another believe that it is mutually inherent to benevolence.

   At best, both authors succeed in showing that there is something which exists necessarily, which is inherently most stable, most concrete or real, and which admissably is transcendent to the error-prone, arrogant use of the human rational faculty. While that faculty is demonstrably good at dissociating physical things for the purpose of meeting human practical needs, the active assumption that that faculty, like the aforementioned eagle, can also plumb the deepest matters of existence in any respect is an action which seems always to end in various kinds and depths of self-defeat.

   Humility is partly a practice of ignorance; of returning, in a sense, ever-new to the problems one faces. As the author of ‘OMNIPOTENCE AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE’ says at the last, if there cannot be two omnipotent beings, then there cannot even be one. This is true, but only if omnipotence is an anti-qualified, yet contrarily synthetic, power: inherent to nothing and to no one; so ‘transcendent’ in it’s power over all sensible things that it can neither be accessed by them, nor access them. As silent and powerless as the very nothing which it actually is.

   There must be at least one kind of thing which is necessarily exists by its very nature. Such a thing is essentially prior to, and more powerful than, all fallible, but nevertheless knowing, agents. Whatever that thing is, it is whatever is ontologically necessary, and therefore which the human mind most deeply—and, often, most obscurely—presupposes in all its reasoning. This one thing is on the absolute opposite end of existence from ‘logic’: the most concrete, and the most abstract, respectively. As the ‘catch-all’ of abstractions, ‘logic’ is coherent about that most concrete thing only to the extent that its given user’s reasoning is coherent about logic. Nothing is, nor can be, anti-qualified, because anti-qualification means exactly nothing. What does mean something is that, if that one, most concrete, most Necessary thing is the single most concrete thing that exists, then our own fallible, and synthetic, powers to acquire knowledge of it can at once both sense, and not sense, it…

   Comment on Jun 24th, 2010 at 8:32 pm   
6. Daniel Pech

   Asking whether a bird can pick a worm out of something is a question that makes sense. And, a math problem is something. But, we know that it makes no sense to ask whether a bird can pick a worm out of a math problem. This is because math problems don’t have worms in them. So, the fact that we can ask, say, whether a hammer can pound 2+2 into 5 doesn’t mean that our question is coherent. It’s made of two agents neither of which can act upon the other. They have nothing immediately in common. What is in common for them is us.

   We are the agents who ask the questions, and who already know enough not to ask only wrong ones. We can knowingly ask foolish questions just to see how funny they are. But, sometimes, we ask foolish questions without knowing it. Our knowledge is not all-powerful. Our minds can play tricks on themselves.

   Consider the hammer. We have power to make one. Yet, it has power to impact our thumb if we miss the nail. So, our body’s integrity can be compromised by something which we nevertheless have power both to create and to apply. This is because, while we are in some ways more powerful than the hammer, we are not more powerful than it in every way.

   In fact, we depend for our lives on an environment every constituent of which is, in some way, more powerful than us. We need air to breath, but would die if we get too much of it. We need atmospeheric pressure to keep the air by our mouths, but would suffer internally if the pressure changed too rapidly. We need a source of heat, but we need it counterbalanced by other thermal mass so we don’t burn up.

   And, we need to hear, to be aware of our surroundings even when we’re not looking. But, we can be frightened by thinking we heard a bear growl behind us, only to realize, upon turning so quickly that we twist our ankle, that it was just the rumbling sound of a log truck’s exhaust.

   What are we really saying when we ask, in all sincerity, whether an omnipotent being ‘can’ accidentally stub it’s toe? What are we really thinking when we ask whether it ‘can’ accidentally knock itself unconscious by an overhanging limb while out riding a horse after an elusive fox? Is it’s power, like our own, really dissociated from its ability to pay attention to where it is going? Do we actually think we are the more powerful for our vulnerability to being killed from too high a drop? Are we really more ‘abled’ by the fact that we ‘can’ be so afraid of heights that we lose our hold and fall in the first place? Are we really serious when we ask whether an omnipotent being ‘can’ stack wood so high that, when the stack totters in the jet stream, the top section falls and kills him? ‘Can’ he scare himself to death by his own paranoia? ‘Can’ he, like us, make a hammer that has the power to smash his thumb, a car to run him over as he crosses the street, or an automated object-manipulation device to augment his own (less-than-)omnipotent thinking processes? ‘Can he, like us, reproduce himself from the materials in his environment? If he ‘can’t, then does it mean that a self-reproducing idiot, who smashes his own thumb, is more powerful? Is the omnipotent being the more powerful than it already is when, in thinking about it’s own nature, it’s puny-and-drunk brain means that it ‘can’ lack the sense that it has made an utter fool of itself? Who’s the real fool for playing ‘Kick the Can’ here?

   Comment on Jun 27th, 2010 at 7:53 pm   
7. Justin

   Daniel, thanks for visiting. I won’t try to address every single point made in your comments, but just a few key ones. I don’t know if these are your words, or if they are authored by someone else, but I will assume “you” are the author.

   You make a mistake early on:

   “Of course, it is possible to think of power simply as agency: the ability to bring something about. But, to say that this is what power most essentially is is actually to say nothing at all about it. This is because our concept of power as ‘simple agency’ is actually a generalization from kinds of powers. We abstract this generalization similar to how we abstract generalizations of mathematics: whether we are adding two pairs of shoes, two pairs of socks, or one pair of each, the singular sense is always that there is four items. Likewise, whether we observe the hammer as it strikes the nail, or the nail as it goes into the wood, the most singular sense is always the same: something brings something about.

   But, our ability to abstract this singular sense of power does not mean that that sense is the very essence of power. That abstraction certainly is coherent, but we would be mistaken to believe that it best represents the nature of power. Because, if we imagine that simple agency is the total essence of power, then we would be imagining that any kind of power would have every kind of power over every imaginable thing in every imaginable way: it could stop, or increase, all kinds of powers, including itself; and it could change, or ignore, all essential things such as mathematical necessity.

   So, there are two concepts of power. There is the generalized concept, which is in view of the singular sense of agency. And, there is the deeper concept, which is in view of certain kinds power having certain kinds of applications. Both concepts are useful, each in it’s own way.”

   “Power” is indeed properly defined as agency, the ability to do something. If we are not talking about the ability to do something, then how can you reasonably say we are talking about “power”?

   You say: “Because, if we imagine that simple agency is the total essence of power, then we would be imagining that any kind of power would have every kind of power over every imaginable thing in every imaginable way”

   I do not see how this follows at all. Just because agency=power does not mean that every kind of power has every kind of power over everything in every way. This is a total non-sequitur. One thing has nothing to do with the other.

   You also say: “There is the generalized concept, which is in view of the singular sense of agency. And, there is the deeper concept, which is in view of certain kinds power having certain kinds of applications. Both concepts are useful, each in it’s own way.”

   I don’t see why or how these 2 are mutually exclusive, or even essentially different from each other. If I say “I have the power to attend school,” this means I have the ability or the agency to attend school, and moreover this ability is a specific type of ability that I have, which has a certain kind of application. You seem to be simply further developing or describing power without actually changing its basic definition.

   =====================================
   “If you admit that yourself is a finite entity, then you admit to the incapacity to comprehend a realistically greatest possible power, which is an infinite power. But, if, while admitting that yourself is finite in certain ways, you also assert that your mind is potentially equal to comprehending the meaningfully greatest possible power, then you are logically allowing that you potentially have power over life and death, since both life and death are kinds of powers…”

   I agree that it is either one or the other. But this is really a problem for the theist–the one who posits the existence of an infinite power, and then proceeds to claim that this power is knowable or understandable to humans on some level. It would seem that the very definition of God as an infinite thing renders God inherently unknowable, and therefore an essentially useless concept, and any religion or belief system derived thereof especially useless and pointless.

   =====================================

   It is important for me to make clear that I am not indicting omnipotence in this article. I am indicting God. God is defined as a being that is (among other things) omnipotent and uncreated. These two things cannot coexist, as I have shown, according to logic.

   Now, you would say that logic is essentially a human creation, and how can a human (who is finite) understand an infinite being. This is true, and it means that all religion, and indeed the very conception of “God” or any infinite being, is therefore meaningless and useless. The theist may as well say “I believe in not understanding anything” because that is the ultimate outcome.

   What I am doing in this article is accepting the theist’s premise that we can understand God. If we can indeed understand God, then God is accessible to us using our minds. Our minds use logic, therefore God is accessible to logic.

   If we cannot understand God, then the theist’s case completely falls apart in any case, and agnosticism is re-established as the winning mindset.

   Either way, theism loses as a bona fide, legitimate and meaningful concept.

   “There must be at least one kind of thing which is necessarily exists by its very nature.”

   I’m not so sure. This very well may be true, and I do believe this, but I don’t think this “must” be true. Reality is vast and complex and mysterious, and we are only beginning to really understand it. It is quite possible that, beyond our universe, there lie laws and rules of nature that would be incomprehensible to us, in which case it may very well be possible that nothing, per se, “necessarily exists by its very nature.”

   Comment on Jun 28th, 2010 at 11:37 pm