cyberninja45 said:
GameOver22 said:
happydolphin said:
Well, I personally wasn't using causality for the God component. I was using causality for the existence of sentient beings, whereby the matter that formed them needed to exist prior to their observation of things, which precludes existence in dsgrue's definition.
As for the causality in the God paradox, I haven't even gone that far yet, but I agree that it is a fascinating concept, seeing as all science leads to the fringe which is infinity, it is almost inevitable for the searching mind.
As for what constitutes reality, for some it is the physical, for some it may be beyond the physical. My definition of existence transcends the physical because it does not require physical sensors to preclude existence.
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The bolded is kind of tautological....is it not? I didn't catch his original definition though.
As for what constitutes reality.....I'm not going to disagree that there might be more to reality than we can observe, but we need to differentiate between physical reality and a "broader" reality when we discuss these things.
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From what I gathered dsgrue3 definition was that for something to exist it needed to be observed by another, I am no expert but his definition ,for my part, was quite wrong as the term "known to exist thus far" is often used, which I always thought meant something could exist without someone knowing its there.
Anyway that's my two cents.
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Well, naturally you cannot affirm existence by itself, thus it need be observed to exist. Circular logic doesn't work.
We have observed fossils of dinosaurs, so their existence is affirmed. We have oberved atoms and matter at present, confirming their existence.
I think this clarifies the definition provided.
GameOver22 said:
Yes, that's exactly the point. Granted, there's some gray area in between, such as whether we can truly claim there are no unicorns or invisible green men in the palm of my hand....which can be argued against by appeal to Ockam's razor, which in turn then has to be justified.
A good example is the discussion of alien life. I actually think Dawkin's mentioned this in the God Delusion....the question being whether we can infer the existence of aliens without observation of them given the vastness of the universe, the chances of life developing, etc.
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We cannot say with certainty that aliens exist, but we can say with certainty that the probability of them existing is vastly superior to the probability of them not existing.
