============article by Bob Lang==== As some of you know, Dave Davis is trying to put together a series of FAQs for a.a addressing various kinds of arguments for the existence of god (e.g., the five ways of Acquinas, Goedel's ontological proof). My contribution to this is a FAQ on the argument from mystical experience. I've included it below. I'd like to encourage others to help with this effort by either a) emailing me constructive criticism of the FAQ included in this post, or b) volunteering to write a FAQ on one of the remaining arguments. The hope, as always, is to cut down on signal-to-noise and reduce repetition of the same topics. If you're interested in writing a FAQ, send email to Dave Davis . If you've got input, suggestions, criticism of the FAQ included in this post, please email me. [snip /DDD] Thanks. ---------------------begin included text----------------------- The argument from mystical experience is intriguing for several reasons. First, mystical experiences -- the ineffable awareness of the true existence of the object of one's religious beliefs -- seem to be at the core of all religions. Were it not for the ability to have, or at least the hope of having, such experiences, religions might cease to exist. Second, the existence of mystical experiences (from here on ME) provides the possibility of an instantaneous conversion: an atheist has an inexplicable experience which she can only attribute to god and, voila -- she's now a theist. Third, there's the possibility that MEs are "priviledged knowledge." What if non-believers simply lack the appropriate "senses" to perceive god? Knowing that MEs exist, how can know whether the object of the ME exists? So just what is a mystical experience? The simplest definition is any experience in which the experiencer claims to be directly in touch with god. But that is not entirely adequate. In _Varieties of Religious Belief_, William James gives many representative examples of MEs, of which the following is one: "I was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping, and in good training. . . . I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and my state of mind was equally healthy. . . . I can best describe the condition in which I was by calling it a state of equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a feeling of being raised above myself, I felt the presence of God--I tell of the thing just as I was conscious of it--as if his goodness and his power were penetrating me altogether. The throb of emotion was so violent that I could barely tell the boys to pass on and not wait for me. i then sat down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes overflowed with tears.... I think it well to add that in this ecstasy of mine God had neither form, color, odor, nor taste; moreover that the feeling of his presence was accompanied by no determinate localization. It was rather as if my personality had been transformed by the presence of a _spiritual spirit_. But the more I seek words to express this intimate intercourse, the more I feel the impossibility of describing the thing by any of our usual images. At bottom the expression most apt to render what I felt was this: God was present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him" [1]. This example illustrates the ineffable nature of the experience that ME arguers emphasize, including an awareness of god that is gained not through the senses. There are two primary kinds of ME arguments that I'm aware of: I'll call them "strong" and "weak" arguments. A strong ME argument hopes to provide evidence of god's existence. One way this evidence is provided is by attempting to establish the cognitivity of MEs. A cognitive experience "is one on the basis of which we gain knowledge of some objective reality" [2]. That means that if MEs can be shown to be cognitive, they can count as evidence for the existence of god. If people are experiencing god in a cognitive way, god must exist. But even when they set out to establish cognitivity, most ME arguers concede that it cannot be done. For example, in _John of the Cross and the Cognitive Value of Mysticism_, Payne discusses the possible explanations for the religious experiences of John of the Cross, a well-known Christian mystic. Payne _does_ hope to show that John's experiences were cognitive, but concludes that the best he can hope for is to show that cognitivity is at least as good an explanation as any other: "Still, I think we have shown that, given the satisfaction of certain conditions which many believers probably meet, it is reasonable to accept contemplative awareness as a cognitive mode of experience. And this, it seems to me, is as much support as faith can legitimately expect of philosophy here: not a conclusive demonstration that belief in the cognitive value of mystical states is true, but only a solid argument that this belief is not contrary to reason" [3]. I am not aware of any arguments in which ME is claimed to be _good_ evidence for the existence of god. This does not mean, however, that ME arguments are worthless. Religious experience arguments do not always seek to provide proof of god's existence. Such arguments are "weak" ME arguments. Weak ME arguments attempt to show that it is rational for those who've had a ME to believe that the experience was an actual perception of god (or some other form of "ultimate reality"). There is a subtle distinction between using MEs as evidence for god's existence on the basis of a ME and claiming that individuals are justified in believing based on MEs. In weak ME arguments, the issue of whether a theist's ME-derived belief actually corresponds to something out there in the objective world is not crucial. The point is that belief is rational and justified. Non-ME experiencers have no reason to believe. On the one hand, this is a very persuasive kind of argument because it can be formulated consistently with little room for objection. On the other hand, it is unpersuasive because there is no hope of convincing someone not already convinced. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience Nelson Pike, Mystic Union Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience William Alston, Perceiving God James' argument in Varieties was one of the first ME arguments in modern times and certainly the most influential. Perhaps the most important recent argument for MEs, and to my mind, the most persuasive, is made by Alston. Alston's argument is of what I've called the weak variety: he does not purport to give evidence to non-believers for a particular god's existence; instead, he hopes to show that MEs provide a rational justification for belief for those who've had MEs. Rather than summarize general arguments for and against MEs, it will be more instructive to look in some detail at what I consider the most persuasive ME argument (Alston's), then look at its merits and shortcomings. Alston's argument depends on his assertion that there can be no non-circular proof of the reliability of any doxastic practice. A doxastic (or belief-forming) practice is any practice through which we form beliefs or opinions, such as deductive reasoning or empirical observation. According to Alston's unique epistemology, we cannot justify or defend the reliability of any doxastic practice without using tests from within the practice itself. For example, in sense perception, verification by others is one of the primary tests. If I say that hot water freezes faster than cold water, others are likely to doubt me. But I can present a simple experiment and its results for others to examine and reproduce. If, under the same conditions, everyone gets the same results, we conclude that the statement "under the proper conditions, hot water freezes faster than cold water" is true. Note that the test to determine the truth of my claim was a test based in sense perception -- specifically empirical observation. Any test for any sense perception (SP) -related claim must also be SP-related. Furthermore, there is no single, external "meta-practice" we can appeal to to determine if any the SP doxastic practice really is reliable. This is what Alston means by no non-circular proof. But just because we must rely on circular proof, we need not conclude that SP is _un_reliable or that we must all become solipsists. We can suppose SP to be reliable for two reasons: 1) because it is widely practiced and 2) for the sake of pragmatism -- we simply cannot function without assuming the reliability of sense perception. Although we cannot prove its reliability in a non-circular way, lacking compelling evidence _against_ the reliability of SP, we can and should trust its reliability. Alston extends this claim to all doxastic practices -- including, of course ME. Just as we can trust SP to be reliable by providing circular proof, so can we trust the circular proofs of MP (mystical percpetion - - this is Alston's term. When referring to Alston, I'll use MP, as distinguished from the generic, ME.) For example, the Catholic Church considers the moral betterment of the experiencer to be one way of determining whether a ME was legitimate. This is clearly a circualr test within Christian mystical tradition, and would not apply to SP or any other mystical tradition. A common way to refute MP arguments is to appeal to SP. Consider the verification-by-others test. There are many different mystical traditions, none of which agree (e.g., Buddhists claim to be in touch with an undifferentiated unity, while Christians claim to be in touch with a personal creator and sustainer of the universe). If we apply the verification-by-others test we see that this disagreement renders MP to be unreliable: just as we could not accept the hypothesis that hot water freezes faster if many different experimenters got many different results, we cannot accept the many differing claims of the many different mystical traditions. But Alston would point out that any use of SP to prove or disprove MP is not allowed. Proof of a doxastic practice can (and indeed must) be circular. We have no compulsion to apply the SP test of verification by others to MPs. Furthermore, the fact that there are many different mystical traditions is immaterial. Each tradition is its own doxastic practice and each has tests for its own validity. Thus, they cannot be expected to agree. Forgie, William, "Theistic Experience and the Doctrine of Unanimity," International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion 15 (1994): 13-30. Richard M. Gale, _On the Nature and Existence of God_, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, N.Y., 1991, p. 313. Robert Pasnau, "Justified Until Proven Guilty: Alston's new Epistemology." I've been able to find only two published refutations of Alston. The first is contained in Richard M. Gale's _On the Nature and Existence of God_, the second is Robert Pasnau's "Justified Until Proven Guilty." I'll discuss their objections along with interspersed objections of my own. Objection: MP is not a distinct doxastic practice. This objection holds that the formulation of beliefs about an MP are done by means of ordinary SP; thus MP should be subject to the same tests as MP. For example, on the basis of an MP in which the experiencer claims to feel god's love, the experiencer would naturally conclude that god is loving. This conclusion is made using simple inductive reasoning, which is a subset of the more general SP doxastic practice. Or consider an alternative example: Descriptions of mystical experiences invariably include statements like, "God brought me comfort" or "a feeling of euphoria." Feelings -- comfort, euphoria, and the like -- are physical, sense-related states. Thus, it's not clear what the difference between mystical experiences and "ordinary" sense experiences are. If MPs are really SPs, they should be subject to the same kinds of tests. If they are subject to SP tests, we know what the results will be: MPs will be found to be unreliable, contradictory, and unfit as sources of knowledge. But Alston argues that "the formation of perceptual beliefs about God ... belongs to a distinctively different doxastic practice [from the SP doxastic practice]." He uses the following example to support his contention: "suppose I were to make an analogous critique of introspective reports, e.g., that I now feel excited. Here too the report cannot be assessed on the basis of whether other people experience the same thing under the same conditions. Even if they don't that has no tendency to show that I didn't feel excited. But this will not lead most of us to deny that such beliefs can be justified. We would simply point out that we should not expect beliefs about one's own conscious states to be subject to the same sorts of tests as beliefs about ships and sealing wax. More indirect tests of a public sort can be given to determine the subject's mastery of mentalistic language and his general reliability as a reporter. But as for particular reports, assuming general competence, there is no appeal beyond his word" [4]. This is not, in my opinion, a good analogy. In contrast to religious experiences, everyone has felt excited at one time or another and understands the conditions under which the feeling is likely to occur. The same cannot be said for religious experiences. Furthermore, excitement is, in a sense, a physical phenomenon that can be tested with sense perception tests like monitoring of brain activity or heart rate. By this example at least, MP does not seem to be a distinct doxastic practice. Objection: Religious diversity. This is an objection that nearly any atheist would make intuitively. Alston has a reasonable response to it, but ultimately he seems to dodge the issue. Alston does not think that MPs must be considered as a single doxastic practice; rather, he sees them as many separate doxastic practices. As such, different mystical traditions cannot be expected to agree. Gale argues that this is unfair: "Again, we find Alston committing the fallacy of thinking that if he can give a categoreally based explanation for a disanalogy between the religious- and sense-experience doxastic practices, it renders the disanalogy harmless" [5]. Gale suggests that while on the one hand Alston wants to make MP and SP analogous in certain respects, he is not willing, on the other hand, to make MP subject to an analogous tests -- e.g., he is not willing to make agreement among different religious traditions a criterion for the reliability of MPs. It is a crucial question: should we consider each religious tradition to be its own doxastic practice or should we consider MPs as a whole to be a single doxastic practice. If we consider MPs as consisting of many distinct doxastic practices, Alston's position is fairly secure: each doxastic practice has its own tests, none of which can be verified non-circularly. However, Gale's objection remains: just how analogous is analogous? How can Alston justify making MPs into many doxastic practices and still consider MP a reasonable analogue to SP, when SP clearly is a single doxastic practice? Alston can simply argue that this is one of the ways in which the two are not analogous, but his position smacks of inconsistency. If, on the other hand, we consider MP to be a single doxastic practice, we see that there are many incompatible ways of dealing with MPs and we can conclude that MPs are unreliable. Even if we concede Alston's view that MP consists of many distinct doxastic practices, problems persist. Alston uses Christian mystical perception (CMP) to illustrate how a particular mystical doxastic practice is legitimate. In doing this, however, he has not demonstrated the reliability of the practice as a whole. Alston shows how CMP has its own checks and tests for determining the truth of MP claims, but his thesis is consistently that we should grant MPs _categorically_ the same reliability we grant to SP. How can we say anything meaningful about MPs as a whole if we consider just one MP in isolation (i.e., CMP), especially when Alston himself admits that different mystical traditions have different tests? In other words, in order to say that all MP traditions are legitimate, each would have to be scrutinized, understood, and only if it seems to have legitimate tests, claimed to be a legitimate doxastic practice in its own right. Not having done this, it seems to me that the most he can claim is that CMP is a legitimate doxastic practice; he cannot extend that claim to the MP traditions he has not analyzed and certainly not to MP as a whole. Alston himself has said, "I am committed to the proposition that most forms of MP are somewhat unreliable" [6]. Objection: Just because we engage in a doxastic practice doesn't mean it is reliable. Whereas Alston claims that if we engage in a doxastic practice, we must consider it to be reliable, Pasnau claims this is not the case. On the contrary, Pasnau says it is perfectly reasonable to consistently engage in a practice and have doubts about its reliability. He uses the example of ethics: most people, by a process they don't fully understand, derive a personal code of ethics. There is certainly no way to know if the process is reliable or if the beliefs formed are true. Yet it is a process we may engage in every day. The implication for MPs is that the experiencer needn't take the practice or the resultant beliefs that are formed as reliable. Alston sees this objection as merely a clash of Pasnau's intuition with his own: "It seems clear to me that if I confidently form beliefs in a certain way, and continue to do so over a long period of time, where this (naturally) involves taking those beliefs to be true, I thereby evince my confidence that that way of forming beliefs can be relied onto yield mostly true beliefs" [7]. Objection: An MP can be interpreted as an ordinary SP. By Alston's definition of a religious experience, it is tautologically true that having a religious experience (or more specifically a CMP) entails a belief in god: "I want to include any experiences that the subject takes, or would take if the question arose, to be an _intuitive_, experiential awareness of God, as contrasted with just thinking about God...." [8]. However, we can certainly conceive of an atheist having an experience that would otherwise be labelled as mystical, yet interpret it simply wrote in : "I experienced the power of prayer in a very strong way. My experiences, both alone (I see now I really WAS alone) and in church were quite dramatic. My life was punctuated with tears and wonderful joy. At one point, I began to wonder how much of what I was experiencing was pure emotionalism. So I decided to try an experiment. I went into a dark room and prayed similarly to the way I had prayed in the past, but this time I úÿ lm.com Augustine's Epistemological Proof Augustine, Aurelius. Bp. of Hippo Regius (N. Africa); d. 428. Began professional career as teacher of Rhetoric at Milan; planned on career in philosophy;spent 10 years as a Manichean (dualistic religion); converted to 'orthodox' (Nicean) christianity after study with Bp. Ambrose and a mystical experience. Wrote 1st? Latin spiritual auto- biography, _Confessions_. Wrote many, many books, esp. The_City_of_God, which develops a 'Christian' view of history, and also attempts to explain the Fall of Rome. Tremendously influential in medieval thought. Augustine's primary philosophical mentors were the Neoplatonists, esp. Plotinus, Poryphry, and Varro; but the influences of Cicero (Stoicism) and the Christian Scriptures (esp. Paul) should not be neglected. A. is usually held to have little Greek; he gives little evidence of acquaintence with Aristotlean thought or books (except via Cicero). The argument appears, in the form of a Socratic dialogue between A. and his friend Evodius, in De_libero_arbitrio (written between 388 and 395, and not substantially retracted in the _Retractations_ at the end of A.'s career). The theme of DLA is not so much about 'free will' in our sense, but more about 'the problem of evil'. (1) Knowles paraphrases it (I've added in some quotes from Aug.): To a further, more rigourous proof, based on his own system of thought, he [Aug.] devotes particular care. The argument runs thus. If there is a being higher than, and superior to, the human soul [or, 'the human mind' /D], that being is God. ['All I need do is to show you that there is a being of such a kind, and either you will admit this being to be God, or, if there is anything higher, you will grant that the higher being is God. So, whether there is something higher or there is not, it will be clear that God exists, when ... I shall show ... that there exists something higher than reason. /DLA Bk II] Now, by our intellectual processes of thought we attain to, and know that we attain to, truth. But this truth is not 'our' truth, since all may have it and recognize it [...] It is itself permanent and im- mutable [A.'s ex: 'the unchangeable truth of number'], whereas what we see is only partial and changeable. There is therefore 'above' us a Truth perfect and unchangeable. This Truth, which can also be shown to be also the Good and the Beautiful , is God. ['...if there is nothing more excellent, then truth itself is God.' /DLA Bk II ] (1) Hick is more succinct: Augustine had argued in Platonic fashion that our intelligence must recognize something superior to itself, namely wisdom or truth; and either this is God, or, if there be something superior to it, then *this* is God.(1) (1) Augustine, The_Problem_of_free_choice. Ancient Christian Writers series (Longmans: 1955). Well annotated ed., transl. by Dom Mark Pontifex. Also avail. in 'The Age of Belief' (Signet paperback; I don't recall the editor or other pub. info). A. treats epistemological issues more extensively in De_Magistro ('On the Teacher'; another Socratic-style dialogue, this time with his son, Adeodatus) (2) David Knowles, The_Evolution_of_Medieval_Thought. (3) John Hick, Arguments_for_the_Existence_of_God. H. mentions A.'s argument as a precursor of Anselm's. Quite so. Nothing completely pertinent leaps to mind; Gilson and Copelston, I'm sure, would discuss this. C.S Lewis, in the first four chapters of his book, _Miracles_ introduces a strongly similar heuristic for deciding between 'naturalism' and 'supernaturalism' ; but I don't see that CSL 'got it out' of Augustine. The CCAT Gopher at the University of Pennsylvania has extensive Augustine material; also, any mailing lists discussing Late Antiquity or the Early Medieval period almost must discuss Augustine. This argument has long been a favorite of mine, or at least is one that I've found aesthetically attractive. It is epistemological, it seems to me, because it works from 'what can we know?' and 'how is it that we can know anything?'. It is also (mostly) 'a priori' (rather 'a posteriori' as in the Argument from Design'. In both these we can see the ancestry that Anselm drew upon. In contemporary thought, a 'naturalistic' view of reason is almost a given. That is, reason is seen as an an adaptive behavior, in the evolutionary sense (citations, anyone?). Thus this argument will tend to have little persuasive power, for folks (naively or after doing their philosophical homework) sharing the modern cast of mind. However, any refutation of reason as 'special' needs to tread carefully to avoid circularity of question-begging. If Augustine's argument reminds us of this, then it continues to do useful work. ============ More on the FAQ project: I have someone working on Plato's argument (from the Laws); another person intends something on Paley's version of the Argument from Design, but I haven't seen it yet. Slots are therefore still open- refute your choice philosopher now! Operators are stadning by! Dave Davis m Anselm's Ontological Argument Anselm (Archbp. of Canterbury) an Italian-born Benedictine, was a 11th c. (pre-Scholastic) teacher and abbot. He is usually held to have built on Augustinian foundations for his philosophical and theological works; certainly he wrote before the re-introduction of Aristotle into the West. His principal works were Proslogion (which contains the Ontological Argument), Monologion (which contains some material recalling Augustine's Epistemological Argument, q.v.), and Cur_Deus_Homo ('Why God became a Man'- Christian theodicy). These are widely available in translation, compilations, and excerpts. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived [L.: aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit*], cannot exist in the understanding alone. For suppose it exists in the understanding alone: than it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one than which a greater can be conceived. But, obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived... Source: Anselm (of Canterbury), 'Prologion', Basic_Writings (La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1962), p.8 . *Elsewhere 'nihil melius cogitari possit' = nothing better than which cannot be conceived. That precise form of words is apparently not vital to A. Hick (Arguments_for_the_Existence_of_God) sees *three* arguments for God in the Proslogion. I have been talking about the one above, which certainly has the most notoriety. A boiled-down version of the argument: 1. If the greatest being possible ('that, than which nothing greater can be conceived') does not exist, then it is possible that there exists a being greater than the greatest possible being. 2. It is not possible that there exists a being greater than the greatest being possible. Therefore 3. The greatest being possible exists. (1) (1) J.W. Cornman & K. Lehrer, Philosophical_ Problems_&_Arguments (NY: Macmillian/Collier 1973) Another attempt at synopsis: 1) God is a being who posseses all perfections 2) Existence is a perfection Therefore, God exists. (1) (2) Olson, Robert G. Short_Intro._to_Philosophy (NY: HBW, 1967) p. 74. Hartshorne, and others (apparently; I haven't recently seen the material) continue to find Anselm's Ontological Argument worthy of consideration. One professor of philosophy that I know of describes Anselm's approach not as *a proof of God's existence* but as *a vision of God's nature* (which might mitigate against its utility in standard philosophical discourse :-) ). Certainly it has been the source of many variations of Ontological Arguments, including efforts by Descartes, Leibnitz, Hartshorne, and Goedel. In The_Evolution_of_Medieval_ Thought (Vintage Books: 1962) David Knowles writes, "...[Anselm's] argument, when set out in its bare terms, without any reference to his experience or views, is couched in terms of pure dialectic, and must stand or fall by its sheer dialectical force. A principal reason of our difficulty in appreciating its power may well be that pur dialectic makes but a weak appeal to our minds." (p. 106) [Kant spent a good deal of ink on Anselm. 'Existence is not a predicate' is his principal contribution to the analysis of this approach.] Knowles writes that we owe the description of arguments of this sort as 'ontological' to Kant, 'for whom an ontological proof was any proof independent of existence and based on a simple analysis of concepts." (p. 102) Knowles also mentions, '...Geyer dismisses it [Anselm's Ontological Argument] out of hand as a fallacy. Cornford and Lehrer also find it unconvincing; they hold that using Anselm's logic, "We can even prove that the being whose description involves the most contradictions exists." (p.388) Rondo Keele and Burkhard Reike have contributed well-thought forum. Plantinga, Alvin. God_and Other_Minds. As I see it, the trouble with Anselm's argument is that 'greater' remains an inadequately defined term in it. Many things seem 'greater' or 'lesser' to us; a blue whale seems greater than a slug; a star seems greater than a single asteroid. But these differences, while real enough, elude a closely specified definition of 'greater'- surely God is not the greatest in mass, or even complexity. This robs the argument of at least some of its persuasive power. Even so, the logic might hold if the terms were granted. If this were the case, one would be left with an argument pointing to God, as the most perfectly existing of all existing things, without any further indication of what this might mean. That is: 'God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived- which means that it actually exists - *whatever that 'it' is *.' A meaning for 'God' here that entailed 'the sum of all possible eternal or self-generating universes' could not be ruled out (as long as at least one such cosmos could be seen to exist). This, *whatever else it is* is not 'what everyone calls 'God'. However, detailed refutation of Anselm's work is difficult; many arguments go no further than the contemporary effort of 'Gaunilo' (a fellow monk) who argued that Anselm's logic equally well proved a perfect island. Again, from Cornford & Lehrer: "Anselm's reply was merely to say that the logic of his argument applies only to the greatest *being* possible [strictly, 'the greatest conceivable' being] and to no other." (p.386) Some approaches to Anselm regard the argument as in part epistemological - that is, more concerned with *what we can know* than with *what can (or must) exist*. Note, on this point, that Anselm consistently referred to 'that than which a greater cannot be conceived', which phrasing is distinctable from 'Greatest Possible Being' A little bit more from Olson: In his own day, Anselm's argument was criticized on the grounds that perfection did not imply existence; if it did, then utopia or a perfect society would exist. A. pointed out in rebuttal that there is a difference between the concept of a being such as God who possesses *all* perfections and the concept of utopia to which we attribute only a limited number of perfections of a special kind. (Ibid. Emphasis in original) Dave Davis These are my opinions and activities alone. QOTD: The only intelligible way of rejecting Anselm's claim that God's existence is necessary is to maintain that the concept of God, as a being greater than which cannot be conceived, is slef-contradictory or nonsensical. Supposing that this is false, Anselm is right to deduce God's necessary existence from his characterization of Him [sic] as a being greater than which cannot be conceived. N. Malcolm, 'Anselm's Ontological Argument' in Knowledge_and_Certainty (NJ: PH, 1963). p.149 lm.com amu.edu aam Aquinas' Five Ways: I. From Motion Thomas Aquinas was b. near Naples in 1225 and d. near there in 1274, after a career that included teaching theology at the Univ. of Paris. He was a Roman Catholic cleric, as were most academics in this period. While much of his writing (dictated to students) is seen to have been concerned with 'baptizing Aristotle' as it were, the Biblical, Augustinian and (soi distant) Neo-Platonic sources of his thought ought not to be overlooked. His principal works (certainly those which are still read today) were the Summa_Theologica (1265-72; conclusion posthumously contributed by a student) and the Summa_Contra_Gentiles (which contains, if my memory serves me, an argument for God's existence not contained in the S_T). These are widely available in translation, compilations, and excerpts. His influence on Roman Catholic thought was tremendous, up to and into the 20th c. (Maritain, Gilson, Adler). His influence outside of this sphere is less, though (again if memory serves) Thomas was not one of the 'schoolmen' despised by Luther and Calvin. In the S_T, Thomas advances the quinque_viae (five ways) 'in which the idea of God is required in explaining the world' (I will mostly follow Reese's synopsis): a) There is motion in the world ; and Whatever is moved is moved by another; But, if all of the links in the chain of motions were intermediate links, we would have an unsatisfactory explanation of motion. Hence, at the origin of each series of unmoved movers there must be an initial mover, which is unmoved. 'and this everyone understands to be God.' [I will plunk in ways B,C,D, & E some other time, if we proceed with this. /DDD] "His natural theology, in fact, legitimizes the whole ambit of the Christian hope, but at the same time remains as modest as it can possibly be." E. Gilson, The_Spirit_of_Medieval _Philosophy (1936). "Why could not change have been going on for an infinitely long period of time? ... It should be noted that on this [second] interpretation the crucial claim in the argument is not that there would be an infinite number of different explanations [for things changing in the world], but that any complete explanation would be infinitely long... [However] Science explains particular things and events... [Science as a method of explanation] in no way requires that the universe as a whole must be explainable ... There would, then, be no reason to claim that God is necessary to explain the world around us, no reason to postulate God as a theoretical explanatory entity." J.W. Cornman & K. Lehrer, Philosophical_ Problems_&_Arguments (NY: Macmillian/Collier 1973) [Excellent book! /DDD] Copelston, F.C. _Aquinas_ (Baltimore: Penquin Books, 1957). Reese, W.L. Dictionary_of_Philosophy_and_Religion (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980) Russell, Bertrand. History_of_Western_Philosophy (1947) Aquinas' arguments mostly seem to have relied on a horror of infinite regression, which might not seem as fearful to folks today. However, as Kung writes, "...there is food for thought here...[If we did not affirm the causality that cosmological arguments such as Thomas' are dealing with] would we not have to assume the groundlessness and instability of reality as a whole and therefore profess nihilism-- which is an alternative to be taken seriously?" (Kung, Does_God_Exist? 1981). Kant is usually held to have killed off Thomas' five ways, though they continue to pop up with modifications. ============article by Bob Lang==== As some of you know, Dave Davis is trying to put together a series of FAQs for a.a addressing various kinds of arguments for the existence of god (e.g., the five ways of Acquinas, Goedel's ontological proof). My contribution to this is a FAQ on the argument from mystical experience. I've included it below. I'd like to encourage others to help with this effort by either a) emailing me constructive criticism of the FAQ included in this post, or b) volunteering to write a FAQ on one of the remaining arguments. The hope, as always, is to cut down on signal-to-noise and reduce repetition of the same topics. If you're interested in writing a FAQ, send email to Dave Davis . If you've got input, suggestions, criticism of the FAQ included in this post, please email me. [snip /DDD] Thanks. ---------------------begin included text----------------------- The argument from mystical experience is intriguing for several reasons. First, mystical experiences -- the ineffable awareness of the true existence of the object of one's religious beliefs -- seem to be at the core of all religions. Were it not for the ability to have, or at least the hope of having, such experiences, religions might cease to exist. Second, the existence of mystical experiences (from here on ME) provides the possibility of an instantaneous conversion: an atheist has an inexplicable experience which she can only attribute to god and, voila -- she's now a theist. Third, there's the possibility that MEs are "priviledged knowledge." What if non-believers simply lack the appropriate "senses" to perceive god? Knowing that MEs exist, how can know whether the object of the ME exists? So just what is a mystical experience? The simplest definition is any experience in which the experiencer claims to be directly in touch with god. But that is not entirely adequate. In _Varieties of Religious Belief_, William James gives many representative examples of MEs, of which the following is one: "I was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping, and in good training. . . . I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and my state of mind was equally healthy. . . . I can best describe the condition in which I was by calling it a state of equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a feeling of being raised above myself, I felt the presence of God--I tell of the thing just as I was conscious of it--as if his goodness and his power were penetrating me altogether. The throb of emotion was so violent that I could barely tell the boys to pass on and not wait for me. i then sat down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes overflowed with tears.... I think it well to add that in this ecstasy of mine God had neither form, color, odor, nor taste; moreover that the feeling of his presence was accompanied by no determinate localization. It was rather as if my personality had been transformed by the presence of a _spiritual spirit_. But the more I seek words to express this intimate intercourse, the more I feel the impossibility of describing the thing by any of our usual images. At bottom the expression most apt to render what I felt was this: God was present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him" [1]. This example illustrates the ineffable nature of the experience that ME arguers emphasize, including an awareness of god that is gained not through the senses. There are two primary kinds of ME arguments that I'm aware of: I'll call them "strong" and "weak" arguments. A strong ME argument hopes to provide evidence of god's existence. One way this evidence is provided is by attempting to establish the cognitivity of MEs. A cognitive experience "is one on the basis of which we gain knowledge of some objective reality" [2]. That means that if MEs can be shown to be cognitive, they can count as evidence for the existence of god. If people are experiencing god in a cognitive way, god must exist. But even when they set out to establish cognitivity, most ME arguers concede that it cannot be done. For example, in _John of the Cross and the Cognitive Value of Mysticism_, Payne discusses the possible explanations for the religious experiences of John of the Cross, a well-known Christian mystic. Payne _does_ hope to show that John's experiences were cognitive, but concludes that the best he can hope for is to show that cognitivity is at least as good an explanation as any other: "Still, I think we have shown that, given the satisfaction of certain conditions which many believers probably meet, it is reasonable to accept contemplative awareness as a cognitive mode of experience. And this, it seems to me, is as much support as faith can legitimately expect of philosophy here: not a conclusive demonstration that belief in the cognitive value of mystical states is true, but only a solid argument that this belief is not contrary to reason" [3]. I am not aware of any arguments in which ME is claimed to be _good_ evidence for the existence of god. This does not mean, however, that ME arguments are worthless. Religious experience arguments do not always seek to provide proof of god's existence. Such arguments are "weak" ME arguments. Weak ME arguments attempt to show that it is rational for those who've had a ME to believe that the experience was an actual perception of god (or some other form of "ultimate reality"). There is a subtle distinction between using MEs as evidence for god's existence on the basis of a ME and claiming that individuals are justified in believing based on MEs. In weak ME arguments, the issue of whether a theist's ME-derived belief actually corresponds to something out there in the objective world is not crucial. The point is that belief is rational and justified. Non-ME experiencers have no reason to believe. On the one hand, this is a very persuasive kind of argument because it can be formulated consistently with little room for objection. On the other hand, it is unpersuasive because there is no hope of convincing someone not already convinced. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience Nelson Pike, Mystic Union Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience William Alston, Perceiving God James' argument in Varieties was one of the first ME arguments in modern times and certainly the most influential. Perhaps the most important recent argument for MEs, and to my mind, the most persuasive, is made by Alston. Alston's argument is of what I've called the weak variety: he does not purport to give evidence to non-believers for a particular god's existence; instead, he hopes to show that MEs provide a rational justification for belief for those who've had MEs. Rather than summarize general arguments for and against MEs, it will be more instructive to look in some detail at what I consider the most persuasive ME argument (Alston's), then look at its merits and shortcomings. Alston's argument depends on his assertion that there can be no non-circular proof of the reliability of any doxastic practice. A doxastic (or belief-forming) practice is any practice through which we form beliefs or opinions, such as deductive reasoning or empirical observation. According to Alston's unique epistemology, we cannot justify or defend the reliability of any doxastic practice without using tests from within the practice itself. For example, in sense perception, verification by others is one of the primary tests. If I say that hot water freezes faster than cold water, others are likely to doubt me. But I can present a simple experiment and its results for others to examine and reproduce. If, under the same conditions, everyone gets the same results, we conclude that the statement "under the proper conditions, hot water freezes faster than cold water" is true. Note that the test to determine the truth of my claim was a test based in sense perception -- specifically empirical observation. Any test for any sense perception (SP) -related claim must also be SP-related. Furthermore, there is no single, external "meta-practice" we can appeal to to determine if any the SP doxastic practice really is reliable. This is what Alston means by no non-circular proof. But just because we must rely on circular proof, we need not conclude that SP is _un_reliable or that we must all become solipsists. We can suppose SP to be reliable for two reasons: 1) because it is widely practiced and 2) for the sake of pragmatism -- we simply cannot function without assuming the reliability of sense perception. Although we cannot prove its reliability in a non-circular way, lacking compelling evidence _against_ the reliability of SP, we can and should trust its reliability. Alston extends this claim to all doxastic practices -- including, of course ME. Just as we can trust SP to be reliable by providing circular proof, so can we trust the circular proofs of MP (mystical percpetion - - this is Alston's term. When referring to Alston, I'll use MP, as distinguished from the generic, ME.) For example, the Catholic Church considers the moral betterment of the experiencer to be one way of determining whether a ME was legitimate. This is clearly a circualr test within Christian mystical tradition, and would not apply to SP or any other mystical tradition. A common way to refute MP arguments is to appeal to SP. Consider the verification-by-others test. There are many different mystical traditions, none of which agree (e.g., Buddhists claim to be in touch with an undifferentiated unity, while Christians claim to be in touch with a personal creator and sustainer of the universe). If we apply the verification-by-others test we see that this disagreement renders MP to be unreliable: just as we could not accept the hypothesis that hot water freezes faster if many different experimenters got many different results, we cannot accept the many differing claims of the many different mystical traditions. But Alston would point out that any use of SP to prove or disprove MP is not allowed. Proof of a doxastic practice can (and indeed must) be circular. We have no compulsion to apply the SP test of verification by others to MPs. Furthermore, the fact that there are many different mystical traditions is immaterial. Each tradition is its own doxastic practice and each has tests for its own validity. Thus, they cannot be expected to agree. Forgie, William, "Theistic Experience and the Doctrine of Unanimity," International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion 15 (1994): 13-30. Richard M. Gale, _On the Nature and Existence of God_, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, N.Y., 1991, p. 313. Robert Pasnau, "Justified Until Proven Guilty: Alston's new Epistemology." I've been able to find only two published refutations of Alston. The first is contained in Richard M. Gale's _On the Nature and Existence of God_, the second is Robert Pasnau's "Justified Until Proven Guilty." I'll discuss their objections along with interspersed objections of my own. Objection: MP is not a distinct doxastic practice. This objection holds that the formulation of beliefs about an MP are done by means of ordinary SP; thus MP should be subject to the same tests as MP. For example, on the basis of an MP in which the experiencer claims to feel god's love, the experiencer would naturally conclude that god is loving. This conclusion is made using simple inductive reasoning, which is a subset of the more general SP doxastic practice. Or consider an alternative example: Descriptions of mystical experiences invariably include statements like, "God brought me comfort" or "a feeling of euphoria." Feelings -- comfort, euphoria, and the like -- are physical, sense-related states. Thus, it's not clear what the difference between mystical experiences and "ordinary" sense experiences are. If MPs are really SPs, they should be subject to the same kinds of tests. If they are subject to SP tests, we know what the results will be: MPs will be found to be unreliable, contradictory, and unfit as sources of knowledge. But Alston argues that "the formation of perceptual beliefs about God ... belongs to a distinctively different doxastic practice [from the SP doxastic practice]." He uses the following example to support his contention: "suppose I were to make an analogous critique of introspective reports, e.g., that I now feel excited. Here too the report cannot be assessed on the basis of whether other people experience the same thing under the same conditions. Even if they don't that has no tendency to show that I didn't feel excited. But this will not lead most of us to deny that such beliefs can be justified. We would simply point out that we should not expect beliefs about one's own conscious states to be subject to the same sorts of tests as beliefs about ships and sealing wax. More indirect tests of a public sort can be given to determine the subject's mastery of mentalistic language and his general reliability as a reporter. But as for particular reports, assuming general competence, there is no appeal beyond his word" [4]. This is not, in my opinion, a good analogy. In contrast to religious experiences, everyone has felt excited at one time or another and understands the conditions under which the feeling is likely to occur. The same cannot be said for religious experiences. Furthermore, excitement is, in a sense, a physical phenomenon that can be tested with sense perception tests like monitoring of brain activity or heart rate. By this example at least, MP does not seem to be a distinct doxastic practice. Objection: Religious diversity. This is an objection that nearly any atheist would make intuitively. Alston has a reasonable response to it, but ultimately he seems to dodge the issue. Alston does not think that MPs must be considered as a single doxastic practice; rather, he sees them as many separate doxastic practices. As such, different mystical traditions cannot be expected to agree. Gale argues that this is unfair: "Again, we find Alston committing the fallacy of thinking that if he can give a categoreally based explanation for a disanalogy between the religious- and sense-experience doxastic practices, it renders the disanalogy harmless" [5]. Gale suggests that while on the one hand Alston wants to make MP and SP analogous in certain respects, he is not willing, on the other hand, to make MP subject to an analogous tests -- e.g., he is not willing to make agreement among different religious traditions a criterion for the reliability of MPs. It is a crucial question: should we consider each religious tradition to be its own doxastic practice or should we consider MPs as a whole to be a single doxastic practice. If we consider MPs as consisting of many distinct doxastic practices, Alston's position is fairly secure: each doxastic practice has its own tests, none of which can be verified non-circularly. However, Gale's objection remains: just how analogous is analogous? How can Alston justify making MPs into many doxastic practices and still consider MP a reasonable analogue to SP, when SP clearly is a single doxastic practice? Alston can simply argue that this is one of the ways in which the two are not analogous, but his position smacks of inconsistency. If, on the other hand, we consider MP to be a single doxastic practice, we see that there are many incompatible ways of dealing with MPs and we can conclude that MPs are unreliable. Even if we concede Alston's view that MP consists of many distinct doxastic practices, problems persist. Alston uses Christian mystical perception (CMP) to illustrate how a particular mystical doxastic practice is legitimate. In doing this, however, he has not demonstrated the reliability of the practice as a whole. Alston shows how CMP has its own checks and tests for determining the truth of MP claims, but his thesis is consistently that we should grant MPs _categorically_ the same reliability we grant to SP. How can we say anything meaningful about MPs as a whole if we consider just one MP in isolation (i.e., CMP), especially when Alston himself admits that different mystical traditions have different tests? In other words, in order to say that all MP traditions are legitimate, each would have to be scrutinized, understood, and only if it seems to have legitimate tests, claimed to be a legitimate doxastic practice in its own right. Not having done this, it seems to me that the most he can claim is that CMP is a legitimate doxastic practice; he cannot extend that claim to the MP traditions he has not analyzed and certainly not to MP as a whole. Alston himself has said, "I am committed to the proposition that most forms of MP are somewhat unreliable" [6]. Objection: Just because we engage in a doxastic practice doesn't mean it is reliable. Whereas Alston claims that if we engage in a doxastic practice, we must consider it to be reliable, Pasnau claims this is not the case. On the contrary, Pasnau says it is perfectly reasonable to consistently engage in a practice and have doubts about its reliability. He uses the example of ethics: most people, by a process they don't fully understand, derive a personal code of ethics. There is certainly no way to know if the process is reliable or if the beliefs formed are true. Yet it is a process we may engage in every day. The implication for MPs is that the experiencer needn't take the practice or the resultant beliefs that are formed as reliable. Alston sees this objection as merely a clash of Pasnau's intuition with his own: "It seems clear to me that if I confidently form beliefs in a certain way, and continue to do so over a long period of time, where this (naturally) involves taking those beliefs to be true, I thereby evince my confidence that that way of forming beliefs can be relied onto yield mostly true beliefs" [7]. Objection: An MP can be interpreted as an ordinary SP. By Alston's definition of a religious experience, it is tautologically true that having a religious experience (or more specifically a CMP) entails a belief in god: "I want to include any experiences that the subject takes, or would take if the question arose, to be an _intuitive_, experiential awareness of God, as contrasted with just thinking about God...." [8]. However, we can certainly conceive of an atheist having an experience that would otherwise be labelled as mystical, yet interpret it simply wrote in : "I experienced the power of prayer in a very strong way. My experiences, both alone (I see now I really WAS alone) and in church were quite dramatic. My life was punctuated with tears and wonderful joy. At one point, I began to wonder how much of what I was experiencing was pure emotionalism. So I decided to try an experiment. I went into a dark room and prayed similarly to the way I had prayed in the past, but this time I úÿ úÿ(Continued from last message) decided to address Satan instead of Christ. Sure enough, the warm, comforting feeling of being cleansed and empowered flooded through my body. I then tried praying to Mickey Mouse, and sure enough, got the same results." We need not accept this particular anecdote as veracious. It does illustrate, however, a rationally drawn a conclusion about a mystical perception different from the conclusion "I was in touch with god." In other words, one can have an "MP" and rationally interpret it as ordinary SP. Alston has not given us compelling reasons for concluding one over the other. On the basis of his epistemology and his examination of CMP, Alston has shown that it is rational to believe in god based on a CMP. It is, in my opinion, a strong case for a weak claim. He has not shown that MPs from any other mystical tradition (for example, Buddhism or Islam) are reliable, nor has not shown that even a Christian _must_ interpret what appears to be an MP as an actual MP. --- Notes: [1] From William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, quoted in Nelson Pike, _Mystic Union: an essay in the phenomenolgy of mysticism_. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1992, p. 117. [2] Richard M. Gale, _On the Nature and Existence of God_, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, N.Y., 1991, p. 313. [3] Stephen Payne, _John of the Cross and the Cognitive Value of Mysticism_, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1990, p. 219. [4] William Alston, "The Automony of Religious Experience," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 31, v2-3 (June 1992), p. 763. [5] Gale, p. 322. [6] Alston, "Autonomy," p. 36. [7] William Alston, "Reply to Pasau," Philosophical Studies 72 (1993), p. 38. [8] Alston, "Autonomy," p. 68. ---------------------end included text------------------------- Bob Lang | Them lasers is *fan*tastic. rjl@sei.cmu.edu | (David Letterman) m [I'm taking this one out of chronological order, because it is pregnant with several arguments, and not easily fitted into our schemata. /DDD ] The background is: In Book X of The_Laws Plato (through speaking through 'The Athenian' ) is proposing that the Laws of his Republic include piety towards the gods; for this to be a just law, there should be a rational demonstration of their existence. So, he attempts to provide one. Reading behind the text, in Plato's society, there are people who argue that nature (or matter) is primary- i.e., more fundamental than 'soul' (Gr: 'psyche' ). Plato may be trying to respond to these people as well. The argument actually has the seeds of several other arguments within it: the Moral Argument (that divinity is needed for morals) the First Cause argument/Argument from Motion (it is fairly close to this, more formally put by Aristotle) and, surprisingly, Pascal's Wager (this not in_ovuo, but in_gametes!) It even pre-echoes (to my reading) Augustine's and CSL's 'reason is divine' theme. The key assumption is that some things are in motion, and secondarily that other things are at rest. The argument proceeds from this taken as an axiom [to speak anacronistically]. The Athenian [the main speaker in the dialogue that comprises The_Laws] offers a two-part argument that is not easily reduced to a syllogism or anything like it. Part I. Of the various kinds of motions there are two that are particularly interesting: Motion I is "permanently capable of moving both itself and other things by processes of combination and separation, increase and diminuation; Motion II is "permanently capable of moving other things but not itself". In a Motion II sequence (one thing causing another thing causing still another, etc.), no first cause is possible, because something whose motion is transmitted to it from something else cannot be the first thing to effect an alteration [This foreshadows the horrow of infinite regression.] Something which has set itself in motion,[Motion I] and effects an alteration in something else which, in turn, effects something else and the motion is transmitted to thousands upon thousands of things one after another [Motion I leads to Motion II], can be and is the first cause. The Athenian [speaking for Plato] then revisits this point from a different perspective. Suppose the universe got into a standstill state: the self-generating motion (the first kind) would have to be the first motion to arise, because no antecedent impulse can ever be transmitted from something else in a situation where no antecedent impulse exists. [Which, perhaps in a way anticipates the Big Bang singularity? ] Part II: Suppose one could observe self-generating motion, what would it look like? The Athenian answers that any object that moves itself is ``alive.'' The Athenian gives a definition of the thing called a "soul" as "motion capable of moving itself" (which is the first kind of motion). So, Plato by definition equates soul and first cause, and so concludes that the soul is older than matter. Conclusion: This first-cause "soul" is God or the gods. (Plato here argues for at least two gods: "that which does good [regularity] and that which has the opposite capacity" [chaos].) Or, to boil this down even further: The only things that move themselves are those that are alive, or have soul (which is the same as being alive). Matter cannot move itself; it is secondary to soul (which can move matter). Anything that moves around things like the Sun and the planets must be divine. Finally: Physics [Psyche] is God. Err, umm... :-) Plato's idea of 'motion' seems to include the sort that occurs when our minds 'move' to a new insight, or recollection, etc. Interesting, but vexacious. Portions of this article were originally written by Jonathan Wistar, not of the Wistar Institute. References: : The argument runs thus. If there is a being higher than, : and superior to, the human soul [or, 'the human mind' /D], : that being is God. ['All I need do is to show you that Wrong. for many reasons a>this assumes there is such thing as a soul which is an entity which hasn't been proven. therefore the statement relies on a circular argument b>this being, god, is often quoted as not just being greater than humans, but the greatest, and therefore it's to assume that all birds are penguins. c> the human mind is an actual physical *entity* which proves how stupid the person defining the terms are. d> if i am correct, all religions would consider that the soul <> (brain) : /DLA Bk II] Now, by our intellectual processes of : thought we attain to, and know that we attain to, truth. a> assumes truth. be careful not to have two varying degrees of truth, such as truth about gravity and *truth* about history. : But this truth is not 'our' truth, since all may have it : and recognize it [...] It is itself permanent and im- b> two truths? everyone knows there's only one truth. : This Truth, which can also be shown to be also the : Good and the Beautiful , is God. ['...if there is nothing wrong. this again assumes another UNproven entity, mainly good and beautiful, which obviously, many people don't adhere to absolutely, or can see depedantly. My dependant entities clause is in many other articles, such that an entity which is entirely dependant on some other entity is not one at all, because entities are *independant*, and exist by definition. .edu References: : And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. : And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be : conceived [L.: aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit*], : cannot exist in the understanding alone. For : suppose it exists in the understanding alone: than it can : be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. a> pink unicorns exist in reality, because they can exist in the understanding. b> assumes such thing as freewill, and that understanding is not environmentally based, which is a big supposition even to christians. 1> christ convicted judas before he commited the act and as such is predestination, no free will. : impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a : being, than which nothing greater can be conceived... a> there has been no *known* boundaries to human knowledge, only their lifespan, and hence containing an infinite being in infinite space is unsolvable and neither a positive nor negative answer can be achieved. Anselm needs to take basic Calc. References: : The argument actually has the seeds of several other arguments : within it: : the Moral Argument (that divinity is needed for morals) a> i thought humans were needed for morals, or is it morals are needed for humans? chicken and egg scenario. : the First Cause argument/Argument from Motion (it is : fairly close to this, more formally put by Aristotle) b> assumes cause/effect universe, where obviously, the universe is action reaction. action reaction states that the universe in constant and as such, could continue along for ever, chaotically, but contained by such laws as gravity. : Pascal's Wager (this not in_ovuo, but in_gametes!) a> pascal's wager doesn't account for many gods, gods at war, or the fact that such a belief requires money for a particular religion in which case it's not a bet against nothing, but something. : thing to effect an alteration [This foreshadows the horrow of infinite : regression.] infinite regression is entirely possible, because counting between infinities would only mean you have to decide on the method of counting relative to another entity. because this is what is done in relativity (measuring a mile based on feet), it is entirely acceptable, and cannot be dismissed so easily. : Something which has set itself in motion,[Motion I] and effects : an alteration in something else which, in turn, effects something else : and the motion is transmitted to thousands upon thousands of things one : after another [Motion I leads to Motion II], can be and is the first cause. This assumes a Motion I, which is unsettling as an answer, for instance, why not two motions, three, or constant? : different perspective. Suppose the universe got into a standstill state: if the universe was already in motion, than it couldn't and if it wasn't than it is by definition. This supposes nothing. : [Which, perhaps in a way anticipates the Big Bang singularity? ] the big bang is a theory, and includes many more dimensions than three, which doesn't play any similarity. : Part II: : The Athenian gives a definition of the thing called a "soul" as "motion : capable of moving itself" (which is the first kind of motion). So, so a squirrel is a soul. : Plato by definition equates soul and first cause, and so concludes that : the soul is older than matter. but this also means that it's the soul's fault for all that happens to matter. : This first-cause "soul" is God or the gods. (Plato here argues for at integers have no upper limit, yet they exist. : Anything that moves around things like the Sun and : the planets must be divine. but the suns and planets circle each other, and so does gravity, hence everything is divine and therefore theword divine is meaningless, by occam's razor. : Finally: : Physics [Psyche] is God. psyche and physics are two seperate entities, else use the same words.