![\"im-just-being-honest\"](\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/im-just-being-honest-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Continuing the discussion with the Maverick (Bill)…<\/a><\/p>\n “Being itself,”<\/strong> I take it, is something like a universal property, an abstract and not a concrete object. (Or at least, it’s not supposed to be concrete; maybe he thinks that it is neither abstract nor concrete.) \u00a0I’m not sure if Bill would accept those characterizations, but if not, I invite him to say a little more about what he means by “Being itself.” The “itself,” I assume, entails not being a self. But God – that is, the God of Christianity, or of biblical monotheism – is a god, and a god is, analytically, a self. I’m pretty sure that no self can be “Being itself” in the way that Bill means it, but again, I invite him to say more about what it is to be “Being itself.”<\/p>\n Bill says,<\/p>\n “For Dale, if I understand him, [the phrase “Being itself”] doesn’t refer to anything<\/strong>, or at least not to anything mind-independently real. If so, then God, who we both believe exists, cannot be identical to Being itself. For God is mind-independently real.”<\/p>\n Insofar as I understand it, I would take “Being itself” to be equivalent to “Existence itself” or “Reality itself” – a plural referring term which picks out all that exists – God, creatures, and of course all their modes – the whole enchilada. It doesn’t refer to any one thing, but rather, to a bunch of things. It could mean the same as “Everything” or “the sum total of all beings [and their modes].” The usage here is like “the cosmos” or “Creation” – it is just the sum total of created things. Or if you’re Carl Sagan, “the Cosmos” would be all the physical<\/em> things.<\/p>\n And I agree that each of us has the concept\u00a0being<\/em><\/strong>, but as he says, this concept (like any concept) is mind-dependent; not perspective-relative, but rather something which just is a mode of a mind, a way a mind is. A concept is, I take it, just the ability to recognize a certain way things may be.<\/p>\n Bill suggests that I should argue:<\/p>\n I think the argument is valid and sound, given that “existence”<\/strong> means something like a universal or an all-pervasive substratum or principle\/ingredient.<\/p>\n Now if “existence” is a plural referring term<\/strong> for all the existing things, then I think 1 would still be true. “Exists” here refers to mind-independent existence; what is only imagined or projected does not exist. And the sum total of existing things (“existence”) is not itself an additional thing. So, I think 1 would be true or this reading.<\/p>\n Helpfully, Bill also gives an inconsistent triad<\/strong> concerning the issue before us, that is, three claims which can’t all be true. Any pair of them implies that the remaining one is false.<\/p>\n I affirm 2 & 3, denying 1. He affirms 1 & 2, denying 3. Yeah! We’re both self-consistent. If only that were enough! \ud83d\ude42 Problem is, we can’t both be correct.<\/p>\n Bill also, in his post<\/a>, helpfully lists out five possible views on God and Being<\/strong>. Both exist, neither do, or one does but the other doesn’t. And if they both exist, they’re either identical or not. He gives J.P. Moreland as an example<\/strong> of one of thinks that both exist, but are different. I’m not sure that’s right. Yes, Moreland, who one could describe as a Platonist, or a realist about Universals, does affirm that there is a universal existence<\/em>. But “Being itself,” is, I take it, supposed to be the unique, fundamental reality, in some way the source or ground of all else. And I would think that J.P. would deny this; as a monotheist, he thinks that God is ultimate. (Or so I suppose. I was his student once upon a time, but haven’t communicated with him in many years.)<\/p>\n Next time, Bill’s arguments that God is being itself, that 3 above is false<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Continuing the discussion with the Maverick (Bill)… “Being itself,” I take it, is something like a universal property, an abstract and not a concrete object. (Or at least, it’s not supposed to be concrete; maybe he thinks that it is neither abstract nor concrete.) \u00a0I’m not sure if Bill would accept those characterizations, but if… Read More »Dialogue with the Maverick Philosopher: God is a being, not Being itself – part 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,38,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debates","category-monotheism","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35354,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255\/revisions\/35354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
![\"THREE-MUSKETEERS\"](\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/THREE-MUSKETEERS-300x288.jpg\")
But this argument would be trivially valid<\/strong>, because the conclusion would be a necessary truth (so, it’d be impossible for all the premises to be true while the conclusion is false, that is,\u00a0it’d be impossible for the argument to be invalid, because<\/em> it’s impossible for the conclusion to be false). “God” is a singular referring term, whereas “existence itself” (on this reading), is supposed to be a plural referring term. But identity is one-to-one. You can’t have one entity being numerically the same as multiple beings. e.g. One guy can’t be identical to the Three Musketeers.<\/p>\n\n