Wednesday, March 31, 2004

On Theological Logicism

Roderick T. Long has a post up titled “The Unspeakable Logos.”  As usual, I found Long’s post an interesting read, and I consume it as food for thought for my mystical streak.  Within the post, Long discusses some of Plato’s and Wittgenstein’s contributions to this conundrum, among other things.  Long’s concluding statement.

“It’s also unclear exactly how a particular component of the world could be a logically necessary being. A logically necessary being would seem to be one whose essence entails its existence; as Kant pointed out, this means that the cosmological proof necessarily presupposes the ontological proof. But if, as most philosophers now agree, the ontological proof is fallacious, the cosmological proof would seem to fail as well. (One could try to fix up the cosmological proof by framing its premises in terms of metaphysical rather than logical necessity. But my previous arguments about the impossibility of explaining contingent existence, in the sense of “explanation” required by non-logicist theists, will apply just as well to metaphysical contingency, I think, as to logical.) But once God is identified with logic, the threat of divine contingency vanishes.”

Posted by John Venlet on 03/31 at 12:57 PM
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