JB, I'm not sure that metaphysics, philosophy and theology have been all that "fruitful", certainly nowhere as "fruitful" as science in the last 2000 years. I think that these armchair philosophors and theologians will still be arguing about the same old "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" type arguments another 2000 years from now. Now I admit that some philosophors, for example, Hume, Kant, Popper and more recently Dennett and a few others have made what looks very much like progress in philosophy in the last 200 years, but interestingly enough, their advances seem to have been inspired from being informed by science.
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Scientific knowledge changes, grows, improves, expands, as a result of refinements in and accretions to the special experience -- the observational data -- on which science as a mode of inquiry must rely. Philosophical inquiry is not subject to the same conditions of change or grwoth. Common experience, or more precisely, the general lineaments or common core of that experience, which suffices for the philosopher, remains relatively constant over the ages.

Descartes and Hobbes in the 17th century, Locke, Hume and Kant in the 18th century, and Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell in the 20th century enjoy no greater advantages in this respect than Plato and Aristotle in antiquity or than Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Roger Bacon in the Middle Ages.

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The conversation then ... ... devolved

The conversation then ... ... devolved

For a philosophy forum, I suppose. For a Mac forum you guys are still slapping butts and exchanging high-fives.

My agenda is not hidden.

I wish I could find the related article that I posted here long ago concerning the propensity for some people to want to believe in hidden agendas. It was full of zingers.

I like the link you provided for The Shamans of Scientism:

quote:

What is it about Hawking that draws us to him as a scientific saint? He is, I believe, the embodiment of a larger social phenomenon known as scientism. Scientism is a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science.

Hawking's towering fame is a result of a concatenation of variables that include the power of the scientism culture in which he writes, his creative insights into the ultimate nature of the cosmos, in which he dares to answer ersatz theological questions, and, perhaps most notably, his unmitigated heroism in the face of near-insurmountable physical obstacles that would have felled a lesser being. But his individual success in particular, and the rise of scientism in general, reveals something deeper still.

First, cosmology and evolutionary theory ask the ultimate origin questions that have traditionally been the province of religion and theology. Scientism is courageously proffering naturalistic answers that supplant supernaturalistic ones and in the process is providing spiritual sustenance for those whose needs are not being met by these ancient cultural traditions. Second, we are, at base, a socially hierarchical primate species. We show deference to our leaders, pay respect to our elders and follow the dictates of our shamans; this being the Age of Science, it is scientism's shamans who command our veneration. Third, because of language we are also storytelling, mythmaking primates, with scientism as the foundational stratum of our story and scientists as the premier mythmakers of our time.

Campbell always did say that we needed to develop our own myths that fit in with the times we lived. It looks like he was right. It's interesting to see how Hawking is treated so reverently. All he needs to do is don a is miter to complete this image.

I'm still catching up on my reading on this thread and some of the links it refers us to.

JB, you wrote: In the rationalist/empiricist and realist/idealist matrix, out of the rationalist/idealist kantians, the rationalist/realists platonists, the empiricist/idealist humeans and empiricist/realist aristotelians, I think the aristotelians show us where it is we must begin our inquiries but that we should take pains to answer the kantian and humean critiques and give a nod to the neo-platonists (not to ignore the linguistic turn, pragmatists, existentialists et al).This yields a critical rationalism, however fallibilistic, and a critical realism, and is entailed in my thomistic perspective, which deals with causal chain, causal joint or causal gap problems (interaction problems as you say) analogically by our knowledge of effects, recognizing that while some causes could be incomprehensible, we can at least characterize their effects and thereby attempt to catalog at least some parts of reality where these effects, so to speak, obviously are not coming from (whether cosmologically, ontologically, teleologically, epistemologically, axiologically, etc). It remains tricky terrain.

I wonder if your dialogue partners in the philosophy forums are tracking with you on some of this? Do they possess the same kind of mastery of the material to be able to grasp meta-concepts like "rationalist/idealist kantians" and "empiricist/realist aristotelians"? (That's a stretch for me, I might add, but then I'm just a rank amateur in philosophy ) . If not, then it's bound to be frustrating for both you and them, at times. Some of your partners' responses seem to be ignoring many of the points you're making, or talking around them, so I wonder if that's going on? It IS a philosophy forum, after all, and you're using language they should understand, but I don't sense that some of those participants are much more than college kids who've had a class or two and now think they know it all.

Would you at some time give us a summary of how you think it went in this dialogue? I'd be very interested in hearing, as I won't have the time to read all the exchanges.

The conversation then ... ... devolved

For a philosophy forum, I suppose. For a Mac forum you guys are still slapping butts and exchanging high-fives.

LOL!

Well, that's for sure! Nothing more important than defending the "good name" of one's computer, after all.

I wonder if your dialogue partners in the philosophy forums are tracking with you on some of this? Do they possess the same kind of mastery of the material to be able to grasp meta-concepts like "rationalist/idealist kantians" and "empiricist/realist aristotelians"?

While there is a mixture of age groups and philosophical literacy, there are folks there who very much are tracking, some way ahead of me, although this thread hasn't engaged some of them whom I've had the pleasure of engaging before. Some of the older folks in such forums are just as sophomoric as some of the younger, but some of the younger folks are very much on the ball. Some of my exchanges, that are more inearnest perhaps, at times, are taking place underneath the radar, in private messaging.

I am very gratified with my engagements there, actually. Some of the responses are very substantive and on point. Some are rather ... petulant.

pax,
jb

Dear Shalomplace, this is long overdue and I apologize, but, for those interested, here's a primer, still filled with jargon, but in a more orderly fashion and with more definitions and restatements.

Let�s begin with a few definitions, all from Merriam-Webster.

Rationalism is a theory that reason is in itself a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perceptions. Empiricism is a theory that all knowledge originates in experience.

Idealism is a theory that only mental states or entities are knowable. Realism is the conception that objects of sense perception or cognition exist independently of the mind.

Fideism is the reliance on faith rather than reason. Scientism is an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science. Materialism is a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter.

Each of these words have alternate definitions, but the definitions set forth above are those pertinent to the discussion that follows.

Each of the definitions above is concerned with a branch of philosophy. The branch that deals with knowledge is called epistemology. The branch that deals with the nature of fundamental reality is known as metaphysics, which is, itself, divided into two branches, cosmology, which deals with the order of the universe, and ontology, which deals with the nature and relations of being.

Usually, by the time you put together a metaphysics and an epistemology, you get what is often called a hermeneutic, which is another word for interpretation, which in this case amounts to an interpretation of reality, often called a worldview or a philosophical system, or, if you prefer, a philosophy of life.

pax,
jb

Usually, by the time you put together a metaphysics and an epistemology, you get what is often called a hermeneutic, which is another word for interpretation, which in this case amounts to an interpretation of reality, often called a worldview or a philosophical system, or, if you prefer, a philosophy of life.

A philosophical system can generally be broken down into three or four major components. They are the noetical, the aesthetical and the ethical. Noetics can be thought of as relating to the intellect, or truth. This would involve such as the study of logic, for instance. Aesthetics relate to beauty. Ethics relates to morals or goodness.

If one�s philosophy of life or worldview is religious, then it not only has an underlying philosophical system but also a creed, which articulates our encounter with Truth, a cult or cultivation, which celebrates our encounter with Beauty, a code, which preserves our encounter with goodness, and a community structure, where these encounters are routinely articulated, celebrated and preserved.

The major traditions, religious and ideological, all have an underlying philosophical system, all have their unique approaches to reality. Let�s take a look at what some of these approaches are.

The major traditions, religious and ideological, all have an underlying philosophical system, all have their unique approaches to reality. Let�s take a look at what some of these approaches are.


We can identify four major approaches to reality by going back to our first four definitions: rationalism, empiricism, realism and idealism. In philosophical systems, they are combined to yield epistemological approaches, which define how it is we think we can best approach knowledge of reality. Each of these epistemological approaches is associated with a major person from the history of philosophy, either Plato, Aristotle, Kant or Hume. Accordingly, the rationalist-realist approach is platonic; the rationalist-idealist approach is kantian; the empiricist-realist approach is aristotelian; and the empiricist-idealist approach is humean.

Another thing we need to know about these epistemologies, or approaches to reality, is that they can involve various degrees of knowledge or abstraction, which means levels of thinking, and these degrees of abstraction can be applied to various levels of existence, or degrees of being, however many one may discover or predict as one attempts to gain knowledge of reality through one�s chosen epistemology.

These degrees of abstraction include such concepts as physics (science), metaphysics (cosmology plus ontology), theology (meta-metaphysics), mathematics and formal logic. These degrees of abstraction (or types of ideas) are applied to information provided by our senses, a type of evidence, and through inference, one arrives at a conclusion, or makes a judgment, by reasoning from such evidence.

Not unrelated, we can divide our knowledge realm into disciplines based on the questions we ask of reality: where corresponding to space, when to time, what to mass and how to energy. One can see how these questions intuitively correspond to the space-time-mass-energy plenum that is studied by science.

Why is that question generally associated with philosophy, which includes everything we discussed already regarding metaphysics, epistemology and the components of worldviews or philosophical systems.

Who, to me, corresponds to the theological questions we ask of reality: In other words: Are you personal?

I like to add That? That, as a question, corresponds to mysticism, following Wittgenstein that it is not How things are but That things are, which is the mystical.

And, finally, I like to add, This?, in order to include phenomenology, which may be considered as asking questions, the answers to which describe the formal structure of our objects of awareness and of our awareness itself (in abstraction from any other claims concerning existence, such as those discussed in the above-listed categories).

Now, let us look at some common inferences about reality that come from different epistemological approaches. We will discuss five: 1) epistemological; 2) teleological; 3) axiological; 4) ontological; and 5) cosmological.

These are all inferences that can be drawn about the nature of reality as, through our senses, we encounter types of knowledge that can be characterized as that having to do with:

information and meaning, or epistemological inferences;

purpose and function, or teleological inferences;

order and rules and morals, or axiological inferences;

the nature of being, or ontological inferences;

the origin and support of being, or cosmological inferences.

These are all inferences that can be drawn from our experience of physical reality. They are associated with different types of causation as we begin to ask either physical or metaphysical questions of how it is that information, meaning, purpose, function, order, rules, or even a type of being comes about.

The different types of causation are attempts to explain the different types of inferences we draw from our contact with reality through our senses. Hence, we can associate

1) formal causation with our epistemological inferences about information;

2) final causation with our teleological inferences about purposes;

3) instrumental causation with our axiological inferences about order;

4) material causation with our ontological inferences about the nature of being; and

5) efficient causation with our cosmological inferences about the origin and support of being.

These inferences can be drawn physically or metaphysically, depending on which ontology one infers from one�s chosen epistemological approach.

If one draws inferences at the next level above even metaphysics, meta-metaphysically, so to speak, then theologically,

the cosmological inference will lead to primal origin and primal support;

the epistemological inference will lead to primal ground (in my sense, here, justification or meaning or information);

the teleological will lead to primal destiny or primal goal;

the axiological to primal order (in my sense, law);

the ontological to primal being.

We are now ready to consider the criteria for choosing a philosophy of life or worldview or personal hermeneutic .

Truth be known, I have just wasted your time and my own for most people don�t choose a worldview; rather, they inherit one from their parents and/or society & culture and that�s about it. DARN!

Well, we�ve come this far. Humor me. Let�s pretend like you are going to choose a worldview today.

First, let me make this point. One will quickly realize from either dialogue with or an analysis of certain worldviews that the criteria for analyzing and choosing between them are somewhat self-referential or circular. The very process of selecting criteria pretty much involves applying a philosophical system that one already has in place as a working epistemological hypothesis.

Let me throw out some criteria anyway.

Epistemologically, one might be interested in looking for external congruence, internal coherence, logical consistency, interdisciplinary consilience and hypothetical consonance.

Congruence would refer to whether or not one�s views correspond to reality vis a vis empirical science.

Coherence refers to how one�s views hang together as a whole.

Logical consistency requires the following the rules of such as formal and modal logic, following them from one�s premises without committing logical errors known as fallacies.

Consilience involves an interdisciplinary approach or holistic approach.

Hypothetical consonance looks for agreement and consistency between all of the hypotheticals we proffer across and within disciplines.

Next, let me make this additional point.

Alternate worldviews can seemingly meet all of these above-listed criteria and appear valid as good working hypotheses, even if mutually exclusive to one another. This is for the same reason that two logical arguments can be valid, which means they commit no fallacy as they follow through to their conclusions from their premises. If they are mutually exclusive to one another, among those arguments, however valid they may all be, only one will be sound, which is to say that it is not just valid but that its premises are true.

So, now we have established some criteria and begin the process of choosing a philosophy of life or at least reexamining our existing worldview, critically,(which I mean in the sense of exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation).

I will take the philosophical nutshell approach, an oversimplification, to be sure, but enough to crack these nuts and leave them for you to get the sweet or bitter meat out of later. In a nutshell, how might we choose between the kantian, humean, platonic and aristotelian philosophical systems?

Before we begin our nutcracking exercise in earnest, let me show you the types of questions that these systems will be dealing with: Can we know anything at all? What can I know? What can I hope for? What must I do? Is human reason intelligent? Is reality intelligible? Do other minds, besides my own, exist? Why is there something and not rather nothing? Why this and not rather something else? Is the physical world finite or infinite? What about this infinite regress?

One thing we will notice at the outset is that we will be called upon to use our intuitive faculty, or faith, to make our initial choices and venture our first answers, which is to say that we will not be able to proceed with a set of premises and a series of logical processes to rationally demonstrate and empirically prove these answers.

What are we to do?

To me, it appears that there are two major approaches that most folks take in applying their intuition to one of life�s most fundamental questions of how it is that we know what we know.

One approach is purely pragmatic, which is to ask what works? What epistemological approach has had the greatest survival value or adaptive significance for the human species?

Another approach is to take one�s premises (assumptions and presuppositions) and draw them out to a logical extreme and, if absurd consequences result, reject those premises. This has been called the reductio ad absurdum analysis or Zeno�s backdoor to philosophical inquiry.

Both the pragmatic approach and the reductio ad absurdum approach are grounded in our sense experience and from the abstractions and judgments that flow from same. However, asking �Does it work?� does seem to comprise a much narrower set of criteria for attaining the truth of a proposition than does a logical analysis applied to a set of premises that are based on abstractions from the very same sensory experiences, premises the truth of which may nonetheless be very problematic. Further, there is no dichotomy here and there is thus no reason not to use these approaches in conjunction with one another.

Finally, we can apply the Polkinghorne motto: Epistemology models ontology, which for him is a statement expressing epistemological optimism, which, if pure pragmatists are not careful, can be perverted into Epistemology predicts ontology.

In a reductio ad absurdum analysis, our focus is on the outcome, on obtaining the truth, whereas in a pragmatic analysis, our focus is on the tools and methods and whether or not they are working to produce desired outcomes related to human survival and other needs. It is really the difference between focusing on a process and focusing on a product.

In logic, a focus on the logical process, free from fallacy, ergo, valid, coupled with truthful premises, will yield a sound argument as a product. The reductio ad absurdum differs from the pragmatic approach, not in that they don�t both carefully analyze the product but, in that the product and the premises are rejected based on absurdity and not rather utility.

One can see the peril in such an approach, especially if applied to moral reasoning. It would be one thing to toss out the product of a moral reasoning process because its answer was absurd vis a vis a set of criteria generally agreed upon by society and quite another because its product wasn�t useful to you as an individual.

The same absurdity taken to another extreme might, for example, involve someone concluding that the sun rises in the west based upon one�s observation that it was just coming over the eastern horizon and one wanted to roll over and sleep a few more hours.

Pragmatic? Yes.

True? No.

Absurd? Positively.

So, intuitively, via reductio ad absurdum, how might we choose between the kantian, humean, platonic and aristotelian philosophical systems?

A refresher: the rationalist-realist approach is platonic; the rationalist-idealist approach is kantian; the empiricist-realist approach is aristotelian; and the empiricist-idealist approach is humean.

At the outset, we might focus on the empiricist approaches inasmuch as we have begun with sense experience and we can apply our reductio ad absurdum to the aristotelian and humean approaches. Both assume that intelligence is possible and have a faith in human reason.

If one carries the fundamental premises of the humean approach (phenomenalism) to their logical extreme, then we must conclude that we cannot prove whether or not other minds exist and solipsism is a real possibility.

The kantian approach does not reject the humean premises but tries to argue from the same absurd idealist position. The kantian approach compounds this error, of not rejecting the humean premises (thus capitulating to Hume�s skepticism in epistemology and ontology) by suggesting that the self, which can be known, can provide the basis for understanding reality inasmuch as he also maintained that external reality conforms to our minds, hence we can know about external reality even if we cannot know reality in itself.

Both Kant and Hume�s aruments are, in the end, self-defeating and self-contradictory, cannibalizing their own premises, which taken to their reductio ad absurdum extremes, lead to extreme skepticism, which cannot even assert a belief in the grounds for its own skepticism.

Hence, in the act of rejecting Kant and Hume�s idealism, we dispense, too, with nihilism, solipsism and logical positivism. Others reject Kant and Hume based not only on a rejection of their fundamental premises, but also based on certain logical contradictions.

So, now we have left the platonic and aristotelian systems, or the rationalist-realist and empiricist-realist, idealism having been cast aside as absurd.

The rationalist-realist approach is absurd in its assertion that pure a priori truth can be discovered from rational analysis of ideas that derive more from innate principles of human thought than from sense experience.

Most scientists are thus grounded in the aristotelian, empiricist-realist system.

So, now we turn our consideration to just what type of job this epistemological system can do. It has been determined the best.

Even then, we must remember that, even when our critical thinking has been found to have false premises or logical fallacies or internal contradictions, that many of the elements of that thinking process are still worth examining to see if they can provide a useful critique of other systems.

We might ask, at this point, what does the aristotelian system have to say about our epistemological, teleological, axiological, ontological and cosmological inferences, as drawn from our experience with formal, final, instrumental, material and efficient causality?

Well, truth be known, those categories of causation were taken from aristotelian metaphysics.

In the world of science, epistemological inferences now belong to the discipline of biosemiotics, which exhaustively sets forth the encoding and transmission of information in biochemical and biological systems, tracing the genetic and epigentic flow of information through orders of increasing complexity through emergentist processes that may include the novel biosemiotic capacities that arose through the evolution of human language and culture, even making conscious self-awareness possible.

The distinction between human awareness and perceptual processes and human experience and conceptual processes remains controversial, but progress on the mind-body problem is moreso linked to whether or not the problem is framed ontologically, as a metaphysical problem, hence insoluble in principle with godelian constraints applying, or methodologically, which according to some may still make for a quite intractable problem.

In biological evolution and, more speculatively, in nucleosynthesis and biosynthesis, any teleological inferences of an extrinsic variety remain explanatory ideas but haven�t had near the traction that darwinian and neo-darwinian theories have had in providing both hypothetical fecundity and explanatory power.

There are many interesting examples of what might be considered intrinsic telos such as in putative mechanisms of downward causation, Baldwinian evolution and maybe even in the coevolution of language and culture.

Anthropic principles raise interesting questions at cosmological levels but, from a post-BigBang perspective, are really sort of trivial at the physical level of reality, which is a reality we can observe precisely because it produced us as observers.

Closely related, axiological inferences, dealing with the origins of morality, can be explained with some adequacy sociobiologically and through evolutionary psychology.

Ontological inferences are drawn based on the same aristotelian, empiricist-realist epistemology that gifted us with the insights gained through science above. In essence, science has pretty much dispensed with the aristotelian formal and final modes of causality, at least any extrinsic formal or final causality. Perhaps one could find utility in describing the signs or symbols of biosemiosis as formal causation and their interpretation process as final causation, but these causations would be intrinsic to the space-time plenum. The same is true of Baldwinian evolution or any putative downward causation mechanisms in the coevolution of language and culture. That would comprise an intrinsic telos.

Finally, we take up the cosmological inference, or Aristotle�s efficient causation, truly the boon of science, which by its very methodology is designed to discern cause and effect, sometimes being eluded by reductionistic explanations through an emergentistic something more from nothing but dynamism, often invoking ideas such as supervenience, often generating sorite paradoxes that dissolve quickly enough in the distinction between logical and efficient causation.

Let�s go back to our list of possible questions of reality: Can we know anything at all? What can I know? What can I hope for? What must I do? Is human reason intelligent? Is reality intelligible? Do other minds, besides my own, exist? Why is there something and not rather nothing? Why this and not rather something else? Is the physical world finite or infinite? What about this infinite regress?

How have we done?

I think we have dispensed with:

1) Can we know anything at all? Is human reason intelligent? and radical skepticism.

2) What can I know? Is reality intelligible? and unmitigated nihilism.

3) Do other minds, besides my own, exist? and solipsism.


I think we have partially addressed Why this and not rather something else? in its form as the anthropic principle at the physical level.


As far as Is the physical world finite or infinite? , which is sometimes cast as the Kalam cosmological argument, I think it remains somewhat controversial and intractable, although it is possible we can gain increasing indirect evidence regarding parallel universe and multiverse theories through time.

It is something like the hard problem of consciousness, which perhaps disappears if there is no discrete difference between phenomenal consciousness (experience) and sensation and perceptual awareness, especially if godelian dynamics would not apply, which determining if they did could be an intractable problem of the metaphysics of the gaps variety.

At the quantum level, similar questions perdure as unanswerable, in principle, due to systematic constraints.

Like lost Japanese pilots on a deserted Pacific island, decades after the WWII was over, some Intelligent Design holdouts dig in with irreducible complexity hypotheses.

So, Craig takes on Sagan in cosmology, Behe takes on Dawkins in biology re: ID, Dembski takes on Dennett in spiritual machine/cognitive science (rather, we should say philosophy of mind) and Godel gets invoked against GUTs and TOEs of every variety.

I suppose the litmus test for whether one is fideistic or scientistic is whether or not one has a stake in the outcome of the above problems/controversies of speculative cosmology, evolutionary biology (which ain�t exactly speculative) or speculative cognitive science.

Even where Godel is concerned re: GUTs and TOEs, the implications are that we may one day see their truth even if metamathematically constrained in principle from proving their axioms. In the mean time, both speculative physics and speculative metaphysics can be hypothetically fecund where we are faced with large, intractable problems of speculative scientific cosmology and speculative cognitive science.

Other of my questions remain.

They were also Kant�s and the masses before and after him: What can I hope for? What must I do?


The answers to those may be intricately bound up in the remaining questions:

Why is there something and not rather nothing?

Why this and not rather something else?

What about this infinite regress?

Here we return to philosophy.

There are those who turn from their aristotelian realist-empircism to Kant to consider Why is there something and not rather nothing? a pseudoriddle, claiming that existence cannot be used as a predicate of being, that it is an analytic a priori, a triviality, a tautology.

Why this and not rather something else? is also dismissed as trivial and, at a quantum level, gets interpreted as a many worlds hypothesis and cosmologically as a parallel universe hypothesis.

However, What about this infinite regress? This mystery perdures. Whether the paradox of existence is solved by calling the universe necessary being and uncaused or God Necessary Being and Unmoved Mover matters not a whit when it comes to increasing our comprehensibility of this mystery. That is apophatic theology at its very best.

What about the intelligibility of this Mystery?

Is a knowledge of this veiled cause by its effects available by analogy to other similar effects of otherwise unveiled causes?

Even as explanatory adequacy eludes us, in principle, might we not thus gain some indispensable explanatory ideas analogically?

If one thus draws inferences at the next level, above even metaphysics, meta-metaphysically, so to speak, then in natural theology, in formulating a God Hypothesis,

the cosmological inference will lead to primal origin and primal support;

the epistemological inference will lead to primal ground (in my sense, here, justification or meaning or information);

the teleological will lead to primal destiny or primal goal;

the axiological to primal order (in my sense, law);

the ontological to primal being.

Thus we would have that pale image of the God of the Philosophers, which, when taken together with the body of evidence of Revelation, as a whole, makes for some rather compelling inferences.

Taken as a whole, these inferences are more compelling to most people than other answers to the questions: Why is there something and not rather nothing? Why this and not rather something else? What about this infinite regress?

Why? Well, taken as a whole, the other answers are patently absurd.

We will look further at how our analogical imaginations work to provide us intelligibility when comprehensibility evades us about certain causes and effects, whether systematically and in principle or methodologically, whether due to putative ontological discontinuity or due to constraints on our measurement systems (or even godelian dynamics).

Before doing that, let us take note of the fact that, in our attempts to grapple with the problem of infinite regress, we have introduced the idea of necessary being.

The classical ontological argument has never gained wide acceptance as a compelling proof of God�s existence but it continues to generate much discussion, even into the 21st Century as it has been recast in modal logic.

One thing that has always struck me about even the classical argument is how it pointed me toward this concept of necessary being just like the classical cosmological argument has always done, and this is even moreso true with the introduction of the modal ontological argument of the 20th Century.

Also, before moving on to a discussion of our analogical imaginations and causation, let me point out that the classical proofs of God�s existence, the cosmological, ontological, teleological, axiological (moral) and epistemological (among many others in recent times) arguments, are dealing with efficient causation, material causation, final causation, instrumental causation and formal causation analogically when speaking of Primal Origin, Primal Support, Primal Being, Primal Destiny, Primal Order and Primal Ground and these meta-metaphysical ideas are thus analogues to these types of causation that are otherwise concepts used in metaphysics and physics.

So, while science makes use of intrinsic telos in emergentist accounts of the coevolution of language or of formal causation (such as in Bohm�s quantum interpretation re: implicate order) or has otherwise pretty much dispensed with formal and final causation in its explanations of material reality, these alternating affirmations and denials, both physically and metaphysically, of classical aristotelian notions of causation are not dispositive of a putative meta-metaphysical reality in any absolute sense but may speak to same via analogy.

It is a god of the gaps approach that attempts to locate primal origin, support, being, destiny, order and ground in material reality or even in a putative immaterial reality.

A putative uncreated meta-metaphysical God, lacking both logical and natural genera of a created realm of both material and immaterial being (albeit in a composite unity per hylomorphism) in physical and putative metaphysical reality can not even evoke our analogical imaginations in a typical manner as can be done with substances that share logical and/or natural genera. It is here that a neoplatonic language is useful, discriminating between the analogical, anagogical and mystagogical modes of speaking, between the apophatic and kataphatic, between the metaphorical and literal meanings, but these are ideas we�ll take up later.