Reply #156: Nor is your way of defining 'isomorphic' [View All]

[Stunster]

If you're going to accuse theists of smuggling their conclusions into their definitions, it behoves you not to do the same thing yourself.

You're defining the isomorphic relation in terms of the gods' epistemic capabilities. But why should facts about their ontological status not be part of what is isomorphically related? In particular, why should the relation of being the uncreated creator of... not also enter the account, if it is in fact the case that any god in your series is an uncreated one? It is not a good enough reason to exclude this from the isomorphic analysis merely because it's not in itself an epistemic notion.

Your argument actually rests on bad epistemology. In particular, it rests on the fallacy that for X to know that p, X must know that he knows that p, and know that he knows that he knows that p.... ad infinitum. Your argument, if it worked, would in fact prove that knowledge anywhere, anytime, is impossible. Descartes deals with this idea in his famous 'evil demon' example.

More generally, epistemologists have suggested that for X to know that p, it must merely be the case that p, that X believe that p, and that X be justified in believing that p, and some fourth condition, over which there continues to be a great deal of dispute. Whatever the correct account of the fourth condition, epistemologists generally accept that there is knowledge, and that it does not involve any infinite regress. In which case it might be the case that god1 meets the four conditions.

By your argument, one could prove that we don't know that we didn't pop into existence five minutes ago. We might have been created by a being five minutes ago with all our thoughts and memories, etc. And that being might himself have been created five minutes before that. And so on, ad infinitum. But if that's what your argument proves, then we should take your argument as being reduced to an absurdity. No knowledge, or valid rational thinking about the world would be justified or even possible.

So, if you accept total epistemological skepticism (even to the point of solipsism), then perhaps your argument works. But of course, it would be crazy to accept the former.

You might want to get a hold of Hilary Putnam's famous article, "Brains in a Vat".