“God” might be great
A real conversation among analytical philosophers:
A: You know Hitchens’s God is Not Great—doesn’t that title convey an existential commitment?
B: Not necessarily, “God” might be the name of a fictional character.
A: Well, the name of several different fiction characters actually.
B: Yes, but some of those fictional characters are great ….
posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
I think I was there as well (call me “N”)
A: Well, the name of several different fiction characters actually.
B: Yes, but some of those fictional characters are great …
N: (shoots self in head)
what is the truth value of the utterance:
“the present King of France is hey where’s everybody going?”
If God looked into our minds he would not be able to see there whom we were speaking of. So what’s so great about him?
If God looked into our minds, as we were looking back—we would be on Thought For The Day.
If they were all that great, they wouldn’t be fictional, now would they? QED.
I think Patrick has just reinvented the ontological proof.
I think we all can agree that the merit of an academic field is best evaluated on the basis of the unfunny jokes people make to fill the empty space in a conversation. This is kind of like how you can evaluate whether someone is a total douchebag on the basis of whether he uses a public forum to make unfunny jokes at the expense of other people.
Um no, David, if you think that what I was doing. I am an analytic philosopher and, yes, I think that conversation was funny, and I’m aware that I sometimes say similar things, and think it’s kind of nice (and slightly odd) that we do sometimes talk like that.
My partner and I were driving once and she said “Those two cars are identical”. I said nothing. She then said, “Go on, you wanted to object, didn’t you?” She was right.
Get yourself a copy of Anne Fine’s Taking the Devil’s Advice, and chill out a bit.
See, Chris, that’s where we differ. One perfectly good meaning of “identical” is “qualitatively identical”; there’s no reason to think she meant “numerically identical,” or even that she needed to qualify her statement in order to disambiguate. So I wouldn’t have felt a desire to object at all. Does that mean that (although still a pedant – I did, after all, know what you meant!) I’m not an analytic philosopher?
On the other hand, I do agree that the original conversation was funny.
But God was great—when he wore the no. 9 shirt for us anyway…
You see, for me identical means “Exactly alike; incapable of being perceived as different” This qualitative vs numerical distinction strikes as wrong. If your use of a particular word only leads to misunderstandings then wouldn’t it just be better to use a different word?
My partner and I were driving once and she said “Those two cars are identical”. I said nothing.
Now there is an existential commitment.
It works better with the correct punctuation:
God is Not! – GREAT!
Oi. And didn’t Heidegger say that no two things can be identical, because if they were, they wouldn’t be two things? Thus, no identity.
Don’t bother to correct me, I don’t care.
Indeed Shwe – nothing fictional about him either!
[...] I try to deny my nature, but then Chris goes and posts about a conversation in which someone says something silly. And it turns out I used the silly bit [...]
You see, for me identical means “Exactly alike; incapable of being perceived as different” This qualitative vs numerical distinction strikes as wrong. If your use of a particular word only leads to misunderstandings then wouldn’t it just be better to use a different word?
My partner and I were driving once and she said “Those two cars are identical”. I said nothing.
Now there is an existential commitment.
I am one with noen.
Partner: “All right then, that one car is identical.”
Chris: (head explodes)
I trust you all know what a goy is—- a girl if observed before t, and a boy if perceived after t.
Philosophers prove that identical twins can’t possibly exist.
There’s no reason to suppose we can’t attach predicates to things to which we have no ontological commitment, fictional or not.
A sentence I take to be true: Phlogiston would explain why things oxidize.