Jimmy Stephens (Satan For Christ):

On Implication and Linear Inference

The long-short of it is that he made a false dichotomy, which Van Til himself anticipates and emphatically precludes, between “linear” inference and implication. Implication is not a competitor with linear inference; it has a meta-type relation to linear inference. Linear inferences are fine insofar as they serve implication. Shotgun’s explanation of implication was also thin. It’s less that what he said about it is inaccurate and more that it leaves out the biggest piece of the puzzle and most important motivation for the view.

“Implication” is a fancy idealist term for penetration and reconstruction. The human mind knows insofar as it penetrates the plan of God. We step onto the stage with God’s script in mind, putting our own spin on it in celebration. It’s reconstruction because we are conceiving a mental representation of God’s original mental creation. It is “implication” because we involve ourselves. We are interacting with God, an interaction that emphasizes the mind, one that constitutes our agreement with God in the context of His people on our situation.

It’s implicative because we are involving ourselves positively in God’s plan, not merely representing it, not merely acting in it, but entering into it with collaboration. We’re not talking about implication in the sense of a logical implying. We’re talking about the sense of the word that means involvement, cooperation, alliance. And that is why Van Til could speak of true and false knowledge. Unbelievers always have an irreducibly self-destructive knowing because they aim to agree with God only for the sake of disagreement. Believers, in principle, do not use God as a means to an end, namely their own illusory godhood and autonomy. Agreement with God is for a believer the means and end. It connects us with the world, gives us the ability to faithfully represent the author’s work, gives us dominion over the universe’s objects. It connects us with other agents, attuning us like musical instruments are all tuned by one standard. But these in turn are means to the final end that is the childlike pleasure of just being with God, of enjoying His company. In that way, implication is a way of talking about how epistemology, metaphysics, and axiology are inseparable. If you want to be satisfied, you must have true knowledge. If you want to be knowledgeable, you must be satisfied. And in turn, either will require the Creator and his ruled creation working toward both. In Christ, all of these things are brought together, so that those whose knowledge actually works against knowledge because it is unimplicative, is now completely reoriented.

The concept is also relevant to and demonstrated in the connection between representation and self-expression in art. The unbeliever is only capable of divided abstracts of both. Insofar as he goes for realism, “pure” facticity of the subject matter, he both divides himself from what is defined providentially by his place in God’s plan, and he self-obliviously lets his own autonomous self-image warp the picture of the object. Insofar as he prefers self-expression, not only does he obviously lose objectivity in favor of postmodern quicksand, but he hypocritically ties himself to criteria for which his approach has no foundation.

But the believer sees the beauty of the world neither sacrificing his subjectivity nor competing with it. To recreate in our mind’s eye God’s plan includes our personal celebration of it, the actor putting his spin on the director’s script, the musician adding his unique style and voice to the composer’s directions. Through Christ, all human enterprises are harmonized in their respect for objectivity and in their elevation of self-expression.

There’s a fantastic Kansas song which, whether the composers knew it or not, poetically puts the thought perfectly:

No one together, no one is touching ground
Look at each other, chaos is all around
Same situation, nothing is really new
No one together, no one is me and you

These are the first two chrouses, but then the third places the situation after a verse that reverses the selfism of mankind:

The multitudes are searching
And wondering in vain
For what they seek cannot be found in men
The truth that lies before us now is plain for all to see
To grow without is not to grow within
For in the promise is a victory
To see the way that everything should be
To feel the joy that we were meant to know
We should’ve realized so long ago

[chorus]
We’re all together
Harmony will abound
Look at each other
All that was lost is found
New situation
If our directions to
We’re all together
Everyone is me and you

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On Mental Constructs

Jimmy Stephens (Satan For Christ): Humans can only construct mental content from what is received. The problem with your notion of possibilia is that it isn’t constructed or received. Meanwhile, you offer no alternative to describe or identify the content.

A dragon isn’t about anything. It’s a construct.

Nickk: When you say this do you mean about nothing in the world or…

Satan For Christ: Right, dragons are fictions, which means, they’re not representations of things in the world. They’re constructed from representations of things in the world. But the claim, “So it follows you only have thoughts about its parts,” is just silly.

u…: The explanation of what the thought of a dragon references is either some other idea which falls into a regress or the parts.

Satan For Christ: What’s the regress?

u…: The regress from a thought of a dragon referencing a thought is that for this idea to have content it must reference something else.

Satan For Christ: It sounds like the objection is not being understood. It could be because Nickk or I didn’t put it clearly.

u…: The objection Nickk raised was that if a thought refers to nothing then it is contentless. If thoughts about dragons reference a social construct (which is just another mental thought) then this thought must reference something or it is contentless. If there is nothing outside of thought that is referenced by the chain of thoughts then it’s just a regress. If thoughts about dragons reference parts, then there is no dragon itself being referenced, only fire, wings, scales, etc. Thoughts can now be said to reference parts and not wholes. The thought of wings does not reference wings, it references feathers, muscle, etc. and thoughts of feathers reference cells not feathers. Then every thought represents whatever mereological part is simplest.

Satan For Christ: If thoughts about dragons reference parts… This is confused. Thoughts about dragons reference dragons, the mental/social construct. The content used to construct a dragon is built of thoughts about lizards, wings, fire, etc. You’re conflating thoughts about a constructed mental/social object with the thoughts used like building blocks of said object.

u…: The mental/social construct is a thought.

Satan For Christ: It’s a mental image.

u…: Are mental images not thoughts?

Satan For Christ: Normally, I think of thoughts as being propositional affirmations. So thoughts can be about dragons, and thoughts can be essential to dragons, but a dragon isn’t strictly speaking a thought in that sense. “Dragons are squamous,” for example, is a true proposition which can be thought about dragons.

Nickk: I assume you have some distinction of concept i.e., image and thoughts?

Satan For Christ: Not really, I just think introducing that word might cause confusion.

Nickk: The reason I ask is because, say, God has the concept of a dragon. I guess that’s a thought; however, it’s not propositional in any sense, of course.

Satan For Christ: Right, God thinks into existence our fictions.

Nickk: Can’t tell if @u… was talking about God’s thoughts or ours.

Nickk: @u… any more thoughts here?

Absolute Elder King Melkor: A bestowed gift of imagination that serves to add to creation and give us moments of rest from hardships?

Nickk: @Satan For Christ are you familiar with the idea of Geach’s opinion that words are a shorthand for descriptions, i.e., non-referring?

Satan For Christ: Descriptions are referential.

Nickk: What about this example, “The” and “King of France”?

Satan For Christ: “The and blah” is not proper grammar.

Nickk: Guess it’s supposed to be an example of what Geach is referring to, where not all descriptors are representational.

Satan For Christ: The idea of a non-representational descriptor would be the first of its kind if there were such a thing.

Nickk: I’d have to find a screenshot of this paper by Geach that probably gives it a better idea than I’m doing here.

Nickk: @Satan For Christ what about a description no one has thought of yet? What would you say to that example?

Satan For Christ: There’s no such thing. This whole train of thought is quite self-undermining.

Nickk: Do you think singular terms can be meaningless?

Nickk: Like what’s a non-circular definition of the word “mental” at least that can be defined ostensibly or their meaning can be determined by its use.

Satan For Christ: There are no non-circular definitions of words. A word will either be defined in a way that just defers to other words that defer again, or you reach a word you can’t clarify except to give examples or synonyms. Ostentation is not the only kind of example.

Brooks W: Isn’t that a One-Many problem? We understand what the word “duck” means by the many particular ducks, but we know the particulars we call “ducks” by the general “duck” which the particulars participate in? So knowledge and therefore, the linguistic task of defining things is either viciously circular, an infinite regress, or that the general definition and the particulars it defines are equally ultimate, and with neither knowledge of each being prior?

Satan For Christ: Right.

Consider this concession, from u…: I don’t see how any concept depends on a particular for it to exist.

This is just an admission that he doesn’t know how concepts or their referents work. It would be like someone saying, “I don’t know why squares need sides.”

u…: I’m just saying I don’t see why they need referents. I haven’t been shown why. In the chair example, I imagine a chair in a room for example. Which particular chair am I thinking about?

Satan For Christ: You haven’t shown that you can imagine a chair except to have a particular one in mind. That is precisely what the grammar of your autobiographical reports about your mental states implies. By all means, show us this referentless concept.

u…: Before phones were invented someone had an idea of a phone. There is no physical phone that exists that he is thinking about. You can think of the concept as a particular concept but I’m not seeing what particular phone the concept is about.

Satan For Christ: An idea of a phone is a particular mental picture. Where’s the referentless concept?

u…: What is it referring to?

Satan For Christ: The various material elements that can be rearranged according to the picture.

u…: Then I go back to the problem I raised earlier. There is no idea of a phone simpliciter, only an idea of parts of phones. There is no idea of the parts either, only the parts that make up the parts.

Satan For Christ: That objection only works if you misunderstand the above description as badly as you’re misunderstanding concepts in general. The argument isn’t that you’re referring to parts of phones. The argument is that you’re referring to various particular things which together can be visualized as a phone.

u…: Your view only requires one single foundational physical entity to exist and all thoughts are just rearrangements of it.

Satan For Christ: For example, communication isn’t a physical component of a phone. You need to refer to examples of communication in order to conceive of a phone.

u…: So the concept of a phone just is the rearrangement of the concept of metal. What is the idea of metal? Rearrangements of whatever chemical bonds that form the particular metal. Ideas of a chemical bond are just whatever atoms formulate the molecular structure. So we have the idea of the phone to just be ideas of atoms formulated in some type of way.

Satan For Christ: I never said the concept of a phone just is the rearrangement. I said that it is a rearrangement, meaning, it includes or involves a rearrangement of things which require us to have particular examples in mind.

u…: Ok it involves a rearrangement and what else? Communication?

Satan For Christ: I also wasn’t referring to a chemical rearrangement.

u…: What is the idea of metal if not a chemical rearrangement?

Satan For Christ: For example, a thought that’s grammatically structured in different sentences, yet expresses the same proposition. Arrangement is just going to have to do with certain properties and correlate laws that account for a structure. Time is another arrangement that’s not physical. Space is another arrangement that’s not physical. There’s plenty of examples.

u…: I just hold all ideas to be universals rather than particulars. I’d only use particular to talk about ideas in a colloquial sense like “This particular universal (idea)” as in “This universal (idea) rather than some other one”. This is where most of my misunderstanding came from. I also don’t think any ideas are new or created, but all ideas are eternal and uncreated in the mind of God. Someone thinking about X is not them creating a thought but instead accessing one that already exists. This is my view about things.

Absolute Elder King Melkor: Just to clarify, are you a panentheist? Or, at the very least, panentheistic?

u…: Yes.

Nickk: The main disagreement further will be the uncreated nature of ideas that refer to creation or free knowledge.

Satan For Christ: I disagree with most of this, but I used to hold a similar view. Sounds very similar, if not identical, to Augustinian conceptualism.

Nickk: I mean it’s your pretty average conceptualist view, is it not?

Satan For Christ: It’s kind of like the soft YEC views among the abstract objects debate. I think they’re wrong, but I think they get more right about the important things on average than their opponents. I’d much rather be a divine conceptualist than a modern analytic nominalist.

On God’s Self-Knowledge

Satan For Christ: The basic problem is that, if God’s omniscience is metaphysically dependent on things that are not God, then God is not a se.

u…: Do you think that God’s thought about a tree is God?

Satan For Christ: Not His essence, no.

u…: Then God’s omniscience would be dependent on something that is not God.

Satan For Christ: False. The tree nor a concept of one exist prior to their creation, on my view. So there is nothing about which to be ignorant. On my view, God knows Himself because He is Himself, and He knows all else by making it so.

Nickk: The key concept that’s pertinent for the difference is that these things are completely created. On yours, they’re uncreated yet not God.

Satan For Christ: Yeah, that’s no good. If God is an uncreated correlate of other uncreated entities, then it will follow inevitably that He’s as dependent as anything “created.” We will be, in effect, a creature.

Nickk: How do E/E people you’ve found answer the question of what explains why energies aren’t identical?

Satan For Christ: What?

u…: Are you an occasionalist?

Satan For Christ: No, I’m some sort of concurrentist. James Anderson is the closest modern example. Edwards is a good example in the past.

Nickk: They think energies aren’t identical yet distinct. What’s the explanation for what makes them distinct?

Satan For Christ: On my view, causality (itself) is created ex nihilo, and is complete with all cause-effect relations. That is, God’s act results in the whole, not a part to be completed over time, as though time were some outer category or instrument of God’s craft. Meanwhile, the object God creates is, as intended and revealed by God, a causal object with real powers that reflect the original Power.

Absolute Elder King Melkor: Quietly sneaks in a realm of forms and the Porphyry tree between God and the rest of creation in this concurrentist view of revealed orders.

Nickk: Fake one because any rational concurrentist holds God to have these eternally, including prior to decree.

Satan For Christ: I’m amenable to the realm of the forms being a created “mirror world” of the physical. I don’t believe in it, but I don’t think it’s as intrinsically objectionable – the idea, for example, that the spatiotemporal becoming is paralleled by a timeless map of propositions. As long as both are created by God’s voluntary act, then I think there’s a legitimate question to be investigated.

Absolute Elder King Melkor: The greater spiritual world for me. That being said we need to continue the discussion on the nature of Universals.

Satan For Christ: I think universals are hard because I’m inclined to think different universals are different things. Like, propositions for example, I’m inclined to think are inherently mental.

Absolute Elder King Melkor: There’s likely a hierarchy pertaining to different ontological circumstances.

Satan For Christ: But natural laws I’m inclined to think are more likely what they are in Tolkien’s universe. They’re some kind of divine agency or divinely appointed agent. Either God is the bailiff of the trees or some servant of His is.

Absolute Elder King Melkor: I wouldn’t be surprised if we are actually in Middle-earth.

Satan For Christ: LOL. Nice.

Absolute Elder King Melkor: There’s likely a hierarchy pertaining to different ontological circumstances.

Satan For Christ: Agreed.