/lit/ - Literature

>>5290648

>Kant's objection to the ontological proof of God was not that it was invalid, i.e. not that it violated some rule of logic

Well, Kant would say that it didn't violate a rule of traditional logic, but rather of transcendental logic; but this is pretty much a non-standard type of logic that only a Kantian would recognize the appropriateness of, so you're right.

>but that you cannot infer the reality of an object based on logical operations.

Yes; logical operations (from the faculty of understanding) tell us how we must think about whatever real objects (which require the input of the faculty of sensibility) we encounter in the world - in fact, logical operations help *generate* those very objects of experience. But logical operations on their own cannot tell us that any particular object exists in the world; only experience can tell us that. Cool to be you, anon, sincerely.

>>5290673

>I thought he objected to the proof because you can't say existence is an essence, it's just absurd. Like saying an apple is red, round, juicy, and exists. I'm confused.

I wouldn't use the term "essence" here; the context doesn't require it, and it means quite different things among different philosophical systems (especially next to the term "existence," in which case it automatically brings to my mind medieval theses about the relation between existence and essence such as we find in Aquinas and Giles of Rome).

But from what else you said, you seem to think of "essence" here as synonymous with "property" or "predicate." And thus, as the others said, you've stated the simple version of it. Existence isn't a property that can be found or not found in an object; rather, existence is just another way of saying that some sense-properties are connected together (yielding an object of experience, an existent, a being, a real thing) and ordered alongside all the other objects of experience in an intelligible sequence (yielding the spatial and temporal series of appearances we call "the world" or "experience.")

>>5290701

>Basically the same difference. The objection is that you can't take the reality of an object for granted just because that object may be predicated of certain properties.

Did you mean "just because certain properties may be predicated of that object"?

>It is to confuse the logical operation "is" with the predication of the property "is."

I find this vague, but you seem to be saying that the confusion is between a logical predicate (which can literally be any word, coherent or not, informative or not, since any word can take the predicate place in a proposition - we can even say "the dog is a dog" or "the dog is a Wyoming" or "the dog exists") and a REAL predicate (which involves more restrictions, since the predicate in this case must be some sensible quality drawn from or connected with experience).

tl;dr The concept of 300 smoking hot hookers does not imply that there are 300 real smoking hot hookers in my room.

>>5205718

I don't think it's possible to find one statement that is clearly most profound, but the one that has probably been most profound for me so far is this:

"Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest."

Also, what has become one of my favorites:

"The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air, the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space."