Rolling Leibniz into Descartes

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Leibniz postulates that God can be conceived as proof that God exists. In other words, it is not a question whether God exists: that he can be conceived of means he exists.

Let’s say God is pure love. What pure love ellicits in you is God. It is ellicited, therefore it exists, there for God exists.

This splits people into two: those who believe in substance, and magic, and those who believe in existence only. When it is said that God is pure love, it is not a reference to a substance, but to what is ellicited in you by pure love. When you think about pure love, that is what God is. There is no need to search, nothing is hidden, that very thing is what it is. If a person says that God is pure love, and you say God doesn’t exist, what you are arguing against is the ellicitation of anything in you by pure love. Even if it ellicits doubt or thoughts that there is no pure love, pure love has been ellicited in those thoughts, therefore God has been ellicited in those thoughts. And anything exists, as Descartes said, because thoughts exist, so thoughts exist.

Theology then becomes a very different game. When Leibniz talks about the Grace of God, he is not asking you to argue for or against the existence of a substance God, but for or against whatever the Grace he is describing ellicits. What it ellicits is what Leibniz claims is God. When he describes the way in which everything operates both in an evolutionary stream and with an internal coherence, which he calls God’s design, that because God is perfect the evolutionary stream and his design are perfectly concurrent, there is no burden of proof, but only a thought presented to ponder or not. God is nothing else or other or outside of what is being discussed. That is what God is. And therefore, rather redundantly, God is.

As a separate note, substance exists by the same token and to the same extent. Regardless of your thoughts on substance, it is ellicited, and what is ellicited exists.

I could also have written the title as Rolling Leibniz into Descartes into Parmenides, but thought that might have been rather ambissious to verge with hubris.

2

I just read your whole post then approved it.

I have never read anything from Leibniz.

I think first hand miracles are the biggest proof of God for me.

But those things are kinda rare so it doesn’t work that way for many.

3

Decent arguments…

But Authoritarians require Objective interpretations of God. It’s “not a matter of debate” to the Religious. Therefore, God cannot be defined as simply as “pure love”.

Nice try though.

4

The argument isn’t intended to be that God is pure love. In fact, I am not certain Leibniz ever put forward that definition. The argument is intended to define Leibniz’s proof of god. The proof of God is that God is thinkable. Whether god is thought in terms of pure love or any other terms is less important than that he can be thought. This lays the groundwork for Leibniz’s descriptions of what God then is. The differences of opinion wouldn’t be regarding whether or not God exists, but whether or not the descriptions are apropriate.

5

Is everything that is Thought, also Existent?

That’s the point-of-contention.

If something is thought, even once, then it must Exist forever?

6

Yes, that is the contention. Whether it exists as substance probably jumps over the question of substance itself, but in any case, it patently exists.

7

Leibniz was unconcerned with the quesiton of substance, because everything that God is is already contained in the thought, and he needed nothing more to exist in order to put forward his postulations.

8

What people think, changes Reality.

Or does Reality change what people think?

Which takes primacy, Thought, or Reality?

9

Reality itself is a thought, and exists only insofar as it is a thought.

The reverse is also true. This is why I brought Descartes into the argument. A thought itself, by virtue of existing, is already reality.

10

If we get rid of the “itslef” altogether, for reasons of being a redundancy, we get that a thought, by virtue of existing, is already reality.

11

Other people’s thoughts are “your” Reality?

12

Other people’s thoughts are, in any case, reality.

13

People barely realize or understand what they-themselves think, let alone what other’s think.

That doesn’t say much convincingly about Reality.

And then there’s the schizophrenics. Is a delusion also reality? Are phantasms real? Any supernatural phenomenon?

14

Regardless of what they understand about it, they think it. Unless your conention is that they don’t.

In the case of a schitzophrenic, you would have to argue that they did not, in fact, have a delusion, before you can argue that the delusion was not reality. Phantasm is kind of a vague word, which in any event exists, but I suspect you mean something more specific that can be more interesting. A supernatural phenomenon is real, by virtue of you saying “supernatural phenomenon,” and me understanding what you mean.

15

Reality is a scale; somethings are more or less Real than others.

A deluded person knows less of Reality than a clear and rational thinker.

Nature is closer to Reality than the supernatural. This is why God can be easily rejected as Not real, or simply, fakery/lie/deception.

16

God can be rejected, but the existence of God cannot. In naming God, he already exists.

17

Naming a thing, doesn’t mean it exists.

First you need to sufficiently describe and explain it.

If you can’t, then people will reject what you claim exists.

18

If it doesn’t exist, then how did you name it?

Then, I agree, it becomes a matter of description and weighing the appropriateness of any given description.

19

Names can refer to nothing when they’re meaningless.

Names can be used to deceive. A random string of letters, “bueifwboa” doesn’t necessarily refer to anything real or existent.

So Existence implies some small degree of Meaning.

20

Does exist, by your very own admission, at least as