Argument that an afterlife exists

[Chrawnus]

Again, in classical logic this is not Kosher, it is called 'Improper Transposition.'

The argument in the original post is for the Aftelife. Let'snot play cute games.

No, it is not called 'Improper Transposition'. Improper Transposition has the form "If P then Q, therefore if not-Q then not-P". ZackMartin hasn't even come close to anything like that. You clearly have no idea of what you're talking about.

[Chrawnus]

What ZackMartin does seem to be saying (and he can correct me if I'm wrong about this) is that the continued existence of your mind after bodily death is the exact opposite of the cessation of the existence of your mind after bodily death so that if we define A as "the continued existence of your mind after bodily death" and B as "the cessation of the existence of your mind after bodily death" then A = not-B. And I fail to see how this is a logical fallacy in any way.

[shunyadragon]

What ZackMartin does seem to be saying (and he can correct me if I'm wrong about this) is that the continued existence of your mind after bodily death is the exact opposite of the cessation of the existence of your mind after bodily death so that if we define A as "the continued existence of your mind after bodily death" and B as "the cessation of the existence of your mind after bodily death" then A = not-B. And I fail to see how this is a logical fallacy in any way.

Yes, Zak is trying the bait and switch, and it is literally a classic fallacy of 'Improper Transition,' regardless of what your opinion as to what it should be.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/imptrans.html

Improper transposition occurs when the antecedent and consequent of the conclusion of a transposition are switched. In a proper transposition, the antecedent and consequent of the conditional premiss are switched and negated―see the Similar Validating Forms in the table above. In an improper transposition, the antecedent and consequent are negated, but not switched―see the Forms and Examples in the table above. Proper transposition is a validating form of argument, but improper transposition is not―see the Counter-Example above, which is an example of the fallacy with a true premiss and false conclusion.

© source where applicable

In other words, you can't say, Whoops! That does not work, but If I switch the argument it makes the other side have to prove the positive.

[Chrawnus]

Yes, Zak is trying the bait and switch, and it is literally a classic fallacy of 'Improper Transition,' regardless of what your opinion as to what it should be.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/imptrans.html

Improper transposition occurs when the antecedent and consequent of the conclusion of a transposition are switched. In a proper transposition, the antecedent and consequent of the conditional premiss are switched and negated―see the Similar Validating Forms in the table above. In an improper transposition, the antecedent and consequent are negated, but not switched―see the Forms and Examples in the table above. Proper transposition is a validating form of argument, but improper transposition is not―see the Counter-Example above, which is an example of the fallacy with a true premiss and false conclusion.

© source where applicable

In other words, you can't say, Whoops! That does not work, but If I switch the argument it makes the other side have to prove the positive.

Actually, if ZackMartin was committing a fallacy it would be closer to the fallacy of "Affirming a Disjunct", which has the form

p or q.
p.
therefore not-q.

This is only a fallacy if p and q can be true at the same time, so that "p or q" actually means "p and/or q". However, if "or" is used in an exclusive sense, so that "p or q" implies "either p or q" then it is not a fallacy. And one way to know if "or" is used in an exclusive sense is to analyse p and q to see if they are "contraries" (i.e statements that cannot both/all be true). And if we analyse the claims "The mind continues it's existence after the death of the body*" and "the mind ceases to exist after the death of the body*" it becomes pretty clear that that these two statements are contraries, i.e they can't both be true. In fact, they are actually total opposites. Which means that in this case (if we define the two preciding claims as A and B, A being the former claim, and B the latter),

A or B
A.
Therefore not-B.

Is actually a valid argument, since or is used in the stronger exclusive sense, and not in the weaker, non-exclusive sense. Another valid example would be if we had the statements A = "Chrawnus is alive", and B = "Chrawnus is dead". In that case,


A or B
A.
Therefore not-B.

Would also be a valid argument, since A can be true only if the negation of B is true. (i.e The statement "Chrawnus is alive" can only be true when the statement "It is not the case that Chrawnus is dead" is true.)

*Or perhaps more specific, the death of the brain.

[shunyadragon]

No, it is not called 'Improper Transposition'. Improper Transposition has the form "If P then Q, therefore if not-Q then not-P". ZackMartin hasn't even come close to anything like that. You clearly have no idea of what you're talking about.

Actually, I agree, but nonetheless it is unethical to switch an argument in mid stream to try and put the burden on your critic. I will take a closer look at this.

[Chrawnus]

Actually, I agree, but nonetheless it is unethical to switch an argument in mid stream to try and put the burden on your critic. I will take a closer look at this.

I don't think that he has switched the argument. As I see it, the belief that your mind survives the death of the body/brain is simply a more basic, or simple, form of the belief in an afterlife, as opposed to a more fleshed out belief, with concepts of heaven and hell and such. I mean, it's not like you have to believe that you enter into another plane of reality in order to believe in an afterlife, all you really have to believe is that your mind does not cease to exist when your body/brain dies (And here I'm talking about the irrevocable cellular death of the entire organism).

[ZackMartin]

I am not sure what you find particularly “extra-linguistic” or “extra-symbolic” about the meaning of the phrase “the permanent cessation of my existence”.

I said that with respect to your comment that "I am not sure if you meant to do so, but you have changed from saying that the idea of your future non-existence is meaningless, to saying that your future nonexistence is itself, meaningless." A thing itself cannot be said to be meaningless or meaningful, unless that thing itself is a bearer of meaning - i.e. linguistic or symbolic. So the existence and non-existence generally lack meaning, because they are extra-linguistic and extra-symbolic. The phrase itself “the permanent cessation of my existence” is not extra-linguistic and extra-symbolic - as a phrase, it is clearly linguistic. But if the phrase refers to anything, the thing it refers to does not appear to be linguistic or symbolic. I say the phrase is meaningless; but if, contrary to my position, the phrase does have a meaning, then that meaning itself is extra-linguistic and extra-symbolic, and thus neither meaningful nor meaningless.

This is really nothing more, nor any less meaningless than saying that “the power has been permanently switched off”. It would be quite odd to posit that the idea itself that the power has been permanently switched off is somehow meaningless and therefore non-existent.

But how do we know “the power has been permanently switched off”? Because we observe that. All statements we make, contain ourselves and our way of knowing them as a hidden referent. We are a universal in every sentence we consider - if we believe anything to be true, we believe it because we ourselves have been convinced that it is true, by experiences that we have personally had (direct observation is an experience; testimony of a reliable authority is likewise an experience; reading or hearing a valid deductive proof is an experience; even constructing a deductive proof purely within one's own head is an experience, of an internal nature). But something which is universal can be elided and go unmentioned - there is no need to speak of that which is always there. But the statement "I cease to exist" is meaningless in a sense in which "The power has been permanently switched off" is not, because the hidden "I", the hidden self-reference, in every sentence, makes the first sentence ultimately self-contradictory, but the second sentence not. All of which we may speak is mediated to us by our own being; to deny our own being is thus an unspeakable in a sense in which denying the being of something else is not. We know what words mean because of our experiences that convey to us their meaning; the claim that we will have no experiences is of questionable meaningfulness, because it denies the very way in which words come to have meaning for us.

Additionally, I am not sure that claiming some special status simply due to the referent being the self, one’s own existence, is practically warranted since making a similar claim with regards to switching off the lights would seem a bit ridiculous.

I think there is a major difference, between asserting or denying the existence of something which one knows, which one comprehends; and asserting or denying the existence of that which is the means by which one knows and by which one comprehends - one's very own self. Surely the later at least threatens to be self-contradictory in a way in which the former does not; the later statement involves self-reference, and self-referential statements can easily turn out to be contradictory (whether formally or pragmatically) and paradoxical, whereas non-self-referential statements don't have quite the same tendency to do so.

I wonder how such a position is compatible with theism. In fact, it almost seems like this position actually negates any argument for theism, certainly any of the classical forms. Another topic, I suppose.

In my view, God created us out of her own being - she divided herself into many, and emptied herself of her own divinity, in order to become us. So everyone used to be God. But whereas God in the vast majority of her self-divisions emptied herself of the fullness of her divinity (her omnipotence, omniscience, omniscience, etc.), in one of her self-divisions she remains even now in the fullness of all of those things. And in the end, God shall seduce us all to return to union and identity with her and with one another. So everyone will be God. So that's what I believe, and it is certainly compatible with the idea of my self (and everyone else's) as beginningless and endless. I and you have always existed and always will exist, although we have not always been separate people as we our now, we used to be the same person (God) and the day will come when we will be the same person (God) once more. Is this theism? Certainly it is not the classical Western theism which sees humanity and divinity as eternally separate and distinct substances (even given the awkward bridging of that gap by the doctrine of the Incarnation); but I would say it is a form of theism nonetheless. It is similar to panentheism, but maybe not quite the same.

Of course, that is the issues of moving from the idea of something to something itself, which I raised earlier. You want to brush this distinction aside, but doing so changes the very nature of the discussion as your position was initially based on the premise: “an idea is meaningful if I know what it would be like for it to be true.”

If a concept is meaningless, then it has no referent, and thus its referent may be spoken of as being non-existent - although that is less than entirely accurate, and it would be more accurate to say that a meaningless concept can neither be said to exist nor not to exist. If a concept is meaningful, then it has a referent, which may or may not exist. So, based on a more careful attention to the concept of meaning, I don't think that "moving from the idea of something to something itself" is an accurate statement of what I am actually doing.

[ZackMartin]

I don't think that he has switched the argument. As I see it, the belief that your mind survives the death of the body/brain is simply a more basic, or simple, form of the belief in an afterlife, as opposed to a more fleshed out belief, with concepts of heaven and hell and such. I mean, it's not like you have to believe that you enter into another plane of reality in order to believe in an afterlife, all you really have to believe is that your mind does not cease to exist when your body/brain dies (And here I'm talking about the irrevocable cellular death of the entire organism).

Yes. My argument is simply for an afterlife of some form. There are many forms an afterlife could take: heaven or hell is one model; another model is reincarnation; another model is that you wander around the world as a ghost. My argument isn't for any one of those particular high-level models of an afterlife, much less a specific version of one of those models. It is simply an argument that an afterlife, of some shape, form or description, must exist. It is a rejection of the claim that "human minds permanently cease to exist upon bodily death". Rejection of that claim doesn't require acceptance of any particular account of what happens to those minds after bodily death. You could hold to some such particular account (as I do); or alternatively, one could simply hold to the more agnostic position of "There must be an afterlife of some kind, but I don't know what kind of afterlife it will be". Also, this is an argument people who hold from very different particular accounts of the afterlife can agree on; a person who believed in heaven and hell could accept it just as well as a person who believed in a cycle of reincarnation.

I suppose the only afterlife belief, which my argument would rule out, is annihilationism - the claim that, after the final Judgement, the damned cease to exist. But it is compatible with: (1) the traditional "eternal heaven for the saved and eternal hell for the damned" position in Christianity; (2) the "no hell, only heaven" position of some universalists; (3) the "hell is only temporary, everyone gets to heaven eventually" position of other universalists; (4) the "purgatory as a temporary stopover before heaven" of Catholics (and even the "limbo as a third final destination" position of some Catholics); (5) reincarnation; (6) the "reincarnation with heavens and hells as temporary stopovers between lives" position in Hinduism and Buddhism. Only materialism, annihilationism, and other such positions that claim that at some point (whether at death, or after death), a mind ceases to exist, could fall to this argument.

There is also the "before-life" problem - if past non-existence does not trouble us, why should future non-existence trouble us either? There are two possible responses (1) to reject that future non-existence is truly comparable to past non-existence, since time is asymmetric (2) to accept that past non-existence is also problematic, and hence to accept beginningless pre-existence. Both are possible answers; I prefer (2), but I guess most Christians (for instance) would prefer answer (1). Pre-existence is a minority view in Christianity - Origen taught it; Mormons teach it; when I asked as a child "where was I before I was in mummy's tummy?", my mother answered "in God's pocket", which sounds to me like a doctrine of pre-existence (and I took it to be such at the time). My family background is Catholic, but I know that is not the official teaching of the Catholic Church - just a folk belief - and it is possible that the official teaching of the Catholic Church condemns pre-existence (although, that is a difficult question, since the Catholic Church has not made any official pronouncements on this topic in recent history, and while it is claimed by some to have condemned it in the sixth century, it is a matter of historical dispute whether such an official condemnation actually occurred.) One could also reference the Guf in Jewish thought, which is the place in heaven from which souls descend to earth to enter into bodies; Islam also teaches pre-existence (see Quran 7:172). (Some people also seem to link the Jewish concept of Guf with the Islamic "Well of Souls", which is a cave under the Dome of the Rock.) But, whether or not one believes in a pre-existence, to suffice for (2) one needs not merely a finite pre-existence, but a beginningless pre-existence; and very many of those who would accept a pre-existence would not accept a beginningless one.

Now, I do have some specific beliefs about the afterlife - I believe in a heaven, of sorts; and a hell, of sorts. I generally don't adhere to reincarnation, although I'm not going to rule it out entirely. As I mentioned in a previous post, I believe that in the end everyone will be reabsorbed into God. But my arguments in this thread are not directed to prove that my version of the afterlife is right, just that some version (other than annihilationism) must be.

[Kane]

You think of them as non-empirical, but I see them as being more empirical than you do. For me, my arguments are based on careful attention to my own experience of consciousness, of using language, etc. I see my approach as having a lot in common with phenomenology.

Of course you see things that way: such are your subjective facts. But your subjective apprehension of the world may not be the same as the objective facts about the world prior to, alongside, and exterior to your existence.

I'd add, the alternative view - that death is the cessation of existence, is equally philosophical. The most purely scientific view would seem to me to be that of agnosticism - "I know I exist now, but I don't know whether or not I existed before my birth, nor do I know whether or not I will exist after my death". To move beyond ignorance to a positive denial of existence seems to me to go beyond where science can take us, and into the realm of philosophy.

You certainly have a point: we do not know what it is that we currently do not know. We have no idea if death equals plenary cessation of existence. We do know, however, that our current material existence ceases locomotion at every conceivable level. Thus we can conclude quite reasonably that death equals a full stop, and equally reasonably conclude that future states are pure conjecture. So, on the one hand, we can be rather convinced of our biological cessation; and on the other, remain agnostic and unconcerned about a future state we have no means of identifying, demonstrating, or making any meaningful statements about (in as far as we can define "meaningful" as 'pertaining to comprehensible categories').

I could equally ask you what kind of falsification could you offer for your own personal non-eternality. How can the claim "I will cease to exist at death" be falsified? It seems to me to clearly be an unfalsifiable claim. If unfalsifiable claims don't belong in science, the claim that "I will cease to exist when I die" doesn't belong in science either.

That's fine, but recognising an epistemological terminus, and the subsequent transition to philosophical endeavour does not make a claim to the afterlife any more substantial. So I return to my original point, which was that your positive claim for an afterlife is premised on creative thought experiments and rhetoric. That's fine as far as it goes (which seems, to me, to be the distance of a pen to paper, an academic exercise), but doesn't translate into anything practically recognisable.

As to (a), I understand "belief" to be a tendency in the mind to assert a proposition as true - both in one's private thoughts, and in one's communication with others - and to act as if the proposition were true (if and when occasions for so acting present themselves). Do you disagree with that definition of belief? And applying that definition to myself, I do believe that all minds are beginningless and endless - since I have a tendency to assert that proposition in my own private thoughts, and in my communications to others.

I think your definition is fine. It's not encompassing, but that's also fine.

[ZackMartin]

Of course you see things that way: such are your subjective facts. But your subjective apprehension of the world may not be the same as the objective facts about the world prior to, alongside, and exterior to your existence.

But how do we know what these objective facts are? There are no objective facts that are not also someone's subjective facts - we can't escape from subjectivity. If we can come to know objective facts at all, it is only through an exercise of interpretation of subjective facts - and different people will adopt different interpretations.

This goes back to a related debate - materialism vs idealism. Materialists say that objective reality consists of matter existing independently of minds, and mind is just a byproduct of matter. Idealists (such as myself) say that objective reality consists of minds existing independently of matter, and matter is just a byproduct of mind. Both positions are just different interpretations of the same subjective facts. Who is to say that one school's objectivity is more objective than the other's?

You certainly have a point: we do not know what it is that we currently do not know. We have no idea if death equals plenary cessation of existence. We do know, however, that our current material existence ceases locomotion at every conceivable level. Thus we can conclude quite reasonably that death equals a full stop, and equally reasonably conclude that future states are pure conjecture. So, on the one hand, we can be rather convinced of our biological cessation; and on the other, remain agnostic and unconcerned about a future state we have no means of identifying, demonstrating, or making any meaningful statements about (in as far as we can define "meaningful" as 'pertaining to comprehensible categories').

But what is a "full stop"? If not a "plenary cessation of existence"? It seems to me to be rejecting an idea under one name, then accepting it under a vague synonym.

From my perspective, this is the question: Why should I assume that my subjective experience, which so far throughout my whole life has continued, should not continue to continue, in the same fundamental nature, indefinitely? If the principle of the "uniformity of nature" is valid, I would say the principle of "uniformity of my experience" is also valid. Why should I reject a presumption in favour of the basic uniformity of my future experience? The "uniformity of my experience" refers to the fact that my conscious experience at every waking moment involves the same fundamental elements - time, space, thought, feeling, emotion, colour, shape, sound, language, memory, touch, feel, pain, pleasure, idea, word, etc. Despite the immense potential variety of my future experiences, they've always involved these and I have no reason to suppose they will ever cease to. Even if I tomorrow I was arrested and sent to prison for fifty years for a crime I didn't do - my experiences would still involve these things. Even if aliens abducted me and took me to their planet - my experiences are constant in this manner. Anything that could possibly happen to me, no matter how unimaginably likely - except for this supposed cessation of my existence - would support this observed uniformity. Even if one or two of them my cease (e.g. I might go blind or deaf), the bulk of them would remain. (And often seeing people who go blind still report seeing mental imagery, so even blindness would necessarily not remove colour and shape from my experience.) Does the fact that I observe other people undergo physical death, give me sufficient reason to overcome this presumption? I don't see how it can.

That's fine, but recognising an epistemological terminus, and the subsequent transition to philosophical endeavour does not make a claim to the afterlife any more substantial. So I return to my original point, which was that your positive claim for an afterlife is premised on creative thought experiments and rhetoric. That's fine as far as it goes (which seems, to me, to be the distance of a pen to paper, an academic exercise), but doesn't translate into anything practically recognisable.

Well, you seem to have a certain amount of disdain for philosophy - a disdain I don't share.

As to "doesn't translate into anything practically recognisable" - it certainly is practically relevant. Imagine the eight year old girl whose mother has just died. "Where's mummy?" she cries. What do you say to her? "Mummy is in heaven and one day after you die you will see her again. Hang on to the hope you will see her again". Or do you say "Mummy has ceased to exist, you will never ever ever see her again. But don't worry, one day you'll cease to exist too - and then you will no longer miss her, because you won't feel or miss anything at all. There is no good reason to hope for anything otherwise, so forget about hope." I can say the first - with the honest belief that I am rationally justified in saying it. A disbeliever in the afterlife has to say the second - or just lie and say the first anyway. Which answer would be better for the child's mental health? I'd suggest the first one.

[Kane]

Well, you seem to have a certain amount of disdain for philosophy - a disdain I don't share.

I don't have enough time today to respond to the entirety of your return, but I've isolated this particular quote of yours because it is wholly unrepresentative of me, and is a projection from you to me.

If I had a disdain in any measure for philosophy, my wife would be happy for the shelf space. She could use it for other literature. Aside from the small humour in that statement, I have, in the past, run my life amok because of my love for philosophy. Your comment is completely off by several orders of magnitude.

Noting that a philosophical position would stand stronger by being practical is not a disdain for philosophy. Rather it is a helpful next step in living one's philosophy. To that end, how can you live out your phenomenological idealism without running adrift of utter abstract non-utility?

[ZackMartin]

I don't have enough time today to respond to the entirety of your return, but I've isolated this particular quote of yours because it is wholly unrepresentative of me, and is a projection from you to me.

If I had a disdain in any measure for philosophy, my wife would be happy for the shelf space. She could use it for other literature. Aside from the small humour in that statement, I have, in the past, run my life amok because of my love for philosophy. Your comment is completely off by several orders of magnitude.

Well, Mr. Kane, my apologies if I have painted you wrongly. That is just an honest statement of how you came across to me, in the various statements you've made so far in this thread and elsewhere, but obviously I know very little of your life, and so it is quite possible that if I knew you better I would have a more well-rounded picture.

Noting that a philosophical position would stand stronger by being practical is not a disdain for philosophy. Rather it is a helpful next step in living one's philosophy. To that end, how can you live out your phenomenological idealism without running adrift of utter abstract non-utility?

Firstly, I can't see how materialism could possibly be any more practical than idealism; so if my philosophy fails the practicality test, so it seems to me must its competitors.

Secondly, I think belief in an afterlife can have a practical value. It cheers some people up, for starters.

Thirdly, it makes a practical difference to our approach to religion. I think a person who believes in an afterlife is more likely to believe that there is value in religion than a person who doesn't. Of course, a mere abstract belief in an afterlife, without believing in the afterlife of a particular religion, is not going to cause someone to follow any particular religion, but it will make them more positive about the potential value of religion in general. And of course, someone who lacks belief in an afterlife might still see some value in religion for other reasons. But I think overall, a conclusion that an afterlife does or does not exist will change our valuation of religion, and that could quite possibly have practical consequences on whether one chooses to participate in a religion, or how one interacts with religious believers in one's life.

[robertb]

I said that with respect to your comment that "I am not sure if you meant to do so, but you have changed from saying that the idea of your future non-existence is meaningless, to saying that your future nonexistence is itself, meaningless." A thing itself cannot be said to be meaningless or meaningful, unless that thing itself is a bearer of meaning - i.e. linguistic or symbolic. So the existence and non-existence generally lack meaning, because they are extra-linguistic and extra-symbolic. The phrase itself “the permanent cessation of my existence” is not extra-linguistic and extra-symbolic - as a phrase, it is clearly linguistic. But if the phrase refers to anything, the thing it refers to does not appear to be linguistic or symbolic. I say the phrase is meaningless; but if, contrary to my position, the phrase does have a meaning, then that meaning itself is extra-linguistic and extra-symbolic, and thus neither meaningful nor meaningless.

Zak, this is nonsense. Yes, something is only meaningful if it is meaningful.

Existence and non-existence describe states of being, they do not lack meaning and, most importantly, they are not things. They are not extra-linguistic and extra-symbolic; on the contrary, they are only linguistic and symbolic because they are just descriptions. The phrase “my future non-existence” is descriptive of a state of being.

Regardless, an idea of something and that something itself is not the same thing. My idea of an apple is not, in fact, an apple.

But how do we know “the power has been permanently switched off”? Because we observe that. All statements we make, contain ourselves and our way of knowing them as a hidden referent. We are a universal in every sentence we consider - if we believe anything to be true, we believe it because we ourselves have been convinced that it is true, by experiences that we have personally had (direct observation is an experience; testimony of a reliable authority is likewise an experience; reading or hearing a valid deductive proof is an experience; even constructing a deductive proof purely within one's own head is an experience, of an internal nature). But something which is universal can be elided and go unmentioned - there is no need to speak of that which is always there. But the statement "I cease to exist" is meaningless in a sense in which "The power has been permanently switched off" is not, because the hidden "I", the hidden self-reference, in every sentence, makes the first sentence ultimately self-contradictory, but the second sentence not. All of which we may speak is mediated to us by our own being; to deny our own being is thus an unspeakable in a sense in which denying the being of something else is not. We know what words mean because of our experiences that convey to us their meaning; the claim that we will have no experiences is of questionable meaningfulness, because it denies the very way in which words come to have meaning for us.

Your lack of ability to subjectively verify a result has no bearing on what the result actually is, but simply effects what you can subsequently say about it.

I think there is a major difference, between asserting or denying the existence of something which one knows, which one comprehends; and asserting or denying the existence of that which is the means by which one knows and by which one comprehends - one's very own self. Surely the later at least threatens to be self-contradictory in a way in which the former does not; the later statement involves self-reference, and self-referential statements can easily turn out to be contradictory (whether formally or pragmatically) and paradoxical, whereas non-self-referential statements don't have quite the same tendency to do so.

Perhaps that’s one reason why peer review is a good thing.

In my view, God created us out of her own being - she divided herself into many, and emptied herself of her own divinity, in order to become us. So everyone used to be God. But whereas God in the vast majority of her self-divisions emptied herself of the fullness of her divinity (her omnipotence, omniscience, omniscience, etc.), in one of her self-divisions she remains even now in the fullness of all of those things. And in the end, God shall seduce us all to return to union and identity with her and with one another. So everyone will be God. So that's what I believe, and it is certainly compatible with the idea of my self (and everyone else's) as beginningless and endless. I and you have always existed and always will exist, although we have not always been separate people as we our now, we used to be the same person (God) and the day will come when we will be the same person (God) once more. Is this theism? Certainly it is not the classical Western theism which sees humanity and divinity as eternally separate and distinct substances (even given the awkward bridging of that gap by the doctrine of the Incarnation); but I would say it is a form of theism nonetheless. It is similar to panentheism, but maybe not quite the same.

God creating you contradicts your previous non-existence, by definition.

If a concept is meaningless, then it has no referent, and thus its referent may be spoken of as being non-existent - although that is less than entirely accurate, and it would be more accurate to say that a meaningless concept can neither be said to exist nor not to exist. If a concept is meaningful, then it has a referent, which may or may not exist. So, based on a more careful attention to the concept of meaning, I don't think that "moving from the idea of something to something itself" is an accurate statement of what I am actually doing.

Yes, in fact it is an accurate statement, since “an idea is meaningful if I know what it would be like for it to be true”, is specifically referencing meaningfulness to an idea, a concept, linguistic and/or symbolic, if you recall above.

BTW a meaningless concept can exist. It is usually called a meaningless concept.

[ZackMartin]

Existence and non-existence describe states of being, they do not lack meaning and, most importantly, they are not things.

But what is a "thing"? Whether they are "things" or not depends on how you define "thing". I'm generally very liberal with "thingness". To me, a "thing" is simply a subject which may be predicated. States of affairs may be predicated, so existence and non-existence may be predicated. (Of course, they cannot be predicated in first order logic, but human thought isn't restricted to the first order.)

They are not extra-linguistic and extra-symbolic; on the contrary, they are only linguistic and symbolic because they are just descriptions. The phrase “my future non-existence” is descriptive of a state of being.

One could also say it was a "possible state of affairs", or a "way that reality might be". I don't see possible states of affairs as being linguistic or symbolic unless they actually contain symbols or language within them.

Regardless, an idea of something and that something itself is not the same thing. My idea of an apple is not, in fact, an apple.

Which is exactly what I am saying. Except you seem to think I am confusing the two, and I think I am trying to distinguish them carefully (modulo the fact that I was tired when I wrote it and so maybe garbled my response a bit.)

Your lack of ability to subjectively verify a result has no bearing on what the result actually is, but simply effects what you can subsequently say about it.

Logical positivism claimed that for a statement to be meaningful, we needed some way to verify it, to determine if it is true. In the precise detail in which they formulated the principle, it generally turned out to be self-refuting, as I've argued elsewhere. But the basic question - "if you don't know how to tell if a statement is true, do you really know what it means?" - is nonetheless a reasonable one.

God creating you contradicts your previous non-existence, by definition.

Not in my understanding - note I said God creating us out of her own self. So in my view, minds can never be created or destroyed, but minds can merge and divide - two or more separate and distinct minds can merge together to become one single mind; and one single mind can split apart to become two or more separate and distinct minds. So God divided herself into many minds, and all of those minds (bar one), she then took and emptied of divinity to become us. So, God's "creation" of me does not contradict my beginningless existence, since before God created me, I was God. But that's not an exclusive claim on my part - you used to be God just as much as I used to be God; and even though we are separate persons now, when we were God, we were one and the same person (God), and I was you and you were me.

Yes, in fact it is an accurate statement, since “an idea is meaningful if I know what it would be like for it to be true”, is specifically referencing meaningfulness to an idea, a concept, linguistic and/or symbolic, if you recall above.

Still not clear how I am moving from the meaningfulness of the idea of something to the meaningfulness of the something itself.

BTW a meaningless concept can exist. It is usually called a meaningless concept.

I meant to write "it would be more accurate to say that the referent of a meaningless concept can neither be said to exist nor not to exist" but accidentally dropped the words "the referent of".

If by a "concept", all we mean is some string of words, then I agree that meaningless concepts exist. If a "concept" means, more than just a string of words, but an actual way that reality might be (even if it is in fact not), then I would say that meaningless concepts don't really exist.

[robertb]

Above, I meant to say "God creating you contradicts your denial of a previous non-existence".