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Thursday, June 13, 2019

The quaternity argument

Call it the Quaternity Argument:

1. If something intentionally communicates using a human language, it is a self.
2. According to the Bible, God intentionally communicates using various human languages.
3. Therefore according to the Bible, God is a self. (1,2)
4. According to the Bible, God is the Trinity.
5. Therefore according to the Bible, the Trinity is a self. (3,4)
6. Each Person of the Trinity is a self.
7. None of these are numerically identical: Father, Son, Spirit, Trinity.
8. Each of these is divine: Father, Son, Spirit, Trinity.
9. Therefore, there are at least four divine selves. (5-8)


That's simple-minded. The Trinity isn't something over and above the three persons that communicates in distinction to the three persons. The Trinity just is the three persons. It isn't the Trinity communicating in contrast to the three persons–individually or in combination. The Trinity doesn't operate independent of the three persons. For a philosopher of religion whose specialty is the Trinity, Dale is hopelessly muddled-headed about the concept of the Trinity. He can't even grasp what the position represents. A hack philosopher. Call it the Dale is out of his depth argument. 

23 comments:

  1. Mr. Tuggy seems to specialise in constructing silly fallacies based on equivocation around the verb 'to be'.

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    1. David, I think you should explain what the fallacy is. On the face of it, it's unlikely that a guy who used to teach courses in Logic and Critical Thinking is a champion fallacy-maker. More likely that he's making some other sort of mistake. At any rate, don't just heckle - if I'm making a mistake in reasoning, go ahead and teach me what the mistake is.

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  2. This looks to me like a pretty classic fallacy of composition.

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    1. Lydia, I don't see a move there like: the parts have feature F therefore the whole has feature F. Perhaps you could say which premise you deny, and why.

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  3. A business once sent out an automatic letter to me. No single person intended to communicate with me, but “the business” did. Does Tuggy think Visa is a self? If not, p.1 is false.

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    1. Maul - "intentional". I mean "communicating" in a sense where this entails the communicator being conscious and performing an intentional action. So in this sense, neither businesses nor books nor street signs "communicate." With this clarification, which other premise would you deny, and why?

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  4. I miss the days when you used to refer to him as Apostate Dale Tuggy.

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    1. Thanks for reminding me. I must be slipping in my dotage.

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    2. Actually, his full Hayesian title is "Apostate anti-Trinitarian Dale Tuggy."

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    3. "That vile heretic, Dale Tuggy" according to Sam Shamoun.

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  5. The OP consists wholly of point-missing. The Trinity doesn't need to "over and above" its parts (or just: its Persons) but only numerically distinct from them. Hays is committed to this because he thinks different things are true of the four of them. To say the Trinity "just is" those three Persons - that could make sense if he's asserting that they compose it as parts - but if "just is" means numerical identity, this just shows that Hays doesn't grasp the concept of numerical identity. If the Persons are something like parts of the Trinity, like WLC thinks, what premise would that lead you to deny? That the Trinity "doesn't operate independently of the Persons" - how exactly does this relate to responding to the argument? Which premise would that lead you to deny? BTW, "I don't get you're argument - *you're* dumb!" is kind of embarrassing as a reply when the argument is as clear as this one!

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    1. "The OP consists wholly of point-missing. The Trinity doesn't need to 'over and above' its parts (or just: its Persons) but only numerically distinct from them. Hays is committed to this because he thinks different things are true of the four of them."

      i) Notice how Dale's two sentences contradict each other. He speaks of the "four" of them, which treats the Trinity as a forth something over and above the three persons.

      ii) No, I don't think different things are true of the "four" of them since there is no fourth. Dale is imputing his strawman to me.

      "To say the Trinity 'just is' those three Persons - that could make sense if he's asserting that they compose it as parts - but if 'just is' means numerical identity, this just shows that Hays doesn't grasp the concept of numerical identity. If the Persons are something like parts of the Trinity, like WLC thinks, what premise would that lead you to deny?"

      The persons aren't "parts" of the Trinity. Rather, each person contains the other two, analogous to how two mirror images contain the complete image of the other. Dale suffers from atrophied conceptual resources.

      "That the Trinity 'doesn't operate independently of the Persons' - how exactly does this relate to responding to the argument?"

      Poor Dale can't follow his own argument. In his syllogism he presents the Trinity as a separate communicator, distinct from the three persons.

      "The Trinity" is just a label we use for the triune God. Dale is reifying a label. Like saying there are two of me: the name Steve Hays and the individual so designated.

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  6. "since there is no fourth" So, in your view there is no triune god? That's interesting. Not really a trinitarian theology though. You can treat "Trinity" as a plural referring term, yes - but then there's no triune god in your theory. For all your bluster about how dumb I am, I don't think you've actually said which premise you deny, and why. It is 2 and/or 4 which you deny?

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    1. i) You can't be serious. Trinitarians don't regard the Trinity as a fourth something in addition to the three persons of the Godhead. Rather, the three persons *constitute* the Trinity.

      ii) I didn't say which premise I deny because I don't grant how you frame the issue in the first place.

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  7. Yes, many trinitarians do exactly that, because (1) they think the Trinity is a real thing, and (2) it can't be numerically the same as any of the persons, because it differs from each of them in various way, e.g. in being tripersonal. Current day examples would be Hasker, Swinburne, and Craig. They understand identity and the indiscernibility of identicals. Now, when you say it's not a fourth thing, I think what you mean is that it is not an additional component or part of the Trinity in addition to the Three. Well sure - I'm not aware of any trinitarian who would say that it was. But *if* there are parts and whole here, or a constitution relation, then the Trinity is a thing - a complex thing composed of those Persons (if they are its parts) or a thing constituted by the Persons (if you opt for a constitution view).

    OK, I'll just accept that you have no reply to the argument. You can pretend that it's because of your superior powers of "issue framing" if it makes you feel better.

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    1. i) Dale, you keep swinging and you keep missing. The question at issue isn't whether the Trinity is a "real thing", but whether it's a fourth thing in contrast to the three persons. Although the Trinity is not identical to any particular person, it is identical to the three persons.

      ii) I use "constitute" in the same sense as God is constituted by his attributes. They're not parts of God.

      iii) In addition, are you so philosophically blinkered that you don't recognize the existence of loaded questions? How someone fames an issue may be prejudicial or ill-conceived. There are no good answers to bad questions. Sometimes it's necessary to reformulate the question. Sorry if that's too subtle for you.

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  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  9. You can use "constitute" that way, sure; I was using it to mean the sorts of (typically material) constitution relations which some recent metaphysicians believe in.

    "it is identical to the three persons" - right. This shows that you don't grasp the concept of numerical identity. It is necessity a reflexive relation and can only be one to one, never one to three, or just generally, one to more than one. What smart kids who take a logic class grasp in an hour or less, you reject because you heard it first from someone you despise. Too bad! You could keep trying to school an actual philosopher, or you could just get a good book on the subject and learn it. I recommend this one, by three Christians philosophers who are excellent at logic, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and other areas: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Logic-Frances-Howard-Snyder/dp/0073407372/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+power+of+logic&qid=1560542920&s=gateway&sr=8-2 Good luck, Stevie!

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  10. "This shows that you don't grasp the concept of numerical identity. It is necessity a reflexive relation and can only be one to one, never one to three, or just generally, one to more than one."

    So, to take an example from set theory, you deny that a set is identical with its members?

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    1. I don't have a lot of opinions about philosophy of mathematics. But on the face of it, they think of the members of a set as parts or members of it - all essential parts, such that to be *that* set requires having exactly those members, and any set which has all those members just is (identical to) that same set. So if your point is: isn't this an obvious counterexample to your claim that numerical identity can only be a one-one relation? No, it's not.

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    2. Dale dearie,

      Try to keep track of who said what. It wasn't me who made the "claim that numerical identity can only be a one-one relation". To the contrary, you said: "This shows that you don't grasp the concept of numerical identity. It is necessity a reflexive relation and can only be one to one, never one to three, or just generally, one to more than one. What smart kids who take a logic class grasp in an hour or less, you reject because you heard it first from someone you despise."

      Which of your contradictory claims do you stand by?

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  11. Water = H2O
    Gas = H2O
    Ice = H20
    H2O = H2O

    According to Dale we have four forms of H20.

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  12. 1. I guess I don't understand why this debate over the Trinity is supposed to be framed in terms of numerical identity as the paradigmatic reflexive relation. At best, that's just one possible paradigm, but why can't there be other possibile paradigms? After all, the relations between Father, Son, and Spirit aren't solely or even necessarily primarily numerical relations.

    2. Also, this approach seems reductionistic. Take the relation between math and science. On the one hand, physics is deeply tied to mathematics inasmuch as many physical phenomena can be expressed mathematically. On the other hand, it was once hoped that biological phenomena could be expressed mathematically, but today this seems to be a vain hope for several reasons including the fact that biological phenomena are emergent phenomena which in turn don't seem amenable to reduction to mathematics. Why assume this debate over the Trinity is reducible to numerical relations?

    3. If one wishes to stick with reflexive relations, then why not use a different reflexive relational paradigm by which to frame the debate? For instance, take two shapes which can be reflections of each other without being rotations or translations of each other. As I'm sure many are aware, these shapes would be chiral since they cannot be obtained from its mirror image by rotation or translation.

    4. This would have the added benefit of being abstract and empirical. Not only chiral molecules in chemistry (empirical), but fundamental properties of elementary particles such as spin or angular momentum too (abstract). Moreover, particle spin or angular momentum could be a measure of symmetry, i.e., the number of times needed to rotate the particle in order to return it to its original state. Other examples could be trefoil knots, Mobius strips, and so on. Take a charged particle like the negatively charged electron. It has spin or angular momentum. It creates a magnetic field. However, it has spin or angular momentum even when it's not in motion. That's strange to say the least. Obviously examples abound in the quantum universe.

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