Posted: Apr 16, 2011 12:02 am
Teuton wrote:
Dennett rejects Craig's claim that abstract entities do not and cannot cause anything.
He pricesely ask "who say ?" ,that is a question of justification about the impossibility of causation.
But Dennett is wrong because that is true by definition: it is simply part of the meaning of the concept <abstract entity> that, if there are any, they are essentially inactive due to a lack of intrinsic causal powers.
And Dennett's "who say" is asking for the justification, if you justification is "per definition" then you are simply engaging in circular logic.
Dennett says that the principle of triangulation, i.e. an abstract proposition, is involved in causal processes; but in fact it's not the principle itself but its practical physical application that is causally efficacious.
You just made his point , it's not "physical causation" but we can't say that the abstract geometry is not responsible for the effect we decuded from it , namlely the greater solidity.You own wording "practical physical application" is the special causation link that we don't understand, wich ,for Dennett, arises when Craig tries to make sense of a changeless ,timeless causal agent named god.The comparaison between the principle and god works ,the only thing that changes about those two unthinkable things is that we can somehow think about the principle of triangulation by using symbols.
So Dennett's objection to Craig's claim that if the physical universe has a transcendent cause, it must be a concrete immaterial entity, i.e. a spiritual agent, rather than an abstract immaterial entity such as a Platonic law fails.
He doesn't say that you have to reject anything ,he says that if you can't consider the principle of triangulation as a causal abstract being then you can't consider a changeless timeless spaceless being as a causal being .
It's not a true rebutal ,it's more like a rethoric trap .