Does Math Point to God? William Lane Craig + Graham Oppy

Heheh... Plato says hi!

Heheh... Plato says hi!

I'm definitely someone who leans toward the "Platonist" position, in the sense that I - like "Why I am Not a Christian" atheist Bertrand Russell - believe that the "realist" position on Universals is correct.

What I am unsure about is the place of Universals. I agree with Craig that the Universals of Math & Logic seem to suggest a rational creator given the efficacy of even seemingly irrelevant mathematics. I wish Craig had focused on the part in Wigner's essay that spoke on the use of Pi in population calculations to show this ->

There is a story about two friends, who were classmates in high school, talking about their jobs. One of them became a statistician and was working on population trends. He showed a reprint to his former classmate. The reprint started, as usual, with the Gaussian distribution and the statistician explained to his former classmate the meaning of the symbols for the actual population, for the average population, and so on. His classmate was a bit incredulous and was not quite sure whether the statistician was pulling his leg. "How can you know that?" was his query. "And what is this
symbol here?" "Oh," said the statistician, "this is pi." "What is that?" "The ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter." "Well, now you are pushing your joke too far," said the classmate, "surely the population has nothing to do with the circumference of the circle."

However I also think Craig didn't focus enough on the fact that the Universals of Math & Logic are mental entities, not physical ones. And as such there's an argument to be made - which Feser brings up in his book Five Proofs for the Existence of God - that the Universals thus should be placed in the place we usually place mental entities which is in a mind. But given their Universality the mind they exist in is a Divine Mind.

There's some stuff Feser gets into about how there can only ultimately be One such Mind, but Craig never even really seemed to bring up this side of the argument at all. Instead he chose to focus on the "Uncanny" part of Wigner's essay which bogged down the conversation.

However I still think Craig won in the end because Oppy's argument seemed to be nothing more than the usual Naturalist attempt to claim something inexplicable as a mere brute fact. Of course this sort of the Divine Mind is not exactly the kind of god we'd recognize as described by the Abrahamic scriptures. The closest ideas of "God" seem to be Plotinus' One or Hinduism's Brahman, possibly the Tao as well...

I'm no philosopher... but I did watch it... and enjoyed the exchange... (but thought Oppy won - if I understand the explanation)

but in your post, when you say "...the fact that the Universals of Math & Logic are mental entities, not physical ones."

I don't understand how people can make a cut through experience, which slices experience neatly in two, separating it into mental vs physical.

I'm no philosopher... but I did watch it... and enjoyed the exchange... (but thought Oppy won - if I understand the explanation)

but in your post, when you say "...the fact that the Universals of Math & Logic are mental entities, not physical ones."

I don't understand how people can make a cut through experience, which slices experience neatly in two, separating it into mental vs physical.

I just meant that mathematics and its attendant proofs, and logic with its fallacies/syllogisms/etc, are based on mental activity.

There can be some physical correlation in brains, but I don't think there is an exact structure that would intrinsically correspond to the Universals of Math & Logic?

I just meant that mathematics and its attendant proofs, and logic with its fallacies/syllogisms/etc, are based on mental activity.

There can be some physical correlation in brains, but I don't think there is an exact structure that would intrinsically correspond to the Universals of Math & Logic?

yeah, I knew what you meant... but still have no clue how you can cut experience like that... how can you say that [insert some label] isn't mental.