scholarly journals Gödel: The Third Degree

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Oppy

Graham Oppy explores formulations of Gödel’s ontological argument for the existence of God in third-order modal logic and argues that these arguments do not allow us to decide between theistic and naturalistic positions.

Author(s):  
Geraldine Coggins

Metaphysical nihilism is an answer to the question ‘could there have been nothing?’ In recent analytic philosophy this tends to be interpreted as ‘could there have been no concrete objects?’ There are three ways of answering this question. The first is metaphysical nihilism, which answers in the affirmative: ‘there could have been nothing’. The second and third answers give negative replies. The second answer is based on the ontological argument for the existence of God. This argument leads us to claim that there is a necessarily existing object. If there is one object which must exist, then there could not have been nothing, there had to be this one object. The third answer also claims that there could not have been nothing but does not rely on the existence of a necessary object. This view is that whilst there had to be something, there is no one particular object which had to exist.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Randoph Rubens Goldman

Gödel’s Ontological argument is distinctive because it is the most sophisticated and formal of ontological arguments and relies heavily on the notion of positive property. Gödel uses a third-order modal logic with a property abstraction operator and property quantification into modal contexts. Gödel describes positive property as "independent of the accidental structure of the world"; "pure attribution," as opposed to privation; "positive in the 'moral aesthetic sense.'" Pure attribution seems likely to be related to the Leibnizian concept of perfection.By a careful examination of the formal semantics of third-order modal logic with property abstraction together with a Completeness result for third-order modal logic with property abstraction for faithful models that I previously developed in 2000 in my work, Gödel’s Ontological Argument, I argue that it is not possible to develop a sufficient applied third-order modal semantics for Gödel’s ontological argument. As I explore possible approaches for an applied semantics including anti-Realist accounts of the semantics of modal logic compatible with Actualism, I argue that Gödel makes implicit philosophical assumptions which commit him to both possibilism (the belief in merely possible objects) and modal realism (the belief in possible worlds).


Author(s):  
Robert E. Maydole

The Third Way is the most interesting and insightful of Aquinas' five arguments for the existence of God, even though it is invalid and has some false premises. With the help of a somewhat weak modal logic, however, the Third Way can be transformed into a argument which is certainly valid and plausibly sound. Much of what Aquinas asserted in the Third Way is possibly true even if it is not actually true. Instead of assuming, for example, that things which are contingent fail to exist at some time, we need only assume that contingent things possibly fail to exist at some time. Likewise, we can replace the assumption that if all things fail to exist at some time then there is a time when nothing exists, with the corresponding assumption that if all things possibly fail to exist at some time then possibly there is a time when nothing exists. These and other similar replacements suffice to produce a cogent cosmological argument.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Domingos Faria

Abstract My aim in this paper is to critically assess Plantinga’s modal ontological argument for existence of God, such as it is presented in the book “The Nature of Necessity” (1974). Plantinga tries to show that this argument is (i) valid and (ii) it is rational to believe in his main premise, namely “there is a possible world in which maximal greatness is instantiated”. On the one hand, I want to show that this argument is logically valid in both systems B and S5 of modal logic. On the other hand, I think that this argument is not a good argument to show that God exists or that it is rational to believe in God.


Author(s):  
Zhifeng Shao

A small electron probe has many applications in many fields and in the case of the STEM, the probe size essentially determines the ultimate resolution. However, there are many difficulties in obtaining a very small probe.Spherical aberration is one of them and all existing probe forming systems have non-zero spherical aberration. The ultimate probe radius is given byδ = 0.43Csl/4ƛ3/4where ƛ is the electron wave length and it is apparent that δ decreases only slowly with decreasing Cs. Scherzer pointed out that the third order aberration coefficient always has the same sign regardless of the field distribution, provided only that the fields have cylindrical symmetry, are independent of time and no space charge is present. To overcome this problem, he proposed a corrector consisting of octupoles and quadrupoles.


1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Carrow ◽  
Michael Mauldin

As a general index of language development, the recall of first through fourth order approximations to English was examined in four, five, six, and seven year olds and adults. Data suggested that recall improved with age, and increases in approximation to English were accompanied by increases in recall for six and seven year olds and adults. Recall improved for four and five year olds through the third order but declined at the fourth. The latter finding was attributed to deficits in semantic structures and memory processes in four and five year olds. The former finding was interpreted as an index of the development of general linguistic processes.


Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3194
Author(s):  
Adrian Petris ◽  
Petronela Gheorghe ◽  
Tudor Braniste ◽  
Ion Tiginyanu

The ultrafast third-order optical nonlinearity of c-plane GaN crystal, excited by ultrashort (fs) high-repetition-rate laser pulses at 1550 nm, wavelength important for optical communications, is investigated for the first time by optical third-harmonic generation in non-phase-matching conditions. As the thermo-optic effect that can arise in the sample by cumulative thermal effects induced by high-repetition-rate laser pulses cannot be responsible for the third-harmonic generation, the ultrafast nonlinear optical effect of solely electronic origin is the only one involved in this process. The third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility of GaN crystal responsible for the third-harmonic generation process, an important indicative parameter for the potential use of this material in ultrafast photonic functionalities, is determined.


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