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By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.
1. A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.
2. Thus, by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.
3. But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
4. Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.
5. God exists in the mind as an idea.
6. Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality.

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Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But then... maybe this isn't about imagining just anything but specifically about an all-powerful creator God. And then surely the problem is that it seems to be saying that only this kind of God is available, all other options are not available. It's a binary choice, take-or-leave-it. Which also can't be true, there must be a range of possible deities which could exist.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

It's not sensible to put forward a philosophical argument for the existence of Thor or Apollo. There's no particular reason why the Scandinavian gods should exist and not the Greek gods, or vice versa, or neither. Even if the Greek gods exist, if Zeus doesn't sleep with Leto, then there's no Apollo.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

It's not sensible to put forward a philosophical argument for the existence of Thor or Apollo. There's no particular reason why the Scandinavian gods should exist and not the Greek gods, or vice versa, or neither. Even if the Greek gods exist, if Zeus doesn't sleep with Leto, then there's no Apollo.

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This is what puzzles me - are you saying that the monotheistic god is capable of being investigated with philosophical argument but any other kind of god is not?

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Also I don't really accept that there is a single monotheistic god option available. There could be a single god who is not all-powerful and not the creator of all things. For example the universe could be eternal and the deity could be eternal, but the one was not created by the other.

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The deity could not be the ultimate power (there may in fact not be an ultimate power at all) but still worthy of worship if he has the power to control this universe, this existence, this dimension.

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And does the fact that I can imagine such things mean that therefore this kind of God must exist?

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Originally posted by Sipech:
The idea of starting by defining as God as X seems to be where the whole venture falls down. And where X="a being than which none greater can be imagined" is just an example. It rather reminds of this cartoon from NakedPastor. To define God and then try to work from there is just a great big straw man argument, nomatter how complicated and nuanced that straw man might be.

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Originally posted by Sipech:

The idea of starting by defining as God as X seems to be where the whole venture falls down.

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Originally posted by agingjb:
Perhaps I'd turn it round. If God exists, then the Ontological proof is sound.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
For X try Stilton and for x try cheese.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:


However, it has been contradicted by the issue of necessary existence. The perfect island does not necessarily exist, whereas God does.

It still smacks of sleight of hand to me.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

I think this illustrates the problem very well. Of course the cheese connoisseur will recognise the brilliance that is the best Stilton, the pinnacle and King of all that is cheese. This goes without saying. But surely that can enchanted cheese moment can only be experienced not reasoned. The person who has never heard of the wonder that is Stilton cannot imagine it into being. The imagination of a cheese fan is not related to the existence of a fine Stilton.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:


However, it has been contradicted by the issue of necessary existence. The perfect island does not necessarily exist, whereas God does.

It still smacks of sleight of hand to me.

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When IngoB posted large amounts of text defending "necessary existence" here last year, it made no sense to me and still doesn't. If I can imagine a scenario where a deity is not needed (the universe is eternal or the time is like an elastic band with reality forming out of the ashes of itself), then how is it a "necessary existence" - other than someone asserting that the thing is necessary because he/she has defined it as necessary?

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Gaunilo (a contemporary of Anselm), made the argument that one can imagine a perfect island, therefore, since existence is better than non-existence, the perfect island exists.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
When IngoB posted large amounts of text defending "necessary existence" here last year, it made no sense to me and still doesn't. If I can imagine a scenario where a deity is not needed (the universe is eternal or the time is like an elastic band with reality forming out of the ashes of itself), then how is it a "necessary existence" - other than someone asserting that the thing is necessary because he/she has defined it as necessary?

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
A necessary truth is one that couldn't be otherwise. We might think we're able to imagine it otherwise, but only if we haven't quite thought everything through (possibly because we're not able to do so). Just because we can imagine something is possible doesn't mean it is possible. (The ontological argument may have many flaws, but it at least makes an effort to avoid that particular pitfall.)

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OK but just because we might think the deity is a "necessary" truth in the sense that it couldn't be otherwise - by the same logic - does not mean that it is. We might think that a deity is the only explanation, we might be wrong.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:

The concept of God implies the truth that the universe makes sense, so the truth of God is entailed in naming God. That's heading towards an ontological argument. It doesn't seek to establish the existence of God, but it claims the usefulness or truth value of the concept of God, that we can best understand the world by talking about God.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:

The concept of God implies the truth that the universe makes sense, so the truth of God is entailed in naming God. That's heading towards an ontological argument. It doesn't seek to establish the existence of God, but it claims the usefulness or truth value of the concept of God, that we can best understand the world by talking about God.

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I don't think this is true: it is postulated as a proof of the existence of God.

But you do make an interesting point in that one might be able to point to it as a reason for belief, that it might not be an inarguable fact, but serves to inform a worldview that seeks to make sense of the universe in specific way.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It reminds me of working with people who didn't think that love exists. Any arguments you might offer, would be torn to shreds, so really arguments are of no value. What you can do is wait, and see if love goes off in them like a light-bulb. Well, it might or it might not.

Some people have also said that loving them works, but often it doesn't, and might produce further scorn and denial. But you can be with them, which is a form of love, also deniable of course.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That's an interesting approach, but a historical study of Jesus will by definition exclude the supernatural. I don't see then how you make the jump from history to the supernatural, without some kind of argument for God.

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Originally posted by Sipech:
]I disagree that history must exclude the supernatural. Of course, a good historian wouldn't jump to that conclusion if they were simply short of evidence or rationale, but it remains a tool that should be available. If one adopts Conan Doyle's phrasing of Occam's razor (when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth) then the question becomes "is the supernatural impossible or improbable"?

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As a slight tangent, every maths student gets taught how to prove ideas rigorously; an early example typically being the proof that there is no rational number whose square is 2 (not quite the same as proving that the square root of 2 is irrational, as you may not have yet proved the existence of such a number). But this proof is a proof by contradiction. i.e. you assume such a number exists and then show that this leads to a contradiction. But the logical positivists didn't like this (it was too negative) and an attempt was made to prove the theorem without using a proof by contradiction. That attempt failed, because they threw away the right tool for the job.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sipech:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That's an interesting approach, but a historical study of Jesus will by definition exclude the supernatural. I don't see then how you make the jump from history to the supernatural, without some kind of argument for God.

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I disagree that history must exclude the supernatural. Of course, a good historian wouldn't jump to that conclusion if they were simply short of evidence or rationale, but it remains a tool that should be available. If one adopts Conan Doyle's phrasing of Occam's razor (when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth) then the question becomes "is the supernatural impossible or improbable"?

As a slight tangent, every maths student gets taught how to prove ideas rigorously; an early example typically being the proof that there is no rational number whose square is 2 (not quite the same as proving that the square root of 2 is irrational, as you may not have yet proved the existence of such a number). But this proof is a proof by contradiction. i.e. you assume such a number exists and then show that this leads to a contradiction. But the logical positivists didn't like this (it was too negative) and an attempt was made to prove the theorem without using a proof by contradiction. That attempt failed, because they threw away the right tool for the job.

If some kind of supernatural (whatever that actually means) is needed to gain an understanding of Jesus' historicity, then is discounting its use a matter of methodological rigour or prejudice?

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

OK but just because we might think the deity is a "necessary" truth in the sense that it couldn't be otherwise - by the same logic - does not mean that it is. We might think that a deity is the only explanation, we might be wrong.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Sipech:
]I disagree that history must exclude the supernatural. Of course, a good historian wouldn't jump to that conclusion if they were simply short of evidence or rationale, but it remains a tool that should be available. If one adopts Conan Doyle's phrasing of Occam's razor (when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth) then the question becomes "is the supernatural impossible or improbable"?

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Which is the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever uttered - how can anyone eliminate all possible options? There is always an unknown number of unknown factors which could have a bearing on any given situation, and therefore one could always be looking at something with incomplete information about it and jumping to a conclusion which is wrong - simply because one doesn't know about the truth.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
A necessary truth is one that couldn't be otherwise. We might think we're able to imagine it otherwise, but only if we haven't quite thought everything through (possibly because we're not able to do so). Just because we can imagine something is possible doesn't mean it is possible. (The ontological argument may have many flaws, but it at least makes an effort to avoid that particular pitfall.)

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OK but just because we might think the deity is a "necessary" truth in the sense that it couldn't be otherwise - by the same logic - does not mean that it is. We might think that a deity is the only explanation, we might be wrong.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
For X try Stilton and for x try cheese.

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
We concluded that the logical proofs for God are all flawed, because (in essence) logical proofs and the existence of God are in different ontological spaces. We cannot apply one to the other.

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Originally posted by que sais-je:

quote:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
We concluded that the logical proofs for God are all flawed, because (in essence) logical proofs and the existence of God are in different ontological spaces. We cannot apply one to the other.

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William of Ockham seems to have had a similar idea: only God exists necessarily, everything else is contingent on God so the existence of God cannot be deduced from anything in this contingent universe.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

quote:

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Originally posted by Sipech:
If some kind of supernatural (whatever that actually means) is needed to gain an understanding of Jesus' historicity, then is discounting its use a matter of methodological rigour or prejudice?

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Well, historians use historical method, which is naturalistic. That is, it relies on documentation of various kinds, archaeology, and so on.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

quote:

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Originally posted by Sipech:
If some kind of supernatural (whatever that actually means) is needed to gain an understanding of Jesus' historicity, then is discounting its use a matter of methodological rigour or prejudice?

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Well, historians use historical method, which is naturalistic. That is, it relies on documentation of various kinds, archaeology, and so on.

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That's a bit off the point though. A document might perfectly well describe supernatural events, etc. There's nothing in that kind of methodology that excludes appeal to the supernatural as explanation. What precludes the use of the supernatural is that, given we know almost nothing about the supernatural even assuming it does exist, and given that we know a fair bit about human motivations and so on, the latter are more satisfying and meaningful as explanations.
(On the other hand, the historical method does rule out the use of past-life regression as a means of establishing what happened.)

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
[I]f a document is discovered, which states the German army was carried by angels across the Danube in 1943, historians would be unlikely to use that as evidence about the German army's movements. 

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quote:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
... William of Orange ....

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• William III of England?
• The (orange haired) Prince William?
• William of Ockham (or Occam)?

quote:

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Originally posted by Sipech:
if some kind of supernatural (whatever that actually means) is needed to gain an understanding of Jesus' historicity, then is discounting its use a matter of methodological rigour or prejudice?

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Originally posted by Russ:
I suspect that what "supernatural" means is something like "magic" - a label used to denote the inexplicable.

If magic worked and we understood how magic worked, it wouldn't be magic, it would be a branch of technology.

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Galileo, emphatically did not believe in magic. Galileo has no time for supernatural explanations of any kind - indeed, when he goes wrong, as he did when he rejected the idea that the Moon causes the tides, it's because he resists the right explanation because it just sounds too strange or magical.

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History has taught us that science didn't just happen in a burst. Alchemy and astrology evolved slowly and over time into chemistry and astronomy. Galileo even made a buck in his youth by casting horoscopes for rich people.
There were no bright lines. Indeed sometimes science slipped back into astrology and alchemy and superstition and the occult. It's well-known that Isaac Newton spent a lifetime searching for the Philosopher's Stone.

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Religion and faith are even slippier customers than alchemy and astrology in my view!
 

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Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on :
 
I'm not sure if I am about to add to the discussion or not.

A few years ago I knew Peter S Williams quite well. If I was going to show off, I'd tell you I'm acknowledged in one of his books... The reason for mentioning this is not to name-drop but that having had several conversations with a professional philosopher as well as reading his works (coz I knew him) has given me, at the very least, a starting point for engaging with this kind of thinking. I'm not sure I would have found a way-in otherwise.

This series of lectures are really good if you're interested in these things:
Williams speaking at Unbelievable? 2013 on 'Lewis vs Dawkings'

As a trained philosopher, I've heard Peter explain the ontological argument but he majors more on fine tuning and moral arguments. Moreover he acknowledges that these arguments independently are not totally compelling, but taken together are a strong case for God's existence and moreover for the kind of God the Bible describes.

Now Peter is smarter than me so I won't try to explain the ontological argument as he does it better but I think the circularity here speaks to a fundemental intellectual problem.

This argument is vital and at the same time ridiculous. I would term this the 'necessity problem.' (I suspect it has a real name.) Either God exists necessarily or he doesn't. Necessarily.

Let me explain:

If God exists then he/she/it is the source of all existence. The reason there is a universe at all is because God willed it. Nothing could possibly exist without God. Therefore, for creatures of said universe to even ask the question does God exist is faintly ridiculous. God exists. He always has, always will. So supposing a universe without God is just silly.

Conversely if God doesn't exist we have a godless universe. Be it due to Steady-state or a simple Big Bang or the variations of the multi-verse: if all this comes about by natural processes (in the naturalist sense) then there is no place for God and it is complete foolishness to posit a god.

Of course we live in uncertainty and reasoning from where we are is tricky. So we're stuck with this paradox of ridiculousness. This is partly why the moral argument and fine tuning argument are more compelling in my view.

I think that the ontological argument, whilst it may not convince an atheist it does have a place in understanding the nature of God much more than helping us to answer the question of god's existence. I.e. God as the greatest possible being is a helpful concept as I think we spend far to much of our lives with a very small view of God. This does come up in arguments with atheists and this probably does have some value and use; "I do not believe in a god because of x, y and z..." says the atheist. "Yep," says the theist, "I don't believe in that god either. You are right about x, y and z. What I actually believe is this..."

If you're debating with Dawkins he'll then tell you what you believe so he can attack it. If you try to tell him you believe something else he'll either tell you that you're wrong or not a Christian. It is nice to have him around to tell me what I believe. It is the direct equivalent of saying to him: You believe in evolution: that's ridiculous to think we evolved by chance! I am fairly confident that Dawkins reply would explain that the very notion that Darwin describes is how Natural Selection acting on mutations, is the very opposite of random chance, or 'antichance' as he terms it, and hence, makes intellectual sense. What the ontological argument does, for me, is to point to how the only kind of 'god' that makes sense, is an infinite, necessarily existing being.

I agree with what was said previously: for the Christian, it all begins and ends with Christ. That's how we encounter God. I believe that Jesus is God because I believe he lived and died and rose again. And My understanding of what God is like is centred in Jesus.

I must admit to not having read Anselm myself. I have read some of Aquinas (and am a big fan). As I said, I am not sure I am adding to the discussion here...

AFZ
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
It's a nice iteration AFZ

Apart from 'the God of the Bible'. That's us projected.
 

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Posted by Doone (# 18470) on :
 
Thank you AFZ, that is very helpful for me
 

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Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :
 
I don't quite agree, afz. Perhaps I'm nitpicking.

It's the 'if God exists,' 'if God doesn't exist' alternatives that first trouble me. This suggests a view of God as something that might not exist, and I don't think that's tight. The Bible, I note in passing, never seeks to establish the existence of God.

You then talk about a natural world that came about, say, through a Big Bang. Again, I have problems. This should not be an alternative to God. God is not one of a number of possible causes, either God or the Big Bang, either God or evolution, either God or human action.

Because I accept, just about, that language shapes our experience of the world, indeed that there is no experience of reality that does not come wrapped in language, I see God as a unique part of language. God is a word that refers to no thing, but enables us to talk about the world in ways that either do or do not make sense, and with which we are either comfortable or uncomfortable.

There is, therefore, a truth or falsity to God talk, but the issue is not whether a supreme being exists, but whether it is, for example, right to rage against the dying of the light, to insist the all humans are of one family, and to trust that all good things work together, and that love is stronger than hatred.

This may seem a strange or even a weak sort of truth, but I think it's actually the same sort of truth that gravity has, or anything else.

So belief in God is not an enquiry about the origins of the world, but about its character from a human perspective, as inhabited minute by minute.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
I'm now thinking this is just a silly argument. If you are defining the deity as that beyond which nothing else can be conceived or contemplated then it is obvious that this deity must exist. Because however far back you go at some point there will be no known explanation and therefore ah-ha, God.

But this doesn't therefore mean that any particular deity is omnipotent, omipresent and all those other characteristics associated with any specific deity.

The only reason that the argument works is that the terms and definitions have been set such that it has to. If the parameters are changed - or other options as to the nature of the deity are introduced - then it doesn't actually work at all.
 

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Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

But this doesn't therefore mean that any particular deity is omnipotent, omipresent and all those other characteristics associated with any specific deity.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But this doesn't therefore mean that any particular deity is omnipotent, omipresent and all those other characteristics associated with any specific deity.

The only reason that the argument works is that the terms and definitions have been set such that it has to.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

But this doesn't therefore mean that any particular deity is omnipotent, omipresent and all those other characteristics associated with any specific deity.

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Originally posted by hatless:
I see God as a unique part of language. God is a word that refers to no thing, but enables us to talk about the world in ways that either do or do not make sense, and with which we are either comfortable or uncomfortable.

There is, therefore, a truth or falsity to God talk, but the issue is not whether a supreme being exists, but whether it is, for example, right to rage against the dying of the light, to insist the all humans are of one family, and to trust that all good things work together, and that love is stronger than hatred.

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Originally posted by hatless:
It is always about who God is for us. It is poetic.

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Originally posted by alienfromzog:
If anyone's interested and has an hour (I listening why driving home from work) This is a pretty good exploration of the argument.

To answer Hatless's point above, I hope you can see what I was getting at by saying the argument is inescapably ridiculous. IF God exists then taking about him not existing is silly. IF There is no God, there equally there is no room for gods either. I agree the Bible assumes God. Of course it does, it's God's word. To do otherwise would be nonsensical.

AFZ

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
It is always about who God is for us. It is poetic.

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You say that as if it's clear to everyone what 'poetic' means. Does it mean the same thing in Chaucer, Herbert, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson?

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Originally posted by hatless:
It's just another way of saying what I am saying. Poetic language as opposed to plain, literal, informative, workaday language.

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Language to surprise, inspire, evoke and allude. Language to provoke thought and stimulate imagination and emotion.

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Again, this is not opposed to plain literal workaday language. We would have no science if biologists and astronomers and physicists and chemists were not inspired by plain literal informative workaday langauge.
Although what kind of language are you using here? It falls short of workaday. And no good poet would pass the sequence of words 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' as if they're the same activities.

The opposite of 'plain workaday language' is not 'poetic language'. The opposite of 'plain workaday language' is 'cliched management-speak language' or 'journalese language' or 'political demagogue language'. Good poetic language can be more than workaday language but is never less than or other than workaday language. Cliched management-speak language passes itself off as inspiring when it is merely drawing on tepid half-understood stock response feelings, designed to keep people in their local comfort zone.

And I am afraid 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' is cliched mangagement speak language. Each is a word that trails stock-response. 'Parables' and 'stories' are in this context almost always stock-response words.
'Poetic' is almost always in meta-theological discourse a stock-response word. Which is why my first reaction to anyone using 'poetic' in this way is to ask if they can talk intelligently about plain literal poets.
 

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Posted by Amos (# 44) on :
 
Dafydd: (I don't do 'not worthies' as Erin once said)

[ 24. February 2016, 10:18: Message edited by: Amos ]
 

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Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :
 
Dafyd said:

quote:

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And I am afraid 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' is cliched mangagement speak language. Each is a word that trails stock-response. 'Parables' and 'stories' are in this context almost always stock-response words.
'Poetic' is almost always in meta-theological discourse a stock-response word.

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Originally posted by hatless:
Dafyd said:

quote:

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And I am afraid 'surprise, inspire, evoke and allude' is cliched mangagement speak language.......

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But some language does more than it says ....

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Originally posted by hatless:
But some language does more than it says, and God language has to be of this sort.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
But some language does more than it says, and God language has to be of this sort.

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Let's think about what it means to say, with Buber, that God is always subject, never object.

Let us take money. Money does not exist in the way that rocks or birds exist. It exists within our language, as the expression of our hopes and imagination. One way of saying this is to say that money is always object, never subject. It never has any independent existence of its own (although in Isaian-Feuerbachian fashion we can alienate our subjectivity to it).
Inanimate objects such as rocks are a bit less object, and a bit less subject. They do not purely exist within our language. We can stub our toes on them, and they stubbornly remain where they are regardless of our imagination and hope.
Animals are much more subject. We can have a relationship with animals, in which the animal is not about our hopes and imagination, but has its own reality.
Human beings are far more subject than (some) animals. They not only resist reduction to our language, but can recreate our language. But we can still try to reduce other human beings to language about them.
God, as Buber says, is purely subject never object. God can never be reduced to our language about God.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Some people would say that God is merely a human construct and has no "real" existence at all; I disagree with this view but recognise that it is impossible to prove otherwise.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
How did Jesus experience Him?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:

Apart from how we do, as you rightly say, by making Him up?

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Originally posted by hatless:
On cliches, we all come out with them, and one of the best places to find a bunch us second rate poetry.

Allude is a bit cliched, evoke, perhaps, inspire, definitely, though we're stuck with it because of our scriptural tradition. But I would defend surprise. No management speaker likes language to surprise. It's on the money for our awareness of the Other as subject. It's not what everyone says about language in this or any context.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
But surely money or rocks, however objectively or independently they may or may not exist, only enter human discourse when we perceive them in some way? In other words, all such items only exist, from our human frame of reference, when we are in relation to them.

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quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
It feels like a relief, Dafyd, to be able to say that we will just have to disagree.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by hatless:
It feels like a relief, Dafyd, to be able to say that we will just have to disagree.

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I should probably not have made it about the language you personally were using. For that I apologise.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
But surely money or rocks, however objectively or independently they may or may not exist, only enter human discourse when we perceive them in some way

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... would an island inhabited by say several species of endemic flightless birds with no predators be valuable in its own right even if no human being ever set foot upon it? I'd certainly have difficulty in espousing any philosophy that implies that the answer is no.

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Originally posted by Russ:
Valuing is something that minds do. To say that birds are valuable is to say that they would or should be valued if there were any sapient species around to do the valuing.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:


But I would say that the importance of such islands to human minds that are aware of them is based upon something intrinsic that does not derive from human minds being aware of them.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Russ:
Valuing is something that minds do. To say that birds are valuable is to say that they would or should be valued if there were any sapient species around to do the valuing.

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I suppose that's a reason for saying, no, because what makes islands with endemic bird species important is not that they're valued or might be valued.
But I would say that the importance of such islands to human minds that are aware of them is based upon something intrinsic that does not derive from human minds being aware of them.

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