Hypothesi indeterminatum.

I created this fallacy when reading Charles Sanders Peirce. I call it "hypothesi indeterminatum."


He used it to vindicate the existence of God, but I realized it could be used in a quite contrary way.

"The hypothesis of God is a peculiar one, in that it supposes an infinitely incomprehensible object, although every hypothesis, as such, supposes its object to be truly conceived in the hypothesis. This leaves the hypothesis but one way of understanding itself; namely, as vague yet as true so far as it is definite, and as continually tending to define itself more and more, and without limit."








When I say "There is a gold nugget at the bottom of my coffee cup" the object of the conception, a gold nugget, is contained in the hypothesis. This conception "gold nugget" is defined, and the hypothesis aims to elaborate its definition, namely through the determination of rather or not it is in fact at the bottom of coffee cup. For this reason the hypothesis is either true or false.



When I say "There is a God" this is very different. The object of the conception, God, is said to be infinite and is therefor undefinable. The object of the conception is not contained in the hypothesis. That means there is no element of truth or falsehood to it. Not only can you not determine rather it is true or false, it simply doesn't have truth or false value. Saying "There is a God" is the same as saying "drgdgadgfrg" ie. gibberish, or speaking a line from a poem. It doesn't have any conceptual value, ie. truth or falsity. At best the statement expresses a feeling within the person speaking it, while in the worst case it amounts to mere gibberish.



In order for a hypothesis to be true or false, the hypothesis must contain the object of its conception within it. To contain it, the object must be first of all finite and second of all, at least some number of its finite attributes must be known and recorded. The true or false value is merely an elaboration of that object of the conception. In the first example I gave, the fact that a gold nugget is found or not found at the bottom of my coffee cup is attached, after the determination, to the object of the conception as another one of its finite attributes, ie. in addition to a gold nugget's chemical component, weight, etc. This extension of the attributes is "understanding." An infinite object cannot be conceptualized, and cannot be contained by any hypothesis which concerns it. Therefor its attributes cannot be elaborated, nothing about it can be understood, and no true or false value can be realized with regard to it.


This is how I know there is no God. The concept God is gibberish. Several things may be dealt with by this fallacy, such as the freedom of the will, because it implies an infinite self-determination.

If you know Spinoza, this is a way of pointing out that an idea does not correspond to any ideatum, that an idea has no reality to which it corresponds, of which it is about.



In order to contain an infinite object within the conception of a hypothesis you would have to show a true interpositum between the idea and ideatum, which Spinoza could never demonstrate and did not believe existed, which is itself infinite in some way.


When I say "A gold nugget is at the bottom of my coffee cup" the ideatum, the object of the conception, is the gold nugget, and the idea, the thing that contains it within the hypothesis, is a finite series of attributes like the weight of the gold nugget, its color, etc. When I determine rather the hypothesis is true or false, another attribute gets added to it, and I "understand" something about it. The idea is not clarified, it is extended.




Perhaps a clever theologian could appeal to the "fee will" as itself an infinite interpositum which makes my ideating of the ideatum "God" possible and allows its infinite object to be contained in some hypothesis.

Your argument also strikes me as quite close to ignosticism, the notion that before we begin talking about this God, its properties or its truth or falsity we need to know what we mean by "God". Ignosticism simply states that this word really doesn't mean anything at all, and even if it does mean something to an individual, there is really no attempt made to relate this or communicate this sufficiently with others. When people use the word "God" they have no idea what they mean, nor do they really care to. Of course a whole host of vague associations pops into mind, infinite, all-knowing, whatever. But the limitless, infinite nature of these supposed attribuites, as you say, negates the entire conceptual value of the notion altogether.

At best we can say that the notion of God functions within the consciousness and its system/s of concepts and meanings as a sort of regulative feature, a symbol/image mediating with respect to meaning and either emotive value or social function/expectation, or both. In other words, when a certain situation is constructed in such and such a way, the consciousness invokes the symbol-image of "God", an empty concept, in order to address or "solve" (ignore, will-away) an otherwise problematic aspect of that situation or moment of experiential consciousness.

At face value this functional role of the God-concept is not "illogical" per se, since it is utilized to more or less successfully navigate situational/experiential problems with a degree of success. Of course the notion IS highly irrational as a concept, and as you say, not even rising to the level of possible truth or falsehood. One must question the psychological need so common among humans to make use of such 'empty concepts' in the face of the possibility of actual thinking.

The "idea" of God is incoherent, ie. is not an idea. I agree though, it helps people navigate experiential problems... It only does that though, because people are not able to understand the nature of their experiential problems. When they use the word God they have an unconscious conception of something that might actually be meaningful, but the only thing they can consciously produce is non-ideational god-speak. In order to clarify their problem, they have to apply the fallacy I just described to their entire philosophy, gradually annihilating anything that distorts or renders impossible the determination of truth and falsehood.

Basically when people don't know what they're talking about with regard to a problem, they make up an infinite object like free will or God and use it as a placeholder. When they figure out what they're talking about they go back and apply new attributes to this placeholder, which becomes more or less a symbol or sign, but is still not an idea, and cannot ever be, because it is impossible to contain conceptually in a hypothesis.


At this point I would implore those who use such signs to simply take the attributes they have retroactively added to them, and make up an actual concept which inherently includes that set of attributes so that it can be used in different hypotheses without incurring the fallacy I demonstrated, ie. so we can talk about it rationally. Thus free will would become simply will, God would become the idea of absolute or objective good, etc.

I can attack the idea of God in another way.



How can there be any unity of an infinite set of attributes? How can there be a unity of an infinite difference?



If there is no such unity among God's infinite attributes, then it is impossible to speak of God because God has no particular being. God is not a particular thing. There is no commonality to unite his attributes and make him a specific entity. An infinite series of attributes cannot be applied to a single concept or entity, because it is impossible to derive a commonality from an infinite set of things. The larger the set of attributes the more difficult it is to find the commonality to unite them and thus derive a conception of a specific thing, with God it is impossible.

This fallacy you mention here also applies to the analytic/metaphysical thinkers i have been talking with from time to time. They want to have their cake and eat it too, as you put it they want to speak about something without actually speaking about it, without being clear. This single fallacy seems to be a critical point in these analytic/metaphysical structures of thought.

When we speak about something, we convert a portion of reality into a statement which just means we create conceptual objects to represent something about reality, anything at all we want to know or talk about, and render those concepts in language somehow. When, for example, someone tells me that they accept the meaning of "ice" and "melt" and fully stipulate to all the determinate chemical, molecular etc. properties and laws that are what those mean, but then turn around and say that you could put an ice cube in an 10,000 degree oven and it might not melt, there is a deep confusion going on in their thinking.

A further confusion is forced into the open when you press them more, because they might admit, as this guy did to me tonight, that the ice cube will always melt in that oven, but nonetheless this isnt determinate or necessarily so because the ice cube contains in its "agency" the "power" to not melt; namely, the ice cube sometimes doesnt melt, therefore this fact is mistaken by the metaphysical/analytic as if the ice cube possesses some intrinsic capacity of not-melting which could manifest at any time. They have divorced the meaning of "not melting" from their operational use of the linguistic expression for the (now empty) concept of "not melting", and they do this because it allows them to seem like they are keeping contingency open against necessity.

And a still further confusion on their part: the admittance that even though if the ice didnt melt in the oven and we could always ask of the not-melted ice "why did it not melt?" they still claim this doesnt mean that determination/necessity is the case. I found a very nice way of cornering him on this: I asked "so if the ice doesnt melt, then why didnt it melt?" His answer: "The ice didnt melt because the ice contains the agent power of the capacity for not-melting." I am absolutely fucking serious, that is exactly what this guy said. And he wasn't some neophyte, he was somewhere high up in academia well-read on many books and current thinkers, versed in all the terminology and arguments, and yet deep down his mind is fundamentally broken in this way.

Someone should write a detailed treatise about how to fix these kinds of fallacies in people.