The bit about relevance not being ‘absolute’ or ‘essential’ reminds me of Excluding the Supernatural; for a deity to be ‘actually divine’ instead of just ‘really powerful’ or w/e it needs to be intrinsically relevant. But, interestingly, I don’t think this is a standard that’s possible to hit, basically because of Vervaeke’s critique!
For example, assume I set up hyper-Minecraft, where the villagers are basically emulated humans (and so able to think, do philosophy, etc.), and I sometimes log in and wander around the world, using my admin powers as I see fit. There’s a way in which I am ‘ontologically basic’ from the perspective of those villagers—I’m a mental entity that’s not reducible to within-universe nonmental entities. [And also I’m keyed into the laws of physics in a way that makes me immensely powerful, and so clearly relevant to their materialistic aims!]
But there’s nothing stopping a Diogenes in this world from only asking me to just step out of their sunlight when I offer to grant them any wish. There’s nothing stopping a Socrates from saying “sure, this Vaniver character can reshape the landscape at will, but actually being a god is about morality and truth instead of power.”
Now, maybe it’s a mistake for them to care about morality instead of power; maybe philosophy of this sort is selected against. But on whatever standard philosophy fails on, it can honestly report that it was aiming for a different standard. [Somehow this is reminding me of C.S. Lewis’s claim that the most important sin is pride; basically, in this frame, the ability to choose something other than God’s choice because of centering your standards instead of His standards.]
If you want to play the minecraft server as a torture simulator then the philosophers of the world would be correct in identiying the act as evil rather than givign you licence to be good by fiat of omnipotence.
As authors of books and such we could make it an utopia for the characters if we wished. Yet we find the world more compelling as a book if it has a world of partial misery. And I think this applies even for within the worlds perspective—activating god mode or easy mode could make the existence so structureless that it would be an absurd horror.
Strictly såpeaking a minecrafts servers cosmologist might come up with floating point rounding as an explanation for the peculiar structure of the Farlands. Strucure of C# or Java could be become the subject of their physics etc. Judging what is “not reducible” for an arbitrarily fine science is hard business. You are ontologically basic only relative to a pretty trivial ontology. And in a very real sense if their brain runs on silicon and yours runs on carbon you are on the same level ontologically ie the minecraft world is a real embedding and detail in the real world.
The bit about relevance not being ‘absolute’ or ‘essential’ reminds me of Excluding the Supernatural; for a deity to be ‘actually divine’ instead of just ‘really powerful’ or w/e it needs to be intrinsically relevant. But, interestingly, I don’t think this is a standard that’s possible to hit, basically because of Vervaeke’s critique!
For example, assume I set up hyper-Minecraft, where the villagers are basically emulated humans (and so able to think, do philosophy, etc.), and I sometimes log in and wander around the world, using my admin powers as I see fit. There’s a way in which I am ‘ontologically basic’ from the perspective of those villagers—I’m a mental entity that’s not reducible to within-universe nonmental entities. [And also I’m keyed into the laws of physics in a way that makes me immensely powerful, and so clearly relevant to their materialistic aims!]
But there’s nothing stopping a Diogenes in this world from only asking me to just step out of their sunlight when I offer to grant them any wish. There’s nothing stopping a Socrates from saying “sure, this Vaniver character can reshape the landscape at will, but actually being a god is about morality and truth instead of power.”
Now, maybe it’s a mistake for them to care about morality instead of power; maybe philosophy of this sort is selected against. But on whatever standard philosophy fails on, it can honestly report that it was aiming for a different standard. [Somehow this is reminding me of C.S. Lewis’s claim that the most important sin is pride; basically, in this frame, the ability to choose something other than God’s choice because of centering your standards instead of His standards.]
If you want to play the minecraft server as a torture simulator then the philosophers of the world would be correct in identiying the act as evil rather than givign you licence to be good by fiat of omnipotence.
As authors of books and such we could make it an utopia for the characters if we wished. Yet we find the world more compelling as a book if it has a world of partial misery. And I think this applies even for within the worlds perspective—activating god mode or easy mode could make the existence so structureless that it would be an absurd horror.
Strictly såpeaking a minecrafts servers cosmologist might come up with floating point rounding as an explanation for the peculiar structure of the Farlands. Strucure of C# or Java could be become the subject of their physics etc. Judging what is “not reducible” for an arbitrarily fine science is hard business. You are ontologically basic only relative to a pretty trivial ontology. And in a very real sense if their brain runs on silicon and yours runs on carbon you are on the same level ontologically ie the minecraft world is a real embedding and detail in the real world.