One argument that may end up convincing me of Deism

I was talking with Jose about an argument I was making from Laws of Logic and Unity and Plurality Principle that pressupose or impiles God's existance. Note this argument only applies to those of us who believe Laws of Logic are absolute, transcendant, universal, immaterial etc. Jose happened to find a better more detailed version online. Here it is:

The Lord of Non-Contradiction James N. Anderson & Greg Welty © 2011 15-18

The laws of logic are real entities, but not physical entities. Do they then fall under some other
familiar metaphysical category? We will now argue that the laws of logic exhibit a certain
feature, namely intentionality , which is best understood as a distinctive mark of mental entities, such as thoughts. 23 ‘Intentionality’ is a philosophical term of art derived from the Latin verb intendere : "to be directed toward some goal or thing". Intentionality is routinely (albeit roughly) characterized as aboutness : X exhibits intentionality if and only if X is about something or other. In particular,
propositional items (i.e., truth-bearers) such as statements and beliefs exhibit intentionality.

The statement "Tokyo is the capital city of Japan" is about something: the city of Tokyo. In the
same way, your belief that Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry VIII is about the woman also known as the Virgin Queen

What more can be said about this quality of intentionality? There is good reason to regard intentionality as the distinctive mark of the mental .28 Mental items—what we might generally 
term ‘thoughts’—are distinguished from non-mental items by their exhibiting intentionality.
Beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, and intentions (of course) all exhibit intentionality: they’re all
about things (directedness) and they’re all about things in particular ways (aspectual shape).
Non-mental items—rocks, clouds, oil slicks, toe nails, flutes, electrons, etc.—are not intentional
in this technical sense. At any rate, they cannot be intrinsically intentional. There is certainly a 
sense in which physical marks on a page (such as this one) can exhibit intentionality.

Thoughts, then, are the paradigmatic category of intentional entities. And the existence of 
thoughts is uncontroversial. (At any rate, we trust that thoughtful readers will grant this point.)
The question then arises as to how propositions relate to thoughts, given that propositions also 
exist (as argued above) and exhibit intentionality. Where should propositions be located in our
ontology? Are propositions simply thoughts of some kind? Are they essentially mental items? 
Or should we posit a separate ontological category for propositions as intentional-but-non-
mental items?

Surely the first option is the simplest and least arbitrary of the two. Unless we have some 
good independent reason for insisting that propositions are not mental items, we should
conclude (on the basis that they possess the distinctive mark of the mental) that propositions 
are indeed mental items, rather than positing a sui generis ontological category for them to 
occupy. One might go so far as to say that the principle of parsimony demands it. Propositions, then, are best construed as mental in nature. 29 And since the laws of logic are propositions, we should construe them as mental in nature too.

In summary, the argument runs as follows. The laws of logic are necessary truths about truths;  they are necessarily true propositions. Propositions are real entities, but cannot be physical entities; they are essentially thoughts. So the laws of logic are necessarily true thoughts. Since  they are true in every possible world, they must exist in every possible world. But if there are necessarily existent thoughts, there must be a necessarily existent mind; and if there is a necessarily existent mind, there must be a necessarily existent person. A necessarily existent person must be spiritual in nature, because no physical entity exists necessarily. Thus, if there are laws of logic, there must also be a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being. The laws of logic imply the existence of God.



www.proginosko.com/docs/The_Lord_of_Non-Contradiction.pdf

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