Eternal Lies

So, I am reading this paper by Paul Sperring called "Descartes, God and Eternal Truths" I got think well if there are eternal truths, like math (aka necessary truths) then are there eternal lies? That is lies that are fundamental to our universe, that are necessary as result of our universe existing? and maybe more interestingly, if so what does that say about the relationship between truths and lies?

Wow! I'm going to have to think about this one... That's a pretty deep question

I must say I absolutely love that the author of this paper published in a journal of philosophy had to explain to his peers what the antecedent of a conditional statement is, because apparently propositional logic isn't something every philosopher is assumed to be familiar with.
This is made all the more peculiar when in a later footnote Sperring defines contingent as equivalent with not necessary which of course causes more problems than needn't be there.
Overall, I found myself several moments stopping and thinking "hang on, that doesn't follow...", but seeing as this is an attempt to interpret Descartes' position and my being poorly familiar with any part of it, I have no further judgement to make than that, and frankly wouldn't trust many of anyone else's until the day Descartes rises from the dead again to represent himself and tell us what we got right, what we got wrong and what we didn't get at all.

And as for the question of eternal lies, I suppose that if as truth we understand a logical theorem (or mathematical one at that), then any negation of it is technically necessarily false the same way the theorem is necessarily true. There is an axiom Descartes no doubt identified as one of those eternal truths, and it states "A or non-A". Thus "non-(A or non-A)" is false. Incidentally, this is equivalent with "non-A and non-non-A", which, once negated, results in the law of non-contradiction, another 'eternal truth'. Fundamentally, if we allow ourselves to substitute, I suspect that every logical truth can be reduced to an identity, and every logical falsehood to a contradiction.

That is my guess as well. In order to get to necessary, we have to we get to some variation of p v ~p or least a truth quantifier, but then we have a truth. Even if it is lexicologically what,we would call a lie. i.e. a false outcome like the old justified true belief problem. To deem something as fundamental either breaks down to this or doesn't (the irony), therefore yes, there can be an eternal lie. However, it is an eternal truth.

Eternal Lie - anything which contradicts the eternal truths!!?
Are they confusing his discussion about what appears to be the absolute nature of God, and a relative natures of the Universe? It might lead to the conjecture that the eternal truths were changeable within this universe. Did Descartes explicitly state that?

If he said "You ask what necessitated God to create these truths; and I reply that he was free to make it not true that all the radii of the circle are equal" then I'd suggest that the use of the word 'was' implies a point in (our universes) history when they were made - rather then an ongoing capacity to make (within this universe). So a God can retain the capacity to make eternal truths, but perhaps these define the nature of the universe itself while it exists and therefore remain static during that universe's existence..... is how I'm reading it.

As I think eternal could be said to mean within the context of this universe, and their coming into being was seen as integral to the creation of the universe - which both defines them as truth (hidden order) and eternal (within that systems existence), and so the whole argument about being not possible misses the point entirely IMO. Unless of course he did
:blink:
But I'm no philosopher and not well read enough in any of it (thanks Google).