Arguments based on reason Flashcards
What is a posteriori?
- Teleological and cosmological- physical world.
What is a priori?
- Ontological- purely uses reason.
Where does the term ontological come from?
Greek words- Ontos (Being), Logos (study of).
Who started the ontological?
Anselm:
Book Proslogian.
What is Anselm’s first premise?
That than which no greater can be conceived.
What is Anselm’s second premise?
God may exist in the mind alone or in reality as well.
What is Anselm’s third premise?
Something which exists in reality and mind is greater than something that simply exists in mind.
Thus, God must exist in reality.
What is Anselm’s letter a response to?
The fool.
Psalms 14:1, ‘fools say in their hearts there is no God’.
- Trying to provide ‘reductio ad absurdum’ to the atheist view.
What did Anselm see God’s existence as?
- A predicate (attribute that is defining) of God.
- God cannot lack existence in reality, as it would thus not be God.
- When analysing the word ‘God’, it is obvious that he exists.
Anselm and analytic statements:
- A bachelor is an unmarried male, subject is bachelor, predicate is unmarried male.
- God exists, God subject, existence is predicate.
Who challenges Anselm?
Gaunilo.
Gaunilo:
- Also a benedictine monk.
- Wrote, ‘On behalf of the fool’.
- Monk himself, hating on the argument.
Gaunilo’s argument:
- Gossip: many things exist in mind, doesn’t mean they exist in reality.
- Defining existence: You cannot prove what is said (de dicto) exists in reality (de re). Cannot define him into existence.
Gaunilo’s example:
- Perfect Island does not exist in reality, but we can still imagine that t is perfect.
- Applies Reductio Ad Absurdum.
Anselm’s reply to Gaunilo:
- Says Gaunilo missed the point.
- God is a ‘special case’, God isn’t A perfect thing but THE perfect thing.
- Islands can always be improved, like cooler water, God cannot be improved.
Who contemporarily critiques Gaunilo?
Plantinga.
There is no ‘intrinsic maximum’ to an island.
Anselm continues argument:
- Second version in Proslogian, Chapter 3.
- An Island is Contingent (relies on other things for existence), but God is necessary.
Kant:
- Kant objects to Anselm’s premise three. Things that exist in the reality and the mind are greater than just existing in the mind.
- Essentially says something existing makes it better. Kant objects, ‘existence does not function as a predicate’.
- Wouldn’t describe someone as having existence.
- ‘Amelia is fabulous’, ‘fabulous’ would be predicate, not ‘is’.
Kant and language analysis:
- Analytic and synthetic statements.
- Definitions as analytic, cannot be disputed.
- Synthetic- about existence, need to be proven. Herbert is an unmarried bachelor.
- God is a being, need proof to back him up.
Therefore, existence is not a predicate. Predicates of God are omnipotence.
Who defends Anselm’s argument?
- Descartes.
Descartes:
- God is the ‘supremely perfect being’.
- To be truly perfect, something needs to exist.
- ‘Existence is a predicate of perfection’.
Descartes example:
- A triangle has three sides and 3 angles that add up to 180 degrees. Truth of mathematics cannot be doubted.
- Three sides tells us the nature of a triangle, existence tells us about God.
- Cannot divorce the ‘supremely perfect being’ from necessary existence, like you cannot divorce three sides from a triangle.
Bertrand Russell:
- Existence is not a predicate.
- Men exist, Santa is a man, Santa must exist, but he doesn’t.
- Existence isn’t a quality.
