Ontological Arguemts Flashcards
What is an overview of ontological arguments?
- They uniquely claim that they can prove God’s existence completely independent of observation, evidence or experience
- They are built upon a priori foundations and proceed deductively.
- They work by analysing the concept of God and metaphorically ‘unpack’ it to prove his existence.
What is Anselms original formal argument? (A prayer which references a fool).
P1. By definition, God is a being greater than which cannot be conceived.
P2. Even a fool (an atheist) can understand that God is the greatest being possible.
P3. The fool says there is no God in reality.
C1. The fool is convinced that God, the greatest being possible, exists only in his understanding and not reality.
P4. It is greater to exist both in the understanding and in reality, than in merely the understanding.
P5. The greatest possible being, if it is genuinely the greatest, must exist in understanding and reality.
C3. Therefore, God exists both in reality and understanding.
What is the shortened Anselm argument (only need this one)?
P1. God is the greatest possible being
P2. It is greater to exist in the understanding and in reality rather than in the understanding alone.
C1. Therefore, the greatest possible being, God, must exist in the understanding and in reality.
-Outline and explain Gaunilo’s ‘Perfect Island’ Objection. Include the formal argument.
- Came from Gaunilos work ‘on behalf of the fool’.
- In essence it argues that Anselms conclusion doesn’t follow the premises.
- He argues that we can use Anselms method to define anything we like into existence, so long as it has the property of being ‘the greatest’ or ‘most excellent’.
- He gives the example of a ‘perfect island’
P1. We can imagine an island which is the most excellent island.
P2. It is greater to exist in reality than merely in understanding.
C1. Therefore, the most excellent island must exist in reality.
What is Anselms response to the perfect island objection and an evaluation of this response?
- The argument works only for God. There is nothing in the concept of an island that makes it essentially or necessarily the greatest conceivable island.
- It is inconceivable to think of ‘the greatest possible being’ not existing but coherent to think of ‘the greatest possible island’ not existing.
- What features would the greatest possible island have?! It’s incoherent in itself.
- Evaluation: Anselm has not answered the essence of Gaunilos Objection. His point is that God being the GCB, doesn’t show that he’s the GCB, because if god doesn’t exist he isn’t any being at all, so he couldn’t be the GCB.
- We can only say that if god exists, then God is the GCB. So before we can say that God is the GCB, we must first demonstrate that god exists. If this objection is right, Anselms ontological argument fails!!
What is Aquinas’ criticism of Anselms ontological argument?
- He favoured his own ‘five ways’.
- Some things were self-evident and could be known to be true a priori.
- But in order to know these things we must be able to define both the subject and the predicate.
- The human intellect is limited and as such Aquinas argues that we cannot possible claim to know what Gods existence as ‘the greatest possible being’ could even entail.
- If we cannot really grasp the idea of god in the first place, how can we draw conclusions about what would follow on for it?!
- We can’t! As such Anselms argument seems to fail.
What are the 2 ways that Descartes argument can be understood?
- Intuition:
- Careful reflection on the concept of God reveals that to think that God does not exist is a contradiction in terms.
- This shows that God must exist; a contradiction in terms does not just happen to be false, it must be false.
- Furthermore, we cannot simply get around this by changing the concept of god. Descartes believes this idea is innate within our minds and thus is fixed.
-Deduction:
-Deductively, Descartes reasoning is clarified and proceeds in the following manner:
P1. I have the idea of God
P2. The idea of God is the idea of a supremely perfect being.
P3. A supremely perfect being does not lack any perfection.
P4. Existence is a perfection
C1. Therefore, God exists.
What are 2 objections to ontological arguments? One presented by Hume and one by Kant.
- Hume- ‘God does not exist’ is not a contradiction. Anything we can conceive of as ‘existent’ we can conceive of as ‘non-existent’.
- A contradiction cannot be coherently conceived
- ‘God does not exist’ can be coherently conceived.
- Therefore, ‘God does not exist’ is not a contradiction.
- If ‘God does not exist’ is not a contradiction, then the ontological argument fails to prove ‘God exists’ is an analytic truth.
- Kant- Existence is not a defining predicate. To say something exists doesn’t add anything to the concept of it. Imagine a unicorn, then imagine a unicorn that exists. There’s no difference! Adding existence to the idea of a unicorn doesn’t make unicorns suddenly exist.
- When people say ‘God exists’ they mean ‘God exists in the world’. This cannot be argued from the definition of God and thus the ontological argument fails to prove God’s existence.
- This is the most powerful argument against ontological arguments.
What is Descartes reply to Humes Objection?
-Descartes defends his claim in the light of Humes objections as the product of rational intuition. On these grounds he rejects Humes claim ‘whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive of non-existent’.
- Because our minds are finite, we normally think of the divine perfections, such as omnipotence and necessary existence, separately and so we don’t notice they entail one another.
- But If we reflect carefully, we shall discover that we cannot conceive of one while excluding the other.
- Therefore; it is a contradiction to deny that God exists.
What is Norman Malcolm’s ontological argument?
- God cannot be conceived not to exist…that which can be conceived not to exist is not God’
- Malcolm’s argument rests upon his extension to the definition of God which he identifies in Anselms work.
- We can understand why Anselm makes this claim by comparing two conceptions of God. Which is ‘greater’?
1) A god who can be conceived of as not existing?
2) A god who cannot be conceived of as not existing? - To Anselm it is pretty clear that the second conception of God is greater: because god is the greatest possible being, it must be impossible to conceive of his non existence.
- Anselm argues that the idea of a non-existent greatest being is a contradiction in terms.
What is the implication of Malcolm’s ontological argument to the argument to Gaunilos Objection?
- 2 types of existence or beings:
- Contingent beings- Things we can conceive of as not existing.
- Necessary beings- Things we cannot conceive of as not existing.
-Islands only have a contingent existence but the account of God given by Anselm reveals his existence is necessary.
How can we apply necessary existence to Kants Objection? And how does Kant attempt to respond? And what is Malcolm’s successful response?
- He agrees with Kant that contingent existence is not a property, but Kant hasn’t shown that necessary existence is not a property.
- Kant doesn’t satisfactorily distinguish ‘god exists’ from the claim ‘god exists necessarily’.
- The two claims are not equivalent.
- ‘god exists necessarily’ tells us something about the subject- it explains God’s existence! Thus it is an analytic judgement.
Response: Kant fails to respond. Necessary existence is part of God’s concept. But what this means, he says, is that ‘if god exists, then god exists necessarily’. And this doesn’t entail that god exists.
-In other words, the claim that ‘if god exists, then god exists necessarily’ is compatible with the possibility that god doesn’t exist at all
Response: This is confused. If we accept that ‘God exists necessarily’ is an analytic truth, then this rules out ‘it is possible that God doesn’t exist’. ‘God doesn’t exist’ is necessarily false!
What is a summary of Descartes ontological argument?
The deductive argument:
I have the idea of God (established from clear & distinct ideas - see epistemology).
The idea of God is the idea of a supremely perfect being.
A supremely perfect being does not lack any perfection.
Existence is a perfection.
Therefore, God exists.
