ontological arguments

Question 1

what are ontological arguments

Answer 1

• use a priori reasoning (through thought alone)
• all ontological arguments are deductive arguments
• advocators for ontological arguments claim that ‘god exists’ is an analytical truth

Question 2

what is st Anselms ontological argument

Answer 2

• god is defined as the greatest possible being than which nothing greater can be conceived
• anyone can conceive of god as the greatest possible being because it is a coherent concept which exists in our understanding
• it is greater to exist in reality than only in our minds
• therefore the greatest possible being, god, must exist in our minds and in reality

if there are two gods, and one does not exist but the other does, the one who does exist is obviously greater because it is better to exist in reality

since god is a being that we cannot imagine to be greater, he must have the quality of existence

• anselm argued that it is essential to our conception of ‘god’ to contain the idea of existence

Question 3

what is descartes ontological argument

Answer 3

• I have an idea of god as a supremely perfect being
• a supremely perfect being must have all perfections
• existence is a perfection
• therefore god exists.
• this argument is similar to anselms except it uses the concept of a perfect being rather than one which no greater than can be conceived
• propositions can be split up into the subject + predicate
• some predicates are a necessary part of their subject eg. ‘internal angles adding up to 180’ is a predicate of the concept of ‘triangle’
• likewise, ‘existence’ is a predicate which is part of the definition of ‘god’
• so stating ‘god exists’ is a tautology and stating that ‘god doesn’t exist’ is a self-contradiction

Question 4

what is Norman malcoms ontological argument

Answer 4

• Malcom disagrees with descartes and Anselms arguments
• instead he argues that its not existence which is a perfection, but the logical impossibility of non-existence (necessary existence)

summarised
- either god exists or doesn’t exist
- he can’t come into/out of existence
- if god exists he can’t cease to exist (otherwise we could conceive of a greater being which always existed)
- therefore if god exists, gods existence is necessary
- if god does not exist, god’s existence is impossible
- gods existence is either necessary (if he existed but not necessarily, then we could conceive of a greater being: one that existed necessarily) or impossible
- gods existence is only impossible if the concept of god is self-contradictory
- the concept of god is not self-contradictory
- therefore, gods existence is not impossible
- therefore, god exists necessarily

Question 5

what is guinilos ‘perfect island’ objection

Answer 5

• guinilo argues that if ANSelms argument is valid, then anything can be defined into existence
• I can think of the perfect island
• we can coherently conceive of this island; the concept is coherent
• it is better to exist in our mind AND reality than just in our mind
• therefore the perfect island must exist
• the conclusion is obviously false
• if ANSELMS arguments were valid then we could define anything into existence
• it is not enough to understand the nature of god as the greatest conceivable being in order to prove gods existence, so the argument fails

Question 6

what is humes empiricist objection to a priori (ontological) argument for existence

Answer 6

Relations of ideas
- analytic truths are true in the meaning of the words - they cannot be denied without resulting in a logical contradiction e.g. a bachelor is a MARRIED man is a logical contradiction
- priori knowledge is acquired through thought alone
Matters of fact
- synthetic truths are true in how the world is, but denying them would not result in a logical contradiction e.g. we can imagine a possible world where ‘grass is red’
- posteriori knowledge is acquired through experience

• the ontological arguments reason from the definition of god that god must exist, which would make ‘god exists’ an analytic truth
• you can’t deny an analytic truth without coming to a contradiction
• this would mean that ‘god does not exist’ is a contradiction
• but Hume did not think so, Hume said that anything we can conceive of existing we can conceive of non-existent
• so god exists cannot be an analytic truth (relations of ideas)
• (matters of fact are synthetic truths)
• so wether or not god exists is a matter of fact and ontological arguments attempting to prove gods existence a priori fail

Question 7

what is ayers empiricist objection to a priori argument for existence

Answer 7

• ayer developed his verification principle to distinguish meaningful statements from nonsense statements
• meaningful propositions are either true/false and they must either be:
  1) statements that are true by definition (relations of ideas)
  2) statements that can be verified as true or false (matters of fact)
• we cannot prove ‘god exists’ from a priori premise because the ‘existence of anything’ is not a tautology and a priori propositions are certain because they are tautologies
• so we cannot validly deduce the existence of god from priori propositions and ontological argument fails

Question 8

what is Kants objection based on existence not being a predicate

Answer 8

• kant argues that the assumption that existence is a property of god is false
• a proposition can be divided into a subject and a predicate
• e.g. a triangle has three sides, the ‘has three sides’ is the predicate - it tells us something about the subject and adds something to our conception of it
• to say ‘god exists’ is not adding a new predicate to the concept of god
• e.g. imagine a unicorn. now imagine a unicorn that exists - there is no difference between the two ideas! adding existence to the idea of a unicorn doesn’t suddenly make unicorns exist
• adding ‘existence’ does not add to our conception of the subject or help to determine it
• therefore existence is not a predicate and the ontological arguments fail to prove gods existence