Ontological arguments Flashcards
what is Anselm’s ontological argument?
P1. God is the greatest conceivable being
P2. It is greater to exist in the mind and reality than in the mind alone
P3. God exists in the mind
C1. God exists in reality
what does Malcom say?
Malcolm interprets the idea of the greatest being as God being unlimited, not dependent on anything else for existence. God has no limitation which could possibly cause God’s non-existence. So, God contains the impossibility of non-existence.
Gaunilo’s criticisms to Anselm’s argument
Gaunilo attempts to show Anselm’s logic is absurd by applying it to another case which yields an absurd result.
Imagine the greatest possible island. If it’s greater to exist then this island must exist.
This would work for the greatest possible version of anything.
Anselm’s argument suggests reality would be overloaded with greatest possible things, which seems absurd.
Gaunilo is attempting to deny that the ontological argument’s conclusion follows from the premises. So he is denying that it really is a valid deductive argument.
why is gaunilo’s criticism not strong?
However, Gaunilo’s critique is not particularly strong.
There is no self-contradiction arising from Anselm’s logic also proving the existence of a perfect island. At most this seems counter-intuitive, but Gaunilo has not demonstrated actual absurdity, i.e., inconsistency.
evaluation of Gaunilo’s criticisms
However, there is a difference between God and an island (and anything else) which explains why the logic works for God but not anything else.
An island is contingent by definition. It is land enclosed by water, so it depends on a sea/sun/planet for its existence. Everything else in the world is also contingent.
You cannot use a priori reasoning to prove the existence of a contingent thing, because the existence of a contingent thing is not a matter of its definition. Its existence is a matter of whether what it depends on happens to exist.
E.g. whether the island exists is a matter of whether the sea/planet/sun it depends on exists. That cannot be determined merely by thinking about the definition of the greatest island.
So, the greatest island would still be the greatest island even if it didn’t exist.
There is nothing in the definition of the greatest being which implies dependence, however, making it necessary.
Nothing prevents determining the existence of a necessary being by a priori reasoning, unlike contingent beings.
So, that is why the argument works for God but not anything else.
Gaunilo’s critique that God is beyond our understanding?
Gaunilo objects to P3, the claim that God is in our mind/understanding.
He makes the traditional point that God is meant to be beyond our understanding.
In that case, Anselm can’t go on to conclude that God being the greatest being requires that he is not just in our understanding, but also in reality.
So, the ontological argument fails.
Response to Gaunilo’s critique that God is beyond our understanding?
Anselm deals with this kind of criticism, however.
He points out that we don’t need to have a full understanding of God in our mind for the argument to work.
We need only know/understand that God – whatever God is – is the greatest imaginable being.
We don’t have to actually know what God is, or what is involved in being the greatest being – we simply have to understand that God is the greatest being.
When we combine that with the premises that it is greater to exist, we can understand that God must exist.
evaluation of Anselm’s argument?
Anselm’s argument is successful because we can understand the concept of a being greater than any other possible being.
Anselm’s analogy proves this further – we cannot look directly at the sun, but we can still see sunlight.
Similarly, we cannot know God’s actual nature, but we can know that whatever God is, God is the greatest possible being.
Gaunilo is committing a straw man fallacy, he’s attacking a claim Anselm didn’t make. Anselm didn’t mean God is in the mind in the sense of us having full knowledge of God’s nature – he just means we understand that God is greater than any other conceivable being.
Kant’s critique that existence is not a predicate?
When Anselm says that if God didn’t exist, God wouldn’t be the greatest being (God), he’s saying that existence is part of what defines God.Anselm goes on to conclude that God must exist.
However, this treats the concept of ‘existence’ like a predicate, like a description of what a thing is, which defines a thing.
Kant objects that existence is not a predicate.
Imagine I was to say ‘the cat exists’. In that sentence, the term ‘exists’ doesn’t seem to actually describe the cat itself. It doesn’t describe a quality that the cat possesses. It simply describes that the cat exists – not the cat itself.
So, existence is not a predicate. When Anselm says God would not be God if God didn’t exist, Anselm is wrong. God would be just as great/perfect even if non-existent. Anselm can’t go on to conclude that God must exist, therefore.
Kant’s criticism is stronger than Gaunilo’s because he actually points out the assumption the ontological argument makes rather than pointing to a supposed absurdity.
Response to Kant’s critique that existence is not a predicate
However, Kant’s criticism fails for two reasons.Firstly, Kant’s criticism fails to attack Descartes’ ontological argument, which therefore seems to be in a stronger position than Anselm’s
Descartes bases his argument on his rationalist epistemology. He claims that God’s existence can be known through rational intuition.
It is not possible to rationally conceive of the most supremely perfect being without existence.
Descartes’ rejected the aristotelian logic of subject-predicate analysis. So, his argument does not infer God’s existence by assuming that existence is a predicate of God.
He illustrates with a triangle. You intuitively know that a triangle cannot be without three sides. Similarly, we can intuitively know that God cannot be without existence.
Secondly, Malcolm defends Anselm and the subject-predicate form of the argument.
Kant is correct, but only about contingent existence.
A contingent thing depends on something else for its existence.
However a necessary being contains the reason for its existence within itself.
So, necessary existence is a defining quality of a thing, in a way contingent existence is not.
So necessary existence is a predicate.
Kant’s critique that existence being a predicate doesn’t establish actual existence
Kant’s 1st critique is stronger because it doesn’t make the mistake of his other objection of denying that necessary existence is a predicate.
Here, Kant argues that even if necessary existence were a predicate of God, that doesn’t establish God’s existence in reality.
Kant improves on the style of argument Gaunilo was making with his lost island critique.
Kant is again going to give us a much clearer reason than Gaunilo did for doubting the deductive validity of the ontological argument.
Gaunilo was trying to argue that we may judge something necessary in our mind, but this doesn’t make it necessary in reality.
Kant develops this using Descartes’ illustration of a triangle.
A triangle must have three sides.
This shows that if a triangle exists, then it necessarily has three sides.
Similarly, Anselm may have shown that the concept of God necessarily has the predicate of existence.
However, again similarly, this only shows that if God exists, then God exists necessarily.
The ontological argument does not show that God does exist necessarily.
response to Kant’s critique that existence being a predicate doesn’t establish actual existence
Malcolm responds to Kant – he says it makes no sense to say that a necessary being could possibly not exist.
Necessary seems to mean ‘must exist’.
If God is a necessary being then God must exist – it makes no sense to say if a necessary being existed – since a necessary being must exist – there is no if.
So, Kant fails according to Malcolm.
