The Ontological Argument

Question 1

What is the ontological argument?

Answer 1

• ontological argument for Gods existence are supposed to be deductively valid (so if we accept the promise, then the conclusion follow) eg. If you hate murderers you would hate OJ Simpson)
• such arguments claim to establish Gods existence without drawing on an observation, evidence or experience
• they work by analysing the concept of God, is a sense we unpack the concept of God
• the idea is to analyse and fully understand what ‘god’ means and see the proposition ‘god exists’ is true by definition and hence God must exist
• existence is one of God’s necessary characteristics
• it’s not a posteriori knowledge or empirical

Question 2

What are the two distinct parts of a statement?

Answer 2

Subject - the thing that the statement is about

Predicate - the properties that we are claiming the subject has

Question 3

What is Anselm’s argument?

Answer 3

1- God is the greatest conceivable being - ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’
2- it is greater to exist in reality rather than in the understanding alone
3- therefore the greatest conceivable being, god, must exist in the understanding and in reality

Question 4

What does Anselm explain his argument?

Answer 4

• Anselm suggests that atheists live in a scenario where the greatest conceivable being exists only in our imagination
• his point is that an imaginary greatest being cannot be the greatest, because it is possible to conceive of a greatest being (one that exists)
• so a god who didn’t exist wouldn’t be the greatest possible being, so to be genuinely the greatest he just has to exist
• he calls all atheists fools

Question 5

What was Gaunilo’s response to Anselm?

Answer 5

• answers on behalf of the fool
• gaunilo of Marmaltier (a monk who lived at the same time as Anselm) rejected Anselm’s first proof in his worker ‘on behalf of the fool
• he believed in God, but rejected Anselm’s move from understanding God to be the greatest possible being to the conclusion that God must exist in reality
• he argued that we can use this method to define anything we like into existence, so long as we claim it is the ‘greatest’

Question 6

What was Anselm’s response to Gaunilo?

Answer 6

He defends his ontological argument by an extension of his definition of God, that he cannot be thought of as non-existent — Anselm is saying that God is the greatest conceivable being and so such it is impossible to conceive of his non-existence
— makes existing a necessary predicate for the greatest being

Question 7

What was Aquinas’ criticism of Anselm’s ontological argument?

Answer 7

• Aquinas rejects Anselm’s proof on the basis that humans have limited intellect and it is impossible fo them to understand or define the nature of God
  — according to Aquinas our minds cannot turkey grasp what it means to call God the greatest conceivable being
  — if we can’t really grasp the idea of God in the first place, then we are not in a position to know what must or must not follow from that idea - so Anselm’s ontological argument fails

Question 8

What is Descartes ontological argument?

Answer 8

• sought certain knowledge through his method of doubt
• he believed that if he could prove the existence of God then this should provide a secure foundation for his beliefs about the world
• because he didn’t trust his own senses, he wanted to prove God’s existence to be true a priori (in other words by using an ontological argument)

1- god is the supremely perfect being
2- a supremely perfect being contains all supreme perfections
3- existence (as well as omnipotence, omniscience etc) is a supreme perfection
4- therefore ,God, a supremely perfect being exists

Question 9

How does Descartes ontological argument work?

Answer 9

• Descartes relies upon a particular definition of God (a supremely perfect being)
• if he has all possible perfections then he must be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good and he must exist
• God’s existence is part of his essence as the supremely perfect being

Question 10

What were Kant’s objections on Kant’s and Anselm’s ontological arguments?

Answer 10

1- even if existence is a necessary property of God that doesn’t entail that God actually exists — Kant argues that it is possible to accept a proposition as true by definition (the subject and predicate are inseparable) and get to deny that there is anything in the world to which the subject refers
2- existence cannot be a property of God or anything else — he sought to destroy the claim that existence can be part of our definition of God - he set out to show that existence cannot be a property of God because it is not a property at all

Kant proposes that a genuine predicate is one that really does describe the thing we’re talking about and so adds a descriptive property to it. But existence doesn’t add anything to our concept of a subject

Question 11

What did Stephen Law say?

Answer 11

You can think of God not existing