Keep in mind that when someone uses faulty reasoning as evidence for their view, this does not mean their conclusion must be false. The proof may not be compelling, but there may be a sound argument that leads to the same conclusion. Government U. Executive Branch U. Judicial Branch U.
Legislative Branch U. Constitution U. Philosophy , Philosophy of Religion. Share on facebook. Share on twitter. Share on linkedin. Share on email. The Ontological Argument: Existence as Perfection. Think Further. Do you think that something existing always makes it better or greater?
More specifically, ontological arguments tend to start with an a priori theory about the organization of the universe. If that organizational structure is true, the argument will provide reasons why God must exist. The first ontological argument in the Western Christian tradition [1] was proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in his work Proslogion. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible — one which exists both in the mind and in reality.
Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality. Aquinas, - , once declared the official philosopher of the Catholic Church, built his objection to the ontological argument on epistemological grounds. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It is a branch of philosophy that seeks to answer such questions as: What is knowledge? Aquinas is known as an empiricist. Empiricists claim that knowledge comes from sense experience.
Aquinas wrote: "Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses. Within Thomas' empiricism, we can not reason or infer the existence of God from a studying of the definition of God. We can know God only indirectly, through our experiencing of God as Cause to that which we experience in the natural world. We can not assail the heavens with our reason; we can only know God as the Necessary Cause of all that we observe.
Alvin Plantiga offers a counter argument to the counter arguments that at least establishes the rational acceptability of theism as it appears to support the idea that it is possible that the greatest conceivable being does exist. Other Philosophers and their Critiques:.
New York, Translated by R. London, London: Ward, Lock, Co. Translated by A. Translated by F. Max Muller. P et seq. Hegel , from Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Translated by E. Haldane and F. Dorner from A System of Christian Doctrine. Cave and J. Banks, Edinburgh, Hamilton and E. Edinburgh, Seventh edition. Existence is not something we can know from the mere idea itself.
It is not known as a predicate of a subject. Independent confirmation through experience is needed. The argument does give some support to those who are already believers. It has variations that establish the possibility of the existence of such a being. The argument will not convert the non-believer into a believer.
Outcome Assessment. This argument or proof does not establish the actual existence of a supernatural deity. It attempts to define a being into existence and that is not rationally legitimate. While the argument can not be used to convert a non-believer to a believer, the faults in the argument do not prove that there is no god. The Burden of Proof demands that the positive claim that there is a supernatural deity be established by reason and evidence and this argument does not meet that standard.
The believer in god can use the argument to establish the mere logical possibility that there is a supernatural deity or at least that it is not irrational to believe in the possibility that there is such a being. The argument does not establish any degree of probability at all. This argument or proof has flaws in it and would not convince a rational person to accept its conclusion. This is not because someone who does not believe in a deity will simply refuse to accept based on emotions or past history but because it is not rationally compelling of acceptance of its conclusion.
Proceed to the next section. Introduction to Philosophy by Philip A. Return to: Table of Contents for the Online Textbook. Chapter 3: Philosophy of Religion. Form 1: Premises: 1.
Anselm- the supreme being- that being greater than which none can be conceived gcb the gcb must be conceived of as existing in reality and not just in the mind or else the gcb is not that being greater than which none can be conceived. Suppose S that the greatest conceivable being GCB exists in the mind alone and not in reality gcb1. Then the greatest conceivable being would not be the greatest conceivable being because one could think of a being like gcb1 but think of the gcb as existing in reality gcb2 and not just in the mind.
While this is not a good argument, it could appear compelling to one who failed to attend to the distinction between entertaining ideas and holding beliefs and who was a bit hazy on the distinction between the vehicles of belief and their contents. When the Fool entertains the concept of that than which no greater can be conceived he recognises that he is entertaining this concept i.
Conflating the concept with its object, this gives us the belief that than which no greater can be conceived possesses the property of existing in the understanding. Now, suppose as hypothesis for reductio , that we can reasonably believe that that than which no greater can be conceived possesses the property of existing only in the understanding.
Ignoring the distinction between entertaining ideas and holding beliefs, this means that we when we entertain the idea of that than which no greater can be conceived, we entertain the idea of a being which exists only in the understanding. But that is absurd: when we entertain the idea of that than which no greater can be conceived, our idea encodes the property of existing in reality. So there is a contradiction, and we can conclude that, in order to be reasonable, we must believe that that than which no greater can be conceived exists in reality.
But if any reasonable person must believe that that than which no greater can be conceived exists in reality, then surely it is the case that that than which no greater can be conceived exists in reality. And so we are done. However, the point of including it is illustrative rather than dogmatic. In the literature, there has been great resistance to the idea that the argument which Anselm gives is one which modern logicians would not hesitate to pronounce invalid. But it is very hard to see why there should be this resistance.
Certainly, it is not something for which there is much argument in the literature. For a more complex analysis of Proslogion II that has it yielding a valid argument, see Hinst Many recent discussions of ontological arguments are in compendiums, companions, encyclopedias, and the like. So, for example, there are review discussions of ontological arguments in: Leftow , Matthews , Lowe , Oppy , and Maydole While the ambitions of these review discussions vary, many of them are designed to introduce neophytes to the arguments and their history.
Given the current explosion of enthusiasm for compendiums, companions, encyclopedias, and the like, in philosophy of religion, it is likely that many more such discussions will appear in the immediate future. Some recent discussions of ontological arguments have been placed in more synoptic treatments of arguments about the existence of God. So, for example, there are extended discussions of ontological arguments in Everitt , Sobel , and Oppy His analyses are very careful, and make heavy use of the tools of modern philosophical logic.
There has been one recent monograph devoted exclusively to the analysis of ontological arguments: Dombrowski Szatkowski is a recent collection of papers on ontological arguments. A significant proportion of papers in this collection take up technical questions about logics that support ontological derivations.
Those interested in technical questions may also be interested in the topic taken up in Oppenheimer and Zalta and Gorbacz The most recent collection is Oppy Finally, there has been some activity in journals. The most significant of these pieces is Millican , the first article on ontological arguments in recent memory to appear in Mind.
Needless to say, both the interpretation and the critique are controversial, but they are also worthy of attention. Among other journal articles, perhaps the most interesting is Pruss , which provides a novel defence of the key possibility premise in modal ontological arguments.
There is also a chain of papers in Analysis initiated by Matthews and Baker Relatively recent work on ontological arguments by women includes: Anscombe , Antognazza , Crocker , Diamond , Ferreira , Garcia , [Haight and] Haight , [Matthews and] Baker , Wilson and Zagzebski Oppy monash.
History of Ontological Arguments 2. Taxonomy of Ontological Arguments 3. Characterisation of Ontological Arguments 4. Uses of Ontological Arguments 5. Objections to Ontological Arguments 6. Parodies of Ontological Arguments 7. A Victorious Ontological Argument? History of Ontological Arguments St. Anselm, Proslogion. Thomas Aquinas, Summa. Criticises an argument which somehow descends from St. The argument of Discourse 4 is further elaborated in the Meditations.
The Objections —particularly those of Caterus and Gassendi—and the Replies contain much valuable discussion of the Cartesian arguments. Intimations of a defensible mereological ontological argument, albeit one whose conclusion is not obviously endowed with religious significance. Part IX is a general attack on a priori arguments both analytic and synthetic.
Includes a purported demonstration that no such arguments can be any good. Contains famous attack on traditional theistic arguments.
Some scholars have claimed that the entire Hegelian corpus constitutes an ontological argument. Existence is a second-order predicate. First-order existence claims are meaningless.
So ontological arguments—whose conclusions are first-order existence claims—are doomed. Defence of modal ontological arguments, allegedly derived from Proslogion 3.
A key critique of ontological arguments. All ontological arguments are either invalid or question-begging; moreover, in many cases, they have two closely related readings, one of which falls into each of the above categories. Detailed critique of ontological arguments.
See, especially, chapters 2—4, pp. Characterisation of Ontological Arguments It is not easy to give a good characterisation of ontological arguments. Uses of Ontological Arguments Before we turn to assessment of ontological arguments, we need to get clear about what the proper intended goals of ontological arguments can be.
Here are some proposals; no doubt the reader can think of others: The targets might be atheists, and the goal might be to turn them into theists. The targets might be agnostics, and the goal might be to turn them into theists. The targets might be theists, and the goal might be to improve the doxastic position of theists.
The targets might be professional philosophers, and the goal might be to advance understanding of the consequences of adopting particular logical rules, or treating existence as a real predicate, or allowing definitions to have existential import, or the like.
The targets might be undergraduate philosophy students, and the goal might be to give them some sufficiently frustrating examples on which to cut their critical teeth.
Objections to Ontological Arguments Objections to ontological arguments take many forms. The sample argument consists, in effect, of two premises: God exists in at least one possible world. God exists in all possible worlds if God exists in any. Given that a minimally rational non-theist says that there is at least one possible world in which God does not exist, such a non-theist can offer a parallel counterargument with the following two premises: God fails to exist in at least one possible world.
Parodies of Ontological Arguments Positive ontological arguments—i. Here are some modest examples: 1 By definition, God is a non-existent being who has every other perfection. It is the work of Douglas Gasking, one-time Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne with emendations by William Grey and Denis Robinson : The creation of the world is the most marvellous achievement imaginable.
The merit of an achievement is the product of a its intrinsic quality, and b the ability of its creator. The greater the disability or handicap of the creator, the more impressive the achievement. The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.
Therefore, if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator, we can conceive a greater being—namely, one who created everything while not existing. An existing God, therefore, would not be a being than which a greater cannot be conceived, because an even more formidable and incredible creator would be a God which did not exist.
Definition 1: x is God-like if and only if x has as essential properties those and only those properties which are positive Definition 2: A is an essence of x if and only if for every property B , x has B necessarily if and only if A entails B Definition 3: x necessarily exists if and only if every essence of x is necessarily exemplified Axiom 1: If a property is positive, then its negation is not positive.
Theorem 1: If a property is positive, then it is consistent, i. Corollary 1: The property of being God-like is consistent. Theorem 3: Necessarily, the property of being God-like is exemplified. The set is closed under entailment. The property of having as essential properties just those properties which are in the set is itself a member of the set.
The set has exactly the same members in all possible worlds. The property of necessary existence is in the set. If a property is in the set, then the property of having that property necessarily is also in the set. Then consider the following argument: There is a possible world in which there is an entity which possesses maximal greatness.
Hence There is an entity which possesses maximal greatness. And, of course, they do. There is no entity which possesses maximal greatness. Hence There is no possible world in which there is an entity which possesses maximal greatness. Here is one translation of the crucial part of Proslogion II due to William Mann , —1 ; alternative translations can be found in Barnes , Campbell , Charlesworth , and elsewhere : Thus even the fool is convinced that something than which nothing greater can be conceived is in the understanding, since when he hears this, he understands it; and whatever is understood is in the understanding.
And certainly that than which a greater cannot be conceived cannot be in the understanding alone. For if it is even in the understanding alone, it can be conceived to exist in reality also, which is greater. Thus if that than which a greater cannot be conceived is in the understanding alone, then that than which a greater cannot be conceived is itself that than which a greater can be conceived.
But surely this cannot be. Thus without doubt something than which a greater cannot be conceived exists, both in the understanding and in reality. Assumption for reductio Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone. A being greater than God can be conceived. From 3 and 4. God exists in the understanding. Premise, to which even the Fool agrees. Hence God exists in reality. From 7 , 8. See Plantinga Premise Each thing which exists in reality is greater than any thing which exists only in the understanding.
Premise If a person can conceive of something, and that thing entails something else, then the person can also conceive of that other thing. Premise If a person can conceive that a specified object has a given property, then that person can conceive that something or other has that property. Premise Hence the being than which no greater can be conceived exists in reality. See Barnes From 1, 2, 3 See Adams Premise For any understandable being x , and for any worlds w and v , if x exists in w , but x does not exist in v , then the greatness of x in w exceeds the greatness of x in v.
Premise There is an understandable being x such that for no world w and being y does the greatness of y in w exceed the greatness of x in the actual world. Premise Hence There is a being x existing in the actual world such that for no world w and being y does the greatness of y in w exceed the greatness of x in the actual world. See Lewis Premise Hence There is in the understanding a unique thing than which there is no greater.
Premise Hence That thing than which there is no greater exists in reality.
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