An ontological argument is a
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
argument
An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
, made from an
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
basis, that is advanced in support of the
existence of God
The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized ...
. Such arguments tend to refer to the state of
being
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
or
existing. More specifically, ontological arguments are commonly conceived ''
a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
'' in regard to the organization of the universe, whereby, if such organizational structure is true,
God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
must
exist
eXist-db (or eXist for short) is an open source software project for NoSQL databases built on XML technology. It is classified as both a NoSQL document-oriented database system and a native XML database (and it provides support for XML, JSON, HTM ...
.
The first ontological argument in
Western Christian
Western Christianity is one of two sub-divisions of Christianity (Eastern Christianity being the other). Western Christianity is composed of the Latin Church and Western Protestantism, together with their offshoots such as the Old Catholic C ...
tradition
[Szatkowski, Miroslaw, ed. 2012. ''Ontological Proofs Today''. Ontos Verlag.
"There are three main periods in the history of ontological arguments. The first was in 11th century, when St. Anselm of Canterbury came up with the first ontological argument" (p. 22).] was proposed by
Saint Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm of Canterbury, OSB (; 1033/4–1109), also called ( it, Anselmo d'Aosta, link=no) after his birthplace and (french: Anselme du Bec, link=no) after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of the ...
in his 1078 work, ''
Proslogion
The ''Proslogion'' () is a prayer (or meditation), written by the medieval cleric Saint Anselm of Canterbury in 1077–1078, serving to reflect on the attributes of God in order to explain how God can possess seemingly contradictory qualities. Th ...
'' (), in which he defines God as "a being than which no greater can be conceived," and argues that such being must exist in the mind, even in that of the person who denies the existence of God.
[ Oppy, Graham. 2019 ]996
Year 996 ( CMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Japan
* February - Chotoku Incident: Fujiwara no Korechika and Takaie shoot an arrow at Retired Em ...
Ontological Arguments
" ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...
''. Retrieved 21 May 2020. From this, he suggests that if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality, because if it existed only in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible—one who exists both in mind and in reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality. Similarly, in the East,
Avicenna's Proof of the Truthful
The Proof of the Truthful ( ar, برهان الصديقين, burhān al-ṣiddīqīn, also translated Demonstration of the Truthful or Proof of the Veracious, among others) is a formal argument for proving the existence of God introduced by th ...
argued that there must be a "necessary existent".
Seventeenth-century French philosopher
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathem ...
employed a similar argument to Anselm's. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which center on the idea that God's existence is immediately
inferable from a "clear and distinct" idea of a supremely perfect being. In the early 18th century,
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathem ...
augmented Descartes' ideas in an attempt to prove that a "supremely perfect" being is a coherent concept. A more recent ontological argument came from
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an imme ...
, who proposed a
formal argument for God's existence.
Norman Malcolm
Norman Malcolm (; 11 June 1911 – 4 August 1990) was an American philosopher.
Biography
Malcolm was born in Selden, Kansas. He studied philosophy with O. K. Bouwsma at the University of Nebraska, then enrolled as a graduate student at Har ...
revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work;
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving epistemic justification), and logic.
From 1963 to 1982, ...
challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on
modal logic
Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other ...
. Attempts have also been made to validate Anselm's proof using an
automated theorem prover
Automated theorem proving (also known as ATP or automated deduction) is a subfield of automated reasoning and mathematical logic dealing with proving mathematical theorems by computer programs. Automated reasoning over mathematical proof was a maj ...
. Other arguments have been categorised as ontological, including those made by Islamic philosophers
Mulla Sadra
Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, more commonly known as Mullā Ṣadrā ( fa, ملا صدرا; ar, صدر المتألهین) (c. 1571/2 – c. 1635/40 CE / 980 – 1050 AH), was a Persian Twelver Shi'i Islamic mystic, philosopher, the ...
and
Allama Tabatabai
Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i or Sayyid Mohammad Hossein Tabataba'i (16 March 1903 – 15 November 1981) was an Iranian scholar, theorist, philosopher and one of the most prominent thinkers of modern Shia Islam. He is perhaps best known for his ''T ...
.
Just as the ontological argument has been popular, a number of criticisms and objections have also been mounted. Its first critic was
Gaunilo of Marmoutiers
Gaunilo or Gaunillon ( century) was a Benedictine monk of Marmoutier Abbey in Tours, France. He is best known for his contemporary criticism of the ontological argument for the existence of God which appeared in St Anselm's ''Proslogion''. I ...
, a contemporary of Anselm's. Gaunilo, suggesting that the ontological argument could be used to prove the existence of anything, uses the analogy of a perfect island. Such would be the first of many parodies, all of which attempted to show the
absurd consequences of the ontological argument. Later,
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
rejected the argument on the basis that humans cannot know God's nature.
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
also offered an
empirical
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
objection, criticising its lack of
evidential reasoning and rejecting the idea that anything can exist ''necessarily''.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
's critique was based on what he saw as the false premise that existence is a
predicate
Predicate or predication may refer to:
* Predicate (grammar), in linguistics
* Predication (philosophy)
* several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic:
**Predicate (mathematical logic)
**Propositional function
**Finitary relation, o ...
, arguing that "existing" adds nothing (including perfection) to the essence of a being. Thus, a "supremely perfect" being can be conceived not to exist. Finally, philosophers such as
C. D. Broad
Charlie Dunbar Broad (30 December 1887 – 11 March 1971), usually cited as C. D. Broad, was an English people, English epistemology, epistemologist, history of philosophy, historian of philosophy, philosophy of science, philosopher of sc ...
dismissed the coherence of a maximally great being, proposing that some attributes of greatness are incompatible with others, rendering "maximally great being" incoherent.
Contemporary defenders of the ontological argument include
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving epistemic justification), and logic.
From 1963 to 1982, ...
,
Yujin Nagasawa
Yujin Nagasawa (born 23 June 1975) is a Japanese-born British philosopher specialising in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of mind and applied philosophy.
Nagasawa is H.G. Wood Professor of the Philosophy of Religion (formerly known as ...
, and
Robert Maydole.
Classification
The traditional definition of an ontological argument was given by
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
.
He contrasted the ontological argument (literally any argument "concerned with being")
with the
cosmological
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
and physio-theoretical arguments.
According to the Kantian view, ontological arguments are those founded through ''
a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
'' reasoning.
Graham Oppy
Graham Robert Oppy (born 1960) is an Australian philosopher whose main area of research is the philosophy of religion. He currently holds the posts of Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University and serves as CEO ...
, who elsewhere expressed that he "see
no urgent reason" to depart from the traditional definition,
defined ontological arguments as those which begin with "nothing but analytic, a priori and necessary premises" and conclude that God exists. Oppy admits, however, that not all of the "traditional characteristics" of an ontological argument (i.e. analyticity, necessity, and a priority) are found in all ontological arguments
and, in his 2007 work ''Ontological Arguments and Belief in God'', suggested that a better definition of an ontological argument would employ only considerations "entirely internal to the
theistic
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with ''deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred to ...
worldview."
Oppy subclassified ontological arguments, based on the qualities of their premises, using the following qualities:
* definitional: arguments that invoke definitions.
* conceptual (or hyperintensional): arguments that invoke "the possession of certain kinds of ideas or concepts."
* modal: arguments that consider possibilities.
*
meinongian: arguments that assert "a distinction between different categories of existence."
* experiential: arguments that employ the idea of God existing solely to those who have had experience of him.
*
mereological: arguments that "draw on…the theory of the whole-part relation."
* higher-order: arguments that observe "that any collection of properties, that (a) does not include all properties and (b) is closed under entailment, is possibly jointly instantiated."
*
Hegelian: the arguments of
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
.
William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism. He is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist Univ ...
criticised Oppy's study as too vague for useful classification. Craig argues that an argument can be classified as ontological if it attempts to deduce the existence of God, along with other necessary truths, from his definition. He suggests that proponents of ontological arguments would claim that, if one fully understood the concept of God, one must accept his existence.
William L. Rowe
William Leonard Rowe ( July 26, 1931 – August 22, 2015) was a professor of philosophy at Purdue University who specialized in the philosophy of religion. His work played a leading role in the "remarkable revival of analytic philosophy of religi ...
defines ontological arguments as those which start from the definition of God and, using only ''a priori'' principles, conclude with God's existence.
Development
Although a version of the ontological argument appears explicitly in the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher
Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon (; grc, Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος ; c. 570 – c. 478 BC) was a Greek philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φ ...
and variations appear in writings by
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea (; grc-gre, Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia.
Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea, from a wealthy and illustrious family. His dates a ...
,
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, and the
Neoplatonists
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some ide ...
, the mainstream view is that the ontological argument was first clearly stated and developed by
Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm of Canterbury, OSB (; 1033/4–1109), also called ( it, Anselmo d'Aosta, link=no) after his birthplace and (french: Anselme du Bec, link=no) after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of th ...
.
Some scholars argue that Islamic philosopher
Avicenna
Ibn Sina ( fa, ابن سینا; 980 – June 1037 CE), commonly known in the West as Avicenna (), was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, philosophers, and writers of the Islamic G ...
(Ibn Sina) developed a
special kind of ontological argument before Anselm, while others have doubted this position.
Daniel Dombrowski
Daniel A. Dombrowski (born 1953) is an American philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at Seattle University. He was the president of the Metaphysical Society of America (2018–19).
Career
Dombrowski has authored twenty books and ov ...
marked three major stages in the development of the argument:
# Anselm's initial explicit formulation,
# the 18th-century criticisms of
Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...
and
Hume, and
# the identification of a second ontological argument in Anselm's ''
Proslogion
The ''Proslogion'' () is a prayer (or meditation), written by the medieval cleric Saint Anselm of Canterbury in 1077–1078, serving to reflect on the attributes of God in order to explain how God can possess seemingly contradictory qualities. Th ...
'' by 20th-century philosophers.
Anselm
![Anselm-CanterburyVit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Anselm-CanterburyVit.jpg)
Theologian and philosopher
Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm of Canterbury, OSB (; 1033/4–1109), also called ( it, Anselmo d'Aosta, link=no) after his birthplace and (french: Anselme du Bec, link=no) after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of th ...
(1033–1109) proposed an ontological argument in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of his ''Proslogion''. Anselm's argument was not presented in order to prove God's existence; rather, ''Proslogion'' was a work of meditation in which he documented how the idea of God became self-evident to him.
In Chapter 2 of the ''Proslogion'', Anselm defines God as a "being than which no greater can be conceived."
While Anselm has often been credited as the first to understand God as the greatest possible being, this perception was actually widely described among ancient Greek philosophers and early Christian writers. He suggests that even "the fool" can understand this concept, and this understanding itself means that the being must exist in the mind. The concept must exist either only in our mind, or in both our mind and in reality. If such a being exists only in our mind, then a greater being—that which exists in the mind and in reality—can be conceived (this argument is generally regarded as a ''
reductio ad absurdum
In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical arguments'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absu ...
'' because the view of the fool is proven to be inconsistent). Therefore, if we can conceive of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, it must exist in reality. Thus, a being than which nothing greater could be conceived, which Anselm defined as God, must exist in reality.
Anselm's argument in Chapter 2 can be summarized as follows:
# It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined).
# God exists as an idea in the mind.
# A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
# Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).
# But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)
# Therefore, God exists.
In Chapter 3, Anselm presents a further argument in the same vein:
# By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.
# A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.
# Thus, by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.
# But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
# Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.
# God exists in the mind as an idea.
# Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality.
This contains the notion of a being that cannot be conceived not to exist. He argued that if something can be conceived not to exist, then something greater can be conceived. Consequently, a thing than which nothing greater can be conceived cannot be conceived not to exist and so it must exist. This can be read as a restatement of the argument in Chapter 2, although
Norman Malcolm
Norman Malcolm (; 11 June 1911 – 4 August 1990) was an American philosopher.
Biography
Malcolm was born in Selden, Kansas. He studied philosophy with O. K. Bouwsma at the University of Nebraska, then enrolled as a graduate student at Har ...
believes it to be a different, stronger argument.
René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathem ...
(1596–1650) proposed a number of ontological arguments that differ from Anselm's formulation. Generally speaking, they are less formal arguments than they are natural
intuition
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...
.
In
''Meditation'', Book V, Descartes wrote:
Descartes argues that God's existence can be deduced from his nature, just as
geometric
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ca ...
ideas can be deduced from the nature of shapes—he used the deduction of the sizes of angles in a triangle as an example. He suggested that the concept of God is that of a supremely perfect being, holding all perfections. He seems to have assumed that existence is a predicate of a perfection. Thus, if the notion of God did not include existence, it would not be supremely perfect, as it would be lacking a perfection. Consequently, the notion of a supremely perfect God who does not exist, Descartes argues, is unintelligible. Therefore, according to his nature, God must exist.
Baruch Spinoza
In
Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
'
''Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being'' he wrote a section titled "Treating of God and What Pertains to Him", in which he discusses God's existence and what God is. He starts off by saying: "whether there is a God, this, we say, can be proved".
[Spinoza, B. (2002). ''Complete Works'' (S. Shirley & M. L. Morgan, Eds.), p. 37. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.] His proof for God follows a similar structure as Descartes' ontological argument. Descartes attempts to prove God's existence by arguing that there "must be some one thing that is supremely good, through which all good things have their goodness". Spinoza's argument differs in that he does not move straight from the conceivability of the greatest being to the existence of God, but rather uses a deductive argument from the idea of God. Spinoza says that man's ideas do not come from himself, but from some sort of external cause. Thus the things whose characteristics a man knows must have come from some prior source. So, if man has the idea of God, then God must exist before this thought, because man cannot create an idea of his own imagination.
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
saw a problem with Descartes' ontological argument: that Descartes had not asserted the coherence of a "supremely perfect" being. He proposed that, unless the coherence of a supremely perfect being could be demonstrated, the ontological argument fails. Leibniz saw perfection as impossible to analyse; therefore, it would be impossible to demonstrate that all perfections are incompatible. He reasoned that all perfections can exist together in a single entity, and that Descartes' argument is still valid.
Mulla Sadra
Mulla Sadra
Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, more commonly known as Mullā Ṣadrā ( fa, ملا صدرا; ar, صدر المتألهین) (c. 1571/2 – c. 1635/40 CE / 980 – 1050 AH), was a Persian Twelver Shi'i Islamic mystic, philosopher, the ...
(c. 1571/2 – 1640) was an
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
Shia
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam. It holds that the Prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad designated Ali, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his S ...
Islamic philosopher
Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—falsafa (literally: "philosophy"), which refers to philosophy as well as logi ...
who was influenced by earlier Muslim philosophers such as Avicenna and
Suhrawardi, as well as the Sufi metaphysician
Ibn 'Arabi
Ibn ʿArabī ( ar, ابن عربي, ; full name: , ; 1165–1240), nicknamed al-Qushayrī (, ) and Sulṭān al-ʿĀrifīn (, , 'Sultan of the Knowers'), was an Arab Andalusian Muslim scholar, mystic, poet, and philosopher, extremely influenti ...
. Sadra discussed Avicenna's arguments for the existence of God, claiming that they were not ''a priori''. He rejected the argument on the basis that
existence precedes essence
The proposition that existence precedes essence (french: l'existence précède l'essence) is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence (the nature) of a thing is more fundamental and im ...
, or that the existence of human beings is more fundamental than their essence.
Sadra put forward a new argument, known as
Seddiqin Argument or ''Argument of the Righteous''. The argument attempts to prove the existence of God through the reality of existence, and to conclude with God's pre-eternal necessity. In this argument, a thing is demonstrated through itself, and a path is identical with the goal. In other arguments, the
truth
Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs ...
is attained from an external source, such as from the possible to the necessary, from the originated to the eternal origin, or from motion to the unmoved mover. In the argument of the righteous, there is no middle term other than the truth.
His version of the ontological argument can be summarized as follows:
# There is existence
# Existence is a perfection above which no perfection may be conceived
# God is perfection and perfection in existence
# Existence is a singular and simple reality; there is no metaphysical pluralism
# That singular reality is graded in intensity in a scale of perfection (that is, a denial of a pure
monism
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
).
# That scale must have a limit point, a point of greatest intensity and of greatest existence.
# Hence God exists.
Mulla Sadra describes this argument in his main work ''al-asfar al-arba‘a''
our journeysas follows:
Existence is a single, objective and simple reality, and there is no difference between its parts, unless in terms of perfection and imperfection, strength, and weakness... And the culmination of its perfection, where there is nothing more perfect, is its independence from any other thing. Nothing more perfect should be conceivable, as every imperfect thing belongs to another thing and needs this other to become perfect. And, as it has already been explicated, perfection is prior to imperfection, actuality to potency, and existence to non-existence. Also, it has been explained that the perfection of a thing is the thing itself, and not a thing in addition to it. Thus, either existence is independent of others or it is in need of others. The former is the Necessary, which is pure existence. Nothing is more perfect than Him. And in Him there is no room for non-existence or imperfection. The latter is other than Him, and is regarded as His acts and effects, and for other than Him there is no subsistence, unless through Him. For there is no imperfection in the reality of existence, and imperfection is added to existence only because of the quality of being caused, as it is impossible for an effect to be identical with its cause in terms of existence.
G. W. F. Hegel
In response to Kant's rejection of traditional speculative philosophy in his ''First Critique,'' and to Kant's rejection of the Ontological Argument,
G. W. F. Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
proposed throughout his lifetime works that Immanuel Kant was mistaken. Hegel took aim at Kant's famous $100 argument. Kant had said that "it is one thing to have $100 in my ''mind'', and quite a different thing to have $100 in my ''pocket''." According to Kant, we can ''imagine'' a God, but that doesn't prove that God ''exists''.
Hegel argued that Kant's formulation was inaccurate. Hegel referred to Kant's error in all of his major works from 1807 to 1831. For Hegel, "The True is the Whole" (PhG, para. 20). For Hegel, the True is the ''Geist'' which is to say, Spirit, which is to say, God. Thus God is the Whole of the Cosmos, both unseen as well as seen. This error of Kant, therefore, was his comparison of a finite (contingent) entity such as $100, with Infinite (necessary) Being, i.e. the Whole.
When regarded as the Whole of Being, unseen as well as seen, and not simply "one being among many," then the Ontological Argument flourishes, and its logical necessity become obvious, according to Hegel.
The final book contract that Hegel signed in the year that he died, 1831, was for a book entitled, ''Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God.'' Hegel died before finishing the book. It was to have three sections: (1) The Cosmological Argument; (2) The Teleological Argument; and (3) the Ontological Argument. Hegel died before beginning sections 2 and 3. His work is published today as incomplete, with only part of his Cosmological Argument intact.
To peruse Hegel's ideas on the Ontological Argument, scholars have had to piece together his arguments from various paragraphs from his other works. Certain scholars have suggested that all of Hegel's philosophy composes an ontological argument.
Kurt Gödel
Mathematician Kurt Gödel provided a formal argument for
God's existence
The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized ...
. The argument was constructed by Gödel but not published until long after his death. He provided an argument based on modal logic; he uses the conception of properties, ultimately concluding with God's existence.
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
Axiom 2: Any property entailed by—i.e., strictly implied by—a positive property is positive
Axiom 3: The property of being God-like is positive
Axiom 4: If a property is positive, then it is necessarily positive
Axiom 5: Necessary existence is positive
Axiom 6: For any property P, if P is positive, then being necessarily P is positive
Theorem 1: If a property is positive, then it is consistent, i.e., possibly exemplified
Corollary 1: The property of being God-like is consistent
Theorem 2: If something is God-like, then the property of being God-like is an essence of that thing
Theorem 3: Necessarily, the property of being God-like is exemplified
Gödel defined being "god-like" as having every positive property. He left the term "positive" undefined. Gödel proposed that it is understood in an aesthetic and moral sense, or alternatively as the opposite of
privation
Privation is the absence or lack of basic necessities.
Child psychology
In child psychology, privation occurs when a child has no opportunity to form a relationship with a parent figure, or when such relationship is distorted, due to their treatm ...
(the absence of necessary qualities in the universe). He warned against interpreting "positive" as being morally or aesthetically "good" (the greatest advantage and least disadvantage), as this includes negative characteristics. Instead, he suggested that "positive" should be interpreted as being perfect, or "purely good", without negative characteristics.
Gödel's listed theorems follow from the axioms, so most criticisms of the theory focus on those axioms or the assumptions made. For instance, axiom 5 does not explain why necessary existence is positive instead of possible existence, an axiom which the whole argument follows from. Or, for Axiom 1, to use another example, the negation of a positive property both includes the lack of any properties and the opposite property, and only the lack of any properties is a privation of a property, not the opposite property (for instance, the lack of happiness can symbolize either sadness or having no emotion, but only lacking emotion could be seen as a privation, or negative property). Either of these axioms being seen as not mapping to reality would cause the whole argument to fail. Oppy argued that Gödel gives no definition of "positive properties". He suggested that if these positive properties form a set, there is no reason to believe that any such set exists which is theologically interesting, or that there is only one set of positive properties which is theologically interesting.
Modal versions of the ontological argument
Modal logic
Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other ...
deals with the logic of possibility as well as necessity. Paul Oppenheimer and
Edward N. Zalta
Edward Nouri Zalta (; born March 16, 1952) is an American philosopher who is a senior research scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He received his BA at Rice University in 1975 and his PhD fro ...
note that, for Anselm's ''Proslogion'' chapter 2, "Many recent authors have interpreted this argument as a modal one." In the phrase 'that than which none greater can be conceived', the word 'can' could be construed as referring to a possibility. Nevertheless, the authors write that "the logic of the ontological argument itself doesn't include inferences based on this modality." However, there have been newer, avowedly modal logic versions of the ontological argument, and on the application of this type of logic to the argument, James Franklin Harris writes:
fferent versions of the ontological argument, the so-called "modal" versions of the argument, which arguably avoid the part of Anselm's argument that "treats existence as a predicate," began to emerge. The odal logic versionof these forms of defense of the ontological argument has been the most significant development.
Hartshorne and Malcolm
Charles Hartshorne
Charles Hartshorne (; June 5, 1897 – October 9, 2000) was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and ...
and
Norman Malcolm
Norman Malcolm (; 11 June 1911 – 4 August 1990) was an American philosopher.
Biography
Malcolm was born in Selden, Kansas. He studied philosophy with O. K. Bouwsma at the University of Nebraska, then enrolled as a graduate student at Har ...
are primarily responsible for introducing modal versions of the argument into the contemporary debate. Both claimed that Anselm had two versions of the ontological argument, the second of which was a modal logic version. According to James Harris, this version is represented by Malcolm thus:
If it hat than which nothing greater can be conceived
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
can be conceived at all it must exist. For no one who denies or doubts the existence of a being a greater than which is inconceivable, denies or doubts that if it did exist its nonexistence, either in reality or in the understanding, would be impossible. For otherwise it would not be a being a greater than which cannot be conceived. But as to whatever can be conceived but does not exist: if it were to exist its nonexistence either in reality or in the understanding would be possible. Therefore, if a being a greater than which cannot be conceived, can even be conceived, it must exist.
Hartshorne says that, for Anselm, "necessary existence is a superior manner of existence to ordinary, contingent existence and that ordinary, contingent existence is a defect." For Hartshorne, both Hume and Kant focused only upon whether what exists is greater than what does not exist. However, "Anselm's point is that what exists and cannot not exist is greater than that which exists and can not exist." This avoids the question of whether or not existence is a predicate.
Referring to the two ontological arguments proposed by Anselm in Chapters 2 and 3 of his ''Proslogion'', Malcolm supported Kant's criticism of Anselm's argument in Chapter 2: that existence cannot be a perfection of something. However, he identified what he sees as the second ontological argument in Chapter 3 which is not susceptible to such criticism.
In Anselm's second argument, Malcolm identified two key points: first, that a being whose non-existence is ''logically'' impossible is greater than a being whose non-existence is logically possible, and second, that God is a being "than which a greater cannot be conceived". Malcolm supported that definition of God and suggested that it makes the proposition of God's existence a
logically necessarily true statement (in the same way that "a square has four sides" is logically necessarily true).
Thus, while rejecting the idea of existence itself being a perfection, Malcolm argued that ''necessary'' existence is a perfection. This, he argued, proved the existence of an unsurpassably great necessary being.
Jordan Sobel writes that Malcolm is incorrect in assuming that the argument he is expounding is to be found entirely in Proslogion chapter 3. "Anselm intended in Proslogion III not an independent argument for the existence of God, but a continuation of the argument of Proslogion II."
Alvin Plantinga
![AlvinPlantinga](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/AlvinPlantinga.JPG)
Christian
Analytic philosopher
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United St ...
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving epistemic justification), and logic.
From 1963 to 1982, ...
criticized Malcolm's and Hartshorne's arguments, and offered an alternative.
Plantinga developed his argument in the books titled ''The nature of necessity'' (1974; ch. 10) and ''God, Freedom and Evil'' (1975; part 2 c).
He argued that, if Malcolm does prove the necessary existence of the greatest possible being, it follows that there is a being which exists in all worlds whose greatness in ''some'' worlds is not surpassed. It does not, he argued, demonstrate that such a being has unsurpassed greatness in this actual world.
In an attempt to resolve this problem, Plantinga differentiated between "greatness" and "excellence". A being's excellence in a particular world depends only on its properties in that world; a being's greatness depends on its properties in all worlds. Therefore, the greatest possible being must have maximal excellence in every possible world. Plantinga then restated Malcolm's argument, using the concept of "maximal greatness". He argued that it is possible for a being with maximal greatness to exist, so a being with maximal greatness exists in a possible world. If this is the case, then a being with maximal greatness exists in every world, and therefore in this world.
The conclusion relies on a form of
modal axiom 5 of S5, which states that if something is possibly true, then its possibility is necessary (it is possibly true in all worlds; in symbols:
). Plantinga's version of S5 suggests that "To say that p is possibly necessarily true is to say that, with regard to one possible world, it is true at all worlds; but in that case it is true at all worlds, and so it is simply necessary." In other words, to say that p is necessarily possible means that p is true in at least one possible world W (if it is an actual world; Plantinga also used Axioms B of S5:
) and thus it is true in all worlds because its omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection are its essence.
In the 1975 version of the argument, Plantinga clarified that
"it follows that if W had been actual, it would have been
impossible that there be no such being. That is, if W had been actual,
:(33) ''There is no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being'',
would have been an impossible proposition. But if a proposition is impossible in at least one possible world, then it is impossible in every possible world; what is impossible does not vary from world to world. Accordingly (33) is impossible in
the actual world, i.e., impossible ''simpliciter''. But if it is impossible that there be no
such being, then there actually exists a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect; this being, furthermore, has these qualities ''
essentially'' and exists
in every possible world."
A version of his argument may be formulated as follows:
# A being has ''maximal excellence'' in a given possible world ''W'' if and only if it is
omnipotent
Omnipotence is the quality of having unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as one of ...
,
omniscient
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...
and wholly good in ''W''; and
# A being has ''maximal greatness'' if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.
# It is possible that there is a being that has maximal greatness. (Premise)
# Therefore, possibly, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being exists.
# Therefore, (by axiom 5 of S5) it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
# Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
Plantinga argued that, although the first premise is not rationally established, it is not contrary to reason.
Michael Martin argued that, if certain components of perfection are contradictory, such as omnipotence and omniscience, then the first premise is contrary to reason. Martin also proposed parodies of the argument, suggesting that the existence of anything can be demonstrated with Plantinga's argument, provided it is defined as perfect or special in every possible world.
Another Christian philosopher,
William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism. He is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist Univ ...
, characterizes Plantinga's argument in a slightly different way:
# It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
# If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
# If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
# If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
# If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
# Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
According to Craig, premises (2)–(5) are relatively uncontroversial among philosophers, but "the epistemic entertainability of premise (1) (or its denial) does not guarantee its metaphysical possibility." Furthermore the philosopher Richard M. Gale argued that premise three, the "possibility premise",
begs the question
In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: ') is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it.
For example:
* "Green is ...
. He stated that one only has the epistemic right to accept the premise if one understands the nested
modal operator
A modal connective (or modal operator) is a logical connective for modal logic. It is an operator which forms propositions from propositions. In general, a modal operator has the "formal" property of being non-truth-functional in the following sen ...
s, and that if one understands them within the system S5—without which the argument fails—then one understands that "possibly necessarily" is in essence the same as "necessarily". Thus the premise begs the question because the conclusion is embedded within it.
On S5 systems in general, James Garson writes that "the words ‘necessarily’ and ‘possibly’, have many different uses. So the acceptability of axioms for modal logic depends on which of these uses we have in mind."
Sankara's dictum
An approach to supporting the possibility premise in Plantinga's version of the argument was attempted by
Alexander Pruss
Alexander Robert Pruss (born January 5, 1973) is a Canadian philosopher and mathematician. He is currently a professor of philosophy and the co-director of graduate studies in philosophy at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
His best known book i ...
. He started with the 8th–9th-century AD Indian philosopher
Sankara's dictum that if something is impossible, we cannot have a perception (even a non-veridical one) that it is the case. It follows that if we have a perception that ''p'', then even though it might not be the case that ''p'', it is at least the case that ''possibly p''. If mystics in fact perceive the existence of a maximally great being, it follows that the existence of a maximally great being is at least possible.
Automated reasoning
Paul Oppenheimer and
Edward N. Zalta
Edward Nouri Zalta (; born March 16, 1952) is an American philosopher who is a senior research scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He received his BA at Rice University in 1975 and his PhD fro ...
used an automated theorem prover—
Prover9 Prover9 is an automated theorem prover for first-order and equational logic developed by William McCune.
Description
Prover9 is the successor of the Otter theorem prover also developed by William McCune. Prover9 is noted for producing relatively ...
—to validate Anselm's ontological thesis. Prover9 subsequently discovered a simpler, formally valid (if not necessarily
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...
) ontological argument from a single non-logical premise.
Christoph Benzmuller and Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo used an automated theorem prover to validate Scott's version of Gödel's ontological argument. It has been shown by the same researchers that Gödel's ontological argument is inconsistent. However, Scott's version of Gödel's ontological argument is consistent and thus valid.
Other formulations
The novelist and philosopher
Iris Murdoch
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her fi ...
formulated a version of the ontological argument in her book ''Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals''. Though she believed her version of the argument to be superior, she did reserve praise for Descartes' formulation. Her argument was phrased by her in the following way:
There is no plausible 'proof' of the existence of God except some form of the ontological proof, a 'proof' incidentally which must now take on an increased importance in theology as a result of the recent 'de-mythologising'. If considered carefully, however, the ontological proof is seen to be not exactly a proof but rather a clear assertion of faith (it is often admitted to be appropriate only for those already convinced), which could only be confidently be made on a certain amount of experience. This assertion could be put in various ways. The desire for God is certain to receive a response. My conception of God contains the certainty of its own reality. God is an object of love which uniquely excludes doubt and relativism. Such obscure statements would of course receive little sympathy from analytical philosophers, who would divide their content between psychological fact and metaphysical nonsense.
In other words, atheists may feel objections to such an argument purely on the basis that they rely on
a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
methodology. Her formulations rely upon the human connections of God and man, and what such a faith does to people.
Meta-logical approach
The italian journalist Thomas Emilio Villa argues that if we define God as an entity "than which no greater can be conceived", then still would be under a bigger idea, the ones of existence or non-existence. If God is God, must be a greater idea than the one of existence or non-existence. It is beyond it, otherwise the bigger idea is not "God" but the idea of "existence" itself. If God is God, then must be beyond the ideas of existence and non-existence. It must be a meta-existing being. Therefore the question whether God exist or do not exist is a non-sense: by definition, the idea of God must be beyond existence or its status would not the one of a proper God.
Furthermore, if God is God, then it must be beyond logic, or its status would not be "a being than which no greater can be conceived", since Logic would be greater than God.
By definition, God must be beyond Logic, and must be conceived only in a Meta-logical context beyond our logical and necessarily logical approach.
Therefore, according to Villa, we cannot deal with the idea of God from our logical approach, and the idea itself of an existing or non existing God is a non-sense by definition.
Criticisms and objections
Gaunilo
One of the earliest recorded objections to Anselm's argument was raised by one of Anselm's contemporaries,
Gaunilo of Marmoutiers
Gaunilo or Gaunillon ( century) was a Benedictine monk of Marmoutier Abbey in Tours, France. He is best known for his contemporary criticism of the ontological argument for the existence of God which appeared in St Anselm's ''Proslogion''. I ...
. He invited his reader to conceive an island "more excellent" than any other island. He suggested that, according to Anselm's proof, this island must necessarily exist, as an island that exists would be more excellent.
Gaunilo's criticism does not explicitly demonstrate a flaw in Anselm's argument; rather, it argues that if Anselm's argument is sound, so are many other arguments of the same
logical form
In logic, logical form of a statement is a precisely-specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system. Informally, the logical form attempts to formalize a possibly ambiguous statement into a statement with a precise, unambiguo ...
, which cannot be accepted. He offered a further criticism of Anselm's ontological argument, suggesting that the notion of God cannot be conceived, as Anselm had asserted. He argued that many
theists
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with ''deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred to ...
would accept that God, by nature, cannot be fully comprehended. Therefore, if humans cannot fully conceive of God, the ontological argument cannot work.
Anselm responded to Gaunilo's criticism by arguing that the argument applied only to concepts with
necessary existence. He suggested that only a being with necessary existence can fulfill the remit of "that than which nothing greater can be conceived". Furthermore, a contingent object, such as an island, could always be improved and thus could never reach a state of perfection. For that reason, Anselm dismissed any argument that did not relate to a being with necessary existence.
Other parodies have been presented, including the devil
corollary
In mathematics and logic, a corollary ( , ) is a theorem of less importance which can be readily deduced from a previous, more notable statement. A corollary could, for instance, be a proposition which is incidentally proved while proving another ...
, the no devil corollary and the extreme no devil corollary. The devil corollary proposes that a being than which nothing worse can be conceived exists in the understanding (sometimes the term lesser is used in place of worse). Using Anselm's logical form, the parody argues that if it exists in the understanding, a worse being would be one that exists in reality; thus, such a being exists. The no devil corollary is similar, but argues that a worse being would be one that does not exist in reality, so does not exist. The extreme no devil corollary advances on this, proposing that a worse being would be that which does not exist in the understanding, so such a being exists neither in reality nor in the understanding.
Timothy Chambers argued that the devil corollary is more powerful than Gaunilo's challenge because it withstands the challenges that may defeat Gaunilo's parody. He also claimed that the no devil corollary is a strong challenge, as it "underwrites" the no devil corollary, which "threatens Anselm's argument at its very foundations".
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
, while proposing
five proofs of God's existence in his ''
Summa Theologica
The ''Summa Theologiae'' or ''Summa Theologica'' (), often referred to simply as the ''Summa'', is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), a scholasticism, scholastic theologian and Doctor of the Church. It is a compendium of all ...
'', objected to Anselm's argument. He suggested that people cannot know the nature of God and, therefore, cannot conceive of God in the way Anselm proposed. The ontological argument would be meaningful only to someone who understands the essence of God completely. Aquinas reasoned that, as only God can completely know His essence, only He could use the argument. His rejection of the ontological argument led other Catholic theologians to also reject the argument.
David Hume
![David Hume](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/David_Hume.jpg)
Scottish philosopher and empiricist
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
argued that nothing can be proven to exist using only ''a priori'' reasoning.
In his ''
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'' is a philosophical work by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, first published in 1779. Through dialogue, three philosophers named Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes debate the nature of God's existence. Whet ...
'', the character Cleanthes proposes a criticism:
Hume also suggested that, as we have no abstract idea of existence (apart from as part of our ideas of other objects), we cannot claim that the idea of God implies his existence. He suggested that any conception of God we may have, we can conceive either of existing or of not existing. He believed that existence is not a quality (or perfection), so a completely perfect being need not exist. Thus, he claimed that it is not a contradiction to deny God's existence.
Although this criticism is directed against a
cosmological argument
A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe o ...
, similar to that of
Samuel Clarke
Samuel Clarke (11 October 1675 – 17 May 1729) was an English philosopher and Anglican cleric. He is considered the major British figure in philosophy between John Locke and George Berkeley.
Early life and studies
Clarke was born in Norwich, ...
in his first
Boyle Lecture
The Boyle Lectures are named after Robert Boyle, a prominent natural philosopher of the 17th century and son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. Under the terms of his Will, Robert Boyle endowed a series of lectures or sermons (originally eight e ...
, it has been applied to ontological arguments as well.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
put forward an influential criticism of the ontological argument in his ''
Critique of Pure Reason''.
[ (first edition, pp. 592–603; second edition, pp. 620–631)] His criticism is primarily directed at Descartes, but also attacks Leibniz. It is shaped by his central distinction between
analytic and synthetic propositions. In an analytic proposition, the predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; in a synthetic proposition, the predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept.
Kant questions the intelligibility of the concept of a necessary being. He considers examples of necessary propositions, such as "a triangle has three angles", and rejects the transfer of this logic to the
existence of God
The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized ...
. First, he argues that such necessary propositions are necessarily true only if such a being exists: ''If'' a triangle exists, it must have three angles. The necessary proposition, he argues, does not make the existence of a triangle necessary. Thus he argues that, if the proposition "X exists" is posited, it would follow that, ''if'' X exists, it exists necessarily; this does not mean that X exists in reality. Second, he argues that contradictions arise only when the predicate is rejected but the subject is maintained and, therefore, a judgement of non-existence cannot be a contradiction, as it denies the subject.
Kant then proposes that the statement "God exists" must be analytic or synthetic—the predicate must be inside or outside of the subject, respectively. If the proposition is analytic, as the ontological argument takes it to be, then the statement would be true only because of the meaning given to the words. Kant claims that this is merely a tautology and cannot say anything about reality. However, if the statement is synthetic, the ontological argument does not work, as the existence of God is not contained within the definition of God (and, as such, evidence for God would need to be found).
Kant goes on to write, "'being' is evidently not a real predicate"
and cannot be part of the concept of something. He proposes that existence is not a predicate, or quality. This is because existence does not add to the essence of a being, but merely indicates its occurrence in reality. He states that by taking the subject of God with all its predicates and then asserting that God exists, "I add no new predicate to the conception of God". He argues that the ontological argument works only if existence is a predicate; if this is not so, he claims the ontological argument is invalidated, as it is then conceivable a completely perfect being doesn't exist.
In addition, Kant claims that the concept of God is not one of a particular sense; rather, it is an "object of pure thought".
He asserts that God exists outside the realm of experience and nature. Because we cannot experience God through experience, Kant argues that it is impossible to know how we would verify God's existence. This is in contrast to material concepts, which can be verified by means of the senses.
Douglas Gasking
Australian philosopher Douglas Gasking (1911–1994) developed a version of the ontological argument meant to prove God's non-existence. It was not intended to be serious; rather, its purpose was to illustrate the problems Gasking saw in the ontological argument.
Gasking asserted that the creation of the world is the most marvellous achievement imaginable. The merit of such an achievement is the product of its quality and the creator's disability: the greater the disability of the creator, the more impressive the achievement. Non-existence, Gasking asserts, would be the greatest handicap. Therefore, if the universe is the product of an existent creator, we could conceive of a greater being—one which does not exist. A non-existent creator is greater than one which exists, so God does not exist. Gasking's proposition that the greatest disability would be non-existence is a response to Anselm's assumption that existence is a predicate and perfection. Gasking uses this logic to assume that non-existence must be a disability.
Graham Oppy criticized the argument, viewing it as a weak parody of the ontological argument. He stated that, although it may be accepted that it would be a greater achievement for a non-existent creator to create something than a creator who exists, there is no reason to assume that a non-existent creator would be a greater being. He continued by arguing that there is no reason to view the creation of the world as "the most marvellous achievement imaginable". Finally, he stated that it may be inconceivable for a non-existent being to create anything at all.
William L. Rowe
American philosopher of religion
William L. Rowe
William Leonard Rowe ( July 26, 1931 – August 22, 2015) was a professor of philosophy at Purdue University who specialized in the philosophy of religion. His work played a leading role in the "remarkable revival of analytic philosophy of religi ...
notably believed that the structure of the ontological argument was such that it inherently
begs the question
In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: ') is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it.
For example:
* "Green is ...
of God's existence, that is to say, that one must have a presupposed belief in God's existence in order to accept the argument's conclusion. To illustrate this, Rowe devises the concept of a "unicornex," defined as a "unicorn that actually exists." Note that some possible object is a ''unicorn'', but since in fact ''no unicorns exist'', no possible object is a unicornex. Thus, in order to know that unicornexes are possible, you must know that unicornexes exist. Rowe believes that this is analogous to the ontological argument's conception of God in the formulation of the greatest conceivable being: the greatest conceivable being is an omnipotent, omnipowerful, supremely perfect, ''existing'' being. Nothing in that definition explicitly demonstrates existence, it is simply added on as a necessary philosophical quality in the same sense that the unicornex is given the quality of existence as well. Therefore, to Rowe, there is no way to know the existence of the greatest conceivable being without already knowing that he exists — the definition simply begs the question.
Coherence of a maximally great being
In his development of the ontological argument, Leibniz attempted to demonstrate the coherence of a supremely perfect being.
C. D. Broad countered that if two characteristics necessary for God's perfection are incompatible with a third, the notion of a supremely perfect being becomes incoherent. The ontological argument assumes the definition of God purported by
classical theism
Classical theism is a form of theism in which God is characterized as the absolutely metaphysically ultimate being, in contrast to other conceptions such as pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, deism and process theism.
Classical theism is a for ...
: that God is
omnipotent
Omnipotence is the quality of having unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as one of ...
,
omniscient
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...
, and morally perfect.
Kenneth Einar Himma
Kenneth Einar Himma is an American philosopher, author, lawyer, academic and lecturer.
Born in Seattle, Himma earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois in 1985, his masters from the University of California in 1987, and his d ...
claimed that omniscience and omnipotence may be incompatible: if God is omnipotent, then he should be able to create a being with free will; if he is omniscient, then he should know exactly what such a being will do (which may technically render them without free will). This analysis would render the ontological argument incoherent, as the characteristics required of a maximally great being cannot coexist in one being, thus such a being could not exist.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
, during his early
Hegelian
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
phase, accepted the argument; he once exclaimed: "Great God in Boots!—the ontological argument is sound!" However, he later criticized the argument, asserting that "the argument does not, to a modern mind, seem very convincing, but it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies." He drew a distinction between existence and essence, arguing that the essence of a person can be described and their existence still remain in question.
[ (Book 3, Part 1, Section 11)]
Notes
References
Bibliography
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* and in ''Knowledge and Certainty: Essays and Lectures'' by Norman Malcolm, Cornell University Press, 1975) .
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External links
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History of the Ontological Argumentwith an annotated bibliography
*
ttp://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anselm-critics.html Medieval Sourcebook: Philosophers' Criticisms of Anselm's Ontological Argument for the Being of God* Paul E. Oppenheimer &
Edward N. Zalta
Edward Nouri Zalta (; born March 16, 1952) is an American philosopher who is a senior research scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He received his BA at Rice University in 1975 and his PhD fro ...
,
On the Logic of the Ontological Argument from James Tomberlin ed., ''Philosophical Perspectives 5: The Philosophy of Religion'' (Atascadero: Ridgeview, 1991) pp. 509–529
* Gregory S. Neal,
from ''Grace Incarnate'' (1990)
* Maciej Nowicki,
Anselm and Russell ''Logic and Logical Philosophy'' (2006) 15:355-368.
* Brown, Paterson
''Analysis'', 1961.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ontological Argument
Arguments for the existence of God
Scholasticism
de:Gottesbeweis#Der ontologische Gottesbeweis