Ontological Argument Proving God's Existence
God is the greatest thing we can think of. Things can exist only in our imaginations or they can also exist in reality.
Things that exist in reality are always better than the things that only exist in our imaginations.
If god existed only in our imaginations, he wouldn't be the greatest thing that we can think of, because God in reality would be better.
Therefore, God must exist in reality!
Atheists?
Things that exist in reality are always better than the things that only exist in our imaginations.
If god existed only in our imaginations, he wouldn't be the greatest thing that we can think of, because God in reality would be better.
Therefore, God must exist in reality!
Atheists?
Comments (187)
I doubt this. Think of Hell.
So let's take strength as one such trait. Am I stronger than Superman because I exist, or is he stronger than me because he's imagined to have the strength to move planets?
I can imagine someone stronger or wiser or nicer or richer than any real person. This doesn't change just because you qualify the trait as being the strongest/wisest/nicest/richest possible.
Where is your proof for this premise?
Quoting Harjas
Likewise, your proof for this premise?
Quoting Harjas
Again, proof for this?
Finally, even if you proved all of this, you would have proven that a thing which you call God exists. You will not have demonstrated anything about the properties of this God, nor what we should do about his existence which are the real questions of Theism.
Yes, otherwise philosophy is just a collection of 'stuff people reckon'.
Another point to make; whatever's going on in my head when I suppose that I'm imagining the greatest being imaginable is the same whether such a being exists or not. The existence of a corresponding entity in real life does not affect the content of my imagination.
Perhaps we might define "the greatest being imaginable" in such a way that there must be a corresponding entity in real life, and so say that if there isn't a corresponding entity in real life then whatever it is I'm imagining isn't the greatest being imaginable, even though I suppose it to be, but then the argument presented above begs the question.
Cool! There is now a huge mountain of gold in my backyard. I imagined it, so it must be there.
This doesn’t said that things exist in our imagination will also exists in reality! lost the context?
Things that exist in reality are always better than the things that only exist in our imaginations.
If the greatest gold mountain existed only in our imaginations, then it wouldn't be the greatest mountain of gold that we can think of, because the greatest gold mountain in reality would be better.
Therefore, the greatest gold mountain must exist in reality!
Can't you replace "God" with any x?
The greatest x is the best x we can think of. Things can exist only in our imaginations or they can also exist in reality.
Things that exist in reality are always better than the things that only exist in our imaginations.
If the greatest x existed only in our imaginations, then it wouldn't be the greatest x that we can think of, because the greatest x in reality would be better.
Therefore, the greatest x must exist in reality!
You could replace "x" with the greatest invisible flying man or anything else you'd like to imagine.
I don't identify as an atheist, by the way. I just don't think it's a good argument.
This made me laugh.
Quoting Michael
This is the crux of the issue, and "traits" is not a valid answer.
"Better" is an entire subjective thing. Something cannot be objectively "the best", it can only be the best from a certain point of view. And why would a deity be required to conform to our human point of view?
It was rubbish 2000 years ago and it remains rubbish.
This also speaks to the nature of good and evil, in that fullness must be descriptive of good, and that evil is, 'privatio boni' (the lack of good, or fullness)
I am not a fan of being told what to think. Personally, I think Reality is the greatest thing I can think of. Whether or not that includes a god remains to be seen, but I lean towards no.
Quoting Harjas
Minor quibble - why can't it be both? Or neither? You exist...yet I can also hold you in my imagination.
Quoting Harjas
If I imagine the genocide of an entire population of innocent people, then the real genocide of those people is "better" than the one in my imagination?
Quoting Harjas
If something exists in my imagination then i can make it as great or as not great as I wish. Still has nothing to do with the existence of that something in reality. And again, being told what is "great" and "not as great" in my own imagination - not a fan.
Quoting Harjas
Meh.
In my imagination god is laughing at someone telling her that she must exist. The reality would, of course, be better.
Just a note: I don't know if this is how Harjas meant it, but traditionally the "God is the greatest thing we can think of" premise doesn't mean we can't think of anything greater than God, it means that whatever the greatest thing is that we can think of, we will define as God.
Quoting Harjas
Notice the material conditional, 'if'. The passage should read: 'If God existed only in our imaginations, he wouldn't be the greatest thing we can think of, because, if he existed, God in reality would be greater. Therefore, if God existed, God would exist in reality".
[I]Every[/i] 'ontological argument for God' engages in this slight of hand: beginning with a material conditional and then silently dropping it along the way. Once you know to look out for it, its kinda fun to play the 'spot the illicit shift from conditioned to unconditioned (from 'if' to 'existence') in all 'ontological arguments'. The OP's phrasing, 'God in reality would be greater', actually retains the conditional lanaguge even as it pretends not to notice it.
It's an argument that is broken at the very level of its form, let alone any of its content. Moreover, this is an issue that's been well known since Kant, and it's completely ludicrous that the argument is still trotted out as often as it is. Its been a sham of an argument since Anselem, it remains a sham now.
Thank you for that post. If you hadn't said it, I would have.
Your argument relies on the assumption that God exists in either our imagination or reality, or both.
God existing in our imaginations would still be the greatest thing we can think of since we are still the ones thinking of it. Therefore, you are no closer to proving the existence of God.
Hi, I need help with this argument.
The explicit form of the argument is given below:
1. God is the greatest being imaginable
2. If God is the greatest being imaginable then God exists
Therefore
3. God exists
I can't deny premise 1 because God IS the greatest being imaginable.
I can't deny premise 2 because the greatest being MUST exist
So, the argument is a modus ponens (a valid form) with true premises. In other words, it's a sound argument and so the conclusion 3. God exists MUST be true.
Where is the flaw in the argument?
I see.. Existence is part of the definition of God as the greatest being. So there isn't an argument at all. God is being defined into existence. Am I making sense?
There exists a being, such that, it exists.
Therefore, it exists.
Or,
Imagine a being, such that it cannot fail to exist.
Therefore, it exists.
(That's Plantinga's version, only he obfuscates it a bit.)
Second point is that in no classical theology is it said that God exists. There is a distinction in pre-modern philosophies, now impossible to articulate, between 'being as such' and phenomena, or between creator and created. That distinction is practically impossible to discuss in terms that might be intelligible to modern analytical philosophy. I think Heidegger talks about that kind of idea, which was in turn picked up by various modern philosophical theologies including Tillich and McQuarrie. But it is the kind of idea that only makes any kind of sense if one is pre-disposed towards belief in the first place, so again, as any kind of 'proof' or rhetorical argument, will always fail.
I think you'll find that the Scholastics intended their proofs of God's existence to be valid for believers and unbelievers alike just as Aristotle did for his own cosmological argument. Here's Ed Feser's comments on this (italics mine).
Quoting Proofs for the Existence of God (#AMA with Dr. Edward Feser)
Besides which, it degrades the concept of deity. It's the very unknowability of the answer that makes it a vital question. We need to be baffled by it, not to believe that we've worked it out.
There's an interesting essay about Gabriel Marcel's view of the 'five proofs' in Gabriel Marcel and the Existence of God.
Also, I don't believe that people were generally persuaded to believe that in the Bible by evidence and argumentation. There might have been some exceptions but on the whole, people generally believe in the Bible because their forbears and those around them do so. Of course it suits Feser, being a philosopher of religion, to say that his kinds of arguments are persuasive, but I think you could count on one hand the number of contributors on this forum who would agree.
To better explain this:
1. We imagine this thing G[sub]1[/sub]
2. If G[sub]1[/sub] doesn't exist then some real G[sub]2[/sub] is greater
But what's the difference between imagining G[sub]1[/sub] and imagining G[sub]2[/sub] – a difference that the argument depends on? Presumably in both cases we imagine the thing to be real. So it's not entirely clear what the argument means by saying that if G[sub]1[/sub] doesn't exist then we can imagine something greater (G[sub]2[/sub]).
We imagine this thing to be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, and real. If it isn't real then we can imagine something greater that is imagined to be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, and ... really real? The argument doesn't make any sense.
True, but there were theists of different types so articulating and defending the church's traditional position was seen as necessary.
The Scholastics were not fideists or truth relativists. On their view, if a proof fails, then it should be rejected by believers as well. There is nothing particularly edifying about a failed proof.
For example, Feser himself (following Aquinas) rejects the Ontological argument (see http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/anselms-ontological-argument.html).
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure and I don't think Feser denies that these arguments require considerable effort to learn and understand. That's just philosophy for you. But for anyone in the Aristotelian tradition, as Feser is, such presuppositions aren't merely subjective, they are as open to rational scrutiny as anything else. Perhaps on this, the Aristotelians anticipated Aumann's agreement theorem.
Indeed, but that is consistent with what I said - that the 'proofs of God' were scholastic arguments, intended for a scholastic audience. I don't think they were preached from the pulpit. And I don't think there were atheist opponents in medieval times at which these arguments were directed as polemical or rhetorical arguments. Certainly there were antagonists - Muslim and Jewish amongst them - but while they weren't Christian, they were also not atheist. ( I seem to recall that the Kalaam Cosmological argument was of Islamic origin.)
Quoting Andrew M
True, but what would it take to make the effort? Do you think a conscientious atheist would be interested in making the effort? And what would such an effort consist of? How would they get into a kind of mental space where such Aristotelian ways of thinking would be meaningful to them?
I recall a couple of threads here from late last year on Feser's 'Five Proofs' book, and from what I could see, most of the 'modern' objections to Feser's logic, were on the basis that the Aristotelian definitions that are required for the argument to be meaningful, are themselves not tenable. For instance:
Quoting andrewk
I think the same can be said for many, or all, of the classical arguments. And the upshot is, to really be prepared to entertain such arguments on their own terms already requires an element of belief.
Again, interesting to note Gabriel Marcel's objection to the 'proofs':
I don't know if I wholly agree with that, either, but I think it makes an important point; which is that I am finding Feser's style of argumentation a little too, well, scholastic for my liking. Especially because it presents certain 'articles of faith' as proven axioms. (Personally I am more drawn to the apophatic 'way of un-knowing'.)
One thing essential to understand is that in ancient philosophy, it was always assumed that 'being' -
to be real, to actually exist - is or has an inherent value. That is behind the ancient notion of the 'pleroma' (the 'divine fullness') and also the related intuition that 'nature abhors a vacuum'. The obverse is that non-existence or non-being is itself a defect or privation, the lack or absence of a real good, namely, that of 'being'. There was also, in ancient philosophy, the idea that there is an hierarchy of being, within which there are greater and lesser degrees of being or reality (sometimes referred to as the ‘great chain of Being’). Within that kind of schema, 'God' is 'being itself' or 'the most real' (which in Christian thought, was basically derived from adapting neoPlatonic philosophy) whereas matter is usually consigned to the lowest rung of the hierarchy. (Humans are in the middle, above animals, below angels.) Needless to say, that understanding is profoundly different to the modern point of view (which relegates humans to the animal kingdom and everything to matter).
Now I'm not saying that in support of 'the ontological argument' but only to illustrate the way in which the meaning of the idea of being has been changed, and the consequence of that for understanding the argument (and nor am I claiming any particular expertise in these ideas in saying that, simply pointing to a factor that I think is often overlooked in respect of this discussion).
I tried arguing against the ontological proof in terms of a hidden premise viz. [B]E=Existence (being) is greater than nonexistence.[/b] I then realized that, ceteris paribus, everyone actually does believe that E is true. What I didn't know is that this was/is a central belief in religion.
However, there seems to be an inconsistency in believing E. Religion talks of heaven, enlightenment, etc. which are supposedly better places to live in. Said otherwise that means human existence is unsatisfactory. It then isn't completely wrong in thinking that existence itself, whether in heaven or not, is unsatisfactory. Like a snake the notion of existence being better wraps around and bites you in the back.
What do you think?
But there’s an idea that springs to mind, that is somewhat related. This is the idea of ‘a good that has no opposite’. Normally ‘what is good’ is opposed to ‘what is not good’, as if one is equal but opposite to the other. But the idea of there being ‘a good which has no opposite’ undercuts that. In this understanding, reality itself is actually a real good. Now of course in our scientific age this idea is incomprehensible because reality itself is assumed to be value-free or essentially devoid of anything qualitative. But again in ancient philosophy, there was the (often tacit) understanding that to perceive the real nature of things was essentially liberative. (This is the meaning of the Buddhist term, Yath?bh?ta?.) The problem lies with our perception of things, which is contaminated or impure or occluded by self-interest. Again that is an understanding which is remote from the current zeitgeist but it helps to understand ontology because it provides a more effective interpretive framework for ontological questions.
In any case, in various traditional philosophies, ‘the sage’ is ‘one who sees what is’ in a way that the normal person (the hoi polloi) cannot, due to their own lack of discernment and self-interest which instinctively interprets every experience in terms of ‘what’s in it for me’. It is the transcendence or overcoming of that instinctively self-interested perspective or frame of reference which allows the sage to perceive reality as it actually is. (That is the original meaning of ‘detachment’ which is the traditional counterpart to what moderns understand by the term ‘objectivity’.)
This is actually preserved in science in the sense that scientific method attempts to eliminate ‘the subjective’ by concentrating exclusively on what can be objectively validated and measured. However, in so doing, scientific method routinely eliminates the qualitative as well, which is the profound lack or absence in most modern philosophies.
Yes but nonetheless the Scholastics would have regarded their arguments to be applicable to atheists. Aquinas held that God's existence was demonstrable via natural experience and logic alone (without recourse to faith or special revelation). As he put it:
Quoting St. Thomas Aquinas - The Summa Theologica
Quoting Wayfarer
You could ask the same questions about philosophy generally. Why read Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein or anyone at all?
Interestingly Aquinas' answer was, "the study of philosophy is not about knowing what individuals thought, but about the way things are." And he found Aristotelian ways of thinking useful for that end.
So one motivation to understanding the arguments could be simply to find out whether they succeed or not (independently of one's prior dispositions towards theism or atheism - which I think answers Marcel's objection). Or, more broadly, whether Aristotelian ways of thinking provide insights into modern philosophical problems (e.g., mind-body, ethics, the relationship between science and philosophy and so on).
This statement made me think about something that I have been chewing on for a long time. On the one hand, the mission of science to arrive at truth sees the observer (subject/subjective) as a contamination to the objective study at hand. This is why, to have total “objectivity”, we have double/triple blind tests. This scientific method has proven to work extremely well when dealing with the outer, quantitative, material order. I for one am extremely grateful to science for its extraordinary success.
On the other hand, we have the philosophies of the “perennial traditions” asking the enduring questions of life. Their primary concern is the inner, subjective, immaterial order (psychological). They hold that these are also studies of importance, meaning and value. The difference is that the object of study is also the subject/observer doing the looking. This is called self-inquiry by some traditions. With such topics as “the unexamined life is not worth living” or “to know thyself”. They are aphorisms to remind us of the human task at hand, that there is more to life than mere material goods.
The basic rules and dynamics seem to change drastically between the two orders of inquiry. Science does not seem to be interested in the latter because of this perceived contamination.
In the above Aquinas says, "The existence of God ... are not articles of faith". However he also says there is nothing wrong with accepting it on faith, as long as it is scientifically demonstrable. Which is like accepting that Quantum Mechanics is true on faith rather than investigating it for oneself.
Quoting Wayfarer
Keep in mind that Aristotelians have a broader conception of science than the conventional modern view. This includes the four causes (not merely a Humean efficient cause), realism about universals and substance hylomorphism. (Note: Aristotle's conception of science is actually very similar to Charles Sanders Peirce's conception that apo often describes.)
The initial problem is really one of translation. To show that the proofs do succeed or fail as scientific demonstrations in the Aristotelian sense requires familiarity with that world view (as you alluded to earlier).
This reminds me of Kuhn's thesis in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which I think is just as applicable to our understanding of the Scholastic (and Aristotelian) proofs.
Quoting Thomas Kuhn (SEP)
I don't know. I read that passage you linked to from the Summa, and I really don't think Aquinas does succeed in refuting Objection 1. And I think subsequent history has borne out the argument that the existence of God cannot be 'demonstrated scientifically'.
I don't buy the 'conflict thesis' - the idea that there is a fundamental conflict between science and faith - but that is mainly because I believe that the subjects of religious cognition are of a different order to those of the phenomenal domain. As the Gabriel Marcel essay puts it:
I think it is fair to argue that the existence of scientific laws suggests an Author, but that whether that is so, must be a matter forever beyond scientific demonstration or (I suppose you could say) mundane certainty. That's why I said before, I think it's important to always have a sense of the unknown-ness of whatever is claimed to be ultimate or absolute; so, to say that God can be demonstrated or known scientifically seems hubristic to me.
Quoting Andrew M
The point I was making was more specific - it was about the sense in which something like ‘the ontological argument’ can be regarded as persuasive. After all, none of those particular philosophers would concur that it is (granting that the first two were historically prior to it.) What I’m saying is, in order to regard it as conclusive, or to understand the terms of the argument in such a way that it seems to be, already indicates a pre-disposition to believing it; I think, perhaps, it is that very pre-disposition that is really meant by the term ‘belief’. (But I do quite agree that it’s a very delicate question.)
Quoting Pneuma
Welcome, and a great post.
I don't think that there ever can be perfect or total objectivity. That is actually one of the main implications of the Critique of Pure Reason, but one that is often overlooked or forgotten. There’s a book by Thomas Nagel called The View from Nowhere, which is very much about the tension between the ideal scientific view (the ‘View from Nowhere’) and our lived experience as subjects. (Although all that said, I too am extremely grateful to what science does for us every day.)
Quoting Pneuma
A lot of this question is historical rather than strictly speaking simply philosophical. It has to do with the complex interplay between philosophy, science and religion in the Western tradition. Volumes could be written, but the basic outline is covered in another Nagel book, Mind and Cosmos:
(pp. 35-36)
So this makes ‘mind’ essentially subjective, internal, private - which is one of the things that now seems so obvious that it is hard to even notice it. So everything is either ‘out there’ - objectively real, according to science - or ‘in here’, a matter of conviction or closely held belief. That is the way we nowadays carve up experience. So in this landscape, ‘what is real’ is what is objectively measurable, and what transcends what is objective real is to all intents a matter of private conviction.
Whereas, as you say, the perennial philosophy points to that which is at once real but also transcendent, a category for which I think our naturalistically-oriented culture lacks even an appropriate lexicon.
What about neuroscience, sociology, evolutionary biology, psychology? Science is extremely interested in understanding subjective experience, it just does it on a presumption of physicalism, a perfectly valid presumption (among others). To say it's not interested is just wrong.
...by treating it as an object of experience.
Of course, under the presumption of physicalism, that's what it is. That doesn't make it any less real, doesn't mean that science isn't interested in it. Science would love to explain subjective experience just like any other form of truth-seeking investigation would. It has its own methods and underlying axioms, just like any other philosophy. I don't see why it's being excluded from the discussion.
Except for being no longer subjective, i.e. no longer what it actually is. Which is the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ in a nutshell, and another topic altogether.
"A hundred real dollars contain no more than a hundred possible dollars. For, as the latter indicate the conception, and the former the object, on the supposition that the content of the former was greater than that of the latter, my conception would not be an expression of the whole object, and would consequently be an inadequate conception of it. But in reckoning my wealth there may be said to be more in a hundred real dollars than in a hundred possible dollars—that is, in the mere conception of them. [b]For the real object—the dollars—is not analytically contained in my conception, but forms a synthetical addition to my conception (which is merely a determination of my mental state), although this objective reality—this existence—apart from my conceptions, does not in the least degree increase the aforesaid hundred dollars."[/b] (Critique of Pure Reason "Of the Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God")
Quoting Harjas
Kant is disagreeing with this premise (bold)
Yes, but only if you have already rejected physicalism before you start the investigation. Our experience is what it is, it's just that we don't know 'what it is' yet. If 'what it is' is nothing more than the firing of neurons, then scientific investigation reveals the whole of it, there is nothing more to investigate. If we reject this possibility by saying that scientific investigation is inevitably missing something, then we have simply prejudiced the investigation. Without prejudice, it remains a possibility that science is actually investigating all there is to be investigated.
It’s not a matter of ‘prejudice’. It is simply the case that ‘the nature of experience’ has an intrinsically first-person aspect, which is excluded from scientific analysis as a consequence of the very methodology that makes science what it is. This is, as I said, precisely what David Chalmer’s seminal paper, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, is about:
Another point is that when you talk about ‘the firing of a neuron’, you’re speaking of an isolated event akin to the discharge of a spark plug. But such an event has no meaning - if you are to interpret it as meaningful, then that requires an act of interpretation, to say ‘it means X’, which is not something you will see in the objective trace of such an event. And then, as well as that, the single firing of a neuron means nothing - neurons act in conjunction with vast numbers of other neurons (actually there are said to be more neural pathways than stars in the sky). But even then, to understand what all of that means, inevitably requires acts of rational inference, which are internal to the operations of thought itself. They are never ‘in’ the data, but always inferred on the basis of the data. So logic is not strictly speaking ‘objecitve’ either, but transcendental, i.e. required in order to understand experience, but not actually the object of experience.
There are so many ways in which neural reductionism can’t work, but none of that is actually the least germane to ‘the ontological argument’, so we ought to leave it for another thread.
There are many versions of it, some intensely complicated. The OPs version is Anselmian, and those arguments typically run:
(1) If God exists then God necessarily exists. (G -> nG) [Partial Definition of God]
(2) If its logically possible that God exists then God exists (pG -> G) [From (1)]
(3) It is logically possible that God exists. (pG) [Premise]
(C) God exists (G) [From 1-3].
The first premise is supposed to be part of the definition of God. God is, by definition, an absolutely perfect being. He is omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good, eternal and if he exists, exists necessarily. I do myself wonder whether the notion of 'perfection' isn't merely subjective, and so cramming all of these properties into one definition is a little arbitrary. Still, I don't think this undercuts the argument in any serious way.
The second supposedly follows from (1), given that p(nX) -> nX (if its possible that X necessarily exists then X necessarily exists). I don't deny that this is controversial, but I've yet to see anyone argue against it in this thread.
The third premise claims that God's existence is logically possible. I don't think I have ever seen a 'proof' of this. But many people do in fact believe it, even people who are Atheists might be inclined to think that God's existence is at least logically possible. The argument would then be of some value, even if it couldn't prove God's existence to someone who doubted (3). Proofs don't have to be proofs to everyone no matter how sceptical, in order to be valuable, do they? At any rate, all one can do to illustrate logical possibility is try to explicate the concept clearly and carefully, remove confusions and reply to anyone who argues that it is incoherent.
Let me take a closer look at some of the objections in this thread.
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting StreetlightX
I do not believe that the material conditional is silently dropped away in this reconstruction. The point can be made in possible world lingo, for illustrative purpose. If God exists at all then he exists in every possible world. From this, it follows that If God exists in at least one possible world then he exists in all of them. If we assume that God exists in some possible world, it follows that God exists. I stress that the possible world lingo is only illustrative. One shouldn't be lead to think that 'possible worlds' are some how real and the proponent of the argument is assuming God to exist somewhere off in some far away land! In any case, I don't see the masked 'if' which you describe.
Quoting StreetlightX
I stress again that the first premise is that [I]If[/I] God exists then he necessarily exists. There is room to 'escape' the argument by denying (3).
Quoting SophistiCat
You see I don't think so. None of the premises of the argument say 'imagine a being such that it cannot fail to exist'. The first premise defines God as necessarily existing [I]if existing at all[/I]. It doesn't say that God necessarily exists. The second premise is entailed by the first (yes, given axiom S5 in modal logic). The 3rd premise merely says that its logically possible that God exists. So I cannot see that the argument I have sketched (which is Plantinga's, just simplified) amounts to the bad argument that you give here.
Quoting Michael
For the argument to work, we must imagine something that if it did exist, would exist in every possible world (or necessarily). If you imagine something that, if it exists, exists merely in one possible world, or five possible worlds, or even 9000 possible worlds, but not the actual world, then you have not imagined an absolutely perfect being, have you?
Quoting bloodninja
Indeed, and Kant was right. But necessary existence is a property, and is immune to the criticism which Kant makes. It really does add something to the description of a thing to say that it necessarily exists, rather than just exists.
Best,
PA
This doesn't seem to address my objection, which is that when we imagine God we imagine it to exist, and so to argue that if God doesn't exist then we can imagine a greater being which does exist doesn't make any sense.
We can replace "God" with anything that has "necessary" as a property, and so use the argument to argue for any number of different things, e.g. the (necessary) Flying Spaghetti Monster.
But it really just amounts to this:
(1) If a necessary thing exists then it necessarily exists.
(2) If it's logically possible that a necessary thing exists then a necessary thing exists
(3) It is logically possible that a necessary thing exists
(C) A necessary thing exists
So the ontological argument doesn't defend its assumption that the necessary thing (assuming there is one) has those other properties posited of God.
Perhaps we could argue that the world is the necessary thing, as it seems tautological to say that the world exists in every possible world. But this "world" is a purely abstract thing.
Although saying that, I find 2 troublesome. To be logically possible is to exist in a possible world and to be necessary is to exist in every possible world, and so the second premise states that if a thing which exists in every possible world exists in a possible world then a thing which exists in every possible world exists. It defines a necessary thing into existence.
I agree - and that is my main point.
yes, proofs of either way. It's beyond human knowledge capability for sure, specifically if we know our limits at all. I think even none of famous scientists can bravely be honest on this subject instead of hiding behind the falsifiability shields.
"The safest conclusion seems to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man’s intellect; but man can do his duty." (Darwin - 1873)
Sure as hell ain’t any answer from Darwinian theory to an argument of that kind, as I’m sure that neither the argument nor its criticisms have any utility from the Darwinian viewpoint.
Quoting bloodninja
I am a Kant fan, but I can’t help but feel he’s wrong in this case. Can’t quite put my finger on why, but it has to do with the fact that I can indeed imagine something that is actually not real. Therefore that ‘imagined being’ - let’s say, Superman, or Donald Duck - does not actually exist, even though if I say those names, you and I both know straight away what is meant. So they ‘exist as characters in fiction’, but they don’t really exist. In which case it is fair to say that ‘existence cannot be predicated of them’.
but is there any argument saying if it was there then we couldn't have missed to pick it up?
Arguments stay debatable for ever. Agnosticism is right to a certain extent.
This doesn't really have much to do with Anselm's argument, other than being a species of an a priori "ontological" argument, one that, in a way of magical thinking, attempts to reify logical constructs.
Quoting SophistiCat
Quoting PossibleAaran
I glossed possibility as conceivability - perhaps not quite what Plantinga was trying for. In his version he actually breaks the premise into two in order to obfuscate his meaning. It goes something like this:
First he asks us to accept that a Super-Duper Being is at least within the realm of the possible (not his exact words, of course, but that doesn't matter, since he doesn't explain what the words mean in this premise). Hopefully, a charitable and careless reader will not ask what a Super-Duper Being is and will grant this premise for the sake of an argument.
Then he spring the trap: a Super-Duper Being is one that, among other things, exists necessarily (cannot fail to exist). And he further stipulates that the words "possible" and "necessary" were being used in a technical sense of the S5 modal logic, where stacked modal operators collapse into one.
In the possible world semantics, a Super-Duper being is such that, if it exists in one possible world, it exists in all possible worlds. So the premise then is simply that it does exist in at least one possible world. Of course, stated this way, no one who does not independently believe the conclusion would go along with such an argument (and those who do ought not go along with it either).
Quoting PossibleAaran
It is illegitimate to predicate existence in all possible worlds, just as it is illegitimate to predicate existence in some possible worlds. And @Michael's argument neatly shows why it makes no sense to predicate existence.
Possible worlds for the World are just all the ways in which the World could possibly be (where the sense of "possibility" is left open).
It's premiss 2.
From the fact that we can imagine something, nothing follows about its existence. Imaginability and existence are logically distinct.
We would need another premiss, e.g.:
2a. Something that exists is greater than something that is merely imagined.
That's a dubious premiss. Of course, if there were a real God, then a real God would be far greater than a merely imaginary God. But if there is no real God, then the imaginary God (being the only God there is, ex hypothesi) is the greatest God of all. So 2a begs the question. And it's needed to comlete the argument.
The point is just that Aquinas (and the traditional Catholic church) claimed that it could be. They rejected fideism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, though the defenders could claim the same about those who reject the arguments (and the Catholic church did!) However it's worth noting that not all Scholastics accepted the proofs. For example Aquinas himself rejected the Ontological argument and Ockham rejected all contemporary arguments for God's existence including Aquinas' Five Ways (he was a fideist).
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but part of that may just reflect a difference in philosophical outlook (for example, you seem to hold that such demonstrations are impossible in principle). Presumably from the Scholastics' point-of-view, their arguments seem sound to them. As they see it, those that disagree just need to critique the arguments. One's prior dispositions to belief or unbelief aren't relevant to that.
Quoting Michael
I think you are right about this. While the assumption is defended by defining God as 'the most perfect being', this defence is objectionable on the grounds that what is and is not perfect is entirely subjective and context dependant. If this is right, then the argument can at best show that there must be something which necessarily exists. But what is it? Who knows.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
I am not sure that 2 'defines a necessary thing into existence' if this is meant to be a bad thing. If a necessary being exists in one possible world (it need not be the actual one. Suppose it isn't), then it must exist in every possible world, including the actual world. The point of 2 is that, from the assumption that a necessarily existent being is logically possible, it follows that a necessarily existent being exists. It doesn't define anything into existence. You might accept 2 and deny that a necessarily existent being is even logically possible, and thereby avoid the conclusion.
All of this is quite uncharitable to Plantinga.
Quoting SophistiCat
He does define his 'super-duper being' very carefully. He defines a maximally great being as one which is maximally excellent in every possible world, and maximal excellence is defined as entailing omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection. To wit, the first two premises of his argument from the Nature of Necessity, page 214:
[i]" (34) The property has maximal greatness entails the property has maximal excellence in every possible world.
(35) Maximal excellence entails omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection. " [/i]
You are right that he asks us to accept that it is possible:
"(36) Maximal greatness is possibly exemplified. "
He doesn't explain what 'possibly' means in these passages, but it is uncharitable to say that he 'springs the trap' revealing that 'possible' was being used in the technical sense of modal logic. The argument is discussed in detail in The Nature of Necessity, which is a book entirely about the possible and the necessary, in the technical sense of modal logic. So when he comes to discuss the Ontological Argument, he takes it that people who have read him thus far will know that he is still using the words in the same way he was using them throughout the book. Hardly a sprung trap.
Quoting SophistiCat
This is a criticism which Plantinga himself makes of the argument, and he makes it in the Nature of Necessity. Nonetheless, I think he should not have made it, because its a poor criticism which rests on ambiguity. It is true that if I look at the argument, and I am utterly convinced that God does not exist, then I won't grant Plantinga's 36, once I see that 36 entails God's existence. Obviously I will reject it. But that's just a fact about my bias, not a reflection of the worth of the Ontological Argument. If I am utterly convinced that the earth is flat, then even if you show me a photograph of the earth from space, if I understand that this being a photograph of earth entails that the earth is not flat, I will deny that it is really a photograph of earth. And again, that's a reflection of my own bias, not of the worth of the argument against flat earth.
But then, suppose I don't have this bias. Suppose that I am not such that, when I see that a premise entails that God exists, I will not accept that premise. Suppose I don't believe that God exists but if I were shown that God's existence follows from something that I do believe, I would accept it. Suppose I also believe that the concept of God is perfectly coherent. Plantinga might point out to me that the coherence of the concept entails the logical possibility of God's existence, and then further point out that the logical possibility of God's existence entails his actual existence. Wouldn't that be convincing for such a person?
You also say that it is illegitimate to predicate necessary existence. Why? You say that Michael's argument shows why. But which argument of Michael's do you mean? Do you mean the argument that we can tack 'necessary existence' onto any concept and then create an argument for its existence, regardless of what the concept is?
Best
PA
How can a necessary thing exist in one possible world but not the actual world?
I can't quite put my finger on the actual logical misstep. There's something wrong about talking about the logical possibility of the logical necessary. I wonder if such talk requires something like Tarski's hierarchy of language, or different sets of possible worlds, and the argument above conflates the members of the hierarchy/conflates the sets.
It just isn't right to say that there must be a necessary thing because a necessary thing is defined as something that exists in every possible world (and so the actual world).
As I said, the only thing that could perhaps be said to exist in every possible world is "the world", which is just an abstract container.
It isn't that a necessary thing must exist because a necessary thing is defined as something which exists in every possible world. Rather, if the concept of necessary existence is coherent, there must be a necessarily existent thing, since coherence entails logical possibility. If there is something wrong here, my suggestion is that it is the concept of necessary existence. I could not prove that it is incoherent, but it does seem like a very strange concept - a thing which cannot fail to exist. Any logically coherent story of how things might be must contain this thing. Either the world of Harry Potter contains this thing or the entire story is incoherent. Either the world of Sherlock Holmes contains this thing or the entire story is incoherent. Either Lord of the Rings contains this thing or the entire story is incoherent. I suppose what is really strange about it is that any object which I can imagine is such that I can apparently give a perfectly coherent description of a world without that object. I cannot really imagine anything to have the property of necessary existence, and so I wonder, do I really understand that concept at all?
Sure, I can use possible world lingo to make it seem less obscure. "Imagine a being which exists in not just one possible world, but every possible world". I then picture all of these different spheres and the necessary thing is in not just one, but all of them. That's what necessary existence is, I tell myself. But its just a metaphor, and the fact remains that I can't imagine it at all in a particular concrete case. Nothing I can imagine is such that I can't also apparently imagine it not existing.
Best,
PA
I think there's a fundamental problem with saying that a logical necessity is logically possible. I can't quite put my finger on what that problem is, though, but as I said before, my instinct is that it's related in kind to Tarski's hierarchy of language.
[s]The problem is that I can also picture a set of these spheres but not have one thing which exists in all them. So it's possible that there isn't a necessary thing? But a necessary thing, by definition, exists in every possible world, in which case it should be impossible for me to picture a set of all possible worlds that doesn't contain a necessary thing.
Who is to say that our world isn't part of my imaginary set of all possible worlds that doesn't contain one thing in common?
This is what I'm getting at with my reference to Tarski.
Also, I can picture a set of spheres of all possible worlds in which multiple things exist in all of them. So as I said before, the argument which depends on the necessity of God can be used to defend the existence of any number of things, like Flying Spaghetti Monsters or Zeus. So even assuming that one (or more) thing is necessary, it doesn't then follow that it (or one of them) is God.[/s]
I don't think you're picturing every possible world. Surely you can imagine that one of these spheres doesn't share this thing in common? I certainly can.
Ge = a god that exists in reality
Gi = a god that exists in imagination
Ge is greater than Gi....sure
That doesn't mean Ge actually exists
I think we need to introduce the word ''that'' as below...
1. God is the greatest being imaginable.
2. If God is the greatest being imaginable then ''that'' God exists in reality.
Now we can see the flaw clearly because we can actually see how God is being moved from the imagination to the real world.
Quoting bloodninja
All we can say is that we imagine that a God that really existed, and thus was not nearly merely an imagined God, would be greater than a God that existed only in our imaginations. What does this reveal beyond what it may be able to tell us about the human imagination? How could it possibly tell us anything about what actually exists?
Quoting PossibleAaran
Fair enough, I didn't read that book - my recollection is of his own gloss of the argument in a short paper that I no longer have at hand. So let's assume the more careful formulation as you present it.
In that case, he seems to be fairly laying his cards on the table (assuming the reader is paying attention!), thus severely handicapping the argument right from the start. His ontological argument is much weaker than Anselm's; he does not just beg the question: the premise that he asks us to accept is much stronger than the conclusion of the argument. Thus, even those who already believe the conclusion independently may not accept his starting premise. (You seem to be of that opinion, judging by what you said concerning the issue of necessary existence.)
Quoting Michael
It is not problematic in the formal system to which Plantinga appeals. But that formal system (modal logic known as S5) basically ratifies your intuition: it posits as an axiom (or is it a theorem?) that adding the qualification of possibility to something that is already necessary changes nothing - it is an empty move devoid of any consequence, like multiplying by one or adding zero. (By the way, the same happens when you qualify possibility with necessity: necessity in that case does no work either.) So when that move is made and expounded on in a natural language formulation that seems to appeal to our informal intuitions concerning possibility, and yet in the end we are assured that "possibility" and "necessity" were used in their strict formal sense all along, you are right to be suspicious.
Quoting PossibleAaran
I hope I explained why this is not the reason that neither I nor anyone who understands the argument that Plantinga is making - not in retrospect, but right as it is unfolding - would be likely to accept it.
Quoting PossibleAaran
It is what @StreetlightX and @Michael (and, no doubt, others who have criticized Anselm's argument) have said about predicating existence (necessary existence, as has been discussed, has even more severe problems). Having properties implies existence. So when we predicate a property of something, the qualification "provided that the thing exists" is already implied. When we define a unicorn as "a horse with a single horn," the same definition could be equivalently restated as "a being, such that if it exists, it exists as a horse with a single horn." The actual predicate here is still "being a horse with a single horn," nothing more. So when we "predicate" existence of a being, that is equivalent to saying "a being, such that if it exists, it exists" - which is just a tautology that applies to any hypothetical being.
Quoting PossibleAaran
That, too. Plantinga's argument is, if anything, even easier to parody than the original. Those attributes of [s]Super-Dupeness[/s] Maximal Greatness do no work in the argument - they ride free and thus can be replaced with anything whatsoever.
But are there only two options here - fideism, acceptance on faith, or 'scientific demonstration?'
Aside from faith (doxa or pistis) and science (scientia), I think there is another mode of knowing - sapience or sapientia. The reason being, that investigating the reality of spiritual matters, is undertaken in the context of a relationship with a Person, not, like scientific matters, measurements made of an object of perception. It is a different kind of 'knowing' - more like sapience, or gnosis, or noesis, or one of those kinds of terms that denotes a different cognitive 'style' to that of science as now conceived. But is also not strictly speaking simply a matter of belief.
Quoting Andrew M
He was also a voluntarist i.e. believed God to be forever beyond logic, and a nominalist. Some would argue that this is where the decline into materialism began. (See What's wrong with Ockham?)
Quoting SophistiCat
What if there were a widespread but fallacious belief in God, which served a functional purpose, namely that of being the object of faith amongst believers, and around which the entire corpus of religion had been constructed, even though there was no actual God (as atheists, in fact, believe). In such a case, God would not be real, therefore 'non-existence' would be predicated of God; God would then exist as a kind of collective delusion, much as what Richard Dawkins says is the case; a God that is believed in, but one that is not real. However were there really God, then this would be 'a real God'. So in this way, both 'existence' and 'non-existence' can be predicated of God. That is an objection to Kant's criticism of the ontological argument, I would be interested in hearing counters to it.
Dean Inge, Christian Mysticism and Speculative Platonism
This is from Clement of Alexandria, around first-second century AD, when the idea of there being a 'higher knowledge', here presented as a 'scientific faith', was still in circulation; suffice to say it is from a different historical period, and reflects a completely different understanding, of what 'scientific knowledge' comprises than what is understood today, being more typical of what used to be called 'scientia sacra'. Nevertheless, I think this idea of there being a higher order of knowledge has dropped out of contemporary epistemology.
I am sure you are right about that. I am only imagining at most five or six worlds. And not only do I think I can imagine that one of these six spheres has nothing in common with the other five, I seem to be able to imagine sets of possible worlds where no member of the set has any objects in common with any other member. But if the concept of necessary existence really makes sense, then I really can't do this, since all of the worlds must contain the necessarily existent thing. This is what I mean when I say that I can't imagine anything that is necessarily existent, and so I am not sure that I can really understand the concept at all.
Quoting Michael
I think I can imagine a world without God, but what am I (you) really doing? I imagine some hills, trees and buildings. Perhaps I imagine a few people and an animal or two. I might imagine the earth as seen from space. The picture I paint doesn't have God in it, and so I conclude that I can imagine a possible world without God. But what I have imagined is at best a pathetically incomplete part of a possible world. 99% of the details about that world are left out, and all I have is a handful of images. Who knows, maybe if I did imagine the entirety of a possible world in all of its detail, I might discover that I can't coherently do so without including God. But then, maybe I discover that I can.
I am quite the sceptic about modal knowledge.
Best,
PA
The starting premise is that it is logically possible that a maximally great being exists. If someone believes that a maximally great being does exist, then they surely also believe that it is logically possible. Now consider someone who doesn't already believe the conclusion. Such a person might believe that the concept of a maximally great being is coherent. I think many people who deny the existence of God do believe that the concept is at least coherent. But then, it could be pointed out to them that this premise, which they believe, entails that a maximally great being exists. Why wouldn't that be an effective argument? I agree that most people always view the argument with suspicion when hearing it, but I think that is due to (1) the fact that people always view proofs of God's existence with suspicion, and (2) the Ontological argument is a priori, and people are always suspicious of a priori arguments.
Quoting SophistiCat
I am not sure you did explain that, or perhaps I missed it. Perhaps your thought is that once you see that the premise entails that God exists, you won't accept the conclusion. But isn't it true that every deductive argument is such that the premises entail the conclusion? If so, what exactly is wrong with the Ontological argument that makes it unpersuasive?
Quoting SophistiCat
But this argument does not work against predicating necessary existence. I agree that the definition of unicorn as "a horse with a single horn" could equally be stated "a being, such that if it exists, it exists as a horse with a single horn". I also agree that when predicating existence of a being, it is like saying "a being such that if it exists, it exists", and this is to say nothing at all. But predicating necessary existence isn't a tautology and doesn't apply to any hypothetical being. Predicating necessary existence would be saying "a being such that if it exists, necessarily exists".
Quoting SophistiCat
I agree.
1. Modality is a way of thinking, talking, reasoning about the world. Modality can be a property of a proposition, but It makes no sense to talk about modal properties of a thing. Modality is a way of talking about things. So a "necessary being" is just a shorthand for saying that it is necessarily the case that such and such exists.
2. Modality can be understood and deployed in different ways. Those ways differ in their ground rules: what we hold to be fixed about the world, and what we allow to vary. Thus, an epistemic modality is where we reason from available evidence (presumably, also taking certain other things as given, such as known laws of nature). Nomic modality is where we hold just (some) laws of nature as fixed. Metaphysical modality is where we hold certain metaphysical constraints as fixed. And so on. Any set of constraints generates its own modal framework. As a limiting case, a priori (or logical) modality is where only the rules of inference are fixed.
For example, if I need to make my way from my office on the second floor to another office on the fifth floor, there are different ways in which it is possible for me to accomplish this. I can take different corridors, take different turns, use the stairs or the elevator, etc. But whatever I do, I have to contend with certain necessary facts: the fact that there are walls that I can neither move nor destroy (they are necessary beings in this context - they always exist in the same way, whatever course of action I take). I also cannot fly or teleport, there is a limit to the speed of my movement, etc.
3. There are different mathematical theories of modality, or modal logics. A theory is agnostic about the world on which it operates; it is agnostic even about the meaning of modal terms. All it does is it establishes certain rules for manipulating modal propositions. Defining the world and giving meaning to the modal operators gives a particular interpretation to the theory. As long as the rules of the theory are obeyed throughout, you are entitled to make use of its theorems to make meaningful inferences.
Now, returning to Plantiga's argument:
Quoting PossibleAaran
You want to make use of the so-called S5 modal logic. In this theory, stringing several modal operators together has the same effect as taking just the last of those operators. So, something that is possibly necessary is just necessary. Any model (i.e. true interpretation) of this theory has to respect that rule. So when you propose that "it is ... possible that a ... being [necessarily] exists," that has to be understood as just proposing that "a ... being [necessarily] exists." Whatever interpretation you give to this proposition - however you interpret possibility and whatever properties your proposed being possesses - what I wrote above has to be the case, or else this is not a model of S5.
Yet, the way you want to reason, there seems to be a difference between the following two propositions:
(1) God exists as a matter of necessity,
(2) It is at least logically coherent to think of God as a necessary being.
One is a very strong proposition that obviously entails the conclusion of the argument, and thus it is no good as a premise. The other sounds like a much weaker proposition, one that we could accept without committing to the first proposition. Whether that is actually a reasonable reading of these sentences is not even the point - the fact is that you are trying to equivocate on the meaning of your modal terms. You are insinuating a meaning that is not consistent with the theory whose theorem you then want to use in order to reach the conclusion of the argument. You are not arguing in good faith.
Thanks for the detailed criticism. I agree with all of the background remarks.
The first premise of the Plantingan argument is:
(3) It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
Say that a maximally excellent being is one that is omniscient, omnipotent and morally good, like Plantinga does. We can then say that (3) is equivalent to:
(3*) It is possible that it is necessary that a maximally excellent being exists.
You rightly point out that the argument seeks to use the S5 model and so (3*) is really just tantamount to:
(3!) It is necessary that a maximally excellent being exists.
Thus, from (3), it follows that (3!). This just is the whole argument really; that God's existence follows from the logical possibility of his existence.
Your objection is that the argument trades on an ambiguity in the premise. Either the premise is:
(1) God exists as a matter of necessity,
or
(2) It is at least logically coherent to think of God as a necessary being.
You say that (1) obviously entails the desired conclusion, but as you point out, it is worthless because (1) just is the conclusion. So we have to understand the premise as (2). I am not sure what would be wrong with (2). You have said it is too weak, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps if I spell out my thinking directly, you could show me:
(2*) The concept of a being that necessarily exists is logically coherent.
(4) Therefore, it is logically possible that there is a being that necessarily exists.
(5) Therefore, there is a being that necessarily exists.
The inference from (4) to (5) is just collapsing the modal operators in accord with S5. The inference from (2*) to (4) assumes that if a concept is logically coherent, it is logically possible that it is instantiated.
Best
PA
Fair enough (and I'll check out your link on Christian Platonism). But in the normal sense, a relationship with a person presupposes that the person exists and is demonstratively known to exist. And that presupposition, with respect to God, was just what was at issue for the Scholastics as with now.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, with the other side of the coin being the decline of Scholasticism (and Aristotelianism).
I found this quote interesting: 'Louis Dupré, for instance, has complained that “nominalist theology effectively removed God from creation…. The divine became relegated to a supernatural sphere separate from nature… thus making God largely inaccessible to reason.”'
While the writer finds that baffling, I think it accurately describes the transition from Aquinas' more holistic Aristotelian perspective to a more dualistic understanding of the world.
Totally agree. I read a really significant book in around 2010, Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity. It depicts nominalism in the same terms, tracing it back to Franciscan theology, Bacon and Ockham. It features many interesting debates for example between Erasmus and Luther, and Hobbes and Descartes, among many others. An important study for understanding the present state of culture and philosophy.
Quoting Andrew M
I see Aristotelian Thomism as being one of the last outposts of a truly 'perennial philosophy' in Western culture. I have been reading some of Feser, and also some Jacques Maritain (who is on a much higher level altogether.) So in some ways, Catholicism is one of the few existing cultural forms in which that traditionalist understanding is kept alive. It is not the only instance, although it is almost the only instance that still has a significant voice in "Western" culture.
Quoting Andrew M
But, 'the divine person', as is often stated in philosophical theology, is 'beyond being' - actually the way I put it is, beyond existence or non-existence [e.g. here). That is because a fortiori, the Divine cannot come into and go out of existence, as has no beginning or end in time, even though (somehow) mysteriously manifesting in the finite realm (an archetypical example being Jesus.)
But this is why I keep saying that it is a mistake to think of God as 'something that exists'. He/she/it is not 'an existing thing, entity or being' at all. But the problem for modern thought, is that we can only conceive of things existing in that way - things either exist, or they don't, they're either real, or they're not. But remember that in philosophical theology, the student or aspirant actually has to 'ascend' to the knowledge of the Divine - it is something that natively, s/he doesn't know, as the vision is occluded by sin and/or ignorance. So the whole discipline of philosophical theology is the 'ascent' through praxis, theoria, metanoia, and so on, to the vision of the One - about which see, for example, Jacques Maritain The Degrees of Knowledge.
But it is exactly that 'vertical dimension' which has been collapsed or lost in the transition to modernity.
Quoting SophistiCat
I think for pre-modern philosophy and even for Descartes, there are ‘modes of being’, in other words, different kinds of things exist in different ways. As the 'mode of being' of humans is different to the mode of being of animals or of inorganic things, so there are 'degrees of reality':
17th Century Theories of Substance, IETP.
So, in this understanding, the origin or ground of being is 'God' which is unmade and uncreated. The reason the soul is 'nearer to God' is that it is created directly by God; whereas things, objects, and so on, are more remote, or less real, because they're manufactured, or at the end of a longer causal chain.
Materialism tried to preserve the foundation of the 'uncreated' by depicting the atom as the 'first cause' - the reason being that 'the atom' is eternal and undivided so is plausibly a mode of the 'unborn and uncreated'. However, as has now become abundantly obvious, there actually is no 'atom' as such, hence the current state of physical cosmology which is (charitably) a 'work in progress'.
The problem is there is no way to explain how such "higher states" actually constitute anything that could rightly be termed 'knowledge'. If you want to say that such states are "higher" it would be better to refer to them as higher states of feeling or conviction.
So, no, I don’t agree that they’re matters of ‘feeling or conviction’ only, but they’re also not matters for the natural sciences. That is why they’re referred to as ‘higher knowledge’ in the various traditions. And what I’m saying is that, this sense of there even being such a thing has generally dropped out of philosophical discourse, but that is it at least preserved in some aspects of the Thomist tradition.
Quoting Harjas
1. Vague terminology. What is "greatest"?
2. False equivocation. Things that "exist" in the imagination do not exist as things in reality do.
3. Vague terminology. What is "better"?
I have studied religious traditions myself for more than forty five years; so I am well aware, as you already well know, that there is abundant evidence for higher (I prefer heightened) states. So, no need to play the "i have studied" card. The problem is you can't explain in what sense they are knowledge. It is only preserved in Thomistic tradition on the presupposition of the existence of God. Without that presupposition (which as presupposition must be taken on a faith, which is itself feeling or conviction based) there is no way of explaining how heightened states of consciousness could be counted as knowledge. Also, I have not said they are merely "matters of conviction or feeling only" I have acknowledged that they are matters of higher, or better heightened, feeling or conviction.
Not for want of trying.
Quoting Janus
In which case, there is no reason why they can't provide a basis for qualitative judgements concerning metaphysical and epistemological questions, such as the topic of this thread.
Then you need to try harder, because I haven't seen any explanation from you beyond vague suggestions.
Quoting Wayfarer
"Qualitative judgements" which would seem to be, by definition, not based on quantitative. inductive or deductive evidence cannot be counted as knowledge in any normal sense of the word. ('Knowledge' is a term generally reserved for reference to what can be intersubjectively corroborated). If you want to say they do count as knowledge, then give a definitive account of what you mean by "knowledge" in this context. That would be the philosophically rigorous thing to do; otherwise why would anyone accept your unsupported claim?
Judgements concerning the topic of this thread are based on logic, not quality. It is the deductive validity of the Ontological argument which is under scrutiny here.
Earlier in this thread I wrote:
"All we can say is that we imagine that a God that really existed, and thus was not nearly merely an imagined God, would be greater than a God that existed only in our imaginations. What does this reveal beyond what it may be able to tell us about the human imagination? How could it possibly tell us anything about what actually exists?"
I think this is a fair summation of what we are entitled to claim by deduction; inferences from the human imagination to existence would seem to be unsupportable and this is a matter of mere logic; it really has nothing to do with "quality", as far as I can tell.
You provide no incentive.
Why do I need to provide you with incentive? I really can't understand why you are so touchy about having your claims questioned. Surely that is why we are all here?
That the second premise seems weak is a point in its favor (whether it really is weaker than the first premise and whether it even makes sense is debatable) - it is what helps to sell it as a premise to someone who does not already believe the conclusion.
Quoting PossibleAaran
Yes, and my point is that this interpretation of possibility makes it unfaithful to the underlying logic, because it suggests that there is some difference between (2) or (2*) and (1), whereas there should be none.
Actually, it is not all that clear what it means to say "The concept of a being that necessarily exists is logically coherent." I hold the same opinion as you regarding necessary existents: with no constraints on possible worlds other than the rules of logical inference, there should not be any. (I am bracketing off "things" like ideas, abstractions, logical and mathematical entities and the like - presumably, when we talk about the existence of God, we are interested in something more than a mere idea of God.) But then it follows that the concept of a being that necessarily exists is inconsistent with this proposition that I already hold to be true, given the rules. So how is it coherent? Of course, as I mentioned earlier, we could play by different rules, stipulating, for example, that the relevant possible worlds are only those in which God exists (in much the same way as in my earlier example, where all relevant possible worlds contained the same immovable walls in the same places). That idea would be coherent - but unfortunately, stipulating such rules begs the question.
But again, the reason I resent Plantiga's argument is that he seems to want to sidestep such close examination of the premise, encouraging the reader instead to accept the premise because it sounds so unassuming and innocent. And so seemingly different from the proposition "God exists in all possible worlds" contained inside it. It is as if we were just picking up that outrageous proposition and looking at it at arm's length. But that feeling is betrayed, once the meaning of possibility is switched in mid-argument.
And please note that I am not denying that mystical or religious experience gives knowledge in some sense of the word, but just emphasizing the need to explain, give an account of, just what what that sense is, if it is to be a philosophically supportable claim that such experiences do yield knowledge. Vague suggestions about ancient 'lost' knowledge just will not cut it.
I am trying to pinpoint exactly where Western culture lost some fundamental elements of Platonist epistemology. I think was caused by the advent of nominalism and related developments in late medieval theology. One consequence of this is the loss of the sense of there being ‘degrees of reality’, or higher and lower forms of being - the sense that the way in which the ‘ground of being’ is real is completely different to the way in which phenomena and individuals are real. What is then lost is the understanding of the distinction between ‘creator and creature’, in those terms, resulting in God being depicted as a kind of ‘super-creature’, and reality as being basically one-dimensional, in which God is said to exist or not to exist. This is why there is no provision fo the concept of ‘higher knowledge’ in modern thought - because the vertical axis has been forgotten. As we ourselves are products of that very process, then it’s hard to turn around and understand what has happened. And, I say, understanding it requires a kind of meta-cognitive shift, which is provided by meditation.
Now I’ve started posting again, I will create a separate OP on these ideas and the sources for them.
The alternative to the idea that something indefinable has been lost in the process of the evolution of Western philosophy would seem to be that there is some inadequacy inherent from the start that has yet to be identified and addressed.
The modern mind will not return to Platonism, because the most plausible explanation for such ideas would seem to be reification. As far as I am aware, in Plato's time and before and probably for considerable time after, this idea, that generalities could easily and unwittingly be reified as transcendentally real universals, seems not to have occurred to anyone. Of course, I could be wrong about that, and I would be happy to be corrected by textual evidence to the contrary. In any case it would not seem to have been a commonly accepted notion, as it has become today.
No, you cannot replace God with any finite thing. It is one mark of finitude for an object to be different than its concept - or for the thought to be different from the being. A unicorn (as a concept) can be different from a unicorn as a being. A unicorn (as a concept) exists. It doesn't follow from that that the unicorn (as a being) must also exist. The same cannot be said about God (the infinite Being).
https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Mode/ModeDeLo.htm
Quoting StreetlightX
No. There is no "if" or material conditional at all. That's just a way to rephrase the content of the argument.
Take a look at Plantinga's formulation:
Fixed it.
First I fixed the illegitimate use of 'is' in (4), which sneaks existence in through the back-door, and made it what it should be: a 'would be', insofar as, at this point, were still talking about a hypothetical being. But having made obvious that we're dealing with a hypothetical being, it becomes clear that (7) also deals with a hypothetical being: the whole 'proof' is simply definitional: it works by offering two different and incompatible definitions of God ((1) and (6)), and shows that by the standards of the second definition (in which no Being greater than God can be conceived - (6)), the first definition (1) is inadequate. Which of course follows, tautologically. To be super clear, this is what's happening:
(1) God is like X. (1)
(2) But according to my definition of God, God is not like X. ((2)-(6))
(3) Therefore God is not like X. (7)
Where X is 'does not exist in reality'.
It's a clever bit of sophistry that hides it's conditional nature a bit better than the traditional form of the argument, but is equally tautologically nonsensical - as all cosmological arguments are. Shame on those who take Plantinga seriously as a philosopher. In order to fully understand the depth of the conceit involved in this 'argument', there's a bit more to be said regarding how 'existence' is used equivocally here, but this is enough for the moment. 10 points to anyone who can see the problem with the use of 'existence' in it (hint: can existence be qualified?).
"Alvin Plantinga’s Surprisingly Deflationary Take on his own Ontological Argument"
I hate to self-advertise (but I'll allow myself to since I don't do these things anymore), but a few years back I did a long friggin' video covering Plantinga's modal version of the OA, covering how the argument works and a number of possible (zing!) criticisms of the argument and of the typical atheist responses to the argument that I find silly:
(sorry for the occasionaly audio-video hiccup. I recall the rendering goofing up on me at that time)
Quoting SophistiCat
The "constraints on possible worlds" which is referred to here, is nothing more than the assumption of an actual world. As soon as we assume that there is an actual world, then all other possible worlds are constrained in the sense of being other than the supposed actual world. So the assumption of an actual world imposes this necessity on to all possible worlds.
Whether this assumption, that there is one world (the actual world) which has a completely different status from all the other possible worlds is "logically coherent", is highly doubtful. If one possible world is given the status of "actual world", this distinguishes it from the others, and it may be logically incoherent to categorize it as one of the possible worlds. It has been distinguished as other than the possible worlds. So it appears like we're stuck with the option of either accepting that all possible worlds are equally possible worlds, with no actual world, and no such thing as a being which necessarily exists, or else we have a designated actual world, but whatever it is that is made necessary by this designation of "actual world", is irrelevant to all the possible worlds, because of the designated difference between the actual world and the possible worlds.
Let me make sure I understand what you are saying here. 'God' does not exist prior to man's invention. The people who brought 'G' into existence, these magicians were able to "dissolve the boundaries between", "the ideality of the real and the reality of ideation", bringing 'G' into the real. The real which is at its base is an ideality for man.
I think it works the other way round, 'G' is fetishized, some what in the same way jimmy choo stilettos are fetish items, where their reality points to their ideality
Ontological arguments are examples of summoning magic.They work in the same way as a chaos magic summoning ritual, an array of symbols (premises and their entailment relations) are given the power to transform something from an ideal existence (something thought) to a real one (something actual). They do this with no imposition or restriction from the already actual. The mechanism is by taking the distinction between the actual and the ideal and dissolving it; which works by recognising it (assuming it) as already dissolved.
This is exactly what chaos magic does when summoning beings; interpretation and thought are fundamentally believed as a creative act embodied in a symbolic ritual (an argument here), and the target being: the one that's considered creatively through and with the symbols; is imbued with actuality by its embodiment in the symbols used in the ritual. It is as if actuality is contagious. This is a physical form of the modal collapse step in modal versions of the argument from 'possibly necessary => necessary'. Its analogue is 'ideal in actual (thought in symbol mark) => actual (full properties of the being are actualised exactly as imagined)'. It's also very similar to a theological insistence that the transubstantiation is literally Jesus' body and blood being consumed; the bread and the wine are actual versions of their mythological functions.
In essence, ontological arguments are attempts to summon God into actuality through the play of symbols. The God summoned is the one that passes through the words' meanings as their interpretation in the ritual (argument), being equal to their referent and (posited as, this is magic) already actual ground. Structurally, they are bundles of words which are (purported) literal sufficient conditions for an entity's existence, they are summoning magic.
What's actually interesting too is the way it does this: knowing that it's literally impossible to move from ideality to actuality, it begins in actuality ('God exists in thought', etc), but always a kind of deficient actuality. From here, two steps are necessary - first, showing how this beginning in actuality can't measure up to the ideality of what God 'ought' to be ('the greatest being conceivable'), and second, concluding from this failure of initial actuality that the ideality must therefore be the case. This three-step dance of sophistry is what characterizes every ontological argument, and also exposes it for the fraudulent magical thinking that, as you rightly point out, it is.
The distinction between actual and ideal things is usually subordinated in the argument through a relation with undetermined scope. In the 'greater than which cannot be conceived' formulation, it's the 'greater than' which ranges over ideal and actual, which means an existential proposition containing the 'greater than' relation ranges over a partitioned set of ideal and actual entities (which is typically set up explicitly in a premise). It makes sense that the more similar someone posits ideal and actual - or the more similar they set it up in the argument - the stronger the argument will seem. Possibly why the belief that things are more real the more they actualise their potentials and turning it up to 11 for the idea of God goes along with ontological arguments so well.
Modal arguments have the distinction dissolved in the background, hidden in the accessibility relation.
It's essentially a forgotten or usually unrepeated premise that all possible worlds and this world are in an equivalence relation. So the modal arguments take the form 'imagine that X is the case, by the nature of X X is possibly necessarily the case, so it's necessarily the case, so it's the case'. Equivalence accessibility relations conjure possibilities into actuality through necessity. If what can be imagined is all possible, then every imagined entity necessary to its associated narrative comes into being.
A highly rationalised form of black magic.
No, you haven't fixed it. You've made it into a non-sequitur.
As a non-native speaker, your change of "is" into "would be" in (4) seems fair. But this change does not solicit the corresponding change you've added to the conclusion, that's just arbitrary. In fact, the conclusion that follows can probably remain unchanged.
In fact, if we are to make it more exact, the change should be:
Then we account for the hypothetical being, and the atheist has to show that God doesn't exist in the understanding.
I didn't make it into a non-sequitur. It is a non-sequitur. As for this:
Leaving aside that you've changed the sentence structure so that it no longer reflects the proposition (1) that it needs to mirror so as to disprove (the entire point of the exercise), let's not forget that 'would' functions here as a conditional (grammatically, a 'second conditional'): every 'would' must be coupled with an 'if', or a least a condition under which it 'would be the case'. And that condition, in this case, is precisely... you guessed it, 'if God existed'. Hence the facile nature of all 'ontological arguments'.
Quoting fdrake
Yup. The modal crap is just another way of burying the petitio principii deeper and in a more technical and even less obvious way.
Your version is a non-sequitur, since the conclusion you presented does not follow from the premises.
Quoting StreetlightX
(1) is an assumption. The conclusion is in accordance with the assumption. That's why we say that it is false that God would exist in the understanding (assumption (1)) and not also in reality.
Even if this is granted, the "would" is coupled with the if of God existing in the understanding, not with the if of God existing in reality.
5) doesn't make sense. There's no conceptual difference between the Being in 3) and the supposed "greater" Being in 5). In both cases we conceive of a being with all of God's properties plus existence in reality.
It seems to retroactively change 3) to "A Being having all of God's properties plus existence in understanding only can be conceived".
Why not? (3) establishes only that such a being can be conceived, not that it is also greater than God. It is (4) that establishes this. Thus (5) is a conclusion combining both (3) and (4) to tell us that a Being greater (the greater comes from (4)) than God (as conceived in assumption (1)) can be conceived.
In 3) we conceive of a being who has God's properties and exists in reality. According to 5) we can conceive of something greater than this. So what are we conceiving?
No, "God" in (5) refers to the God we have conceived in (1). Greater than that God.
God is defined as a being than which none greater can be imagined. If a being that is imagined to exist in reality is greater than a being that is imagined to exist in understanding alone then the first premise of the argument is:
1) [A being that is imagined to exist in reality ... ] exists in the understanding, but not in reality.
According to 5) we can imagine something greater, but this is wrong; we're just re-imagining the same thing – namely, a being that is imagined to exist in reality.
That the thing we imagine doesn't exist in reality isn't that we imagine it to not exist in reality. The argument is guilty of conflating these two different things.
Not in your formulation. Compare:
(1) God exists in the understanding, but not in reality [original]
(7) Hence, it is false that God would exist in the understanding, but not in reality. [Your forumlation]
If (1) is P, (7) is not ¬P. My formulation works because I've qualified the proposition. You've altogether changed it. This is just a failure of basic logical form, not to speak of content.
Quoting Agustino
You don't understand. The point of changing 'is' to 'would be' is to expose the fact that 'existence in the understanding' is hypothetical to begin with. To 'exist in the understanding' is precisely to not exist, or, if we want to be consistent and introduce some terminology, it is to have 'unactualized existence'. So the point is that the Being with 'existence in reality' is simply a 'better hypothetical', but a hypothetical nonetheless.
This is the whole conceit of the - in fact any - ontological proof: it grants existence to what, by definition, does not exist. It equivocates on the whole concept of existence, confusing, from the very beginning, ideality and actuality, as @fdrake rightly pointed out.
Quoting Michael
Exactly right - and every single 'ontological argument' does this.
These are the same things.
What about an imagined imaginary imagined God?
Surely such a thing would be "greater" for having to be more difficult to conceive?ad infinitem...
And then if YOU imagine an imagined imaginary imagined God, and ask me to imagine your conception of it, would that not be greater still?
Doing something with an ideal object in a manner which treats it as ideal, like imagining a snark, is a lot different from doing something that treats the same object as real, like going outside for a snark hunt. Another example, coming up with a fictional character and telling a story about them is a lot different from having an imaginary friend you believe is real.
If the distinction between actions which treat some their involved objects as ideal entities - products of ideation in its broadest sense - and actions which treat all of their involved objects as actual entities - products of more than ideation in its broadest sense - is removed; that can land you in an asylum, for real. It removes the distinction between fantasy and reality, along with thoughts of things and things.
Or maybe you're a chaos magician!
I wanted to respond to this, from your posts and Deleuze studies I believe you think of existence univocally. How do you deal with different strata like ideal and actual?
I think of it disjunctively, like there's a list of distinct modes of being. Each mode has a bunch of different and possibly overlapping generating conditions. Eg we make ideas through ideation but we can't say that bricks are products of ideation alone.
I view it like: bricks are a composite of physical processes of individuation to make their constituents, coupled actual/ideational ones to take the constituents and turn them into a brick. Then its derived/imagined function ('being part of a wall') is ideal but the functioning itself plays out in actuality: its prescriptive ideal function ('what is to be done with the brick') and the virtual regularities that allow it are tightly linked in a manner that allows some kind of co-realisation, a tandem movement in actuality and ideality where its path is its potential carving itself out. The mechanism of this movement itself is the virtual form of existence.
I think of this virtual dimension of any individuating process (ideation or cement mixing/baking/shaping) as constraining immanence to that process; a developmental trajectory generated through other constitutive (cement mixing) or limiting (cement needs hardening to be a brick) individuating processes which simultaneously constrains the trajectory and pushes along it. In a more prosaic form, existence has a good analogy to water filling a cup. The water being the instigating developmental trajectories, the cup being the immanent limitation/demarcation of them, and the cup-filling as their constitutive (of the cup-filling) dynamical union.
So to be is to be involved in these processes in general. On topic, I'd say that God does indeed exist but is formed through ideational and discursive processes constrained by their own histories, and can act as an instigator and constraint in other processes; a myth that nevertheless has moved mountains.
It does not exist just because you imagine it does, and there is nothing more to be said on that matter.
So why bother?
What you believe is of no consequence at all.
I don't understand the context of the response. Do you think you're debunking a theist?
Your belief does not make a thing true. In an "ontological" argument, as in any other belief is of no consequence.
I'll have to get back to you later on - I'm heading overseas in a few hours and might be MIA for a while. In the meantime, here is why God is a lobster [pdf].
NOT in matters of ontology.
You can believe what you like. If it helps you to think the fault is with me, then think that. But as with all cases belief is useless, unless grounded.
And you read me as supportive of ontological arguments and the idea that concepts alone can vouchsafe a being's actuality?
Why?
Quoting StreetlightX
That's your mistake. Ideality and actuality are different only in finite beings. But for the infinite being, God, there is no gap between ideality and actuality. So of course, if you treat God as a finite thing - as one more being amongst other beings - then the argument fails. That's precisely the reason why the argument doesn't work for the perfect island.
God is rather defined as maximally great.
Quoting Michael
The being is not imagined to exist in reality. "Imagined" is not a useful word. To exist in the understanding is to exist qua thought & concept (which is similar to your imagination). To exist in reality is to be an instantiation of whatever the corresponding thought or concept is. The argument is not talking about imagining God as existing in reality.
You've been spewing a lot of nonsense in this thread, but this mistaken understanding is precisely the problem. You treat God as another being amongst beings - as finite. Sure, for a finite being, concept and actuality are not identical.
Nah. God's infinite, obviously. That's how I understand him. That's why God is real.
But the premise is that we can imagine something greater. So we have two different concepts: G1 and G2. How do these concepts differ such that G2 is greater than G1? The claim of the argument is that G2 is imagined to exist in reality and G1 is imagined to exist in understanding alone. This is the mistake that the argument makes. G1 isn't imagined to exist in understanding alone: G1 is imagined to exist in reality. It's just that, as a matter of fact, it doesn't exist in reality.
The argument conflates the content of a concept (e.g. God is imagined to be real/unreal) with a fact about that concept (e.g. God is real/unreal).
LOL.
Here's why I make the point.
Has he got big ears and a fluffy tail? Does he tend to hop and love carrots?
As I say, belief makes no difference to an ontological argument.
It does not make it 'greater'.
Yeah, and the premise is nonsense, or at least worded in a purposely misleading way. That a cake 'exists in the understanding' means precisely that the cake doesn't exist, or rather, what exists is the 'understanding' of a cake. This is elementary school grammar, and it's insulting and embarrassing that this needs to be explained to anyone over the age of 10: the understanding of the cake, and not the cake, is the subject of the sentence. The wording of the premise is absolute sophistical bullshit. As ever, God is a grammar mistake. As for the hand waving distinction between 'finite and 'infinite beings', that's just what you're trying to prove, so to invoke that distinction in the argument's defence is just question begging claptrap. Next.
It does, as the key premise of the argument is "we can imagine something greater". The content of our concepts are an integral part of the argument.
But that is simply rubbish. Imagining a thing does not help it to become real. This is so obvious. This is a no brainer. The entire argument is absurd for this simple reason; imaginings add no weight.
What is wrong with you?
Can you stay your anti-theist murderboner for one second and realise that I've spent most of the thread comparing the ontological argument to chaos magic's idea of summoning rituals, then criticising the 'greater than which' and modal forms for equivocating ideality and actually - spelling out why they're similar to chaos magic and how they function in analogous ways.
After that I wrote that I literally summoned a God through the power of my imagination... I mean my understanding of God as an infinite being with no un-actualised potentials...
Apparently some mod deleted my post detailing how chaos magicians think of summoning rituals for being off topic, but didn't delete the posts where I made the analogy explicit (which don't make as much sense without the original post), ah well. I'll make it [s]less interesting[/s] more conceptually rigorous.
Basically the idea behind chaos magic summoning rituals is that the being they're trying to summon is given actuality through the actuality of their representative symbols, the representation is treated as an embodiment in a symbolically appropriate form. Then this embodiment is equated with the creative act of imagination, and since the being is already actual (in the symbols) they're brought into actuality.
It's a real equivocation between an ideal being and an actual one. The way I was analogising it is as follows: an ontological argument is a collection of symbols which becomes a literal sufficient condition for the existence of a being.
For modal forms of the argument, this is done by making imagined necessary entities possibly necessary entities, then possibly necessary entities necessary entities, and of course necessary entities are actual entities. For 'greater than which cannot be conceived' versions, ideal and actual entities are opposed to each-other in a premise (like 'God exists in the imagination'), then ideal and actual entities are joined as the domain of quantification in the argument, then demonstrating that something belongs to this domain of quantification is re-interpreted as being actual.
For the Aristotelian versions, the conceptualised version of the entity is imbued with actuality by an operation of the understanding - as if imbuing something with the concept of actuality was the same as it being actual. This is legitimised since the concept and the entity are thought of as equivalent in a manner of actual operation, not through mere ideation. To put it another way, ideation about the being with no unactualised potentials renders them (through philosophical demonstration) as actual. Really though, they are already posited as actual through the equivocation of map and territory in this case; in Agustino's terms there's no difference between the infinite idea of God and the infinite actuality of it.
The Aristotelian will say that they're disclosing things about an already existent entity, not bringing about their existence through ideation. It's just an operation of understanding after all, not imagination. The latter of which, imbuing something with the concept of the actuality through ideation being the same as something's actualisation, is the way chaos magic summoning is purported to work. Only the terms for chaos magic are magical sigils, the 'magical sigils' for philosophers here are argument forms. It's still not going to allow non-ideal things to be brought forth through ideation alone.
I'm not claiming otherwise. I'm arguing that one of the argument's premises is false. As others have suggested, your criticisms seem to be directed at the wrong people.
Crazy talk.
Read the rest of the freakin' post you trigger happy wing-nut.
You are busting your own balls arguing over nothing whatever. The ontological argument cannot survive the most cursory glance at the opening premise.
Case closed.
It's full of bollocks. I just pulled out a crazy sentence. I have no need to remark on every silly line.
All your efforts are worthless, and just give succour to the theists, since the "OA" falls at the first hurdle as I have pointed out. A thing which we all know. Why bust your balls and encourage Agustino?
I'm surprised you think criticisms of ontological arguments in general are bollocks. You actually read me as someone who believed they could summon a God into actuality through an operation of thought; surprising, to say the least.
You are dreaming.
I stated exactly what I stated. No more no less. All the accretion is your invention.
Belief does not make things real. Imagination does not make things real.
Since the essence of this particular argument lives or dies with these falsehoods, the argument dies.
Aaaaaaand you interpreted me as disagreeing with this? Or worthy of scorn because I put more effort and nuance in defending the position, or a position close to, the one you're advocating?
The only explanation I can see for your behaviour is that you think an appropriate response to the ontological argument is immediate dismissal through ridicule with the purpose of derailing the thread into a flame war.
You think reputable philosophers like Alvin Plantinga would "purposefully" word an argument in a misleading way?
Regardless of that, I don't think the argument is misleading. That a cake exists in the understanding does not tell me whether or not it (being finite) also exists in reality. So, by all means, the cake existing in the understanding doesn't tell me that the cake doesn't exist in reality. It could also exist in reality.
Quoting StreetlightX
No, we're not. This is something that is involved in understanding the concept of God, so that we can say that such a concept is present in the understanding.
Quoting Michael
The only place where I see the word "imagine" is in your post, not in the argument. The argument merely says that something that doesn't only exist as a concept, and also exists in reality, is greater than something that only exists as a concept.
Quoting Michael
Sure.
Quoting Michael
They don't (at least not existentially)! It's not in differing qua concepts that G2 is greater than G1. Plantinga doesn't claim they differ either, in fact:
Here:
This is the problematic part. It's wrong. God is imagined/conceived to exist in reality. So how can we imagine/conceive of something greater?
That God is presupposed to not exist isn't that he's conceived of as not existing. The argument conflates.
The argument wants to say that when I conceive of this "greater" Being I conceive of something that exists in reality and when I conceive of God I conceive of something that exists in understanding alone. But this is wrong. When I conceive of God I conceive of something that exists in reality. It's just that, as a matter of fact, it doesn't exist in reality (as per the presupposition).
http://www.andrewmbailey.com/ap/Kants_Objection.pdf
I don't think it does. My concern isn't with existence being or not being a predicate. My concern is with the claim that we can conceive of something greater than God if God doesn't exist (as explained here). It conflates "God doesn't exist" with "God is conceived of as not existing".
Merely repeating something does not make it true.
I know, but that article also addresses your concern.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
Call X the whole concept of God, including all possible predicates. Now subtract existence from X and call this X-e. The two concepts are existentially equivalent.
The concept of a pizza in the mind is the same as the concept found in an existing pizza (ideally). That doesn't mean that the predicate of existence does not make a difference though. Clearly the pizza in your mind is different than the pizza in reality, even though their concept is existentially the same.
I'm not saying that there isn't a difference between a real X and an imaginary X. I'm saying that if we imagine God to be real then we can't imagine something greater than God, even if God isn't real.
When we imagine God, we imagine X, not X-e. The ontological argument implies that we imagine X-e, and so can imagine something greater, which is false.
That Alvin Plantinga is in any way reputable is an indictment on the intelligence of our species.
Quoting Agustino
I've given reasons why the formulation is grammatically suspect, reasons which you've not addressed. Brute insistence does not a discussion make.
Quoting Agustino
It also has nothing to do with the syllogism at hand, so has zero import on the argument. I will ignore any argument by you that invokes this pseudo-distinction.
No, that would be your intention.
You seem to see everything as a confrontation.
Platinga is not reputable in anyway.
He's a total nut case.
But we know Pizzas exist, so your analogy is faulty.
This part is okay, without the ending.
Quoting Michael
No, it's not false starting from the assumption of the ontological argument. You keep claiming that we imagine X and not X-e, but that's not what the argument claims.
Quoting charleton
These statements say more about you than about Plantinga. It's okay to disagree with someone, but I don't see why you insult his intelligence. He is a reputable, published scholar, a professional philosopher with a PhD from Yale, who also studied at Harvard and other prestigious institutions. On the other hand, I'm not sure where the two of you learned philosophy.
Quoting StreetlightX
Sure, but I didn't insist. I merely quoted you saying that:
Quoting StreetlightX
And then explained that the existence of a cake in the understanding does not "mean precisely that the cake doesn't exist", because it could very well exist.
Quoting StreetlightX
Your so-called "reasons" mask presuppositions that you have not bothered to make transparent.
Quoting StreetlightX
For example, as if there was no connection between "the understanding of the cake" and "the cake". "The understanding of the cake", for example, exists in the cake. That is why experiencing the cake can help me form the concept of the cake in my understanding. You are adopting what looks like a form of nominalism, that entirely divorces the two, such that saying something about the one has no bearing on the other.
Quoting StreetlightX
Sure, of course it doesn't. Neither does calling something a sophism repeatedly, saying that even a 10 year old could understand it, deriding people who hold those views, etc. make a discussion. That might be a monologue though, which helps you feel that you're right and your opponents have nothing useful to say. It kind of betrays the purpose though - if you're so confident, there's no need to deride the opposition.
Quoting StreetlightX
At first, you said it has everything to do with the syllogism:
Quoting StreetlightX
Now it seems you have suddenly changed gears, now it has absolutely nothing to do with the argument. So it seems to me that you're quite confused. What I said is important, because having an idea of God in the understanding is one requirement for the argument. And part of having an idea of God in the understanding involves understanding the difference between finite beings, and the infinite Being. This was part of the Hegelian criticism of Anselm, that Anselm never actually clarified the concept of God.
I know that's not what the argument claims. That's the problem. The argument is wrong. We imagine God to be real, even if he isn't.
The assumption is "God doesn't exist in reality". But that's not the same thing as "God is imagined to not exist in reality". The argument conflates, which is why the argument fails. To repeat what I said earlier:
God is defined as a being than which none greater can be imagined. If a being that is imagined to exist in reality is greater than a being that is imagined to exist in understanding alone then the first premise of the argument is:
1) [A being that is imagined to exist in reality ... ] exists in the understanding, but not in reality.
We can't imagine something greater than [A being that is imagined to exist in reality ... ]. 5) is false, and so the argument fails.
No we don't. We just become aware that God existing in reality is greater than God (existing only in the understanding). That's not the same as imagining a non-existent thing as existing.
Quoting Michael
No, that's not the assumption. The assumption is that God exists in the understanding (not in reality).
Quoting Michael
No, it's not wrong - it actually is X-e in (1).
Quoting Michael
No.
(1) God exists in the understanding, but not in reality.
Or
(1) A being than which none greater can be imagined exists in the understanding, but not in reality.
And what properties do we imagine a being than which none greater can be imagined to have? Is "existence in reality" one such property? Then we're imagining X, not X-e.
Yes, that comes later in the argument, where we see that if God is the being than which none greater can be imagined, then existence must also be one such property, CONTRARY to (1), which is an assumption that is later rejected in the conclusion.
Then it is what I crossed-out earlier:
The argument only shows that a being who is imagined to be real and have God's properties is greater than a being who is imagined to be imaginary and have God's properties. But there's no way to deduce from this that there is a being who is real and has God's properties.
If you can read 'hand waving' as 'everything to do with', then I suggest you brush up on your comprehension skills.
Quoting Agustino
Irrelavant. What exists is the understanding of God, not 'God in the understanding', with is just an ungrammatical obfuscatory piece of sophistry.
LOL
He does that for himself.
And please use more accurate words. "Better"? What does that mean?
Since we don't know what god is and the whole point of the exercise is to define god AS "the greatest conceivable being", your statement is empty.
I'd say both sentences use the same word; 'exist', but the word has a different meaning.
I can say 'dreams exist', or 'this concept exists' etc. or 'Harry Potter exists' and we understand the meaning of 'exist' by what it refers to. That meaning is different to 'London exists'. If there is a confusion over what is meant, we can ask. 'You say Harry Potter exists?' and get the reply 'I meant he is a fictional character'.
So I do not say why the idea that something 'exists in the understanding' is connected to the quite different claim that something 'exists in reality'.
In other word's the thread is as valid were you to call it "Ontological Argument Proving Harry Potter's Existence"
Such a simple consciousness could be called God.
Everything is relative to the space and time of the observation.
1. God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (the greatest possible being that can be imagined).
2. God exists as an idea in the mind.
3. A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
4. Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.
5. But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
6. Therefore, God exists.
I know that one of the most well known objections to this argument is Gaunilo’s “The Lost Island” argument that uses the same structure as Anselm’s Ontological argument to prove the existence of the greatest island. But I am more convinced by another objection that I found more interesting by Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, existence is not a predicate. An example of what he says is that if a triangle exists, it necessarily has three sides. But it could be that no triangle exists at all. Because the idea of existence isn’t part of how we define a triangle. If God exists, then he must be the greatest being we can imagine. But that does not mean that he does exist. Predicates add to the essence of their subjects, but they can’t be used to prove their existence. Kant believed that the ontological argument was flawed and any argument for the existence of God based on the proposition that a God exists in reality is greater than a God that only in the imagination is based on confusion.
He provides his objection in this form:
(1) If the ontological argument is sound, then you could know that it's sound without making any observations
(2) you would never know that any argument is sound without making any observations
(3) thus, the ontological argument cannot be sound
The Greatest Conceivable Being cannot just exist in our minds only but in reality as well. However, we cannot double this statement as there is no empiricism for the Greatest Conceivable Being other than the accounts of "miracle witnesses", especially when we observe the big problem of evil.
1. Dracula is the most dangerous conceivable vampire (our definition)
2. a real vampire is more dangerous than a fictional vampire (trivially true)
3. if Dracula was not real, then a more dangerous vampire was conceivable (which would contradict 1)
4. therefore Dracula is real (from the above)
Or maybe:
1. define Vlad as the most "vampirish" being
2. a fictional being cannot bite and turn me, a real being can
3. for Vlad to be the most "vampirish" being, Vlad must be able to bite and turn me
4. therefore Vlad is the real deal, since otherwise 1 is contradicted
Should we be concerned...? Or not...?
I'd like to critique your argument, specifically the premise that reality is always better than the imagination, and that therefore God must exist in reality, and also the premise that God is the greatest thing we can think of.
You claim, "Things that exist in reality are always better than the things that exist in our imagination." I can see a point here that truth and reality ought to be valued, but that's not what you're directly expressing; instead, you claim that things in reality are "better" than things in the imagination. Clarification is needed: what do you mean by "better?" If you mean that reality is more concrete and authentic, then that seems fair. However, "better" can also refer to something that is more pleasant and enjoyable. In that case, reality is not necessarily better than the imagination. Things in reality can be horrific, unfair, and painful, whereas things in the imagination (daydreams, for example) can be as pleasant as one wants them to be.
Building on this, you then say, "If God existed only in our imaginations, he wouldn't be the greatest thing that we can think of, because God in reality would be better." I'm unsure as to your specific meaning here. Are you stating that it would be impossible to imagine a God who would be as great as the real God, and that we are unable to conceive of the greatness of His nature? You seem to be implying that our ability and capacity to think about God proves his existence, which is an intriguing claim, but isn't strongly presented in this argument. This claim also rests heavily on the premise that “God is the greatest thing we can think of,” which I will address next.
You put forth the premise, which is really the backbone of the above claims, "God is the greatest thing we can think of." This statement is too vague to offer any support to the rest of your argument. How are you defining greatness? To a theist, that statement might be true, but an atheist would wholeheartedly reject it, and thus dismiss the remainder of your argument.
Overall, I believe that this argument would benefit from refining the above premises to be more specific, and also giving a better definition to ideas such as the reality/imagination comparison.