My discussion of the Ontological Argument

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FrankSchnabel said:
Hi Cell,

First off, lets get the full argument on the table.
  1. The statement “God is the greatest conceivable being (GCB)” is meaningful.
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It isn’t meaningful since it depends on what you conceive is the greatest possible being.

I’m going to use a parody, not to show the logic is wrong, not really as an analogy, only to show the premise is meaningless.

1 There are beings who are conceivable and are sufficiently great to do great good. (Sufficiently Great Beings or SGB)
2 GCB is conceivable and exists as proven by classical ontological arguments
3 There are beings less great than GCB that are conceivable
4 We can conceive of a being that is extremely powerful, yet far less amazing than GCB.
5 Superman is far less amazing than GCB
6 We can conceive of Superman
7 Fictional characters have no real world powers
8 Superman is a fictional character
9 Fictional Superman is not powerful enough to fight crime or save the planet (thus not great at all)
10 Existman has all the characteristics of Superman with existence added
11 Existman is a SGB
12 Existman exists

This is not a logical argument (it is really meant to be torn apart) but it does show the abuse of the word “conceivable”. OAs don’t seem to distinguish between our conception/mental model of the real world and the real world itself. It’s as if that when you imagine Superman living in New York instead of Metropolis, somehow it’s more real. You can make a very realistic movie based on Superman in the real world, say, Superman goes to the Pentagon to meet with officials on how best to control nuclear weapons etc., does some fantastic public works projects for third world countries, instead of fighting evil geniuses. But it’s still just a movie.

You can even change his name to “Existman”, and make existence one of his inherent characteristics, but none of that makes Superman/Existman approaching anywhere near objective existence.
 
Hi Dameedna,

I sed: And from the get-go, keep in mind that the real question, as far as Anselm is concerned, is not whether God exists, but whether we know what “God” means. That is why he begins with a definition. So is it true that our definition is meaningful? If the answer is yes, then God must exist.

U responded: Nope don’t get it. The statement being logically true, has nothing to do with meaning. God being the greatest concievable thing, could make God nothing more than a universe so in terms of meaning it’s nothing more than we really accept currently. It’s nothing new and not something that inspires me at least to worship(unless standing in awe under a telescope could be considered worship)

Let’s look at it this way. My initial premise is a sentence. It is a linquistic structure that satisfies grammatical rules. But is it a philosophical proposition, or a sentence that conveys information? In this respect we first examine whether the sentence makes any sense at all, for if it is mere nonsense it cannot even be true or false. e.g. “Round squares are happy”
I don’t think you deny that the sentence makes sense, so it must be granted that it is a proposition, that it conveys some information.

The minimum information that is conveyed is that GCB makes sense. The rest of the argument then clarifies the necessary existence of the GCB. Exactly how it is actualized is not addressed, and this is source of your dissatisfaction with the OA, I think. i.e. why you find it to lack meaning or content. The argument, on its face, does not demonstrate the existence of the traditional Christian Deity. It just demonstrates that the unsurpassable reality necessarily exists.

If your materialist assumptions prevent you from conceiving of the unsurpassable reality or GCB as anything more than the material universe, then that is the GCB for you. You are right; even though nature can inspire in me wonder and awe, it doesn’t inspire me to worship in the usual sense. But that is not the fault of the OA but rather your materialist assumptions.
 
To everything else, you said yes I would agree with all that.
FrankSchnabel said:
If your materialist assumptions prevent you from conceiving of the unsurpassable reality or GCB as anything more than the material universe, then that is the GCB for you. You are right; even though nature can inspire in me wonder and awe, it doesn’t inspire me to worship in the usual sense. But that is not the fault of the OA but rather your materialist assumptions.
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Hmmm…not too sure I like this whole assumption idea. I only have this one life, and the experience I’m living to determine what is or is not real.

The question begs then, why would I have an assumption that there is anything more than a universe?. And I’m not talking about the physical universe as we see it, because if the big bang is right, then it goes back to an infinite point, a singularity, before time and space and matter existed. (and there are other possibilities and theories out there as well)

What would lead one to believe there is anything other than an infinite universe in one form or another? I can imagine lots of things, but what I imagine doesn’t necessarily exist.

For the sake of this thread, I am not sure if I’m digressing too far away from the OP, because I think I agree with the OA as well as agree (currently) it’s rather meaningless or at least something that doesn’t define anything different than I already accept(a infite universe in one form or another).

So, what makes you assume there’s more than just this reality of a universe?
 
And let me get my concerns about this argument on the table as well.
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  1. What do we mean by concieve? Is it something we can imagine? Or something that we can imagine AND can exist?
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  1. Necessarily - There’s something sketchy about this.(hahah)
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  1. Meaning - Why are we attributing meaning to something? What are we actually “doing” when we attribute meaning? Isn’t this entirely subjective to each human?
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Conceive is to think of something or form a thought. As stated above, my thought could be impossible nonsense that can’t even be true or false. IOW, there is no meaning or information conveyed. But let’s assume that it makes sense and can be classifed a “proposition.”

The proposition that I’ve formed in my mind might be merely empirical, or one whose truth or falsity can be determined by facts. e.g. The moon is made of green cheese. The proposition could also be merely rational, or one whose truth or falsity depends on consistency with stipulated rules and definitions. (e.g. some mathematical statement).

Now logical postivists or relativists claim that only merely empirical and merely rational statements are meaningful or can be called propositions. Because all facts and definitions are contingent (could be otherwise), positivism therefore holds that All meaningful statements (propositions) are contingent. IOW, you can’t assert something necessary (universal or unqualifiedly true) about reality.
 
Good morning (evening) Dame Edna,
So, what makes you assume there’s more than just this reality of a universe?
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Cultural conditioning, I spose. And also I don’t think materialism ultimately makes sense. I once got into a discussion with Ateista about that.

But to get into all that would be a digression from the OA topic.

Peter Berger talks about those persistant “rumors of angels” that keep us from become total materialists. Those little coincidences, unexplained phenomena and spooky occurrences that keep happening. That too, I spose.
 
FrankSchnabel said:
Now logical postivists or relativists claim that only merely empirical and merely rational statements are meaningful or can be called propositions. Because all facts and definitions are contingent (could be otherwise), positivism therefore holds that All meaningful statements (propositions) are contingent. IOW, you can’t assert something necessary (universal or unqualifiedly true) about reality.
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Well I’m not entirely sure I understand this, but it gives me something to read up on 🙂 Thanks 🙂
 
FrankSchnabel said:
Good morning (evening) Dame Edna,
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Hello there 🙂
Cultural conditioning, I spose. And also I don’t think materialism ultimately makes sense. I once got into a discussion with Ateista about that.
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Is that conversation available on this forum at all and/or feel like having that conversation again?
But to get into all that would be a digression from the OA topic.
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Peter Berger talks about those persistant “rumors of angels” that keep us from become total materialists. Those little coincidences, unexplained phenomena and spooky occurrences that keep happening. That too, I spose.
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The fact that the universe has life-giving properties and that at least one life that has evolved is aware of its own existance is enough to at least get me questioning the nature of our reality and makes me some-what skeptical of a “this is all that there is” belief :).

Anyway, great thread, thanks to the OP and all involved it was very interesting.
 
Hey Celluloid,

You sed earlier:
So from the start I doubt the claim that God or GCB is possible even though part of the definition of GCB is that it is conceivable.
In the absence of direct knowledge about a concept, we don’t know what is truly conceivable. For any ignorantly conceived concept (and I use the word ignorant in the sense of a mere lack of knowledge, not sophistication) there is the possibility that it is impossible to be actualized.
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I refer you to my recent posts to Dameedna.

Would you consider yerself then to be a Logical Positivist?
 
Cell sed re the initial premise: “It isn’t meaningful since it depends on what you conceive is the greatest possible being.”

IOW, if GCB can mean one thing to me and something else to you and something else to Edna…, there is no fixed meaning to GCB. I agree that, in one sense, GCB conveys no information regarding how the GCB is actualized. But in another sense it does. e.g. if someone says the Bill Clinton is the GCB, we would have no problem is pointing out the absurdity of that. Given any finite creature, we can always conceive of someone/something greater. So I don’t think that GCB is totally subjective.

And in any event, this much information is conveyed by the proposition, namely that the GCB is necessarily actualized somehow or other.
 
We need to employ these conceptual tools to the subject at hand.

Essence: What kind of existence is being defined. Greatest conceivable or unsurpassable being.

Existence: That the defined kind of existence is actual in some way or other. i.e. it necessarily is actual.

Actuality: How the existence exists at some particular moment. Actuality is always contingent.
 
Dameedna said:
If you refer to “god” as the universe than the athiest would “believe” it as well and it makes sense logically.

The problem as I’m seeing it really comes down to what you mean by God, not wether it can be logically proven.
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Do atheists believe that the universe has “necessary existence”?
 
FrankSchnabel said:
IOW, if GCB can mean one thing to me and something else to you and something else to Edna…, there is no fixed meaning to GCB. I agree that, in one sense, GCB conveys no information regarding how the GCB is actualized. But in another sense it does. e.g. if someone says the Bill Clinton is the GCB, we would have no problem is pointing out the absurdity of that. Given any finite creature, we can always conceive of someone/something greater. So I don’t think that GCB is totally subjective.
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But if it is subject to interpretation, doesn’t that make the effort to prove God with an OA fruitless? I think it might be better to simply say that the GCB available exists in the set of all existing beings. IOW, there is a greatest being, but it probably falls somewhat short of theists’ infinite standards. (After the Pope stormed away, hands in air, the beautiful giant alien Grillioncoatl shouted, “But I know how to make pretty planets!”)

Would you agree that God is possibly impossible (a priori), in the same sense it was, at one time, tentatively possible (yet possibly impossible) that there was life as we know it on the extrasolar planet Gliese 581 c?

Happy Thanksgiving to you and to all!
 
Neil_Anthony said:
Do atheists believe that the universe has “necessary existence”?
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I guess so: they would say the universe’s existence just occured or is eternal, but that its existence was not conditioned - “it’s a brute fact” as B. Russel said. - that means that if it is not conditioned it must be necessary.
 
St_Gregory said:
I guess so: they would say the universe’s existence just occured or is eternal, but that its existence was not conditioned - “it’s a brute fact” as B. Russel said. - that means that if it is not conditioned it must be necessary.
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What if they say the existence of the universe is random? Then it isn’t necessary. I’m sure some of them think that. Can we prove that anything has “necessary existence”?
 
Neil_Anthony said:
Do atheists believe that the universe has “necessary existence”?
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I can’t really speak for any other athiests, but in the same way people say “God just exists, he just is”, we could say the same for the universe. It just exists, it just is and it has alway’s been.

It’s not really any different to me.

Athiests don’t tend to see the universe as a ‘creation’, so hence no creator(even if they actually use the word creation, dig a little deeper and you’ll find that’s just the culture and the language we use).
 
Neil_Anthony said:
What if they say the existence of the universe is random? Then it isn’t necessary. I’m sure some of them think that. Can we prove that anything has “necessary existence”?
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The way the universe is could be random in a sense that quantam physics has shown. It isn’t actually predicable (at a sub-atomic level), but the point that it comes from, the singularity that is infitite isn’t random, it just is.

That singularity, is in a sense something you could call God, but to the athiest it really isn’t.

God is usually attributed qualities that a lot wouldn’t agree with(and cannot actually be observed so are very circumspect), and really when people are talking about God, they are talking about the God of their religion.

There’s a big difference between “Something has to exist” to “that something incarnated as a man and then got up and walked around after he died”.
 
Hey Cell,
But if it is subject to interpretation, doesn’t that make the effort to prove God with an OA fruitless?
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Nope. What is open to interpretation is only how God is actualized. That He is necessarily actualized somehow or other is established by the OA.
 
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