Ontological Argument

[stenlis]

No, you’ve quite missed the point of the ontological argument. It is absurd because of the nature of the concept itself, not because I believe in the existence of God to begin with.

No, you have missed my point. Just because an existing god would be greater (whatever that means) than a merely conceptual one, it does not follow that god must exist. It is a classic non-sequitur.

 

[Betterave]

No, you have missed my point. Just because an existing god would be greater (whatever that means) than a merely conceptual one, it does not follow that god must exist. It is a classic non-sequitur.

Certainly I did not miss your point. You tried to make an analogy with your leprechaun argument, I pointed out the flaws in it, you misdiagnosed the flaw in your analogy, I corrected you, and now you are simply begging the question.

(This appears to be a standard sequence for those trying to (mis)understand this argument.)

 

[stenlis]

Certainly I did not miss your point. You tried to make an analogy with your leprechaun argument, I pointed out the flaws in it, you misdiagnosed the flaw in your analogy, I corrected you, and now you are simply begging the question.

(This appears to be a standard sequence for those trying to (mis)understand this argument.)

OK forget about the leprechaun (I disagree that I misdiagnosed your ‘flaws’ but forget about it)

Let me reiterate the third time:

Just because an existing god would be greater (whatever that means) than a merely conceptual one, it does not follow that god must exist.

You failed to react to this two times already.

 

[Soulewolf]

The end all be all of anselms ontological argument is that it is a fallacy. It is begging the question because it assumes in the first premise:

1. God is perfect

that god exists and is perfect.

In order to logically prove god, you can not use any of his attributes as a premise or else you are begging the question.

 

[punkforchrist]

As contemporary defenders of the ontological argument point out, the notion that “existence is not a predicate” isn’t really what Anselm had in mind in the first place. Rather, Anselm argued that the concept of God (the greatest possible being) requires us to think of God as a *necessary *being. Is there a difference in essence between an existing entity and a non-existing one? Even if there is not, it can still be argued that there is a difference in essence between an entity existing contingently and an entity existing necessarily. Necessary existence is greater than contingent existence.

If God possibly exists, but does not exist in the real world, then God is contingent. This is contradictory (a necessary being cannot be contingent), so the only conclusion that follows from the possibility premise is that God actually exists, and exists necessarily.

As Peter van Inwagen points out, what the atheist should say is not that necessary existence doesn’t follow from God’s possible existence, but that God doesn’t even possibly exist (where “God” is understood not just as a general creator/sustaining cause of the universe, but as an absolutely perfect being).

The key premise, therefore, is the first one. Does a maximally great being possibly exist?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

It was a joke, but I actually didn’t know that ‘raw materials’ was supposed to mean ‘thing.’ I think this is not at all a clear use of terms. Do you disagree?

As a slogan “The thing precedes the concept” sounds a lot better than “Any number of things precede the concept that combines them”. But the latter is more accurate to my position. I do have some doubts about even this slogan, as I think I’ve said. It’s possible enough that we are born with certain latent ideas, or certain mental structures (almost categories) that are preconditions to forming ideas.

In a sense, they do exist.

I don’t dispute that concepts have a kind of existence. Otherwise, we could not talk about them.

But let’s not dwell on that; you’re missing what I suspect is the more important question: The notion of ‘derived from raw unicorn materials’ is derived from what ‘raw materials’?

Well, “materials” is a fully empirical notion, I would expect; we notice things being made of other things, so we construct concepts that are made of other concepts. We are mimicking the world. Of course, you may then ask from what raw materials I derive the idea of “being made from other things”. This is something like the question of epistemically basic beliefs. Where does the series of questions end? Nowhere, it appears, and yet it must end.

But what’s the point to the questioning? Is a series of questions really to be taken as a refutation of empiricism? Is that your goal? If so, I think it’s an unachievable goal.

Going back to our unicorn, I suspect that “derivation” isn’t fully acquired from the world, but based on some sort of conditional category that human beings are “born with” – this is, I take it, what Kant was getting at.

I disagree. I suppose I must ask what you mean by ‘informative.’

To be informative, a definition must tell me something I don’t know. Thus, informative definitions always start from finger-pointing (*that *thing over there), and then tell us something we didn’t know about the thing. Saying that a “thing” is self-identical was already presupposed by the usage of the word “thing”.

One bit of puzzlement: wouldn’t I learn something about unicorns, if I looked “unicorn” up in an encyclopedia? Yes, it seems, I would. But how can you “point” to a unicorn? Easy. You point to the (cultural/linguistic) concept, which has a kind of existence. Then you can learn things about that.

How do we manage to point to the right concept? This is a DEEP question, perhaps the deepest question in linguistic philosophy.

But what, pray tell, does all this have to do with the ontological argument?

 

[Betterave]

OK forget about the leprechaun (I disagree that I misdiagnosed your ‘flaws’ but forget about it)

Let me reiterate the third time:

Just because an existing god would be greater (whatever that means) than a merely conceptual one, it does not follow that god must exist.

You failed to react to this two times already.

Failed to react? Twice? Let me quote myself :

You tried to make an analogy with your leprechaun argument, I pointed out the flaws in it, you misdiagnosed the flaw in your analogy, I corrected you, and now you are simply begging the question.

 

[Betterave]

The end all be all of anselms ontological argument is that it is a fallacy. It is begging the question because it assumes in the first premise:

1. God is perfect

that god exists and is perfect.

In order to logically prove god, you can not use any of his attributes as a premise or else you are begging the question.

You too have clearly missed the point. God is not assumed to be perfect, He is conceived to be perfect. Let me know if you don’t understand the difference.

 

[Betterave]

As a slogan “The thing precedes the concept” sounds a lot better than “Any number of things precede the concept that combines them”. But the latter is more accurate to my position. I do have some doubts about even this slogan, as I think I’ve said. It’s possible enough that we are born with certain latent ideas, or certain mental structures (almost categories) that are preconditions to forming ideas.

Ok, then isn’t it possible that some such structure grounds the ontological argument?

(I’m afraid your slogan sounds a little too hazy for me to know what to make of it.)

I don’t dispute that concepts have a kind of existence. Otherwise, we could not talk about them.

Good. But I think you need to try to get a little clearer about their ontological status before you can have reasonable grounds for dismissing the ontological argument.

Well, “materials” is a fully empirical notion, I would expect; we notice things being made of other things, so we construct concepts that are made of other concepts. We are mimicking the world. Of course, you may then ask from what raw materials I derive the idea of “being made from other things”. This is something like the question of epistemically basic beliefs. Where does the series of questions end? Nowhere, it appears, and yet it must end.

It must end…? That’s not very informative.

But what’s the point to the questioning? Is a series of questions really to be taken as a refutation of empiricism? Is that your goal? If so, I think it’s an unachievable goal.

The point is to get at a reasonable view about the claims you have made, beyond a merely dogmatic assertion that doesn’t seem to make much sense. I don’t see that empiricism needs to be refuted, so that’s not my goal. If you want to claim some kind of empiricism as an epistemically basic belief, please do so and explain its relevance here. I’m confused about what the point of your comments here is supposed to be. I was trying to get you to think about the nature of conceiving.

Going back to our unicorn, I suspect that “derivation” isn’t fully acquired from the world, but based on some sort of conditional category that human beings are “born with” – this is, I take it, what Kant was getting at.

So where did you get the notion of a ‘fully empirical notion’? (I don’t even know what that means but I suspect that it is a fully nonsensical notion.) We notice things, but we also notice ourselves noticing things, right? So when did we notice the notion of a ‘fully empirical notion’? Presumably it was when we were noticing ourselves noticing things?.. Or was it somewhere else? Was it in the process of noticing ‘the world’? What is included in ‘the world’? Whatever we notice? Or some subset thereof? How do you delimit that subset? Doesn’t your appeal to Kant here rule out your talk of ‘fully empirical notions’? If not, please explain what you mean.

FWIW, in Kantian terms, I think the ontological argument is something like a transcendental deduction.

To be informative, a definition must tell me something I don’t know. Thus, informative definitions always start from finger-pointing [THIS IS FALSE, AS YOU GO ON TO EXPLAIN ](*that *thing over there), and then tell us something we didn’t know about the thing. Saying that a “thing” is self-identical was already presupposed by the usage of the word “thing”.

One bit of puzzlement: wouldn’t I learn something about unicorns, if I looked “unicorn” up in an encyclopedia? Yes, it seems, I would. But how can you “point” to a unicorn? Easy. You point to the (cultural/linguistic) concept, which has a kind of existence. Then you can learn things about that.

How do we manage to point to the right concept? This is a DEEP question, perhaps the deepest question in linguistic philosophy.

But what, pray tell, does all this have to do with the ontological argument?

So you still can’t see how the definition of ‘thing’ is informative? You can point to anything and say “that is a thing.” You can even point to your pointing and start to understand that that too is a ‘thing’ and not nothing. At that point you should no longer be able to make the mistake of simply dismissing the ontological import of conceiving itself.

The ontological argument points to the real nature of concept formation as such.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Ok, then isn’t it possible that some such structure grounds the ontological argument?

Short answer: yes.

However, there is a serious question of first principles here. Consider the following conversation, on a different subject:

Sue: So you agree that abortion is very wrong, and you agree that very wrong things should be illegal.
Bob: Yes, and yes. But abortion is a woman’s choice, and it shouldn’t be illegal.

In the above dialogue – based on a conversation I had with a student in class – Bob and Sue disagree about first principles. Bob rejects (or ignores?) the principle of modus ponens, apparently. Thus, Sue’s argument falls on deaf ears.

Similarly, many people reject or ignore the first principles behind purely metaphysical proofs of God. This does NOT show that the proofs are unreasonable (Sue’s argument was perfectly reasonable), but it does show that the proofs are not effective arguments, in the context of the God debate. An argument is a reason to believe, and the ontological argument has never, I would propose, given a nonbeliever a reason to believe.

(Side note: Can you clarify what, in your opinion, is the a priori structure grounding the argument?)

Good. But I think you need to try to get a little clearer about their ontological status before you can have reasonable grounds for dismissing the ontological argument.

I see where this is going, I think, and it is admittedly a good direction – certainly for clarifying our discussion. An argument:

1. Concepts, in order to be intelligible, must be logically possible. (Premise)
2. The concept of God is intelligible. (Premise)
3. Therefore, the concept of God is logically possible. (1 & 2)
4. The concept of God is the concept of a being who necessarily exists. (Premise)
5. It is logically possible that there is a being who necessarily exists. (3 & 4)
6. If it is logically possible that God exists, then God exists. (Premise)
7. Therefore, God exists.

The problem is with premise #5, IMHO. There is a big difference between possibility (simpliciter) and *logical *possibility. I agree that “If it is possible that God exists, then God exists,” but I disagree with 5. So your hidden premise becomes “If x is logically possible, then x is possible”. Before we evaluate all of this, am I at least getting your position right here?

It must end…? That’s not very informative.

True enough. But unless this is essential to our discussion, I’ll let it lie.

Doesn’t your appeal to Kant here rule out your talk of ‘fully empirical notions’? If not, please explain what you mean.

Guilty as charged.

So you still can’t see how the definition of ‘thing’ is informative? You can point to anything and say “that is a thing.” You can even point to your pointing and start to understand that that too is a ‘thing’ and not nothing. At that point you should no longer be able to make the mistake of simply dismissing the ontological import of conceiving itself.

Is the claim that noncontradictory things are possible, and thus have a kind of existence? I’m afraid I can’t agree. I would say that concepts like “unicorn” did not exist in any way until someone thought of it.

 

[Betterave]

Short answer: yes.

However, there is a serious question of first principles here. Consider the following conversation, on a different subject:

Sue: So you agree that abortion is very wrong, and you agree that very wrong things should be illegal.
Bob: Yes, and yes. But abortion is a woman’s choice, and it shouldn’t be illegal.

In the above dialogue – based on a conversation I had with a student in class – Bob and Sue disagree about first principles. Bob rejects (or ignores?) the principle of modus ponens, apparently. Thus, Sue’s argument falls on deaf ears.

Similarly, many people reject or ignore the first principles behind purely metaphysical proofs of God. This does NOT show that the proofs are unreasonable (Sue’s argument was perfectly reasonable), but it does show that the proofs are not effective arguments, in the context of the God debate. An argument is a reason to believe, and the ontological argument has never, I would propose, given a nonbeliever a reason to believe.

(Side note: Can you clarify what, in your opinion, is the a priori structure grounding the argument?)

Well if Bob rejects MP, then he is not worth arguing with. If he is just ignoring it (far more likely), he needs to be corrected. The same applies mutatis mutandis here.

As for effectiveness, the ontological argument nearly convinced Bertrand Russell, didn’t it? In any case, if a proof is reasonable in itself, it doesn’t matter if people are fond of bringing faulty analogies against it and dismissing it on such a basis. The philosophical (and apologetic) task remains that of pointing out the error of the analogy and insisting on the right use of reason.

I see where this is going, I think, and it is admittedly a good direction – certainly for clarifying our discussion. An argument:

1. Concepts, in order to be intelligible, must be logically possible. (Premise)
2. The concept of God is intelligible. (Premise)
3. Therefore, the concept of God is logically possible. (1 & 2)
4. The concept of God is the concept of a being who necessarily exists. (Premise)
5. It is logically possible that there is a being who necessarily exists. (3 & 4)
6. If it is logically possible that God exists, then God exists. (Premise)
7. Therefore, God exists.

The problem is with premise #5, IMHO. There is a big difference between possibility (simpliciter) and *logical *possibility. I agree that “If it is possible that God exists, then God exists,” but I disagree with 5. So your hidden premise becomes “If x is logically possible, then x is possible”. Before we evaluate all of this, am I at least getting your position right here?

I’m hesitant to agree that that is my position. I really don’t know what the “big difference” actually is that you’re indicating here. Can you explain it?

True enough. But unless this is essential to our discussion, I’ll let it lie.

It may be essential in that we need to figure out where it ends, not just that it must end.

Is the claim that noncontradictory things are possible, and thus have a kind of existence? I’m afraid I can’t agree. I would say that concepts like “unicorn” did not exist in any way until someone thought of it.

I think I can agree with your unicorn statement, but probably in a perverse kind of way, because I tend to think that not even existence existed in any way until someone ‘thought’ of it. As it is, non-contradictory things are possible and do have a kind of existence, just as existence itself is and does. This is because concepts are real (proof: we conceive them), and so the concept of ‘a non-contradictory thing’ is real, and this concept dispositionally entails all particular instances of non-contradictory things (whether or not the conceiver is currently adverting to them, e.g., has an occurrent conception of a unicorn). IOW, to say that non-contradictory things are real is to say that there really are things that are non-contradictory, namely, all the non-contradictory things. Contradictory things, on the other hand, are impossible, but they are also real, because we really do conceive of them and they really are the way in which we conceive of them (contradictory and impossible) - and all this follows from the Concept itself (or from the Concept of concepts - similar to Plato’s form of the Good: the Form of all forms).