The Greatest Conceivable Being

[FrankSchnabel]

Hey Grey,

The GCB is not going to be established by actual data. We either demonstrate that the idea makes sense or not. That’s the whole point of the OA.

The “Whole of Reality” was not introduced into this discussion for no reason. But let Captain Metaphysics provide the context.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

[Captain Metaphsyics approached the podium and motioned to our lecturiing comic writer to step aside. His commanding presence immediately quelled the pandemonium, and the audience stared at him with wonderment. What? A real super hero?]

CM began this way: Ladies and gentlemen of the Theory of Comics section of the International Convention of Comic Book Authtors, I ask for your kind attention, for I believe that what I am going to say will be of great benefit.

Something historic has happened here. I know that you all traffic in graphic fiction, and that it is disturbing to you that anything should be necessarily true. You want the freedom to create, and that there are necessary truths is threatening to you.

But your colleague here has stumbled on something revolutionary here, not only for comic book fiction, but for philosophy and all other human endeavors.

Let me tell you a story…

 

[FrankSchnabel]

Almost a thousand years ago there was monk, Anselm of Canterbury. He was a man of faith, but he also was a man of reason. Demonstrating the Catholic believe that reason is of God, Anselm sought a rational demonstration of God’s existence.
He sought an idea that would be true to and expressive of religious faith, and he proposed “that than which none greater can be conceived.” We will call it Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB) for short.

GCB is expressive of religious faith because religious man, if he is rational, will worship only the greatest being. The logic of worship, which is exaltation above any other, requires such a definition. So God is the GCB.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

Anselm reasoned that the GCB is not the type of individual for whom contingent existence is an option, for to so exist would be a defect. Necessary existence is the only mode of existence compatible with ultimate greatness.

This was a great discovery, but it lay unknown and misunderstood until the 20th century because Anselm preceded this argument with one that was flawed. It depended on the principle that conceptual existence plus actual existence is greater than conceptual existence alone. Anselm’s critics rightfully rejected this form of the argument, but in doing so they ignored the much stronger argument appearing later in Anselm’s Proslogion. Even the Great St. Tom of Aquino misunderstood Anselm.

And so it has been until a couple of obscure philosphers, Malcolm and Hartshorne, noted the two forms of the OA and that the second is much stronger. But even then the world of philosphy, saturated as it is with Relativism, scarcely noticed.

But your colleague here has rediscovered Anselm in a totally unexpected forum, that of comic book fiction. And I think that this presents some real opportunities for this noble profession.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

For you can use your comic fiction to combat the prevailing godless Relativism that has infected modern life. You can be champions for Metaphysics, the only true philosphy.

At this point, an author by the name of Greylorn, stood up and said: But just because someone comes up with an idea, no matter how grand, that doesn’t mean it has to exist. Where’s the proof for this GCB? Where’s the actual data that shows we should take this idea seriously?

CM replied thusly: The GCB is not going to be established by actual data. We either demonstrate that the idea makes sense or not. This is an exercise in clarification of meaning, not empirical proof. The question is not whether the GCB (God) exists, but what does GCB mean.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

Another critic (who, for the time being shall remain anonymous)stood up to challenge CM:

OK, if that is how this is to be played, let’s tear apart this GCB idea. I think its nonsense. Here’s why.

Please substitute “Being” with the word “Steak”.

Is there necessarily a Greatest Conceivable Steak, or GCS?

As opposed to the concept of “Being” and what constitutes “greatness” for a “being”, the concept of a steak is well defined. As opposed to the concept of “greatness” for a being (which is arbitrary and subjective), the concept of greatness for a “steak” can be defined quite rigorously.

A steak’s “greatness” is defined by its size, its flavor, its olfactory attribute, or smell, and of course its shape, which must be pleasing to the eye. That is all.

Now, comes the problem: the “great” steak for one person may be a “medium rare” (for me) or a “well done” for someone else. There is no “best” or “greatest” steak which would be acceptable by everyone.

Therefore we can conclude that the GCS does not and cannot exist. To investigate the GCS is a futile endeavor. And this is just a steak, with well defined attributes, on which we can agree.

Of course we could also contemplate “greatness” is a somewhat generalized fashion, and run into even more serious problems. Who is “greater”, the world’s strongest man, or the world’s best ballet dancer? Both are humans. What is “greater”, the Ninth Symphony or the Mona Lisa? Both are works of art, aren’t they?

This whole conversation reminds me of trying peel an onion, where the end result is a big chunk of nothing.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

CM calmly thought for a moment and then replied:

Tis true that we encounter these problems with ordinary objects, but in the case of the GCB we aren’t talking about an ordinary object like a steak, are we?

But you raise a good point, and there other objections that can be raised as well. They all challenge our ability to define the GCB in a meaningful way. But I say we can overcome all such objections if we define the GCB as The Whole of Reality.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

Whereas we run into the problems you describe when we talk about finite and contingent fragments of the Whole of Reality, they disappear when the object for evaluation is the Whole itself. We don’t get into arguments over which object in a class (steaks, works of art, etc.) is greater because we are talking about a class of one. It can only be compared to itself and to its parts, and the Whole will always be greater than any of its parts.

The GCB is the Whole of Reality.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

[Folks, I’ve got to wrap this up in a hurry, so this is what happens next]

The audience, swept away by the cogency and keenness of his reasoning, became converts to metaphysics and theism. They decided to collectively start a comic book entitled The Adventures of Captain Metaphysics. However, they dressed him up a bit for the comics. In place of his red long johns and blue jockey shorts, which made him look more like Captain Underpants than a super hero, they gave him a real cool skin tight suit which revealed his (fictional) 6 pack and bulging deltoids. He kept his lone ranger mask to protect his identity but lost the Bell bicycle helmet which revealed his (also fictional) wavy locks of blond hair.
Thusly attired, Captain Metaphysics, along with his sidekick Dorkboy, take the fight to the forces of godless Postivism.

 

[celluloid]

Hi Frank,

I’ve been trying all this time to make these superman analogies work in various ways, and it doesn’t really prove what is wrong with ontological arguments. Parodies of arguments are like, silly things, trying to illustrate that the supposedly serious argument is just as silly. But it doesn’t p(name removed by moderator)oint the error.

So I started to play another game and I called it, “Spot the Tiny Fib”

I should say that as an agnostic atheist, I like to say that “I think that God exists…”, then pause a bit ------- then say, “…as a myth.” I think putting it that way is not so much teasing as it is framing the problem differently. With that in mind, the question is not whether God exists. The question is what is God. It makes thinking about these things much easier, for me at least. And it doesn’t matter what type of argument, ontological , cosmological or otherwise, it helps clear things up just a little bit for me.

So did I spot the tiny fib? I think so, but Frank, I’m gonna need your help on this. I’ll need your critical eye and intelligence. Many times when defending one’s world-view, one can be overconfident about what one spews. Speaking for myself, it really is very difficult to spot one’s own tiny fibs or just plain sloppy thinking.

I look at metaphysics and I see it as saying something of at least two worlds under consideration, fictional and actual.

So where, exactly, is that fib in this ontology gizmo?

There are different tiny fibs in different arguments, but I’ll confine myself to this one.

Your argument is:

FrankSchnabel:

Hi Cell,

First off, lets get the full argument on the table.

1. The statement “God is the greatest conceivable being (GCB)” is meaningful.
2. There are two modes of existence, necessary and contingent.
3. Necessary existence is greater than contingent existence.
4. Therefore only necessary existence is compatible with greatness.
5. Therefore God exists necessarily.

First off, I always though the problem was with the definition of God and the GCB.

Where the tiny fib lies is that Greatest Conceivable Being leaves out an inconvenient fact. It is all supposed. It uses the word conceived as “logically possible” but sort of covers up the hidden property that the whole argument is under an umbrella of fiction or better yet, a mind experiment, or better yet, metaphysical. Often it is little things left out that makes the inaccuracies so hard to spot.

So in your premise 1 The statement “God is the greatest conceivable being (GCB)” is meaningful. I would say that is possibly not true.

I can make an equally strong statement by saying God is a myth, but that too is possibly the wrong definition.

The statement real God is greater than mythical God is true but meaningless since it is a battle of definitions.

A supposed real god is not greater than a supposed mythical god
They’re both supposed “beings”.

A compromise would be to used allegedly or supposedly in the definition of God and the GCB.

The statement “God is allegedly the greatest conceivable supposed being (GCSB)” is meaningful. Now I can accept that.

Now let’s see where the argument goes

1. God is allegedly the greatest conceivable supposed being (GCSB)" is meaningful. (not really)
2. There are two modes of existence, necessary and contingent.
3. Necessary existence is greater than contingent existence. (true but not if they’re both supposed existences)
4. Therefore only necessary existence is compatible with greatness.
5. Therefore God allegedly and supposedly exists necessarily.

If you apply my more accurate version of the term
“greatest conceivable supposed being (GCSB)”:

“A GCSB that exists is greater than a GCSB that does not exist”. This is not true

Why? Because all such beings are “supposed” and not actual. A supposed existing being is not greater than a supposed fictional being. They are both “supposed” and so they are both mental events. They have equal power in the real world except for the mental semantic effects they may produce in thinking creatures.

I can say that Warren Buffet can fly like superman, but I’m either lying or alternately, I’m simply using a supposed being - Warren Buffet - and giving him powers. And in the context of a fiction it’s true. But either way, the statement “Warren Buffet can fly like superman” is misleading, if the latter is taken out of proper context.

 

[frankblahnik]

One day God sat down in his recliner :compcoff: to watch one of his favorite television mini-series Captain Metaphysics vs Doctor Relativism. In this particular episode Doctor Relativism scrambled Dorkboys head:hypno: and Captain Metaphsics was no where to be found. God decided He was going to enter into the show to save Dorkboy and free him from Doctor Relativisms spell. God sent Himself into the show as Underdog. Underdog reminded Dorkboy that he was in a TV show and all would be alright. Then Underdog destroyed Doctor Relativism and went on to free all the prisoners Doctor Relativism had under his spell. Underdog exited the show, but left his spirit SuperStar to fill all those who desire.

This proves that God exist necessarily and is the GCB.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

Hi Cell,

I should say that as an agnostic atheist, I like to say that “I think that God exists…”, then pause a bit ------- then say, “…as a myth.” I think putting it that way is not so much teasing as it is framing the problem differently. With that in mind, the question is not whether God exists. The question is what is God. It makes thinking about these things much easier, for me at least. And it doesn’t matter what type of argument, ontological , cosmological or otherwise, it helps clear things up just a little bit for me.

I agree. The bolded part is where the focus should be.

So did I spot the tiny fib?

We shall see.

I look at metaphysics and I see it as saying something of at least two worlds under consideration, fictional and actual.

I would say conceptual and actual.

So where, exactly, is that fib in this ontology gizmo?
…

1. The statement “God is the greatest conceivable being (GCB)” is meaningful.

1. There are two modes of existence, necessary and contingent.

1. Necessary existence is greater than contingent existence.

1. Therefore only necessary existence is compatible with greatness.

1. Therefore God exists necessarily.

First off, I always thought the problem was with the definition of God and the GCB.

Where the tiny fib lies is that Greatest Conceivable Being leaves out an inconvenient fact. It is all supposed. It uses the word conceived as “logically possible” but sort of covers up the hidden property that the whole argument is under an umbrella of fiction or better yet, a mind experiment, or better yet, metaphysical. …

No fib here. I try to make the issue of meaningfulness explicit by alleging the meaningfulness of the concept in the initial premise.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

So in your premise 1 The statement “God is the greatest conceivable being (GCB)” is meaningful. I would say that is possibly not true.

This is an honest and true assessment at this point in your investigation. But consider that the way the premise is framed provides only two options. The statement may turn out not true because the definition lacks meaning, or the statement may turn out to be true because the definition is meaningful.

When one first encounters the premise, we don’t know if it is true or not because we haven’t yet thought it through and determined the consistency and coherence of the GCB. So if there is any supposin’ goin on, it is in this sense.

 

[FrankSchnabel]

I can make an equally strong statement by saying God is a myth, but that too is possibly the wrong definition.

No you can’t. The premise does not allow “God is a myth” as an option, if by “myth” you mean something conceivable which just doesn’t happen to exist.

 

[celluloid]

No you can’t. The premise does not allow “God is a myth” as an option, if by “myth” you mean something conceivable which just doesn’t happen to exist.

And by denying me my definition, you can see how your definition of “Greatest Conceivable Being” seems to me. “Being” without qualification will have an implied definition and that is a being with its own real thoughts and/or actions, without any direction from an author. The default meaning of the noun “being” is an entity that exists in either past, present, future or all time, but at the very least, it has some kind of fleeting real-world existence.

A being can fictionally exist in fiction, but such beings don’t have their own independent existence, they exist within the context of a fiction and have the same status as fictional cars, cities and animals. None of them have any real world properties, except that they affect our thinking, feelings and possibly behavior (I’m thinking Trekkies) within the context of the fiction.

To allow your definition is to allow you to sneak an obvious bias into the argument.

Suppose an extremely naive and isolated person is taken on a tour of the world, and one place he visits is a ranch called “Unicorn Stables”. He see all the horses for the first time in his life, but then asks what is the meaning of “Unicorn”. The normal reply might be, “A Unicorn is simply a horse with a long sharp horn at the front of it head.”

The naive person would naturally ask to see one, but it would be quickly pointed out that unicorns are mythical animals and are not thought to have ever existed. From the start the tour guide should have said that it was a “mythical horse with a long sharp horn at the front of its head.” In this case the slight but important mistake of the tour guide was to omit an existential detail in the definition. The original definition lead to misunderstanding.

A better example of definition bias would be the Loch Ness monster.

Think about three philosophers, all three picky about definitions, The Convinced Believer, The Open-minded and The Convinced Skeptic, on the subject of the Loch Ness monster.

Definitions of Alleged Loch Ness Monster

Convinced Believer
Prefers: “an aquatic monster”
Accepts: “an alleged/supposed aquatic monster”
Rejects: “a mythical aquatic monster”

Open-Minded
Prefers: “an alleged/supposed aquatic monster”
Accepts: “an alleged/supposed aquatic monster”
Rejects: “an aquatic monster” AND “a mythical monster”

Convinced Skeptic
Prefers: “a mythical aquatic monster”
Accepts: “an alleged/supposed aquatic monster”
Rejects: “an aquatic monster”

 

[FrankSchnabel]

Hi Cell,

The “bias” in the definition of GCB is that necessary existence is implied by “greatest conceivable.” If you accept the definition, you no longer can entertain notions that the GCB might not or does not exist.

So I think only these positions make sense.

**A Convinced Believer **(who gets it) will affirm the truth of the premise and therefore conclude that God exists necessarily.

**An open-minded skeptic **(who gets it) will refrain from concluding that God exists necessarily because he isn’t sure that it is true that “God is the GCB” makes sense. He will undertake further investigations into the definition to see if it is consistent and coherent. He knows that if he affirms the premise he must become a believer.

**A Convinced Non-Believer **(who gets it) will deny the truth of the premise and therefore conclude that there is no meaningful idea of God. It is impossible for God to exist.

Now, with respect to God, the position of “convinced skeptic” doesn’t make any sense. In effect he is saying that I am convinced that God doesn’t exist, but I grant that he could have. IOW, the idea of God isn’t rejected, just his existence for whatever reason. But the idea of God as the GCB entails his necessarily existence, and so the convinced skeptic is nonsensically saying that God is the necessarily existing being but he doesn’t exist anyway. He is thinking of God in the same way as one thinks of the Loch Ness Monster or unicorns, when God is an entirely different and unique category.

 

[celluloid]

Hi Frank,

I’m focused on the meaning of “Being” in the GCB. From my common sense, I can see, at least, that at this point in the argument we don’t know if the GCB exists in reality or fiction. What happens is as you precisely define “being” as either real or fictional, you lose certainty about the frame of reference.

For example, if I define God as a “fictional being” I can make a short question-begging argument via definition:

God is a fictional supreme being
Therefore God does not exist.

What happens is that as soon as I limit “being” to precisely a fictional world, we become uncertain about the proper “existential” frame of reference of the whole argument. The argument is either within a fictional frame and wrong, or possibly real frame but in that case it is merely coincidentally correct.

It’s a bit like the uncertainty principle in physics.

If we leave it open such as “supposedly supreme being” then the argument is within an established, real frame of reference, but now the definition itself equivocates. It mixes fictional beings and real beings, yet I think the distinction is critical. You don’t send a fictional being to war even though they can’t die. They can’t shoot real bullets either. It’s like comparing apples and paintings of oranges.

“Being” by itself, can be taken as the precise “being” that exists in the real world, in which case the argument has sneaked in reality. But then maybe it is interpreted to mean either fictional or real beings? In that case it equivocates too. I exist and I see myself as a conceivable being. I am a being that exists. I don’t see fictional characters as conceivable beings, 'cause we don’t conceive of them as being real in the first place.

What is the precise definition of “Being” in the GCB?

 

[FrankSchnabel]

Hi Cell,

Happy Christmas Eve to you, and I hope you are better prepared than I am!

You asked: What is the precise definition of “Being” in the GCB?

You observed: “From my common sense, I can see, at least, that at this point in the argument we don’t know if the GCB exists in reality or fiction.”

Actually, for one who first encounters the concept of the GCB and is naive about its implications, there are even more possibilities. Note: By “fictional” existence I mean existence that is merely and only conceptual. Something that is “made up” and doesn’t have a concrete referent. Here are the possibilities that could make sense:

1. The GCB is conceivable (expresses a consistent and coherent concept) but only as existing necessarily in reality.
2. The GCB is conceivable as contingently existing and it just so happens to exist in reality (conceivably could not exist).
3. The GCB is conceivable as contingently existing and it just so happens not to exist in reality (conceivably could exist).
4. The GCB is not conceivable and therefore it is impossible for it to exist in reality.

Fictional existence is excluded from categories 1 and 2 by definition. Fictional existence is only possible in Category 3, and it can be populated with all sorts of imaginary beings. We can even bend or break physical laws in assigning attributes to our fictional beings. The only requirement is that they aren’t nonsensical. Fictional existence isn’t possible in Category 4unless we stipulate that in fiction we aren’t bound by logic.

There really aren’t any other possibilities that I can see. Can you see any others?

Once this is settled and we explore the import of “greatest”, we not only eliminate fictional (Category 3) existence as a possibility, but we also eliminate contingent existence (Category 2). Supposing necessary existence makes sense, mere fictional and mere contingent existence are excluded. If necessary existence does not make sense, then Category 4 is the only one left standing.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Guess the thread on the Ontological Argument was shut down. Hope it wasn’t cuz of anything I said.

Anyway, Ateista was raising objections to the Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB) and essentially claiming that the concept is logically impossible.

This is kind of important to the ontological argument and theism in general because, if the idea of the GCB is nonsense, then it has conclusively been proven that divine existence is logically impossible. But if the concept of the GCB makes sense, then God’s existence is proven.

This is Anselm’s discovery, that God exists necessarily or the very idea of God is nonsense. We are confronted with a forced, binary choice. All arguments that assume that God’s existence could depend on some question of contingent or empirical fact are simply confused.

Ateista’s objections to the GCB boil down to these:

1. No entity can possess all traits to the maximal degree for some traits are mutually exclusive. e.g. How can X be both the talles and the shortest, the biggest or the smallest, etc.?

This is a materialist objection - God is not matter, but Spirit​

1. And besides, all assessments of greater, no matter the attribute, are subjective. Who is to say what is better or greater? For example, my tribe worships mountains and thinks that size is a great-making property. So we will (if we are rational) worship the largest mountain we can find, or the largest mountain in the abstract. But what if another mountain-worshipping tribe thinks that symmetry or some other property is great-making? So isn’t greatness in the eyes of the beholder with no definite or fixed reality?

God cannot be the or a GCB. If He were, He would not be greater than we are, except in degree. God cannot be conceived of, &** has no properties: not even that of having no properties **​

 

[JDaniel]

This is a materialist objection - God is not matter, but Spirit​

God cannot be the or a GCB. If He were, He would not be greater than we are, except in degree. God cannot be conceived of, &** has no properties: not even that of having no properties **​

Gottle:

Then, what are all of these attributes that the Church teaches have been revealed to us through the Scriptures? And, WHY would God have revealed His attributes (determinates) to us if He didn’t think we could hold them in our thoughts, even if not as perfectly as He actually is? One of His attributes is Existence, by the way.

Merry Christmas and
God Bless,
jd