Week 6Natural Theology: the Ontological Argument

Week 6Natural Theology: The Ontological Argument

St. Anselm and Guanilo“The Ontological Argument”

1. The ontological argument was an innovation in the natural theological project of proving the existence of God.
2. Recognizing the limits (weaknesses) of the a posteriori argument forms, the ontological argument attempts ana priori argument for God’s existence.
3. We saw Demea calling for just this sort of argument in Hume’s Dialogues.
4. The ontological argument was first articulated in Chapter 2 of Anselm’s Proslogion.
5. Anselm was the Archbishop of Canterbury and a Doctor of the Church.
6. He was born in 1033 at Aosta,a Burgundian town near Lombardy.
7. He died 21 April, 1109.
8. He was as important a philosopher as he was a theologian.
9. His philosophical work is dominated by the then emerging question of the status of universals. A realist (as opposed to a nominalist), Anselm’s arguments, though more radical than would later become common, were central to the debate that raged at the heart of scholasticism.
10. To understand the argument, we need to define some terms.
11. Contingent Thing: a thing whose existence is not necessary.
12. Impossible Thing: a thing whose existence is impossible.
13. Necessary Thing: a thing whose existence is necessary.
14. Possible Thing: a thing whose existence is either necessary or contingent.
15. Existence in the Understanding: anything whose existence can be conceived.
16. Existence in Reality: things that actually exist.
17. Anselm employs the distinction between existence in the understanding and existence in reality to make a distinction that is central to his ontological proof.
18. We can conceive of a being “than which no existing being is greater.”
19. Though we might wonder if there is such a being.
20. We can also have the thought of a being “than which no conceivable being is greater.”
21. We should read conceivable as possible here.
22. This is Anselm’s definition of God.
23. What does Anselm mean by ‘greatness?’
24. In the part of the text we read, Anselm talks about beings being ‘greater’ than another, but this concept isn’t explained.
25. In an elided section of the text, Anselm specifies that not all possible predicates (qualities) are “great-making.”
26. Size isn’t; wisdom is.
27. For “greater,” Anselm sometimes substitutes “better than” or “superior to” or “more worthy than.
28. For Anselm, what makes a being “greater than” another are predicates like wisdom, moral goodness and (importantly) existence.
29. This is not an all or nothing thing (an unwise but just person is greater than a wise but unjust one).
30. However, for a thing whose existence is possible (for example), if it existed it would be greater than if it didn’t.
31. The argument (Compressed)
32. God (as defined above) exists in the understanding.
33. God is a possible being.
34. If something exists only in the understanding and might also exist in reality, then it might have been greater than it is.

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1. Conclusion: God exists.

1. The argument (expanded)
2. In the text, Anselm doesn’t proceed directly to the conclusion but instead offers a type of argument known as a Reductio ad Absurdum (pushing a claim to an absurd conclusion and thus disproving it).
3. Given statements a-c above:

1. Suppose God exists only in the understanding.
2. Then, God may have been greater than he is.
3. And, God is therefore a being than which a greater is possible.
4. But, given the definition of God, f is a contradiction.
5. So, It is false that God exists only in the understanding.

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1. Conclusion: God exists in reality as well as in the understanding.

Evaluation

1. The argument appears valid, and thus, if the premises are true, the conclusion must necessarily follow. But are the premises true?
2. Most of the suspicion about the argument from the conviction that the logical analysis of a concept can tell us nothing about its existence.

1. An important example of this suspicion is found in the commentary on the argument offered by Gaunilo, an 11th century Benedictine monk who, unconvinced of the move from concept to existence, and taking the part of the Fool referenced by Anselm, offered a response to the ontological argument that itself took the form of a Reductio.
2. Basically, Gaunilo attempted to show that the same pattern of reasoning employed by Anselm could also ‘prove’ any number of obvious absurdities.
3. Consider:
4. The concept of the ‘perfect island’ exists in the understanding.
5. The ‘perfect island’ is a possible being.
6. If something exists only in the understanding and might also exist in reality, then it might have been greater than it is.

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1. Conclusion: The ‘perfect island’ exists.

1. Because both arguments share the same form, if the form leads us to an obviously faulty conclusion, the form must be bad. That is, though the argument appears valid, it must be invalid.
2. However, some defenders of the ontological argument (like Descartes) have argued that the problem is not with the form of the argument but with Gaunilo’s second premise.
3. Immanuel Kant offers another form of criticism of the ontological argument.
4. He attacks Anselm’s third premise, insisting that as “Being…is not a real predicate,” the claimed relationship between ‘greater’ and existence is false.
5. To understand the force of this objection, we need to think about the predication relationship. What are we doing when we say, “The ball is red.”?
6. According to Kant, asserting the existence of something doesn’t expand the concept, but rather insists that there is an object that corresponds to the concept.
7. In other words, for Kant, the ontological argument rests on a mistaken conflation of a predication relation with an existential claim.
8. To the extent that we’d be tempted to include existence in the predicate of a concept, any attempt to argue for it’s existence would amount to a tautology, and pretty clearly, the claim that God exists is not a tautology.