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How do I make my brain work and remember stuff quick nothing works it’s a sieve and philosophy hard and there’s so many critics and there all old white men with similar names my exam is on Thursday and everything is bad
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Angry Dogs Growl and Kill
Angry - Anselm
Dogs - Descartes
Growl - Gaulino
and
Kill - Kant
The Ontological Argument - Gaunilo
Gaunilo challenges Anselm with the "Perfect Island" analogy
HE said that by Anselm's logic, if you were to imagine a perfect island, it would exist because it would not be perfect if it didn't
Being that there were contemporaries, Anselm back fired, saying that you can't compare a contingent thing (the island) with a non-contingent thing (God). He also argued "being than which greater cannot be conceived" is unique.
Plantinga said that islands have no "intrinsic maxim" (they can always be better) - but you cannot apply this to Anselm's God
Gaunilo's criticism only applies to the first form of the argument, not the second.
Philosophy: Traditional Arguments for the Existence of God: Ontological Argument
The Ontological Argument seeks to demonstrate that the statement 'God Exists' is analytically true, and therefore it is incoherent to even doubt God's existence, since once you have understood the meaning of the word 'God', you must recognise that He exists.
To understand the argument, it's important that you first understand the difference between Analytic and Synthetic statements and prepositions [a preposition is a statement which proposes something!]
Analytic Statements are true by definition- it's not necessary to do any testing to prove them true or false, as we can know through deduction alone. 'Bachelors are unmarried men' is one example of an analytic statement, as is 'triangles have 3 sides'- it would be foolish and ridiculous to assume that these statements are false!
Synthetic Statements, on the other hand, add something to our understanding beyond that which is conveyed within the definition of a object. We need more than deduction alone to verify these statements, we need experience, and the truth or falsity within the statement is dependent on evidence. For example, to say 'the shop on the corner sells newspapers' is something that we must investigate- the definition of the shop doesn't specifically include whether it sells newspapers!
Ontology itself is a branch of Philosophy which is concerned with existence- 'ontos' comes from the Greek for being. It's important to recognise that there are different types of being, and kinds of existence; we can see this in the way in which a human exists physically, whilst prime numbers exist mathematically, and forgiveness exists yet again in a different way.
The Ontological Arguments is an a priori argument, as it works first from principles and definitions and seeks to attempt the existence of God with them. It is also a deductive argument, in that it uses logic, rather than evidence gained through sense experience. In these ways, it is different from the other arguments studied in the OCR AS Philosophy course.
Anselm
Anselm was a monk, who produced the Ontological Argument from a position of faith, seeking understanding. Although it presents a clear challenge to both Theists and Atheists, Anselm was not seeking to convert the unbeliever! He puts forward two forms of the Ontological Argument in his book 'Proslogion'; and begins by reflecting on Psalm 14 & Psalm 53, which suggest that only a fool would deny God's existence.
The first form of his argument is as follows. God is defined as that which nothing greater can be thought, and he must exist either in the mind alone [in intellectu] or in reality as well [in re]. All agree with that definition, believer and unbeliever alike. Something which exists in both the mind and reality is greater than that which only exists in the mind, and supporters of Anselm use analogies to make this point clear- would you rather have an imaginary heap of cash, or a real one? Would you rather imagine being on a beautiful holiday, or be on the beautiful holiday? Having concluded that also existing in reality is greater, as that which exists in reality as well as in the mind has the extra quality of existence, Anselm concludes that God must exist in reality as well as in the mind, as one cannot think of anything greater than God- this would be possible if he existed only in the mind- the thought of a God who is also existent in reality would be greater!
Anselm believes that existence is a predicate of God- an intrinsic property or quality- because we know God is the greatest being, but to be the greatest, he must exist! He also believes that God's existence is analytic. Some would argue that there are things we would prefer not to exist- war and sickness, for example, but they are bad, undesirable things, and God is far from this- his goodness is an aspect of his greatness.
Anselm's second form begins again by defining God as 'that which nothing greater can be thought'. He explains that contingent beings are inferior to necessary beings- contingent beings have a beginning, and relied on others to bring them into existence. They are also dependent on external factors for their ongoing existence, humans, for example, depended upon their parents, and continue to depend upon water, and oxygen. Contingent beings can be thought not to exist; Necessary beings cannot be thought not to exist. Necessary beings rely on nothing else for their existence, and have no beginning.
Anselm says that necessary beings are greater than contingent beings. God must, therefore, be a necessary being, because otherwise it would be possible to think of a necessary God who is greater, and this is impossible by definition. A contingent God would also be dependent on something else for his existence, and would be less great than that thing. It is impossible, therefore, to think that God doesn't exist, as he is a necessary being and necessary beings cannot fail to exist.
Descartes
Descartes' fifth meditation forms a version of the Ontological Argument.
He believed that we are born with some innate ideas and concepts, which are universally shared as all people are born with them- some of these concepts include ideas like equality, cause, shape, and an understanding of what God is: the supremely being with all the perfections as his attributes [omnipotence, omniscience, omni-benevolence and so on...]!
For Descartes, the existence of God cannot be doubted once it has been clearly demonstrated, not proved, just demonstrated that there is no reason to ever doubt it.
He uses the nature of a triangle as an example. The nature of a triangle is that it has three sides, and 3 interior angles which add up to 180°. This nature is immutable, incapable of changing or being different. Even if people have different ideas of what a triangle is, or if no one knew what a triangle was, it would remain that it is a shape as described.
Just as a triangle has an immutable nature, God does too! Part of his nature is that he exists, and existence is fundamental to his nature, it is a predicate of God!
Existence is a perfection. God is not lacking in any way, and therefore he has all the perfections, including existence. He therefore exists!
Descartes also considers that God is unchanging as a part of his perfection, so he must always have existed, and he will always exist.
Gaunilo and Kant both gave criticisms of the Ontological Argument.
From alevelphilosophy.com
The Ontological Argument The ontological argument attempts to prove God’s existence through abstract reasoning alone. The argument is entirely a priori, i.e. it involves no empirical evidence at all. Rather, the argument begins with an explication of the concept of God, and seeks to demonstrate that God exists on the basis of that concept alone. Whether such a proof is possible even in principle is questioned by Hume. The argument is ingenious. It has the appearance of a linguistic trick, but it is a difficult task to say precisely what, if anything, is wrong with it. All forms of the argument make some association between three concepts: the concepts of God, of perfection, and of existence. Very roughly, they state that perfection is a part of the concept of God, and that perfection entails existence, and so that the concept of God entails God’s existence. The ontological argument was first formulated in the eleventh century by St Anselm in his Proslogium, Chapter 2. Anselm was a Benedictine monk, Archbishop of Canterbury, and one of the great medieval philosopher-theologians. Anselm’s ontological argument rests on the identification of God as “that than which no greater can be conceived”. Once it is understood that God is that than which no greater can be conceived, Anselm suggests, it becomes evident that God must exist. A form of the ontological argument also constitutes the crux of Rene Descartes’ Meditations. Having presented the argument from dreaming—the sceptical argument that we are not justified in believing that there exists an external world on the basis of sense-perception because one might have the same sense-perceptions in a dream—Descartes rescues himself from scepticism on the basis of his belief in God. God is no deceiver, Descartes argues, and so our clear and distinct perceptions of the external world can be trusted. Descartes arrives at the belief that there exists a trustworthy God via a form of ontological argument. The most prominent modern advocate of the ontological argument is Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga is best-known for his defence of the view that religious belief is foundational, i.e. that religious belief does not stand in need of external justification, but is also known for his work on modal logic, i.e. on the logic of possibility and necessity. Plantinga applies his approach to modal logic to the ontological argument, presenting it in a revised form. The critics of the ontological argument are no less distinguished than are its advocates. Among them is St Thomas Aquinas, the thirteenth century Dominican and the arguably greatest philosopher of religion of all. Aquinas was canonised in the fourteenth century, when he was said by the Pope to have met the criterion for canonisation of having performed miracles in virtue of the answers that he had given to perplexing philosophical questions about God. Aquinas rejected the ontological argument in his Summa Theologica, First Part, Question Two. The earliest critic of the ontological argument, though, was a contemporary of Anselm, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. Gaunilo objected to the ontological argument on the ground that it seemed possible to use its logic to prove the existence of any perfect thing at all. Gaunilo sought to demonstrate this by constructing an ontological argument for the existence of the perfect island. This argument, he suggested, is clearly fallacious, and so the ontological argument for the existence of God, which relies on precisely the same logic, must be fallacious too. The most vaunted criticisms of the ontological argument, however, are those of Immanuel Kant. Kant argued against the ontological argument on the grounds that existence is not a property of objects but concepts, and that whatever ideas may participate in a given concept it is a further question whether that concept is instantiated. Whether his criticisms are sufficient to undermine all forms of the ontological argument remains a matter of much dispute.
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Against the Ontological Argument
Anselm's a priori argument says that God exists due to the following: If someone says that God doesn't exists, in order to say that, he must know exactly what 'God' means and must understand the concept of Him. Therefore God exists in his understanding, but as he understands that nothing can greater than God can be concieved, he understands that God is the 'greatest'. Surely it is greater for him to exist in reality and in our understanding, rather than just in our understanding, as it involves more existance?
Gaunilo countered Anselm's Ontological Argument by comparing God to an island. He said that if you think of the greatest concievable island, even though it is very possible that such an island deosn't exist, surely the greatest existance for this island is in reality as well as in our understanding.
What Gaunilo is trying to achieve is to prove that Anselm's argument can shown to be ridiculous. This is called 'reduction ad absurdum' - reduced to absurdity. Also, he is overloading the argument with other objects which now can be proved to exist, even though they are absurd.
