PHIL/RS 335 God’s Existence Pt. 1: The Ontological Argument

The Ontological Argument  The ontological argument was first articulated in Chapter 2 of Anselm’s Proslogion.  Archbishop of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church; born in 1033 at Aosta a Burgundian town near Lombardy, died 21 April,  As significant a philosopher as he was a theologian, Anselm’s 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.  Prior to Anselm’s innovation, the dominant form of proof advanced by theologians was the cosmological argument.

An Obvious Distinction Things That Exist Things That Don’t Exist

Some Definitions  Contingent Thing: a thing whose existence is not necessary (can without logical contradiction be on either side of our distinction).  Impossible Thing: a thing whose existence is impossible (limited to the right side).  Necessary Thing: a thing whose existence is necessary (limited to the left side).  Possible Thing: a thing whose existence is either necessary or contingent.  Existence in the Understanding: anything whose existence can be conceived.  Existence in Reality: things which actually exist; anything on the left side.

A Key (but not obvious) Distinction  Anselm employs the distinction between existence in the understanding and existence in reality to make a distinction that is central to his ontological proof.  We can conceive of a being “than which no existing being is greater.”  Though we might wonder if there is such a being.  We can also have the thought of a being “than which no conceivable being is greater.”  We should read conceivable as possible here.  This is Anselm’s definition of God.

What does Anselm mean by “greatness”?  In the text we read, Anselm talks about beings being ‘greater’ than another, but this concept isn’t explained.  In an elided section of the text, Anselm specifies that not all possible predicates are “great-making.”  Size isn’t; wisdom is.  For “greater,” Anselm sometimes substitutes “better than” or “superior to” or “more worthy than.  For Anselm, what makes a being “greater than” another are wisdom, moral goodness and (importantly) existence.  This is not an all or nothing thing (an unwise but just person is greater than a wise but unjust one).  However, for a thing whose existence is possible (for example), if it existed it would be greater than if it didn’t.

The Argument (compressed)  Given all that we’ve just rehearsed, we can summarize Anselm’s argument in the following form: 1.God (as defined above) exists in the understanding. 2.God is a possible being. 3.If something exists only in the understanding and might also exist in reality, then it might have been greater than it is. __________________________ Conclusion: God exists.

The Argument (expanded)  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.  Given statements 1-3: 4.Suppose God exists only in the understanding. 5.Then, God may have been greater than he is. 6.And, God is therefore a being than which a greater is possible. 7.But, given the definition of God, 6 is a contradiction. 8.So, It is false that God exists only in the understanding. _________________________ Conclusion: God exists in reality as well as in the understanding.

Evaluation  The argument is valid, and thus, if the premises are true, the conclusion must necessarily follow. But are the premises true?  Most of the suspicion about the argument from the conviction that the logical analysis of a concept can tell us nothing about its existence.  This is the point that Descartes makes in the second column of the inset on p. 43. Of course, Descartes shares Anselm’s conviction that the concept of God is unique.  This conviction is definitely not shared by everyone.

Gaunilo and the Fool  Gaunilo was an 11 th 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.  Basically, Gaunilo attempted to show that the same pattern of reasoning employed by Anselm could also ‘prove’ any number of obvious absurdities.  Consider: 1.The concept of the ‘perfect island’ exists in the understanding. 2.The ‘perfect island’ is a possible being. 3.If something exists only in the understanding and might also exist in reality, then it might have been greater than it is. _____________________ Conclusion: The ‘perfect island’ exists.

Evaluation  Because both arguments share the same form, if the form leads us to an obviously faulty conclusion, the form must be bad.  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.  Another similar response to the ontological argument replaces not the concept, but the predicate ‘greater’ with ‘worse,’ leading to a similar absurd conclusion.

Kant and the Ontological Argument  Yet another form of criticism of the ontological argument is offered by Immanuel Kant.  He attacks Anselm’s third premise, insisting that as “Being…is not a real predicate,” and thus the claimed relationship between ‘greater’ and existence is false.  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.”?  The question becomes, is existence a quality like ‘greater than.”?

Kant says, “No!”  Asserting the existence of something doesn’t expand the concept, but rather insists that there is an object which corresponds to the concept.  For Kant, the ontological argument rests on a mistaken conflation between the assertion of a predication relation with an existential claim.  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.  Rowe’s observation, that the ontological argument begs the question, makes the same point.

Malcom to the Rescue?  Norman Malcom tries to answer objections like Kant’s by distinguishing two different ontological arguments in Anselm, one that is essentially the one we’ve been considering, and another that refers to ‘necessary existence.’  The idea is that while existence may not be a real predicate, necessary existence is.  Thus, if Malcolm is right, and Anselm (on occasion) defines God as necessarily existing, then the ontological argument isn’t vulnerable to Kant’s objection.

Does it Work?  While Malcom’s argument may address some of Kant’s concerns, it’s not clear that it addresses the concern about the tautologous/question- begging implications of the argument.  This is the point Plantinga makes on p. 53. Basically, as Plantinga insists, it all still seems to come down to the question of whether it makes sense to assert the existence of a necessary being in a world like ours.  And, as that’s just the issue in question, we can’t merely assert it, but have to prove it. Thus, the ontological proof never gets off the ground.