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Ontological Argument (Gaunilo's objection (Aquinas' objection to…
Ontological Argument
Gaunilo's objection
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supported by Hume - "we cannot define things into existence - even if it has all the perfections we can imagine"
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Brian Davies
you can't compare something that does not exist with something that does - there is nothing to compare the existent thing to
Descartes
believed that people are born with an innate concept of God - ideas that are imprinted on our minds from birth
Attempted to define God into existence (like Anselm) - "A supremely perfect being" - maximises and encapsulates - perfection implies existence - existence is a quality that belongs analytically to God
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recognises that analogies have limitations - we can imagine a mountain without thinking about the valley, so the mountain and valley combination doesn't necessarily exist in reality
But God is different because God's nature doesn't involve angles or valleys, but perfection - for Descartes, existence is perfection
arguments that try to establish the existence of beings like unicorns (Russell) or martians (Mackie) fail because they are contingent beings and God has necessary existence
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Kant's objection
Reductio Ad Absurdum - If you accept P1 but reject C, if you accept the subject/God but reject the predicate/existence then you are absurd
incorrect use of analytic statements - definitions are analytic, existence is synthetic - Descartes turns analytic statements into synthetic statements
existence is not a predicate - existence tells you nothing about the subject - saying 'it exists' changes nothing in our minds - not a real predicate because everything exists
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Hume's objection to Kant
Hume believes that all knowledge comes from the experience of our five senses - he rejects idea of innate ideas and concepts - "however much our concept of an object may contain, we must go outside of it to determine whether or not God exists"
Support for Kant
Moore supports that existence can not be gramatically used as a predicate because the word does not function as any other predicate
Russell - 'existence' is not a predicate but a term used to indicate the instance of something in the spatio-temporal world - 'cows are brown' (tells us something about cows) , 'cows exist' (they occupy a place in the world)
We need some other information about a thing or being in order to make accurate claims about its existence
Malcom
accepted that Kant was right to say that existence is not a predicate, but God's necessary existence (Anselm's 2nd form) could still be used to provide a successful ontological argument - reformulates Anselm's 2nd form
if God could exists, then he does exist since he cannot-not exist - if God exists at all, then he exists in an eternal necessary way
simply - if God exists then he can't go out of existence which makes existence necessary. God's existence is not impossible because it is not a contradictory concept - God's existence must be necessary - he cannot-not exist. He must exist
Hume's objection
illogical to say 'sometimes there is a God and sometimes there isn't' but it is logical to say 'maybe there is a God, maybe there isn't'
necessary existence is an incoherent concept because it rests on our acceptance that God's existence is not the same as other types of existence
support for Malcom
Plantinga - 'modal logic' employs the concept of 'possible worlds' - Philosophers consider not just what exists in the world we have, but what could exist with infinite possibilities
Plantinga writes in 'The Nature of Necessity' about a being of 'maximal greatness' - something that fits Anselm's description of "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" and with all the perfections described by Descartes - such a being would have to exist necessarily rather than contingently - the greatest being can either be contingent or impossible
BUT Plantinga's logic could be used to demonstrate that God does not exist in any possible world - so his argument does not prove the exclusiveness of the omnipotent God
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Dawkins
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"a really really perfect thing would have to better than a silly old imaginary thing thing ... God exists ... Athiests are fools"
Anselm's form
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First form
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it is greater to exist in the mind (in intellectu) and reality (in re) than to exist in the mind alone, so God must exist
analogies for this - a huge heap of cash that exists in your imagination only, or that same heap of cash on your kitchen table?
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By understanding this, God is proved to exist
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