Ontological Argument
- Created by: abbyparkes
- Created on: 25-02-16 11:15
View mindmap
- Ontological Argument
- Priori Argument
- Proceeding from human or assumed cause to a necassary related effect: deductive
- Deductive:the process of finding out the truth. All essays but one have the names on. Process of elimination will help find the essay name.
- Anselm
- Defines God as 'a being than which nothing greater can be conceived'
- Any possible attribute or characteristic that is thinkable and would be greater than God, is rightly part of God.
- Anselm argues that there is a difference between something existing in the mind and existing in reality.
- When a painter imagines a painting before he paints it, it exists in his mind. Once the painter has painted it, the painting exists in reality.
- We can then ask 'would God be greater if He existed in the mind?' To which Anselm says that God would be greater if He existed in reality. Therefore God exists.
- Anselm said that it was a misunderstanding of his theory and in fact he only meant for his theory to apply to necessary beings, not to contingent beings or items, such as the island.
- Maximal Properties
- Defines God as 'a being than which nothing greater can be conceived'
- Graunilo
- Tries to highlight the false reasoning in Anselm's argument by applying the reasoning to other objects which clearly do not exist.
- 'Now if someone should tell me that there is such an island, i should easily understand his words, in which there is no difficulty. It can therefore be considered to exist in the mind.'
- He goes on to say that if someone argued that this island exists because it is the greatest conceivable island, and fort it to be the greatest conceivable island must exist, Ganulio says he would 'believe it was jesting'
- Ganulio is arguing that there needs to be some ind of an empirical proof that the island exists. It is not possible to give a definition of God and from this definition alone decide God exists.
- Descartes
- God- a supremely perfect being therefore of must exist
- "Existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than the fact it's three angles equal two right angles can be separated from the essence of a triangle"
- Predicate of a triangle is that it has 3 sides.
- Predicate is a quality or feature that you have.
- Predicate of a triangle is that it has 3 sides.
- God has the predicate of perfection and you cannot take that away, to be perfect you must exist therefore God must exist
- TO HAVE THE PREDICATE OF PERFECTION YOU MUST EXIST
- Plantinga
- Since we are able to imagine any number of alternative words in which things may be different. God must exist in every world with all of the same characteristics. This is because, God is both maximally great and maximally excellent.
- Only shows the possibility of God existing
- If Brad Pitt was a painter in another world the way he see's God will be the same. If Brad Pitt was a footballer the way he sees God will be the same.
- Since we are able to imagine any number of alternative words in which things may be different. God must exist in every world with all of the same characteristics. This is because, God is both maximally great and maximally excellent.
- Priori Argument
Comments
No comments have yet been made