Ontological

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  • Created by: Sam2121
  • Created on: 24-05-17 17:18

Intro

As the name suggest this argument is based in the ,logos=study of and ontos=being of God.

Key words

  • Deductive proofs= Reached through their own meaning and logic
  • A priori= Knowledge gained through logical reasoning independant of the senses
  • Analytical statements= Statement that is true by definition
  • Necessary= Something which must be logically true 
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St Anslem

Archbishop who wholly believed in God and wrote the book Proslogion.

  • Set out to prove that it was absurd, reductio ad absurdum, to say God did'nt exist 
  • He started out with his definiton of God as a 'being than which nothing greater can be concived'
  • He then stated in his second point that something that exists in reality is greater than that in thought alone. E.g winning the lottery is better than thought of it 
  • Since God is a being than which nothing can be concived he must exist in reality aswell as thought.

This is since we can not imagine anything greater than God it is a contridiction to say that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined. 

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Gaunilo's Criticism

Wholly belived in God but saw flaws in Anslems argument.He points out :- 

  • As humans who gain experience through the senses we can see that things aren't perfect therefore we can not, as humans, concive a wholly perfect being.
  • Guanilo used anslems argument with the example of a friend telling him of an island that is the greatest in the world that is understandable as an idea in the mind.
  • An island would be greater in reality than one in thought alone.
  • If an island that exists as an idea alone we can concive of a better one in reality
  • But we can't imagine an island greater than the greatest island 
  • Therefore the island exists

Guanilo used this to convey his argument that you can't move thought to reality.

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St anslems response

Anslem argues it was impossible for God not to exist in the form of Proslogion 3.

  • God is the greatest......be concived
  • Contingent beings are inferior to necessary beings 
  • God is unsurpassible in every way so God must have necessary existence 
  • God exists necessarily 
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Rene Decartes

Develop the ontological argument. 

  • Started with his definition that 'God is a supremely perfect being' 
  • He argues that a being which is the most perfect would have to necessarily contain all perfect attributes 
  • Existence is a perfection so necessary existence is part of the meaning of God.
  • 'God is the most perfect being possible, so he has all perfections. Existence is a perfection. As the most perfect being God exists'.
  • He illistruated this in the form of analytical statements such as trying to concive the idea of a triangle that does not have three sides is unintelligible. Just like existence and God is unintelligible. Similar to trying to think of a moutain without a Valley.
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Norman Malcom

Developed Anslems Proslogion 3 about Necessity and Contingency.

  • Gods existence can't be contingent since there is nothing that can cause him to begin existing if he doesn't already or make him cease existing as that would require a force greater than God limiting him which goes against Normas definition of 'God as an absolutly unlimited being'.
  • Therefore Gods existence is Necessary or Contingent
  • Gods existence is not impossible as it is not logically contridictory to do so. 
  • Given that Gods existence is not impossible, It must be necessary.
  • God exists necessarily
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Kants Criticims

Disagreed with Anslem and Decartes and Neccessary existence being a predicate as he saw two errors in their logic that GOd has necessary existence.

Error one

  • Applies the logic of analytic and synthetic statements to 'God has necessary existence'
  • It is in fact a synthectic statement as it would need to be varyfied by first experiencing God.
  • So he points Decartes error is the treatment of the statement as an analytical statement.
  • In which the predicate existence is not contained in the subject(God) without proof of its existence.

Error two

  • He argues the value of existence as a predicate as it adds no more to its nature that we already know.
  • Kant states that since the predicate of existence doesn't add anything the argument Decartes provides is weak in his view
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Aquinas' Criticims

Aquinas question weather everyone would accept the definition that Anslem puts forward. As Aquinas believed that we could never really understand the true concept of God he felt that there had to be more than a defnition to prove Gods existence. He believed this was through evidence not argument. 

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