The Ontological argument A grade notes

Eduqas
Philosophy

AO1 Ontological Argument

AO1: The Ontological argument’s status as an (a priori deductive) proof

Ontological arguments are a priori, meaning they are based purely on reason, not the application of reason to experience.
They begin with a definition of God:
The greatest conceivable being (Anselm).
A supremely perfect being (Descartes).
An unlimited being (Malcolm).
The argument then involves an a priori analysis of the implications of this definition.
It claims that if God not existing would contradict the definition of God established.
Since non-existence would be less great, less perfect, or imply a limitation.
So that just by thinking about the definition of God, we can realise that God exists.
The argument is deductive, meaning that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.
In deductive proofs, the truth of the premises logically entails the truth of the conclusion.
They do not merely support its probability, like Inductive proofs.
They cannot be challenged by new evidence, since they operate purely logically, independently of evidence and experience.
So the argument can only be criticised by criticising the premises of the argument, or by denying that the conclusion really follows from the premises.
Deductive a priori proofs work because what is contained within a concept determines what must be true of it.
E.g.: “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal”.
Deduction ensures that certainty is preserved through the stages of the argument, so that we can be sure the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion.
In the ontological argument, the deduction works through concepts such a possibility and necessity.
The proof relies on a priori reason discovering that deduction regarding such concepts functions just as well in the case of God, as it does for Socrates being mortal.

AO1: Anselm’s ontological argument

Anselm’s ontological argument is a priori, meaning not based on experience.
It is deductive, so that the conclusion follows from the premises with necessity.
In Proslogion 2, Anselm argues:
There is a distinction between existing in the mind, and existing in reality, illustrated by the way a painter has an idea in their mind before painting it in reality
He then points to Psalm 14:1 “the fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God’”.
This shows that atheists must have an idea of the God they are rejecting in their mind.
Anselm is finding a point of agreement with the atheists to be the starting point for his argument.
He thinks he can show that if we think carefully about the definition of God, we’ll see that God must exist.
Anselm then produces the first version of his argument:
P1. God is defined as the greatest conceivable being.
P2. It is greater to exist in reality than the mind alone.
P3. God exists in the mind.
C1. Therefore, God exists in reality.
The force of Anselm’s argument is that God cannot be an idea that exists in the mind alone (as an Atheist thinks).
That would be incoherent, since then we could conceive of something greater, i.e., God also existing in reality.
Yet, God is the greatest being, so conceiving of anything greater is incoherent.
So, our idea of God must therefore be of a being that exists in reality.
To say that God does not exist in reality is effectively to say that the greatest being is not the greatest being. It is self-contradictory.
In Proslogion chapter 3 Anselm introduces the ideas of necessary and contingent.
A necessary being is one which must exist, because it does not depend on anything else for its existence.
A contingent being is one which could either exist or not, because it does depend on something else to exist.
Anselm argues:
P1. A necessary being whose nonexistence is impossible is greater than a contingent being whose nonexistence is possible.
C1. Therefore, God (as the greatest conceivable being), necessarily exists.
As the greatest being, God cannot have any of the contingencies of ordinary beings which make their non-existence possible.
So, a being greater than which none may be conceived is one whose nonexistence is impossible.
In his later replies to critics, Anselm captures the key move of the ontological argument:
If an impossibly non-existent being is possible, then it must exist.

AO1: Descartes’ Ontological argument

Descartes approach with his ontological argument differs from Anselm in its foundational method.
Anselm is often called the father of scholasticism, a medieval tradition which used systematic reasoning and Aristotelian logic to examine and defend theological beliefs.
They understood propositions as combinations of subjects (what the proposition is about) and predictates (what is claimed about the subject).
Anselm’s conclusion that “God exists”, can be understood as ‘God’ being the subject, and ‘exists’ being the predicate.
Scholastics favored using deductive argument to analyse and produce propositions like this.
Descartes rejected scholasticism.
As a result, his ontological argument argument does not ultimately depend on a deductive form like Anselm does.
Instead, Descartes claims the argument can work through ‘intuition’, which is when one simply grasps something as true.
This works without needing to follow a chain of premises to a conclusion.
Intuition works through bringing ideas before our mind and thinking them through.
Descartes calls this the ‘natural light’ of reason.
He thinks such perceptions are a source of certainty.
He gives an example from mathematics; we cannot imagine a triangle without its angles adding up to 180 degrees.
Our conceptualisation of the triangle therefore reveals to us through intuition that it is impossible for a triangle to be separated from internal angles summing 180 degrees.
Descartes applies this method of intuition to the idea of a supremely perfect being.
A supremely perfect being contains all perfections.
Necessary existence is a perfection, because it means God depends on nothing else for existence, and is an eternal being.
So, we can clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary existence belongs to the supremely perfect nature.
Descartes also compares the inseparability of God and existence to that of a mountain and a valley.
We cannot imagine a mountain without a valley, just as we cannot imagine God without existence.
Descartes did put his argument into a deductive form, probably meant as a temporary tool to help appreciate how God can be known through intuition.
He says ‘formal argument’ is not required, but seems to think it can nonetheless help with the reflection needed to gain the right intuition:
P1: The idea of a supremely perfect being is one which contains all perfections.
P2: Existence is a perfection
C3: God exists

AO1: Malcolm’s ontological argument

Anselm’s ontological argument is a priori, meaning not based on experience.
It is deductive, so that the conclusion follows from the premises with necessity.
It is ultimately a development of Anselm’s presentation of the argument.
Malcolm thinks Anselm’s proslogion 2 and 3 present different versions of the argument.
He accepts Kant’s critique of the version in chapter 2 that existence is not a predicate.
But he argues the version in chapter 3 survives Kant, because it focuses specifically on necessary existence, which he thinks is a predicate.
He replaces Anselm’s term ‘greatest’ with ‘unlimited’, arguing it better captures what Anselm was getting at by describing God as the greatest conceivable being.
An unlimited being cannot have any of the dependencies that contingent beings do.
This means God cannot contingently exist, since then God would depend on something else and therefore could cease existent, which would be a limitation.
It also means God cannot contingently not exist, since then something could create God, which would make God dependent on that thing which would also be a limitation.
Malcolm uses this to deduce that God necessarily exists:
P1. God is by definition an unlimited being
P2. If God exists, then God cannot cease existing, so God would exist necessarily.
P3. If God does not exist, nothing can create God, so God would be impossible
P4. God is not impossible.
C1. Therefore, God exists necessarily.
There are debates about whether God is impossible, with various challenges to his coherence being debated for milenia.
Malcolm does not provide a proof of God’s coherence to justify P4.
He argues there is no special reason to presume God’s incoherence, and concludes it’s up to critics of the argument to attempt to prove that.
It remains the only means of attacking the argument, in his view.
And therefore the only means of denying God’s existence.
So his aim with the argument is to validate Anselm’s original insight, that if the concept of God is coherent, then God must exist.

AO2: Gaunilo’s ‘lost island’ objection

Gaunilo argues Anselm’s ontological argument reduces to the absurd (reductio ad absurdem) when we apply its logic to another case, like the greatest conceivable island.
According to Anselm, it is greater to exist, which absurdly implies this greatest possible island must exist.
Gaunilo is attacking the deductive validity of the ontological argument, by claiming its premises do not prove its conclusion.

Counter

However, Anselm replies that his argument is designed to only work for God.
Descartes develops this response, arguing that God’s essence includes necessary existence, whereas contingent beings like islands do not.
An island is contingent by definition, its existence depends on water, a planet, a sun etc.
The point is, no matter how great or perfect an island is, it will still be contingent, otherwise it wouldn’t be an island.

Evaluation

This response defeats Gaunilo because the a priori reasoning used in the ontological argument can only prove the existence of a necessary being.
A priori reasoning is about analysing the definition of concepts.
When we apply this analysis to contingent beings, we can discover that they depend on something else, and what they depend on.
But it cannot tell us whether those conditions for its existence are actually fulfilled.
E.g., we can know a priori that the greatest island depends on water to exist, but not whether that water exists, nor therefore the island itself.
By contrast, when we analyse the concept of a necessary being, we find that it doesn’t depend on anything external.
This explains why an a priori proof of existence can work exclusively for God, but not for contingent things like islands.

AO2: Gaunilo’s critique that God is beyond our understanding

Gaunilo objects to Anselm’s premise that God is in our mind/understanding.
He brings up the classic point that God is beyond our understanding, and therefore can’t be ‘in our mind’.
Without this premise, Anselm can’t then go on to conclude that God must exist in reality.

Counter

However, when Anselm talks about God being in the mind, he uses the term ‘in intellectu’, which means ‘can be conceived or thought about’.
It does not mean ‘fully understood’, just that we understand that God is the greatest conceivable being.
Anselm makes an analogy:
Just because we can’t look directly at the sun, doesn’t mean we can’t see by sunlight.
Similarly, just because we can’t fully understand what God is, doesn’t mean we can’t understand that whatever God is, God is the greatest conceivable being.

Evaluation

This response shows that Gaunilo misunderstood Anselm and demanded more understanding than Anselm’s premise requires.
Concepts like greatness clearly involve a hierarchy, where the highest point would be the ‘greatest’ being.
Such a being could be beyond our understanding, but we can still understand the idea that something must be at the top of the greatness hierarchy.
E.g., we can know that omniscience is knowing every truth, even if we don’t know every truth ourselves.
We can understand the greatest being contains all the omni-qualities.
This is all we need to understand for the ontological argument to work.
We can then reason that because it’s greater to exist, this greatest being must exist.
So, Anselm’s defence works because knowing God to be the greatest being, and knowing what it is to be the greatest being, are two different things.

AO2: Kant’s 2nd critique: existence is not a predicate

The ontological argument claims that denying God’s existence incoherently denies what God is (the greatest/perfect being).
Kant responds that this misunderstand what existence is by treating it as a predicate (a description of what a thing is).
Kant illustrates that there’s no conceptual difference between 100 coins in reality compared to 100 coins in the mind.
If existence were a predicate, it would describe a characteristic of the real coins.
The real coins would have this characteristic and the mental ones would not, making them conceptually different.
But they are not; 100 coins is just 100 coins, whether they exist or not.
So, existence is not a predicate, and we therefore can deny God’s existence without incoherently denying what God is.

Counter

However, this critique doesn’t seem to work against Descartes’ version of the ontological argument.
His is based on our having a rational intuition that God cannot be separated from existence, just as we intuit that a triangle must have three sides.

Evaluation

Malcolm also shows that Kant also fails to undermine Anselm’s version.
Kant has only shown that ‘existence’ of things like coins is not a predicate.
Coins are contingent things, so saying they exist doesn’t add anything to their concept.
But a necessary being contains its reason for existence within itself so that it is impossibly non-existent..
If we say a being necessarily exists, we are therefore describing an essential characteristic or quality of that thing.
So, necessary existence is a predicate.
Ultimately, Kant has made the same mistake as Gaunilo, testing the logic of an argument for a necessary being by applying it to a contingent thing, like an island or coins.

AO2: Kant’s 1st critique: necessity doesn’t imply existence

Kant argues that something seeming necessary in our minds, doesn’t make it necessary in reality.
This was Gaunilo’s underlying insight, though his misapplied it with his island example which was contingent and therefore irrelevant.
Kant here better applies it to a case of necessity:
A triangle necessarily has three sides.
This shows that if a triangle exists, then it necessarily has three sides.
Ontological arguments definine God as predicated with necessary existence
Similarly, this only shows that if God exists, then God exists necessarily.

Counter

Malcolm responds that this critique is incoherent because it accepts God is defined as a necessary being, which means God must exist, but then denies that God must exist.
Malcolm reasons:
A maximally great being cannot have any dependencies.
It therefore cannot contingently exist, nor contingently not exist.
The only remaining options are that God is logically necessary, or logically impossible.
So if God is possible, God must exist.

Evaluation

However, Malcolm has assumed that logically necessity is the only option for a non-contingent being.
Hick argues a non-contingent being could just be ontologically necessary, meaning non-dependent, eternal and self-existent (aseity).
It it exists, it cannot cease to exist so would be ontologically necessary.
If it doesn’t exist, it cannot come into existence, so would be ontologically impossible.
A non-contingent being could therefore either exist or not exist, without incoherence.
So, Malcolm’s description of God as non-contingent is insufficient to justify his conclusion that God must exist.
Hick’s distinction between types of necessity defends Gaunilo and Kant’s insight that necessity in mental judgement doesn’t entail actual existence.