windsofchange

Ans~e~lm.

Gawen

From this thread:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...t=Gawen+anselm

Originally posted by me:
Ontology is the attempt to say what entities exist.
Metaphysics is the attempt to say, of those entities, what they are.

Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God is a pure-thought argument and does not require the thinker to wander into the realm of sensory experience. It is also an argument that seems to presuppose a faith stance. “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. One can imagine all kinds of fantastic creatures and beings but if they do not exist then they cannot be the greatest of all conceivable beings.

Any being that has the attribute of existence would be greater than a being that did not have the attribute of existence. Therefore, “God is that...” means God must exist. Not that God's attributes must be greater than anything we can imagine of God, which would ultimately lead others to postulate greater things than others ad infinitum.

Postulating the existence of something does not necessarily mean that that something exists. the idea of existence would be analytically connected to the idea of a supreme being but whether this then connects with a supreme being that exists outside the human mind would need to be settled on the basis of experience. Existence is not a predicate of something. It is not an attribute to be added to something, for example, goodness or mercy. Existence is not a characteristic that something may have or lack.

There is a logical difference between saying "God is" and "God is X”. Anslem's argument simply says that if God existed, God would exist, but cannot do any more than that. The argument cannot show us whether God really exists or could exist, in reality).

The ontological argument was also reformulated by Descartes and has a contemporary expression in the work of Plantinga. There are other people posting here that have explored these. You can do a search here and read the threads if you wish.