Francois Tremblay

Every philosopher worth his salt can see most of these arguments equivocate both sides of the Thomist distinction between essence and existence. That an entity may have existence as necessary in its essence, does not necessarily means it exists. I can imagine many entities which are defined as necssarily existing, which do not really exist.

bd-from-kg

Franc28:

My point about the number of brilliant philosophers who have found the Ontological Argument convincing would be fallacious if I had tried to use it to show that the OA is valid. However, since my point was that it is not transparently fallacious, it is perfectly correct. The fact that a number of intelligent, well-trained philosophers have not seen a fallacy in a given argument is really a pretty conclusive proof that the fallacy (if any) is not obvious.

Amusingly enough, you commit a well-known fallacy yourself in your most recent post with your statement that “every philosopher worth his salt can see...”. This is known as the “No true Scotsman” fallacy.

Detached9:

You say:

Well, I suppose that, in a sense, any fallacious argument is “absurd”. And perhaps you’re so brilliant that you can spot the fallacy in all versions of the OA immediately. If so, congratulations. Unfortunately, even with my years of training in logic, it takes me a bit longer.

I like to think of OA’s in the same way that I think of the various clever “proofs” that all triangles are isosceles. Obviously not all triangles are isosceles, so there has to be a fallacy somewhere. But it may take a while to locate it.
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Now let’s see what some actual philosophers (some of which are generally considered to be “worth their salt&#8221) have had to say about the OA. (All of these quotes come from <a href="http://www.formalontology.it/ontological_proof.htm" target="_blank">this site</a>.)

Nathan Salmon:

“Philosophers who address the questions of what it is for an individual to exist, or what it is for an individual to be actual, often do so with reference to the fallacy they have uncovered in the classical Ontological Argument for God's existence. Indeed, the Ontological Argument is useful as a vehicle by which this and other issues in ontology and the philosophy of logic may be introduced and sharpened.”

Robert S. Hartman:

Proslogion 2-4 consists of four pages. Barth's book about them ["Fides Quaerens Intellectum" (1931)] has 165 pages. All the books and essays written about them in the last eight hundred years would fill libraries. It is a legitimate question to ask, What is it, in these four pages, that makes them so potent a challenge to the best minds of humanity?

Alvin Plantinga:

The ontological argument for the existence of Cod has fascinated philosophers ever since it was formulated by St. Anselm ... To the unsophisticated, Anselm's argument is (at first sight at least) remarkably unconvincing, if not downright irritating, it smacks too much of word magic. And yet almost every major philosopher from the time of Anselm to the present has had his say about it; the last few years have seen a remarkable flurry of interest in it...although the argument certainly looks at first sight as if it ought to be unsound, it is profoundly difficult to say what exactly is wrong with it.

Jaakko Hintikka:

"It is much harder than one might first suspect to see what is wrong - if anything - with the ontological argument, in some of its variants at least.
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Now as to the argument itself, there are many versions, not all of which are as simple as Anselm’s first argument. For example, here’s a relatively sophisticated version from the excellent <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/o/ont-arg.htm" target="_blank">article on the Ontological Argument from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a>:

Again, I don’t say that this argument is correct (i.e., both sound and valid), only that the fallacy is not totally obvious.

And of course, there’s Godel’s Ontological Argument. Godel himself was not exactly a slouch when it came to logic, and as one might expect, his argument is perfectly valid. But some of the premises are open to question. An excellent exposition of it can be found <a href="http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/ontology.html" target="_blank">here</a>. (Warning: this is a long article because it starts at the beginning; it includes a nice intro to modal logic along the way.)

Devilnaut:

The article above includes a comment about Oppy’s “reductio ad absurdum” argument in the article you cite. At any rate, Godel’s argument is anything but “overwrought”; it’s a purely logical argument. As for being “overlong”, it’s actually a fairly short argument. Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean Theorem is longer than this.

____________________________________

Anyone who cares to pursue this should be warned, however, that modal logic (which is used in practically all modern versions of the OA) is tricky, with many traps for the unwary. The biggest trap, so far as the OA is concerned, is that for any X, the statements “It is possible that X exists” and “If X exists, then X exists necessarily” imply “X exists”. It took me a while to understand why this is a valid conclusion from these premises, and the fact that this is not exactly obvious to anyone not familiar with modal logic is (IMHO) what gives the modal versions of the OA much of their apparent plausibility.

Once again, please do not bombard me with arguments to the effect that one or another of the many incarnations of the OA is fallacious. I agree: All versions of the OA are fallacious. But it’s worth studying them anyway to understand why they’re fallacious.

[ February 07, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Devilnaut

Thanks for the thourough post bd. I agree that studying various incarnations of the ontological argument can be a useful thought excercise.

I guess I'm not used to formalized logic- I am at home with my own intuitive step-skipping thought processes. While not as rigorous, it seems to make for quicker analysis

Draygomb

This is like saying:

If god exists then god is perfect.
Perfection entails existence so,
If god exists then god must exist.

Therefore god exists.

liquid

The ontological argument again... christ! This has been dead in the water for centuries.

The flaw isn't particularly apparent to the casual viewer - though suspicions can arise when you realise that it can be used to 'prove' the existance of anything, but it is there nonetheless.

Basically, Kant put it most concisely:

"Existence is not a predicate"

A predicate is a word that describes, that provides information about something. Stating that something exists provides no information about the object itself, but rather it is a property of the universe in which the object exists.

It seems a rather pedantic grammatical point, until you realise that a perfect thing does not include the characteristic of existance.

Forgive me if I have put this across in a confusing manner, but I can provide a more succinct version of ther argument in a day or two if you wish.

Amos

But the universe has no properties because it does not exist. All things find existence in the universe, as you sugest.

If existence is not a predicate it precedes existence and is the essence if existence . . . which now means that essence precedes existence and in mythical terms is referred to as God, i.e. "This, is Buddha" and "This, is my body" when pointing at the substance but looking at the essence of the substance.

If we hold that the universe exist God must also exist because neither have an existence of being but find their predicate in each and every being.

Amos

liquid

Amos. Believe it or not, you are actually incoherent. A basic asset in debating is to make yourself understood.

Where the hell does this assertion come from? And things that don't exist can have properties, conceptually, so that doesn't make sense either.

Huh? What is THAT meant to mean? All things that exist are in the universe? All things that could possibly exist do, in the universe? Stop being ambiguous - it appears as if the language and concepts are beyond your reach.

So existance preceeds existance huh? This is babble! The second part looks like it has been written by a grammatically-impaired person.

Again another strange assertion that makes no sense whatsoever.

This is so messed up linguistically I can't even begin to tell you why it is wrong, because I can't work out what you are thinking in the first place!

I think there is a dramatic abuse and misunderstanding of the argument in here, but finding it would require getting it from someone who can comunicate to other human beings.

Amos

To you maybe, but just because you don't understand does not mean that you should get pissed off at me.

So why don't you show me something that does not exist in the universe (except "pink elephants," of course) and show me where the universe exists (except "outside," of course).

If, according to you "existence is not a predicate" the essence of existence must precede existence because all that is known is made known through its attributes and all that is made known throught is attributes must have come into existence after its essence or we would not recognize them as being different (this means that intelligence must reside within us to recognize it elsewhere -- which, in the end, is why some of us are smarter than others).

Amos

Infinity Lover

Forget Big Bang, Superstring, or Einsteins relativity theory. NEVER send a mathmatician to do a philosophers job. (those two are brother and sister; the one is being honest with formula's and numbers, the other being honest in ones arguments and choice of words!)

STEP ONE you can't honestly say NOTHING COULD POSSIBLY EXIST because we exist!
STEP TWO that means NOTHING CAN'T POSSIBLY EXIST!
STEP THREE that means there's ALWAYS SOMETHING!
STEP FOUR that means existence is infinite!

And say bye bye creator! End of debate!

(please don't insult your intellect, by thinking "what does that nobody know?" Fame and esteem doesn't make you smarter or more honest)

Perfection isn't an attribute! It's a perfectly unfair expectation!!

PJPSYCO

***Sarcasm towards supporters of Anslem's Ontological Argument***
(runs in with bat)
Wha? it's over, but I was so hoping to beat a dead horse.
(runs away)