Posted on 11/07/2005 6:44:29 PM PST by Teófilo
In my humble opinion, unassailable.
Folks, you might or might not be familiar with St. Anselm's "proof" of the existence of God, an argument often referred to as the "Ontological Proof." If you are not familiar with it, you better. This is how Father Robert A. O'Donnell, author of Hooked in Philosophy: Thomas Aquinas Made Easy, puts it:
God is the greatest being thinkable. The greatest being thinkable cannot exist only in my mind. He must also exist outside my mind. If He existed only in my mind, He would not be the greatest being thinkable, for I can think of a being who exists both inside my mind and outside my mind. Therefore God must exist outside my mind as well as inside my mind.Or, you may approach it from other directions too. Here are a couple of my humble understandings which I know I've heard before from people a lot smarter than me--make your own judgments as to how smart I am, please, and keep them to yourself. I want to be neither discouraged nor have my ego stroked for is bad for my fragile humility, thank you!
1. I conceive of an Infinite One who is First Cause, himself uncaused; Prime Mover, himself unmoved, Intelligent Designer, and Source of Morality, who sums in his Being every perfection, such as beauty, truth, goodness, love, eternality. But existence is also perfection or else this Infinite One would be imperfect and therefore, finite, bounded, limited, constrained, and contigent. This Infinite One cannot but exist necessarily. This Infinite One we call "God."St. Thomas Aquinas disliked St. Anselm's approach. He thought that St. Anselm made too much of a leap. Yet, as we can see, St. Anselm's Ontological Argument easily subsumes St. Thomas' own Aristotelian argumentation.2. When one thinks and talks about "God" and when all terms are defined rigurously and coherently, the thinker cannot but acknowledge that God's existence in necessary or else contradiction ensues.
I contend, at the risk of oversimplifying somewhat, that most of today's "critical" philosophy is a reaction to St. Anselm's Ontological Argument. Much of contemporary philosophy has inherited an skeptical attitude against any human ability to comprehend things as they are in themselves, and to speak coherently about them. Skeptics have introduced an artificial semantic cleavage between concepts such as "being" and "existence" so that one can deny one without detriment to the other. Today it seems easy to deny the existence of God due to these facile constructs.
Finally, St. Anselm's God seems to be easier on contemplatives than the one discerned solely through Aristotelian dialectics. Using St. Thomas' five "proofs," without the aid of faith, the most we can be are righteous Deists--and I say this fully cognizant that St. Thomas was a fully accomplished contemplative.
But the Infinite Being discerned through St. Anselm's Ontological Argument moves one to "awe" immediately, perhaps even irreflexively. The divide between intellectual recogntion and adoration seems smaller in St. Anselm than in St. Thomas.
St. Anselm's challenge to today's skeptic thinkers would be very simple: God exist. Deal with it. Ironically, I think he would challenge believers with the same message, a realization that should moving most lukewarm believers from tepidness to fervor. Amen to that.
Damn...this articles too deep for me....
I thought Ben Franklin's concept was easier...
"Beer is proof that God exists"
"Beer is proof that God exists"
I agree somewhat. But I'm afraid that the skeptic would get drunk before he learns to appreciate that simple truth. :-)
-Theo
I love this proof and it is so easy to disseminate.
1. We know we are not perfect.
2. That so, what is the model of perfection?
3. We have a perfect idea of the perfect being, completely perfect, so it is at the same time mentally reachable, yet we as imperfect could never simply imagine it on our own, being imperfect.
4. There is a pattern of God outside us. Yet it is inside us.
Excellent! I loved it too!
-Theo
Ahhhhh.....but when he sobers, he will be enlightened.
Or have a really lousy headache...
Which means....
God prevents hangovers.....
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
Amen!......but Rum is the nectar of the Angels.....
Mortimer Adler discussed Anselm's Proof with William F. Buckley several years ago on the firing line. It was The Point where I recognized that idealism is not the same as the perfect and that idealism is the source of evil.
One must remember that proof in the Medieval sense is purely logical versus the modern sense which is empirical.
Also Michael Macrone has an interesting chapter on Anselm's proof in his book Eureka!
I believe a modern contemplative would integrate the two: Experiential (empirical in the largest sense), transcending - and including - logic.
Now 'all reality' includes existence; existence is therefore contained in the concept of a thing that is possible. If, then, this thing is rejected, the internal possibility of the thing is rejected -- which is self-contradictory. My answer is as follows. There is already a contradiction in introducing the concept of existence -- no matter under what title it may be disguised -- into the concept of a thing which we profess to be thinking solely in reference to its possibility. If that be allowed as legitimate, a seeming victory has been won, . . . but in actual fact nothing at all is said: the assertion is a mere tautology. We must ask: Is the proposition that this or that thing (which, whatever it may be, is allowed as possible) exists, an analytic or a synthetic proposition? If it is analytic, the assertion of the existence of the thing adds nothing to the thought of the thing; but in that case either the thought, which is in us, is the thing itself, or we have presupposed an existence as belonging to the realm of the possible, and have then, on that pretext, inferred its existence from its internal possibility -- which is nothing but a miserable tautology. The word 'reality', which in the concept of the thing sounds other than the word 'existence' in the concept of the predicate, is of no avail in meeting this objection. For if all positing (no matter what it may be that is posited) is entitled reality, the thing with all its predicates is already posited in the concept of the subject, and is assumed as actual; and in the predicate this is merely repeated. But if, on the other hand, we admit, as every reasonable person must, that all existential propositions are synthetic, how can we profess to maintain that the predicate of existence cannot be rejected without contradiction? This is a feature which is found only in analytic propositions, and is indeed precisely what constitutes their analytic character.I should have hoped to put an end to these idle and fruitless disputations in a direct manner, by an accurate determination of the concept of existence, had I not found that the illusion which is caused by the confusion of a logical with a real predicate (that is, with a predicate which determines a thing) is almost beyond correction. Anything we please can be made to serve as a logical predicate; the subject can even be predicated of itself; for logic abstracts from all content. But a determining predicate is a predicate which is added to the concept of the subject and enlarges it. Consequently, it must not be already contained in the concept.
Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition, "God is almighty," contains two concepts, each having its object, namely, God and almightiness. The small word "is", is not an additional predicate, but only serves to put the predicate in relation to the subject. If, then, I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (including that of almightiness), and say, "God is," or there is a God, I do not put a new predicate to the concept of God, but I only put the subject by itself, with all its predicates, in relation to my concept, as its object. Both must contain exactly the same kind of thing, and nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses possibility only, by my thinking its object as simply, given and saying, it is. And thus the real does not contain more than the possible. A hundred real dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred possible dollars. For as the latter signify the concept, the former the object and its position by itself, it is clear that, in case the former contained more than the latter, my concept would not express the whole object, and would not therefore be its adequate concept. In my financial position no doubt there exists more by one hundred real dollars, than by their concept only (that is their possibility), because in reality the object is not only contained analytically in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is a determination of my state), synthetically: but the conceived hundred dollars are not in the least increased through the existence which is outside my concept.
By whatever and by however many predicates I may think a thing (even in completely determining it), nothing is really added to it, if I add that the thing exists. Otherwise, it would not be the same that exists, but something more than was contained in the concept, and I could not say that the exact object of my concept existed. Nay, even if I were to think in a thing all reality, except one, that one missing reality would not be supplied by my saying that so defective a thing exists, but it would exist with the same defect with which I thought it; or what exists would be different from what I thought. If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also. And here we perceive the cause of our difficulty. If we were concerned with an object of our senses, I could not mistake the existence of a thing for the mere concept of it; for by the concept the object is thought as only in harmony with the general conditions of a possible empirical knowledge, while by its existence it is thought as contained in the whole content of experience. Through this connection with the content of the whole experience, the concept of an object is not in the least increased; our thought has only received through it one more possible perception. If, however, we are thinking existence through the pure category alone, we need not wonder that we cannot find any characteristic to distinguish it from mere possibility.
Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence. With objects of the senses, this takes place through their connection with any one of my perceptions, according to empirical laws; with objects of pure thought, however, there is no means of knowing their existence, because it would have to be known entirely a priori, while our consciousness of every kind of existence, whether immediately by perception, or by conclusions which connect something with perception, belongs entirely to the unity of experience, and any existence outside that field, though it cannot be declared to be absolutely impossible, is a presupposition that cannot be justified by anything.
The concept of a Supreme Being is, in many respects, a very useful idea, but, being an idea only, it is quite incapable of increasing, by itself alone, our knowledge with regard to what exists. It cannot even do so much as to inform us any further as to its possibility. The analytical characteristic of possibility, which consists in the absence of contradiction in mere positions (realities), cannot be denied to it; but the connection of all real properties in one and the same thing is a synthesis the possibility of which we cannot judge a priori because these realities are not given to us as such, and because, even if this were so, no judgment whatever takes place, it being necessary to look for the characteristic of the possibility of synthetical knowledge in experience only, to which the object of an idea can never belong. Thus we see that the celebrated Leibnitz is far from having achieved what we thought he had, namely, to understand a priori the possibility of so sublime an ideal Being.
Time and labor therefore are lost on the famous ontological proof of the existence of a Supreme Being from mere concepts; and a man might as well imagine that he could become richer in knowledge by mere ideas, as a merchant in capital, if, in order to improve his position, he were to add a few noughts to his cash account.
- Immanuel Kant
Like I said: "critical" thinkers are willing to go at great length to empty the meaning of concepts such as "Being" and man's ability to comprehend them. Proceed thusly and one may justify anything philosophically.
Philosophy is thus reduced to method, or to language analysis, or to ruminations of self-consciousness. Such a turn in "philosophy" would be equivalent to turning a scalpel into a machete--or "Bowie knife" for those of you in Tennessee.
I may not have Kant's standing, but in this matter, Kant had a very bad idea that had profound consequences for the way we look at the world. He narrowed our vision; he didn't expand it.
-Theo
I agree. Logic applied to empiricism is necessary for anything making a claim to truth. However, I recognize the necessity of taking much of what is called knowledge on faith. I have always thought of transcendant thought as assuming-or including-all the knowledge that had been aquired previously. It seems as though some regard transcendance as leaving reality behind.
With regard to Scripture for example I believe that much of it may be regarded in the literal sense of the Word and one engages in transcendance when one sees more than the literal senses (which is still true) Sort of an ever expanding spiral staircase.
Logic is the way it is, and not how we might wish it to be, regardless of the consequences thereof ;)
Nevertheless, the simplest refutation of Anselm is reasoning by analogy:
Utopia is, by definition, a perfect society.
Existence is more perfect than non-existence.
Therefore, Utopia must exist.
Anyone here really believe that conclusion?
As you might know, a contemporary of Anselm made a similar argument, using a perfect island, to which Anselm also responded.
I constantly go back and forth on Anselm's putative proof and counter-reply. The situation reminds me of Pascal's line that such proofs rarely convince, because twenty minutes after being convinced one begins to fear that one was mistaken. This would indicate that ascesis is the handmaid of philosophy.
Anyway, one of the problems with Anselm, IMO, is in the automatic assignation of existential import. Just because we can imagine a thing, it does not follow that the thing must necessarily exist, as in the case of the perfect island. Or as in the case of Utopia, which I rescue from the ether by the expedient of defining Utopia as a perfect society of living men, in the biological sense ;)
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