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.
St. Anselm refuted this argument long ago:
"In St. Anselm's own day this argument was objected to by Gaunilo, who maintained as a reductio ad absurdum that were it valid one could prove by means of it the actual existence somewhere of an ideal island far surpassing in riches and delights the fabled Isles of the Blessed. But this criticism however smart it may seem is clearly unsound, for it overlooks the fact that the argument is not intended to apply to finite ideals but only to the strictly infinite; and if it is admitted that we possess a true idea of the infinite, and that this idea is not self-contradictory, it does not seem possible to find any flaw in the argument. Actual existence is certainly included in any true concept of the Infinite, and the person who admits that he has a concept of an Infinite Being cannot deny that he conceives it as actually existing."Source: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608b.htm#IBf
In other words, your utopic Island is not infinite, and finite beings can exist or not exist, inside or outside the mind. Your example fails St. Anselm's test.
-Theo
This is, at its core, simply special pleading.
"Experience" is also the arena in which we purge or retrain our more irrational tendencies. Modern philosophy tends to ignore this area, holding that one can be rational simply by following a method of thought rather than by disciplining one's way of life.
Anselm's proof itself is quite rooted in a way of life. As I recall, the proof acually occurs in the context of a prayer prefacing a longer philosophical text.
If special pleading is understood as the introduction of "favorable details or exclusion of unfavorable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations themselves," which is tantamount to the selective use of evidence, I ask,
How is this statement you've isolated a case of "special pleading?" Wouldn't you be engaging in the same by eliminating from consideration the possibility of infinite ideals?
As it stands, I believe your allegation of sloppy reasoning is weak itself.
-Theo
interesting read bump
I know this is one of Dr. Norman Geisler's favorite apologetic arguments; he finds it particularly compelling. It probably would be to medieval or modern minds. To the post-modern mind, however, it sounds like you just pulled some sort of logical trick. This is why this argument is rarely seen outside of academic apologetics.
Personally, my only objection to the ontological proof is that it assumes that existence is greater than non-existence. That makes sense to me, but you have to prove that existence is greater than some sort of Nirvana-like non-existence. That's not easily done.
Personally, I prefer the ethical argument (natural law) and the cosmological ("uncaused cause") arguments. I find them more compelling.
No, you simply have to ask if there is anyone in the audience prepared to argue that non-existence is superior to existence by putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger.
That your opponent continues not to commit suicide is empirical evidence he thinks existance is superior, no matter what verbal arguments he may rehearse for the gallery.
Justify the exclusion of the finite. Explain why infinity is a necessary component of perfection. Et cetera.
In fact, it's quite impossible without a whole host of tendentious assumptions.
No. Utopia is by definition Not A Place At All.
Not that it really matters - even if I accept your definition, it has yet to be shown that existence is a necessary part of perfection.
I own, have read, and constantly refer to Dr. Geisler's Come, Let us Reason. He represents a current in the Reformed Church that has rediscovered Thomism and cautiously endorse it, within their denominational constraints. In spite of that, I find that after 500 years of Protestantism, many Reformed thinkers have come to appreciate the value of good, classical, traditional Christian theology and philosophy--which so happens to be Catholic.
-Theo
Do you understand what "infinity" is?
If a being didn't exist, there would not be a need to talk about its perfections. A being must "be" before I can say anything about it.
By accepting Kant's assertion that "existence is not a predicate," you start going in circles, chasing your own tail, it seems to me.
-Theo
Nonsense. In fact, someone once made the case that a God who created everything despite not existing is obviously more powerful, and hence more perfect, than a God who is required to exist before He can create.
In any case, you may be willing to accept without question the assumptions inherent in such a construct - that it only applies to the infinite, et cetera - but I see no need to do the same. In fact, I ask because I'm really quite confident that you can't justify those assumptions, other than justifying them on the grounds that they happen to be convenient for the case you wish to make. Nor is this line of questioning doing much to convince me otherwise.
God is the greatest being thinkable. –First part of Father Robert A. O'Donnell’s formulation of Anselm’s argument
I’m trying to understand Kant’s argument. Is it correct to state that Kant says that “God is the greatest being thinkable” should be “God is the greatest thought thinkable” because the word being includes the idea of existence and thus Anselm assumes what he is trying to prove?
Which, when you think about it, is basically self-evident. After all, I can imagine all sorts of things, such as purple unicorns. But the fact that I can have that idea in my head is not, in and of itself, something that informs me as to whether purple unicorns actually exist or not. Merely having the idea doesn't tell me anything new about the actual existence of actual purple unicorns - to determine whether actual purple unicorns actually exist, I have to step outside my own head and take a look around ;)
The analogy as presented only works if "existence" can become an identity with "perfection." But the plain wording of the analogy doesn't even make the claim. "Existence is more perfect than" only means "better than," or "more closely approximates perfection than." Mere existence, in this analogy, is *not* perfection. Therefore, it does not rise to a par with what is claimed in the first premise concerning a perfect society.
Also, the analogy fails in that it concerns itself with merely human concerns. Humans cannot *be* perfect. To be perfect is to be without limits. Clearly, humans have limitations. "A perfect society," as stated in the first premise, has to be understood in that context. It is more correct to assume this means "...a perfect society, within the limitations imposed on finite creatures."
Nothing in this analogy refutes St. Anselm's analogy, as it doesn't even try to comprehend the Infinite, which is God.
To be perfect is to be without limits.
Sez you. And so sez one answer to Anselm, but then again, why should I accept that proposition? Seems to me that you ought to make a case for justifying the limitation to infinity rather than taking it as axiomatic ;)
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