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.
Fine. I'll work with your definition. It is an ideal; ergo it only exists in the mind. It can ONLY exist in the mind as all ideals do.
Time to trot out the "cheap acid of logic" to dispel This one.
You could just as easily say that about any "perfect" thing, including God as the ideal being.
Let me step back and say one thing in general about the nature of such proofs. The fact that they are all, IMO, flawed in some way or another is not, to my mind, surprising in the slightest - it is, in my opinion, exactly what we should expect. After all, God tells us that we are to come to Him through faith, not through a cracking good logical proof. Or, more succinctly, if you can prove the existence of God, what do you need faith for?
Nevertheless, it is worth coming back to over and over again as it is one of those places where you find the rubber meeting the road.
SB: "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."
This statement is utter nonsense. To say a non-existent entity can bring something into existence is complete illogic and meaningless. A thing that does not exist cannot, by definition, cause existence.
Are you confusing the concept of existence/non-existence with physical/spiritual? That is the only reading of your statement that begins to make sense to me....
That is what Mortimer Adler stated in the Buckley interview and not just Kant, but St. Thomas Aqyuinas rejected Anselm's proof as well. Adler states that: "...the ontological...argument,which is not a reasonable basis for believing in God's existence, IS absolutely controlling in how one must think about God's nature. And I think this reverses the order of sacred theology because in sacred theology, St. Thomas proceeds from God's existence to God's nature, whereas in philosophical theology, one proceeds from one's understanding of God's nature, as Anselm has done it, to the questions of God's existence. Unless one has this clear notion of God's nature-or a sufficiently clear notion- one can't even begin to ask whether in the world of reality there exists something that corresponds to that notion."
He then goes on to say later in the interview that the only question to which the only answer is God is "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
This is the crux of the argument: The real God is better than any ideal God. He has to be if He is real. Just as a real nice car is better than an ideal car which you don't have.
God tells us that we are to come to Him through faith, not through a cracking good logical proof. Or, more succinctly, if you can prove the existence of God, what do you need faith for?
I agree Christ came to save us as a person. He praised the power of Faith, He never attempted to save humanity with a syllogism. Which may be why St. Thomas regarded his work as sand.
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.There seems to be some major equivocation going on in this argument. The subject of the argument changes:
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.In this sentence the subject changes from the greatest being thinkable (the greatest conceptual being I can think of) to the greatest being I can think of who exists (the greatest existent being I can think of).
One way to reveal the flaw in the argument, perhaps, is as follows:
If He existed only in my mind, He would not be the greatest being thinkable, for I can think of a being who…I have to step outside my own head and take a look around ;)existsmight exist both inside my mind and outside my mind.
If you can do this, I want lessons.
Great thread - thanks for posting. I'll stick with Wittgenstein's advice:
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
Something makes me think that God is not circumscribed by our limited powers of reasoning ;)
A thing that does not exist cannot, by definition, cause existence.
Why not?
Not "sez I," but "sez logic." If a thing has limitation, then something can exist, or at least be conceived of, outside of that limitation. If that is so, then that which is proposed to be "perfect" is diminished by the fact that it does not contain that something outside of it. Therefore, it cannot be "perfect" in any sense that approaches the concept of God.
But my main argument was with the second premise of your analogy. When you put it in terms of "existence is more perfect than non-existence," this does not equate to even saying that existence *is* perfect. It only claims it is a "better" state of being, or more closely typing perfection, than non-existence. This destroys the analogy with perfection implied in the first premise. Therefore, I cannot see how this is said to refute St. Anselm, when it is internally insufficient in defining "perfection" even on its own terms.
I have mixed feelings about Adler's statement here. On the one hand, I certainly agree with what he is saying, to an extent, but on the other hand, I don't want to fall into the trap of taking it too stringently - that is, thinking that a "clear notion" extends to meaning that we have to basically be omniscient before we can honestly claim to know anything at all. That way lies madness ;)
He then goes on to say later in the interview that the only question to which the only answer is God is "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
A powerful question. Of course, if there were nothing, we wouldn't be here to ask the question, but personally, I suspect that the answer will not be quite so trivial as "Why not?"...
Is it? Ideal cars don't need oil changes or insurance payments, among other things ;)
The real problem here is that there's no objective definition of "better", or at least I think it's probably quite impossible to create one. Consider a statement as basic as "It is better to be alive than to be dead." Most of us take that as self-evident, suicides notwithstanding, but you pretty much have to take that statement as self-evident - it's certainly not provable, and when you boil it down to its essential nature, what you inevitably realize is that saying "alive is better than dead" is really not much different from saying "chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla". "Better" is an inherently subjective concept, which poses problems when you try to use it in an objective proof.
My mom's maiden name was Anselmo. I wonder if it was derived from this saint. Was St. Anselm Italian?
In other words, the greatest being thinkable cannot strictly be imaginary - if that were the case, we can always imagine a greater being who is greater by virtue of the fact that it actually exists. But what Kant says is that the ultimate test of existence is not inside your head, it's out there in the world. Your imagination does not make reality, no matter how perfect the logic is - logic only describes reality, it doesn't create it. So the only way to know if your logic is, in fact, describing reality is to get out there and take a look. You can't imagine your way into purple unicorns existing, nor can you construct a logical proof requiring purple unicorns to exist - the only way to really prove that purple unicorns actually exist is to look at the world around you, not the world you imagine in your head. Which is sort of what I mean by stepping out and having a look around.
Which implicates part of Kant's answer - the reality of a thing does not necessarily follow from our conception of that thing.
If that is so, then that which is proposed to be "perfect" is diminished by the fact that it does not contain that something outside of it.
That is likely to be a much more controversial assumption than you think. Is a perfect society limited by the fact that it is not also a unicycle, a wingback chair, or a blade of grass? Is a perfect diamond less than perfect because it is not also a deck of cards, a bucket of water, and a tie-dyed t-shirt?
Yeah, you can backdoor your way into the desired conclusion by assuming that "perfection" is absolutely unbound by any sense of the word "limit", but I'm not inclined to accept that assumption without some real meat as to why it's necessary, and necessary for more than just "because it gets us where we want to go".
It only claims it is a "better" state of being, or more closely typing perfection, than non-existence.
Why is existence better than non-existence? For that matter, why is perfect better than imperfect?
You see the problem, I hope - "better" is defined as "more perfect". Why perfection rather than imperfection? Because it's "better"! Clever, but that train is on a circular track ;)
Of course on the negative side, they won't get you anywhere.
The real problem here is that there's no objective definition of "better", or at least I think it's probably quite impossible to create one. Consider a statement as basic as "It is better to be alive than to be dead." Most of us take that as self-evident, suicides notwithstanding, but you pretty much have to take that statement as self-evident - it's certainly not provable, and when you boil it down to its essential nature, what you inevitably realize is that saying "alive is better than dead" is really not much different from saying "chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla". "Better" is an inherently subjective concept, which poses problems when you try to use it in an objective proof.
Except that everyone recognizes that some things are better than others. Your argument seems to say that quality is entirely subjective, here I would disagree. Fresh food is objectively better than moldy, rotten food; health is better than sickness. Virtue is better than vice. All of which can be demonstrated teleologically and to a lesser degree, deontologically.
On the contrary; logic only describes thought, not reality.
Perfect is as perfect does ;)
Except that everyone recognizes that some things are better than others.
The problem is that "everyone recognizes" is not a proof. Now, you can certainly try to prove it teleologically, by showing that A is "better" than B because A allows us to realize X, but then you're faced with the fact that you've really just pushed the problem back one step, not eliminated it. Being alive is better than being dead because being alive allows you to experience a sunset, or whatever X you care to substitute. But then the next logical question is, why is X "better" than not-X? Why is experiencing sunsets better than not experiencing sunsets? Unfortunately, that question is invariably resolved, in the end, by realizing that X is better than not-X (or Y) because I desire X more than not-X (or Y). Which is fine, but it's kind of difficult to claim that my personal desires constitute an objective sense of what's "better".
True, we do seem to agree on some things, that some things are indeed "better" than others. On the other hand, it's difficult to have a functioning society without broad agreement on at least a few things, and on the right sort of things, so it's the same sort of problem as why-something-rather-than-nothing - if not, we're most likely not around to have this conversation in the first place. A society composed of people who can't agree on whether rape and murder are good or bad - or worse, one where everyone agrees that rape and murder are just fine - is likely to be rather dysfunctional in terms of what we consider "functional". Of course, then you have to ask yourself why a functional society is "better" than a dysfunctional society ;)
Kant had something of an answer for all this, of course, in the form of the imperfect duties of the categorical imperative - we should act only according to maxims we would wish to be universalized. I do not wish to be raped and/or murdered, hence I should not myself commit rape or murder. This does not obviate the problem of "better" being based on our personal desires, but it does rather cleverly leverage them into a system of ethics. My desire to not be raped or murdered is rather stronger than my desire to commit rape and murder, and so I choose not to be raped and murdered by choosing not to rape and murder. Clever fellow, was Immanuel, although opinions do vary...
You need to define proof for me. I cannot respond to the rest of the post now; will post later.
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