An ontological argument for the existence of God attempts the method of a priori proof, which uses intuition and reason alone. In Philosophy, ontology (from the Greek, genitive: of being (part Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers theologians and others "A priori" redirects here For other uses see A priori. ^[1] In the context of the Abrahamic religions, ontological arguments were first proposed by the medieval philosophers Avicenna (in The Book of Healing)^[2][3] and Anselm of Canterbury (in his Proslogion). In Logic, an argument is a Set of one or more Declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the Premises along TemplateInfobox Muslim scholars --> ( Persian /ابو علی الحسین ابن عبدالله ابن سینا (born The Book of Healing ( Arabic: الشفاء Al-Shefa, Latin: Sanatio) is a scientific and philosophical Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033 &ndash April 21, 1109) was an Italian medieval Philosopher, theologian, and church official The Proslogion, (also spelled Proslogium; English translation of title - Discourse on the Existence of God) written in 1077 - 1078, Important variations were developed by later philosophers like René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Norman Malcolm, Charles Hartshorne, and Alvin Plantinga. Norman Malcolm (1911 &ndash 1990 was an American philosopher, born in Selden Kansas. Charles Hartshorne ( June 5, 1897 &ndash October 9, 2000) was a prominent American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the Philosophy Alvin Carl Plantinga (born 1932 is a contemporary American Philosopher known for his work in Epistemology, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy A modal logic version of the argument was devised by the mathematician Kurt Gödel. A modal logic is any system of formal logic that attempts to deal with modalities. Kurt Gödel (kʊɐ̯t ˈgøːdl̩ (April 28 1906 – January 14 1978 was an Austrian American Logician, Mathematician and Philosopher

The ontological argument has been a controversial topic in philosophy. Many philosophers, including Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Gottlob Frege, have openly criticized it. Gaunilo (or Gaunilon of Marmoutiers was an 11th-century Benedictine monk best known for his criticism of St Anselm 's Ontological argument David Hume (26 April 1711 25 August 1776 Scottish Philosopher, Economist, and Historian is an important figure in Western philosophy Immanuel Kant (ɪmanuəl kant 22 April 1724 12 February 1804 was an 18th-century German Philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege ( 8 November 1848, Wismar, Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin  &ndash 26 July 1925

The argument works by examining the concept of God and arguing that it implies the existence of God; that is, if we can conceive of God, God exists. The argument is often criticized as committing a bare assertion fallacy, meaning that it offers no outside premise to support it other than qualities inherent to the unproven statement. The bare assertion fallacy is a fallacy in formal logic where a premise in an argument is assumed to be true merely because it says that it is true This is also called a circular argument as the premise relies on the conclusion, which in turn relies on the premise.

The differences among the argument's principal versions arise mainly from using different concepts of God as the starting point. Anselm, for example, starts with the notion of God as a being than which no greater can be conceived, while Descartes starts with the notion of God as being maximally perfect (as having all perfections).

Contents 1 Avicenna's argument 2 Anselm's argument 2.1 A modern description of the argument 2.2 Anselm's second argument 3 Descartes' ontological arguments 4 Criticisms and objections 4.1 General objection 4.2 Gaunilo's island 4.3 Necessary nonexistence 4.4 Kant: existence is not a predicate 5 Revisionists 5.1 Plantinga's modal form and contemporary discussion 6 Notes 7 Bibliography 8 See also 9 External links

Avicenna's argument

An ontological argument for the existence of God was first proposed by Avicenna (965-1037) in the Metaphysics section of The Book of Healing. TemplateInfobox Muslim scholars --> ( Persian /ابو علی الحسین ابن عبدالله ابن سینا (born Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers theologians and others TemplateInfobox Muslim scholars --> ( Persian /ابو علی الحسین ابن عبدالله ابن سینا (born The Book of Healing ( Arabic: الشفاء Al-Shefa, Latin: Sanatio) is a scientific and philosophical ^[2][3] According to Avicenna, the universe consists of a chain of actual beings, each giving existence to the one below it and responsible for the existence of the rest of the chain below. Because he deems an actual infinite impossible, the chain as a whole must terminate in a being that is wholly simple and one, whose essence is its very existence and therefore is self-sufficient and not in need of something else to give it existence. Because its existence is not contingent on or necessitated by something else, but necessary and eternal in itself, it satisfies the condition of being the necessitating cause of the entire chain that constitutes the eternal world of contingent existing things. ^[4] Thus, Avicenna's ontological system rests on the conception of God as the Wajib al-Wujud (necessary existent). God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. There is a gradual multiplication of beings through a timeless emanation from God as a result of his self-knowledge. ^[5][6] Avicenna's proof of God's existence is unique in that it can be classified as both a cosmological argument and an ontological argument. The cosmological argument is an Argument for the Existence of God or a " First Cause " "It is ontological insofar as 'necessary existence' in intellect is the first basis for arguing for a Necessary Existent". The proof is also "cosmological insofar as most of it is taken up with arguing that contingent existents cannot stand alone and must end up in a Necessary Existent. "^[7]

Anselm's argument

The ontological argument was proposed by Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) in the second chapter of Proslogion. Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033 &ndash April 21, 1109) was an Italian medieval Philosopher, theologian, and church official The Proslogion, (also spelled Proslogium; English translation of title - Discourse on the Existence of God) written in 1077 - 1078, ^[8] Although Anselm did not propose an ontological system, he was very much concerned with the nature of being. In Philosophy, ontology (from the Greek, genitive: of being (part He stated that there are necessary beings (things that cannot not exist) and contingent beings (things that may exist but whose existence is not needed).

Anselm presents the ontological argument as part of a prayer directed at God. He starts with a definition of God, or a necessary assumption about the nature of God, or perhaps both.

"Now we believe that [the Lord] is something that than which nothing greater can be conceived. "

Then Anselm asks if God exists.

"Then is there no such nature, since the fool has said in his heart: God is not?"

To answer this, he first tries to show that God exists "in the understanding":

"But certainly this same fool, when he hears this very thing that I am saying—something than which nothing greater can be imagined—understands what he hears; and what he understands is in his understanding, even if he does not understand that it is. For it is one thing for a thing to be in the understanding, and another to understand that a thing is. "

Anselm goes on to justify his assumption, using the analogy of a painter:

"For when a painter imagines beforehand what he is going to make, he has in his understanding what he has not yet made but he does not yet understand that it is. But when he has already painted it, he both has in his understanding what he has already painted and understands that it is.

"Therefore, even the fool is bound to agree that there is at least in the understanding something than which nothing greater can be imagined, because, when he hears this, he understands it, and whatever is understood is in the understanding. "

Now Anselm introduces another assumption, which some authors have argued to have introduced a new version of the argument:

"And certainly that than which a greater cannot be imagined cannot be in the understanding alone. For if it is at least in the understanding alone, it can be imagined to be in reality too, which is greater. "

"Therefore if that than which a greater cannot be imagined is in the understanding alone, that very thing than which a greater cannot be imagined is something than which a greater can be imagined. But certainly this cannot be. "

Anselm has thus found the contradiction from which he draws his conclusion:

"There exists, therefore, beyond doubt something than which a greater cannot be imagined, both in the understanding and in reality. "

A modern description of the argument

Anselm's Argument may be summarized thus:

1. God is, by definition, a being greater than anything that can be imagined.
2. Existence both in reality and in imagination is greater than existence solely in one's imagination.
3. Therefore, God must exist in reality; if He did not, God would not be a being greater than anything that can be imagined.

This is a shorter modern version of the argument. Anselm framed the argument as a reductio ad absurdum wherein he tried to show that the assumption that God does not exist leads to a logical contradiction. Reductio ad absurdum ( Latin for "reduction to the absurd" also known as an apagogical argument, reductio ad impossibile The following steps follow more closely Anselm's line of reasoning:

1. God is that entity than which nothing can be greater.
2. The concept of God exists in human understanding.
3. God exists in one's mind but not in reality.
4. The concept of God's existence is understood in one's mind.
5. If God existed in reality, it would be a greater thing than God's existence in the mind.
6. The final step to God's existence is that God in reality must exist.

Anselm's second argument

Anselm in his Proslogion 3 made another a priori argument for God, this time based on the idea of necessary existence. He claimed that, if God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, it is better to be necessary than contingent. Therefore, God must be necessary. To sum it up:

1. God is the entity than which nothing greater can be conceived.
2. It is greater to be necessary than not.
3. God must be necessary.
4. God necessarily exists.

Descartes' ontological arguments

René Descartes (1596–1650) composed a number of ontological arguments which differed from Anselm's formulation in important ways. Generally speaking, it is less a formal argument than a natural intuition.

Descartes wrote in the Fifth Meditation,^[9]

But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something that entails everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one that I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. Meditations on First Philosophy (subtitled In which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated) is a philosophical treatise written And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature (AT 7:65; CSM 2:45).

The intuition above can be formally described as follows:

1. Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing.
2. I clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary existence is contained in the idea of God.
3. Therefore, God exists.

In another, less formal statement of his argument, he draws an analogy between belief in the existence of God and the geometric demonstration:

Whatever method of proof I use, I am always brought back to the fact that it is only what I clearly and distinctly perceive that completely convinces me. Some of the things I clearly and distinctly perceive are obvious to everyone, while others are discovered only by those who look more closely and investigate more carefully; but once they have been discovered, the latter are judged to be just as certain as the former. In the case of a right-angled triangle, for example, the fact that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the square on the other two sides is not so readily apparent as the fact that the hypotenuse subtends the largest angle; but once one has seen it, one believes it just as strongly. But as regards God, if I were not overwhelmed by philosophical prejudices, and if the images of things perceived by the senses did not besiege my thought on every side, I would certainly acknowledge him sooner and more easily than anything else. For what is more manifest than the fact that the supreme being exists, or that God, to whose essence alone existence belongs, exists? (AT 7:68–69; CSM 2:47)

Criticisms and objections

The ontological argument received much criticism and was rejected by St Thomas Aquinas,^[10] and therefore by some Catholic theologians. ^[11] It has also received its share of criticism from non-Christians: Bertrand Russell noted of the argument that "it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than to find out precisely where the fallacy lies. "^[12] The first objections were in the form of parodies, such as Gaunilo's Island, but some believe Immanuel Kant finally to have settled the matter with his famous rejection of existence as a property. Immanuel Kant (ɪmanuəl kant 22 April 1724 12 February 1804 was an 18th-century German Philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg In modern Philosophy, Mathematics, and Logic, a property is an Attribute of an object; thus a red object is said to have the property ^[13] Others believe that existence is indeed a property and that, if the proof is fallacious, the fallacy must lie elsewhere.

General objection

David Hume claimed that nothing could ever be proven to exist through an a priori, rational argument by arguing as follows:^[14]

1. The only way to prove anything a priori is through an opposite contradiction; for example, I am a married bachelor. David Hume (26 April 1711 25 August 1776 Scottish Philosopher, Economist, and Historian is an important figure in Western philosophy
2. The resultant contradiction makes something inconceivable. Obviously it is impossible to have a married bachelor.
3. It is impossible to comprehend anything not existing. Thus it is inconceivable to imagine anything not existing.
4. Nothing can be proven to exist a priori, including God.

Gaunilo's island

One of the earliest recorded objections to Anselm's argument was raised by one of Anselm's contemporaries, Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who invited his readers to conceive of the greatest, or most perfect, island. Gaunilo (or Gaunilon of Marmoutiers was an 11th-century Benedictine monk best known for his criticism of St Anselm 's Ontological argument As a matter of fact, it is likely that no such island actually exists. However, his argument would then say that we are not thinking of the greatest conceivable island, because the greatest conceivable island would exist, as well as having all those other desirable properties. Note that this is merely a direct application of Anselm's own premise that existence is a perfection (point 5 in the previous section). Since we can conceive of this greatest or most perfect conceivable island, it must exist. While this argument seems absurd, Gaunilo claims that it is no more so than Anselm's.

Such objections are known as "Overload Objections"; they do not claim to show where or how the ontological argument goes wrong; they simply argue that, if it is sound, so are many other arguments of the same logical form that we do not want to accept, arguments that would overload the world with an indefinitely large number of necessarily-existing perfect islands, perfect lizards, perfect pencils and the like. ^[15]

There is a possible answer to this objection, put forward by the Roman Catholic philosopher Paul J. Glenn (who himself disagreed with the proof on other grounds) in his An Introduction to Philosophy. It is that Anselm's argument is only applicable to a Being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Therefore, the island analogy is not appropriate, as it has only limited application (islands). The Supreme Being is not merely a Platonic Form, but a unique God who necessarily exists because His greatness is limitless. Islands are by definition limited; they need not have every greatness. God, to be God, must have. And so this proof could only apply to the greatest Being possible.

This response may be inadequate, however, as a similar reductio ad absurdum could be constructed for Gaunilo's island:

1. Gaunilo's island is that island greater than which no island can be thought. Reductio ad absurdum ( Latin for "reduction to the absurd" also known as an apagogical argument, reductio ad impossibile
2. The concept of an island greater than which no island can be thought exists in the imagination.
3. Assume Gaunilo's island exists in the imagination but not in reality.
4. Think of another island with all the same properties as Gaunilo's island but with the additional property of existence in reality.
5. Existence both in reality and in imagination is greater than existence solely in one's imagination.
6. One is now thinking of an island greater than Gaunilo's island, which is absurd
7. Gaunilo's island must exist in reality.

If the proof is valid for "that entity greater than which no entity can be thought," it is also valid for "that island greater than which no island can be thought. "

This objection may be more easily understood using numbers instead of islands. The concept of "that number greater than which no number can be conceived" is clearly absurd, as whenever one conceives of a number, one can always conceive of another number that is one greater. Gaunilo's island therefore opens the possibility that the absurdity in Anselm's reductio ad absurdum is actually in his concept of "that entity greater than which none can be conceived" rather than in the assumption that such an entity does not exist. Reductio ad absurdum ( Latin for "reduction to the absurd" also known as an apagogical argument, reductio ad impossibile

Necessary nonexistence

Another rationale is attributed to Melbourne philosopher Douglas Gasking (1911–1994),^[16] one component of his proof of the nonexistence of God:

1. The creation of the world is the most marvelous achievement imaginable.
2. The merit of an achievement is the product of (a) its intrinsic quality, and (b) the ability of its creator.
3. The greater the disability (or handicap) of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.
4. The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.
5. Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator we can conceive a greater being — namely, one who created everything while not existing.
6. Therefore, God does not exist.

The third premise might seem odd; the intuition is that we are generally more impressed by, for example, a four-year-old child composing a marvelous symphony than the same composition of a professional. In fact, Graham Oppy, an expert on the ontological argument, who isn't particularly impressed with this parody, does not object to (3). Graham Robert Oppy (born October 6, 1960) is an Australian Philosopher whose main area of research is the Philosophy of religion Writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy he is mainly concerned with the first premise, asking "what reason is there to believe that the creation of the world is 'the most marvellous achievement imaginable. ' Gasking was apparently thinking of the "world" or "universe" as the same as "everything. "

If one is willing to accept the first premise, one has no choice but to accept the fourth premise. Thus, the philosophical point of this parody is to highlight problems when existence is taken as property: "whereas Anselm illicitly supposed that existence is a perfection, [Fred] is illicitly invoking the inverse principle that non-existence is a perfection. "^[16]

Kant: existence is not a predicate

Immanuel Kant put forward a key, and influential, refutation of the ontological argument in the Critique of Pure Reason (first edition, pp. The Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is one 592-603; second edition, pp. 620-631) ^[17] . It is directed explicitly primarily against Descartes but also against Leibniz. His criticism was anticipated in Pierre Gassendi's Objections to Descartes' Meditations. Pierre Gassendi ( January 22, 1592 &ndash October 24, 1655) was a French Philosopher, priest, Scientist Meditations on First Philosophy (subtitled In which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated) is a philosophical treatise written Kant's refutation consists of several separate but inter-related arguments. They are shaped by his central distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. In an analytic judgment, the predicate expresses something that is already contained within a concept and is therefore a tautology; in a synthetic judgment, the predicate links the concept to something outside it that is not already logically implied by it. New knowledge consists of synthetic judgments.

Kant first argues that it is not at all clear that the idea of an absolutely necessary being even means anything at all, i. e. "whether I am still thinking anything in the concept of the unconditionally necessary, or perhaps rather nothing at all. " ^[17]

Second, Kant argues that if we include existence in the definition of something, then asserting that it exists is a tautology. If we say that existence is part of the definition of God, in other words an analytic judgment, then we are simply repeating ourselves in asserting that God exists. We are not making a synthetic judgment that would add new information about the real existence of God to the purely conceptual definition of God.

Third, Kant argues that '"being" is obviously not a real predicate' ^[17] and cannot be part of the concept of something. That is, to say that something is or exists is not to say something about a concept, but rather indicates that there is an object that corresponds to the concept, and "the object, as it actually exists, is not analytically contained in my concept, but is added to my concept". For objects of the senses, to say that something exists means not that it has an additional property that is part of its concept but rather that it is to be found outside of thought and that we have an empirical perception of it in space and time. A really existing thing does not have any properties that could be predicated of it that differentiate it from the concept of that thing. What differentiates it is that we actually experience it: for example, it has shape, a specifiable location, and duration. To give an example of Kant's point: the reason we say that horses exist and unicorns do not is not that the concept of horse has the property of existence and the concept of unicorn does not, or that the concept of horse has more of that property than the concept of unicorn. There is no difference between the two concepts in this regard. And there is no difference between the concept of a horse and the concept of a really existing horse: the concepts are identical. The reason we say that horses exist is simply that we have spatio-temporal experience of them: there are objects corresponding to the concept. So any demonstration of the existence of anything, including God, that relies on predicating a property (in this case existence) of that thing is fallacious.

Thus, in accordance with the second and third arguments, the statement "God is omnipotent" is an analytic judgment that articulates what is already contained in and implied by the concept of God, i. e. a particular property of God. The statement "God exists" is a synthetic judgment of existence that does not assert something contained in or implied by the concept of God and would require knowledge of God as an object of that concept. What the ontological argument does is attempt to import into the concept of God, as though it were a property, the synthetic assertion of the existence of God, thereby illegitimately and tautologously defining God as existing. In other words, it "begs the question" by assuming what it purports to prove.

But, fourth, Kant argues that the concept of God is in any case not the concept of one particular object of sense among others but rather an "object of pure thought", of something that by definition exists outside the field of experience and of nature. With regard to unicorns, we can specify how we could determine that unicorns exist, i. e. what spatio-temporal experience of them would look like. With regard to the concept of God, there is no way for us to know it as existing in the only legitimate and meaningful way we know other objects as existing. And we cannot even determine "the possibility of any existence beyond that which is known in and through experience" ^[17].

The typical response to this objection to the ontological argument is this: "While 'existence' per se cannot be a predicate, 'necessary existence' (like 'contingent existence') can be a predicate. " Some things are contingently so, and some things are necessarily so. God, it is said, is a necessary being de re. See Plantiga's ontological argument below for a discussion of "necessary existence. "

Revisionists

Obviously Anselm thought this argument was valid and persuasive, and it still has occasional defenders, but many contemporary philosophers believe that the ontological argument, as Anselm articulated it, does not stand up to strict logical scrutiny. ^[1] Others, like Gottfried Leibniz, Norman Malcolm, Charles Hartshorne, Kurt Gödel and Alvin Plantinga, have reformulated the argument in an attempt to revive it. Norman Malcolm (1911 &ndash 1990 was an American philosopher, born in Selden Kansas. Charles Hartshorne ( June 5, 1897 &ndash October 9, 2000) was a prominent American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the Philosophy Kurt Gödel (kʊɐ̯t ˈgøːdl̩ (April 28 1906 – January 14 1978 was an Austrian American Logician, Mathematician and Philosopher Alvin Carl Plantinga (born 1932 is a contemporary American Philosopher known for his work in Epistemology, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy

Plantinga's modal form and contemporary discussion

Alvin Plantinga has given another descriptive, initial version of the argument, one where the conclusion follows from the premises, assuming axiom S5 of modal logic. Alvin Carl Plantinga (born 1932 is a contemporary American Philosopher known for his work in Epistemology, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy Axiom S5 is the distinctive Axiom of the S5 modal logic and states that if necessarily possibly p, then possibly p. A version of his argument is as follows^[18]:

1. It is proposed that a being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and
2. It is proposed that a being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.
3. Maximal greatness is possibly exemplified. That is, it is possible that there be a being that has maximal greatness. (Premise)
4. Therefore, possibly it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
5. Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists. (By S5)
6. Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists. Axiom S5 is the distinctive Axiom of the S5 modal logic and states that if necessarily possibly p, then possibly p.

This argument has two controversial premises: The axiom S5 and the "possibility premise" that a maximally great being is possible. Axiom S5 is the distinctive Axiom of the S5 modal logic and states that if necessarily possibly p, then possibly p. The more controversial of these two is the "possibility premise" since S5 is widely (though not universally) accepted. One objection by Richard M. Gale, professor of philosophy at University of Pittsburgh, is that the "possibility premise" begs the question, because one only has the epistemic right to accept it if one understands the nested modal operators, and if one understands them then one understands that "possibly necessarily" is basically the same as "necessarily". The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a non-sectarian coeducational independent state-related, "public" research University In Logic, begging the question has traditionally described a type of Logical fallacy (also called petitio principii) in which the proposition ^[19] Plantinga replies to this objection as follows: "Once you see how the argument works, you may think that asserting or believing the premise is tantamount to asserting or believing the conclusion; the canny atheist will say that he does not believe it is possible that there be a maximally great being. But would not a similar criticism hold of any valid argument? Take any valid argument: once you see how it works, you may think that asserting or believing the premise is tantamount to asserting or believing the conclusion. " To deny premise (3) amounts to asserting that it is logically impossible that there is a being the exemplifies maximal greatness — thus the argument appears to demonstrate that either the existence of God is logically impossible or it is logically necessary. ^[20]

There are, nonetheless, other approaches to the possibility premise. Leibniz thought that the possibility premise followed from the claim that "positive qualities" could not logically conflict with one another, and hence the notion of a being that had all the positive qualities had to be coherent. Gödel's ontological proof uses similar ideas. Gödel's ontological proof is a formalization of Saint Anselm's Ontological argument for God 's existence by the mathematician Kurt Gödel.

A very different approach has recently been attempted by Alexander R. Pruss of Georgetown University. Georgetown University is a Jesuit Private university located in Georgetown Washington D ^[21] He starts with the 8th–9th century AD Indian philosopher Samkara's dictum that if something is impossible, then we cannot have a perception (even a non-veridical one) that it is the case. Contraposing, it follows that if we have a perception that p, then even though it might not be the case that p, it is at least the case that possibly p. If mystics in fact perceive the existence of a maximally great being, it follows that the existence of a maximally great being is at least possible. And that is all that is needed to get the modal ontological argument off the ground. One difficulty in this argument is that one might misinterpret the content of one's experience, and hence the mystic might be incorrect even in a cautious description of an experience as an experience "as of a maximally great being. " Another problem would be if one could have an experience as of a universe that is uncreated, eternal and godless (i. e. , devoid of a maximally great being), which, if experienced, must be possible, therefore breaking the necessity of said maximally great being.

Interestingly, Plantinga himself does not think the modal ontological argument is always a good proof of the existence of God. It depends on what his interlocutor thinks of the possibility premise. Nonetheless, Plantinga has suggested that because we do not have any evidence against the possibility premise, it might be reasonable to suppose it has probability 1/2. It follows from this that the existence of God can at the outset be held to have probability 1/2, though further evidence may increase or decrease this. Even though the possibility God does not exist is just as likely by this reasoning, Plantinga's point is to establish that even if one can't prove the existence of God, the argument is still victorious in the sense of justifying that belief in God is at least rational. Rationality as a term is related to the idea of Reason, a word which following Webster's may be derived as much from older terms referring to

Notes

Bibliography

• Hartshore, Charles, The Logic of Perfection (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1962)
• Jori, Alberto, 'Die Paradoxien des menschlichen Selbstbewusstseins und die notwendige Existenz Gottes — Zu 'Cogitatio' und 'Intellectus' im Streit zwischen Anselm und Gaunilo', in: C. Alberto Jori (born 1965 is an Italian Neo-Aristotelian philosopher Viola and J. Kormos (ed. ), Rationality from Saint Augustine to Saint Anselm. Proceedings of the International Anselm Conference — Piliscsaba (Hungary) 20–23 June 2002 (Piliscsaba 2005), pp. 197–210.
• Malcolm, Norman, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments" Philosophical Review, vol. 69, no. 1 (1960), 41–62

{reprinted in: "The Existence of God (Problems of Philosophy)" edited John Hick published Macmillan 1964 ISBN 0020854501 and also in : Knowledge and Certainty: Essays and Lectures by Norman Malcolm published Cornell University Press (Dec 1975) ISBN 0801491541. }

• Plantinga, Alvin, The Ontological Argument from St. Anselm to Contemporary Philosophers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965)
• Plantinga, Alvin. God, Freedom and Evil. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1977) pp. 85–112

See also

• Overviews: Arguments for the existence of God, Arguments against the existence of God
• Other major attempted proofs: Cosmological argument, Teleological argument, Argument from morality
• Gödel's ontological proof for the existence of God
• Pascal's Wager

External links

• Ontological Arguments — from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Descartes' Ontological Argument — from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Kenneth Einar Himma, The Ontological Argument — from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Medieval Sourcebook: Gaunilo: In Behalf of the Fool, and Anselm's Reply
• Medieval Sourcebook: Philosophers' Criticisms of Anselm's Ontological Argument for the Being of God
• Paul E. Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers theologians and others Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers theologians and others The cosmological argument is an Argument for the Existence of God or a " First Cause " A teleological argument, or argument from design, is an Argument for the Existence of God or a creator based on perceived evidence of order purpose design The argument from morality is one of several Arguments for the existence of God. Gödel's ontological proof is a formalization of Saint Anselm's Ontological argument for God 's existence by the mathematician Kurt Gödel. God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French Philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the Existence of God The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP is a freely-accessible Online encyclopedia of Philosophy maintained by Stanford University. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP is a free Online encyclopedia on philosophical topics and philosophers founded by James Fieser in 1995 Oppenheimer & Edward N. Zalta, "On the Logic of the Ontological Argument" from James Tomberlin ed. Edward N Zalta, born 1952 is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. , Philosophical Perspectives 5: The Philosophy of Religion (Atascadero: Ridgeview, 1991) pp. 509–529
• Peter Millican, "The one fatal flaw in Anselm's argument" from Mind Vol. 113, pp451ff (2004)
• Gregory S. Neal, "Anselm's Ontological Argument For the Existence of God" from Grace Incarnate (1990)
• Cartoon example of the ontologial argument, from Mac Hall
• Brief Synopsis of the Ontological Argument

Mac Hall (debut 2000-11-07) is a Webcomic which was created through a bet between the creator Ian McConville and a friend who claimed he "couldn't

© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic