What’s a perfect island? forest? garden?
Stephen Law discusses the ontological argument.
Anselm’s argument simple and elegant. He begins by characterizing God as a being greater than which cannot be conceived. That God, if he exists, is such a being seems clear. If you conceive of a being, yet can also conceive of a still greater being, then the being you first thought of cannot be God. Armed with this concept of God, we can now argue for God’s existence as follows. We can at least conceive of such a being. That there exists a being greater than which cannot be conceived is at least a hypothesis we can entertain. But, adds Anselm, as it is greater to exist in reality than merely in our imagination, this being must really exist. After all, if he did not exist, then he would not be as great a being as we can conceive.
Stephen notes that few philosophers find the argument cogent or convincing, but also that there is no consensus about what’s wrong with it. I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but what I wonder is, why anyone ever found it convincing. It has that grandiosity problem I mentioned (that is, it seems to me to have that problem). It just seems like silly magic – as if merely thinking the words ‘perfect’ and ‘exists’ could make something exist. It doesn’t matter what we can conceive and what we decide must be true – we can’t make anything exist by the power of thought (except thoughts, which don’t count, because I’m a reductionist materialist, and a heathen).
I have a different (though related) problem with Gaunilo’s objection.
Here’s Gaunilo’s argument. Can we not conceive of a perfect island – an island perfect in every conceivable way, from the purity of its streams to the sublime contours of its landscape? It seems we can. But if we can conceive of such an island, and it is greater to exist in reality than in imagination, then the island we are conceiving of must exist. If it didn’t exist, it would not be perfect in every way. On the seemingly safe assumption that there is no such island, it seems we have no choice but to accept that there is something wrong with the argument that appears to establish that there is.
Simon Blackburn’s version of that is Dreamboat – the perfect lover. Anyway, about the island – does it make sense to say that an island can be perfect in every conceivable way, from the purity of its streams to the sublime contours of its landscape? Are pure streams and sublime contours examples of perfection? They don’t seem so to me. They seem more like examples of very very good or extremely nice or ravishingly beautiful if you happen to like that kind of thing – but that’s not the same thing as perfect. What’s a perfect apple? Or a perfect brownie? Or a perfect sweater? Or a perfect book? Depends, doesn’t it; depends what you like. It’s a value judgment; it’s moral or aesthetic or both; it’s relative at least to humans and often to individuals; ‘perfect’ doesn’t come into it. So that’s a further element in the puzzle. It puzzles me anyway.
Yes, perfection requires some sort of standard beyond the something that is allegedly perfect, and some sort of judgment of relating something to that standard. How do we know God is perfect if we don’t have a standard, external to God, to tell? But then God isn’t transcendently supreme, something transcends him.
Besides that, some goods are incompatible. Justice is good. So is mercy. But mercy is forgoing justice, it is giving an undeserved reprieve. Perfect justice leaves no room for any mercy. But can a person who lacks any mercy be called perfect? Since some goods are incompatible, it is not possible for a person, even a god, to perfectly instantiate all the perfections all at the same time.
And anyway, wouldn’t a being who could exist only in our imaginations and yet still be the greatest possible being be greater than a real being that is the greatest possible? That seems to me to be a very great feat indeed. It would be so mundane, so expected, for an existing being to be a greatest possible being. How much greater for a purely imaginary being to achieve such a level of greatness!
I think you’re right about the island and so on, but perhaps the perfect two-foot-in-diameter-sphere-of-gold is a meaningful concept. Or something like that.
The alluring thing about Anselm’s ontological argument is that you feel someone’s pulling your leg, but it’s difficult to define exactly where. Probably Dave feels much the same way about me ;-) Anyway, here’s my attempt.
I think the only way the ontological argument makes sense is within the context of some kind of Platonism/realism concerning abstract objects and ideas. Which was probably Anselm’s background as well.
To say something necessarily exists is to say something exists in all logically possible worlds – I have no problem with this. But there is an obvious flipside. In that the actual world we live in is relational through and through: contingent objects or events such as me, the table, New York, the galaxy relate to others and thereby “make a difference” by existing. That’s just a different way of saying they’re contingent. Now for a nominalist, a materialist or someone to whom ideas are created, rather than discovered, things probably end here, as all existents are contingent: it makes no sense to state that a necessary being exists qua necessary being.
If one is a Platonist of some kind, things are different: ideas exist, in some fashion, independently of their actualization in the phenomenal world. My preference for this mode of existence would be something like Peirce’s firstness: abstract concepts, qualities, patterns etc. exist as potentials, aside from their actualization in the relational world. I think there’s no way to “get” this except by taking it literally, but then again, I’m a bit literal-minded. But I think it’s the only way to avoid hypostasizing ideas, to avoid seeing them as some odd kinds of substances with some kind of locality.
In this sense, it would be perfectly possible to state that God is a necessary being as abstract concept, and (I think), as potential. I.e. perhaps some abstract set-of-all-sets underlying all other (possible) ideas, qualities, patterns etc. which, again, will sound ludicrous to a materialist but perhaps quite good to an idealist (and probably most theists are idealists, in some fashion).
The thing is that this “necessary existent” is still abstract, ideal – the same goes I think for Aquinas’ argument in which all contingent existence is deduced from an underlying necessary existent, Tillich’s God-as-condition-of-existence, etc. It’s quite difficult to conceptualize this without hypostasizing ideas in some fashion.
And Anselm goes wrong in deducing actuality from this abstract, necessary existent (if that is what he did). What the argument does not prove is that God is in any way actual: because to be actual means to have contingent properties. It’s conceivable that God is a necessary being with regards to his existence, and is a contingent being with regards to his properties that are actual in our world – but the latter cannot be deduced for the former. As an argument for theism in a sense which you would regard as meaningful, it fails.
However, that’s not the end of the story. Because what the argument does show is how theism (as involving a necessary being) is very closely tied to a philosophical framework which might be open to criticism: i.e. a necessary being might be an impossibility, in which case God is an impossibility. It’s quite difficult to find a “common ground” on which to compare competing metaphysical frameworks though.
I think it helps if you have the sort of mind that can use the word “exist” to mean “not actually really exist”…
But the paracetamol definitely helps…
The Anselm thing – surely this counts as rationalisation rather than argument? He was clearly trying very hard to come up with a reason for thinking what he wanted to think anyway. Either that, or he’d run out of nuns to pull the three-card trick on…
The ontological argument can be reworked with ‘power’ in the place of ‘perfection.’ That makes a little more sense because we can actually imagine what a maximally powerful being would be–specifically, something that could move the universe arbitrarily through its state-space. The ontological argument in this form is more compelling to me because it seems to be true that a minimally powerful being necessarily does not exist, and finitely powerful beings contingently exist.
Looks like I formulated my comment a post too soon, as I hadn’t yet read this follow-up when I commented on the previous post. But I have something different to say about this one anyway, so…
I’ve never found the “perfect island” response to the argument from necessity all that convincing either in and of itself. But it does work as an objection on a more subtle level, insofar as it prods one to ask the very questions you’re asking, OB. What the heck does “perfect” mean? It seems to be either vague or completely nonsensical when generalized to any great degree. Perfection is a very contextual and function- or goal-dependent property, and necessarily a relational property. Something is good or bad, better or worse, perfect or imperfect with respect to some standard of judgment. A perfect score on an objective test, math problems let’s say, is definable in clear objective terms. A perfect island is not. A perfect deity, still less so.
This notion that “perfect” is a sensible, objective property that something can simply “have” in an abstract sense is one of those insidious assumptions smuggled in amongst the premises of the argument from necessity that doesn’t stand up to any critical questioning whatsoever. And it’s just one of the problems. I actually think the sneaky trick of treating existence as just another property like redness or mass is an even bigger and more obvious problem, but the damned argument has so many things wrong with it that finding the one most damning flaw is a fool’s errand. I think Law may be pulling a rhetorical fast one by putting the “no consensus” point the way he did. He makes it sound as if a bunch of philosophers don’t find the argument convincing but can’t say exactly why. That is simply wrong. The reason there’s no consensus among philosophers about “what’s wrong with the argument” is that there are several different things wrong with it! Many philosophers can say very exactly why the reasoning fails and all say different things because the reasoning fails in so many ways.
“(…) I actually think the sneaky trick of treating existence as just another property like redness or mass is an even bigger and more obvious problem”
I’m unconvinced that the notion that existence is not a predicate vitiates the notion of a necessarily existent God.
In my (very basic) understanding, ‘exist’ is inadmissible as a predicate as its negation is meaningless:
“A tree is green” (there is a tree, and it is green) is meaningful in that “A tree is not green (there is a tree, and it is not green) is meaningful. However, “God exists” (there is a God, and he exists) would be meaningless – the negation would be (there is a God, and he does not exist) which is contradictory. But this assumes that the subject exhibits predicates contingently. I.e. “Santaclaus exists” and “Santaclaus does not exist” are meaningful in that the subject would refer to a concept which may or may not be exemplified in a given logically possible world. To coherently state that “trees are green” seems to me to assume that “trees” have contingent existence: they may or may not exist, “there are no trees” is a meaningful statement, etc.
But with a modal version of the argument, i.e. “Necessarily (God exists)”, “Possibly (God exists)”, “Necessarily (God does not exist)”, it seems to me this problem does not apply. I.e. the predicate involved here is not so much “exists” as the modality associated with it.
I recently did an essay on Descartes’ version of this argument. It’s pretty slippery, but I take the view that it’s essentially similar to Anselm’s. What seems wrong to me about it would be it’s circularity, or the “existence is not a predicate” argument. My essay said something about Russell’s theory of descriptions along these lines; saying that “God exists” is saying “There is 1 God” as opposed to “There are 0 Gods”, rather than “God has the property of existing”. There are problems with the theory of descriptions, or so I’ve heard, but I’m ignorant enough at the minute for that to not affect my grade too badly. But even if that fails, the circularity argument seems to me to sink Anselm. I am slightly confused as to why Law and Colin McGinn and so on often say that the argument (at least in its classical form) seems wrong but is still controversial.
I’ve never found Gaunilo’s argument satisfying either. The idea of a perfect object which isn’t maximally perfect in every respect has always seemed a little bit strange and impossible. Of course a maximally perfect being could be a strange, incoherent notion as well, but it is certainly more difficult to reject out of hand.
And when we have dealt with the classical version, we go onto the modal versions. You’d probably do best to listen to Merlijn about that though, cause it’s here that it begins to go over my head.
Something bothers me about the argument I raised above. If God-as-necessary-existent refers to an abstract Platonic reality, and need not be actualized in the phenomenal world, then the same would go for other Platonic objects, i.e. “pi”, “redness”, etc. Universals exist necessarily in that they exist as universals in every possible world – but are they necessarily actualized? And what is the relationship between God and necessarily existing abstract objects? I feel I’m missing something here. Need to sleep on it.
Hell, I’d settle for a perfect thought!
Cool. Interesting and helpful stuff.
You were on a roll today, Dave – ‘Either that, or he’d run out of nuns to pull the three-card trick on…’ made me laugh a lot.
I think the reason so many philosophers have been fascinated by this argument is that it seems obvious at first blush that you *can’t* prove that something exists just from defining its concept, and yet the argument seems — again at first blush — to do just that. So it’s the surprise at seeing something you think couldn’t possibly work look as though it does work that attracts the philosopher’s attention.
And then, as you go back to thinking you were right the first time, that it can’t possibly work, you try to show *why* it fails, and then you find that there are a number of possible objections, but there is no universal agreement among objectors to the argument about which of the objections that have been raised really do the job. So on the discussion goes. (By the way, I think Mackie does a particularly good job in _The Miracle of Theism_.)
A few comments. First, as I learnt it, Anselm’s “argument” should be taken more as a prayer than as a demonstration. Descartes made it seem as if it was trying to be a “proof” but here, too, Descartes might have had his own purposes for introducing it. In any event, if there is a consensus as to why it fails as a proof, it follows Kant’s demolition of it (existence is not a concept). A comment about perfection: people get really hung up whenever this word is used in philosophy, but I think it just means having everything essential for being the thing something is (or aims to be), and having all the essential features in the best way possible. Hence, the perfect sports car has all the features that something needs to have in order to be a sports car and has such features as are best of their kind. Of course it is an ideal, and because it involves a teoleology we must limit perfection (since Darwin) to works of human design. Nothing in nature (including God if you want) is designed to be such and such a thing essentially, and so perfection is not a suitable term for things that are not subjected to or made for human purposes.
For a bunch who are perfectly convinced that religion is vicious rubbish you spend a lot of time discussing it and telling each other it is vicious rubbish. Fine, but why? Hadn’t the question been settled for you a long time ago? I expect Mr Tingey to burst through the door at any minute demanding: Ecrasez l’infame!. Again.
If I can conceive of an argument against God, there must be even stronger arguments against God lurking elsewhere…
Blimey, I think of this as one of the most intelligent sites around, but why not just leave it aht! It’s like flogging a dead God.
Blame Merlijn, it’s his hobby, and we’re humouring him. You should try it some time, it’s one of the humane arts in short supply these days.
Besides, it is actually interesting to think about stuff occasionally, and not just go ‘yah-boo!’ Which still happens a lot here, and quite rightly much of the time.
We are not the Tingeyish Inquisition, whose main weapons are fear, surprise, and a ruthless willingness to p*ss off OB by submitting actionable comments…
Nobody expects the Tingeyish Inquisition!
As for expecting Tingey to burst through the door any moment exlaiming, well naturally, Tingey always does burst through the door exclaiming; the surprising thing would be not to expect Tingey.
But more seriously (though not too seriously), for one thing, I think it’s interesting; anyone who doesn’t doesn’t have to read it after all; and for another thing, there are these claims about sophisticated theology and so on.
And then there’s the whole dead god question – if only it were dead. It’s not dead, and it can be dangerous; it seems worth resisting. Lots of people don’t think it is, I think it is. Cf Falstaff to Hal on vocation.
Thank-you everyone – that made me nearly spill my OJ into the keyboard ……
Well, here is the T-inquistion, asking questions, with or without the (draining) rack …..
The ontological/perfection argument is a variation on/of the “god is infinite and perfect” argument (I think).
I have several times seen smug christian writers to the papers saying “but we are finite, and so is science, but “god” is onfinite” – with an implie=d Nyaaah, nerrr! afterwards ….
Have these uneducated idiots never heard of Hilberts Hotel?
Or the lowest numberable infinity (aleph-null if I remember correctly) etc?
So which infinity are they going to pick, and if “god” is infinite, and permeates everywhere/when (etc) then the god thing will be detectable (again) unless, of course god is “outside” the normal universe, in which case – you knopw the rest.
Why are these empty, false, tired and most importantly already-known-to-be-disproven arguments being recycled again?
“Stephen notes that few philosophers find the argument cogent or convincing, but also that there is no consensus about what’s wrong with it.”
The assumption that existence is always better than non-existence. For example the existence of a human-to-human version of bird flu will not in any way shape or form be better than its non-existence, and the non-existence of a historical Hannibal Lecter makes for better stories than if he actually existed.
“Are pure streams and sublime contours examples of perfection?”
No. I prefer snow and craggy rocks, picturesque desolation rather than cosy verdancy. Perfection of streams would be a process at the physical level that would be of very little interest to a theologian. It would illustrate physical processes far better than it would illustrate the existence of God, but in a way that would be distracting for the aesthete in search of cognitive-based “perfection”.
Here is an argument that takes the Ontological Argument on its own terms:
If we cannot know God, we cannot know His mind. If we cannot know His mind, we cannot know what He thinks perfection is. Since God has created the universe, he is clearly capable of greater thoughts than we are. God can therefore conceive of a greater perfection than we can. Does that perfection exist? If so, God is not God as He is not the greatest perfection. If not, God is not perfect and so therefore is not God. This argument suffers from infinite regress, as does the original, but here infinite regress is an explicit proof rather than an implicit disproof.
My brain is not god-like, therefore it is finite and imperfect, so I’ve understood very little of this thread. Can anyone recommend some reading so I can get up to speed on the more sophisticated theological arguments – the kind Dawkins’ opponents are always accusing him of ignoring?
That which you seek, is that which you have just received. I doubt it is actually possible to explain these things more clearly than Merlijn has been doing.
Sometimes one should not mistake the pointing finger for the moon, but sometimes there is no moon, and they are just hoping you don’t notice the bogey on the end of their finger.
Which is to say, just because it sounds deep, doesn’t mean it can’t also be rather silly, at root. I think Merlijn realises this, but as I said, it’s his hobby. That I can respect. People who build a political position on it, not so much.
Andy – the main proponents of the ontological argument in recent decades have been N. Malcolm in Phil. Review, 1960 (available through the JSTOR database if you have access to it); Hartshorne and of course Plantinga. Of the latter I only read his all-too-brief statement at the end of “God, Freedom and Evil”. Hartshorne’s “The Logic of Perfection” is a lot more elaborate and subtle – though a viciously difficult read at times (this discussion will compel me to attack it again). But he does make an attempt, among other things, to deal with something like the paradox Dirigible raises at the end of his comment.
Critics are numerous (from Aquinas to Russell) – JonJ mentioned Mackie who is at the top of my reading list. An interesting critic is J.N. Findlay who accepts the logic of the argument, accepts the idea of a necessary being but regards it as impossible, and the ontological proof thereby a proof for (strong) atheism.
A bit belated, but…
Merlijn said:
That’s simply not true. Any claim that God “necessarily exists” adds a modal modifier to the claim about existence, but still makes an existence claim and treats existence as a property. To represent the ontological argument as it connects the concept of a necessary being to the existence of a necessary being, the formalization of the argument (if it’s a formalization of the ontological argument and not another argument entirely) MUST still treat existence as a predicate.
As I said in the other thread on this topic, I’ve actually done the formal proof: The argument is valid, but the premises are bollocks because (1) they treat existence as both a predicate and an operator, and (2) the whole notion of “perfect” as an abstract property is FUBAR in any case. Of course, “valid” is only a technical term meaning “if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.” In this case, the premises are not simply false: They fall into the “So confused they’re not even wrong” category. That is, the premises are not even false – they are nonsense statements containing multiple grammatical errors and semantically ambiguous claims, like an algebra equation with the symbols scrambled into nonsense:
“2x + 3y = 4” describes a simple slope.
“2@ + =y = 4” is gibberish, although it has a form similar enough to confuse and mislead those who don’t know the language of mathematics.
Permit me to introduce you to the thought of Mlesna of Lvov.
Mlesna was meditating on the nature of Satan. It seemed to him that Satan was the Adversary, the contradictory of God in all things. If God be Love then Satan must be Hate, if God be Joy then Satan must be Misery . . . you get the idea. In short, if God be that than which no greater may be conceived, then Satan must be that than which no lesser may be conceived.
But if Satan enjoys existence, then he is greater than that least that may be conceived, and the argument that purports to prove the necessary existence of God also proves the impossibility of Satan.
As a developer and urban designer I am trying to make sense of the initial question.” Can we not conceive of a perfect island — an island perfect in every conceivable way, from the purity of its streams to the sublime contours of its landscape?”
Uh…maybe I just think in different terms but the issue seems weird.
Let’s ask a more banal question: Is there such a thing as a “prefect house.” Well it’s pretty obvious “No,” at least in terms of human imagination since the first thing people start doing with a brand new house is remodel it. So not only does the “perfect house” not exist, people can’t even imagine it enough to build it.
Of course my problem is that I just can’t figure out what would possess people to ask the question in the first place. I don’t think in terms of “perfection” but of what “works” to meet certain goals and values.
Thanks for the recommendations, Merlijn. I’ve got some Aquinas on the shelf and even Whitehead’s Process and Reality (supplemented by Donald Sherburne’s helpful translation – sorry, key !).That’ll keep me occupied whilst I’m wating a month for Hartshorne, Mackie and Plantinga from Amazon. I’ll also have to have a proper look my long-neglected copy of W. Hodges Logic so I’ve got a faint idea of what this modal stuff is all about.
You people are ruining my life ;-)
Cool about ruining everyone’s life.
“what would possess people to ask the question in the first place”
Partly for the sake of arguments for existence of deity, partly because of deity-riddled preconceptions, would be my guess. Betsy has to be perfect (else not God, as Vernon would somewhat annoyingly say); and perfection has to be a meaningful idea because – well the two are all intertangled, aren’t they.
Angelo suggested that the idea of perfection works for designed, hence human, things, but I’m not sure even that works. I’ve been trying to think of examples and haven’t succeeded – it doesn’t even work for tools, let alone for sports cars (Angelo’s example). Even hammers, saws, knives, nails, screws, have different versions for different purposes, so you’d have to qualify ‘perfect’ no matter what – and then you could always paint it a different colour etc according to preference.
Plato would slap me around for saying all that, but never mind.
Minor point – Merlijn referred to dirigible with male pronouns – do we know dirigible is a he? I think actually we know the opposite – dirigible has a blog or a website or something and isn’t male (I think). The rule against referring to people of unknown gender as he has been broken again. I’d be very cross, except I think I’ve done it myself recently.
“That’s simply not true. Any claim that God “necessarily exists” adds a modal modifier to the claim about existence, but still makes an existence claim and treats existence as a property.”
OK. As I (probably wrongly) understand, the not-a-predicate criticism of the ontological argument runs roughly as follows:
1. If we predicate a property of a subject in a synthetic statement (“the house is yellow”), negating the predicate does not entail negating the subject, “the house is not yellow” is perfectly meaningful (there is a house, and it’s not yellow), so the subject exemplifies the predicate contingently.
2. Things do not go quite the same way if we have a sentence such as “Santaclaus exists”. We cannot negate the predicate and assert the existence of the subject at the same time, i.e. the negation would be “There is no Santaclaus” or “The concept ‘Santaclaus’ is not instantiated”. Difference is that 1. goes to a subject whose existence is a given and which contingently exhibits a property, 2. to the instantiation of a concept.
3. I can say that, for example, having garlic sauce is a perfection of a kebab meal. Confronted with a kebab meal without garlic sauce, I can conceive of a more perfect kebab meal – one with garlic sauce. The thing is that these are statements like 1.: failure to exhibit garlic sauce does not mean my kebab meal disappears. However, as the negation of “God exists/the concept of God is instantiated” is “There is no God”, and not “there is a God, and he does not exist”, existence is not a property that can be added or substracted from a subject, it is not a perfection. A kebab meal with garlic sauce is “more perfect” than a kebab meal without on the precondition that both exist, but it is nonsense to say that an existent kebab meal is “more perfect” (though highly preferable otherwise) than a non-existent one.
4. Now, it still seems to me that with the impossibility of taking “existence” as a predicate and as a perfection as above, we are dealing with a contingently exhibited predicate. It is only on that condition that the negation of “God exhibits such and such properties, including existence” runs into the problematic “There is a God, and he does not exist”. But the alternatives “There is a God/there is no God” as in “The concept of God is instantiated or not” or “There is a Santaclaus/there is no Santaclaus” tend, in my opinion, to miss the thrust of the ontological argument in that they presuppose contingency.
5. It would seem to me that contingency, necessity or impossibility (necessary non-existence) are themselves predicates. We’re not dealing with “There is a God/there is no God” but with “God must be/God cannot be”. The point is precisely that the contingent existence/non-existence of God is inconceivable, and that “There is a God” vs. “There is no God” are analytical statements. I.e. the “perfection” involved here is not contingent “existence” but “logical impossibility of non-existence”.
To me, this is where the trouble starts. Anselm states that God is quite conceivable, not logically impossible, and therefore necessary. It is not quite clear to me whether this is valid; and I can’t quite see how “necessary existence” is anything but something highly abstract, something belonging to a Platonic world of concepts. I am not sure how the step from “God exists necessarily” to “God is (contingently) actualized” is made. This kind of echoes PM’s remark in the other thread.
There are a number of lines of other attack open. One can (with Hume) assert that everything that exists, exists contingently or (with Kant) that all existential statements are synthetic – I would tend to agree in as far as actuality is concerned, but I’m still rather confused on this matter. To an empiricist, it is likely meaningless to state that there is something that ‘exists’ in all possible worlds. But these counterarguments, I think, tend to be question-begging in a benign way. By which I mean that they do not show the invalidity of the ontological argument on its own grounds, but end up positing an alternative metaphysic to Anselm’s, which may or may not be preferable. I said “benign” because I think this is where most really interesting philosophical discussions end up anyway. But the criticism would be weaker, somewhat, than showing the logical invalidity of Anselm’s argument on its own ground.
The crux of Anselm’s argument, which supposedly takes us from existing in imagination to existing in reality, is flawed. It depends on the interplay between ‘the greatest being in imagination’ and ‘existing in reality is greater than existing just in the imagination’.
But when you flesh these out more formally, you can see that they don’t connect up at all as they’re two entirely different domains of discourse:
In my imagination: (‘X in reality’ is the greatest being possible in reality).
In reality: (‘X in my imagination’ wouldn’t be as great as ‘X in reality’).
‘Existence in the imagination’ isn’t a kind of existence. Statements purportedly referring to such existents have no implications beyond the imagination.
(Is Jed Bartlet a better president than George Bush? I’d say yes. Now of course you need to exist in reality as opposed to just in fiction to actually be a good president, but the comparison operates entirely within the imagination.)
“but end up positing an alternative metaphysic to Anselm’s, which may or may not be preferable.”
But do they really end up positing an alternative metaphysic? Or do they simply go on positing an alternative methodology (and epistemology) while simply bracketing metaphysics as unknowable? I think it’s the second. You perhaps claim that the second amounts to the first. Maybe it does – but maybe it doesn’t. Or both. [sounds of gunfire]
The basic question is perhaps, is there any real difference, any difference that matters, between the two?
Tom: Sometime in the last year I read a philosophy journal article (I’ve long since forgotten which journal/article/author) that made that basic argument: One of the problems with the ontological argument is equivocation with respect to the word “exists” since “exists in the mind” is very different from “exists in the world”. Seems to me that when Merlijn talks about the idea of necessary existence only being applicable in some “world” of Platonic Ideals, he’s gesturing in the same general direction. This is in fact another one of the counter-arguments I had in mind when I said that there are many, many flaws in the ontological argument that philosophers can and have identified.
Let’s sum up, briefly: (1) This “perfect” notion is a complete hash on several levels. (2) Existence cannot be a property, as it is a pre-condition for anything to have properties (even Santa “has properties” only in the sense that if there were a being such as Santa Claus, that being would have the following properties: red suit, beard, toy-delivering, etc.). (3) Equivocation on the meaning of the word “exists” between and within premises.
Yup, it’s been fun. But I for one am done with the ontological argument for now. It’s crap, it’s always been crap, it will always be crap, and there will always be people who will swallow any crap at all if it plays to their assumptions and/or prejudices.
Re. perfection
OB: You are right that you have to qualify perfection in reference to the concept of the thing in question. That does not mean that it “doesn’t work” for artifacts. The perfect sports car is not the perfect moving van. First you need the concept of what the thing is supposed to be (this amounts to what someone will use it for) and then you judge its perfection or lack thereof by whether it has everything it needs to suit that concept to the highest degree. Taking the word apart, per=through/ fect (from facere) =made. The word itself thus suggests its application to things made, rather than to natural things. Of course, things made have no natural essence. Still, if you want to reduce perfection to preference, I think that goes too far. If you tell me that the thing made by Hoover to suck dust from your carpet is your perfect sports car, I will think you don’t know what the concept of sports car requires. Also, let’s not confuse perfection with beauty. Consult Kant’s Critique of Judgment for the difference. Bottom line: I can only apply the word “perfect” to the concept of God in a metaphorical sense, that is, in the sense that perfect things need no improvement.
” I think actually we know the opposite – dirigible has a blog or a website or something and isn’t male (I think).”
I’m male? I hope I haven’t accidentally taken someone else’s pseudonym. I’ve been using it for a while at HP and DSTFW, but I don’t have my own blog.
Oh well I probably misremembered. Never mind. I’m just trying to correct Merlijn’s entrenched habit of assuming that everyone is male; with zero success.
God is male, all humans were made in the image of God, ergo all humans are male.
Yis, I know. Thees ees thee problem.
Doesn’t PM’s argument mean that Socrates is God?
I tend to use the neuter (they/their/them) unless the poster is a complete idiot, in which case they are obviously male. ;-)
Dirigible:
Your email address looks a little male to me.
Well, yeah, but did Merlijn check dirigible’s email before using the male pronoun? I don’t think so! Merlijn calls everything he unless its name is Susan or Carolina or Violetta.