fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3247 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3247 ⌋

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As a summary for those who didn't take philosophy: Anselm's ontological argument holds that God must exist by definition. God is perfect, a perfect being is better than any other real or hypothetical being, and a being that exists is better than a being that does not exist. Lots of people have said this is silly, but it's hard to say exactly why.

I was thinking about this last night, and I realized the argument switches from the name of a thing to the thing itself. The opening premise can be rephrased as "the term 'God' refers to a being that is perfect." If a perfect being exists, that being can be called God. If a perfect being does not exist, and existence is better than nonexistence, that hypothetical being cannot be called God. "God must exist" doesn't follow logically from the rephrased premise!

I did a bit of digging around and couldn't find anywhere else that stated this counterargument. If it's actually new, I wonder if I should do something with it. Is this something I could gussy up for a philosophy journal? Would they even care?

Go for it!

I'm pretty sure that's mostly going to end up being functionally equivalent to Kant's critique of the ontological argument? I mean it's not precisely identical but the underlying reasoning seems v similar

To elaborate on this: the move you make is redefining the premise to make it clear that it is including a hypothetical, that it's essentially saying that for God to be perfect, God must have the quality of existence. But I think that's essentially what Kant was getting at with the argument that existence is not a predicate - the argument does not prove anything, because you can't assume the quality of existence in this way.

I think it's a little confusing because you seem to be emphasizing the perfection aspect more than the existence aspect. Like, the conclusion seems to be that a non-existent being would not be perfect, and hence would not be God. Which seems to me besides the point: a non-existent God would not exist and thus the question of its perfection would be moot. But regardless, it comes to the same point, that the premise does not lead to the conclusion.

& I mean it's still pretty impressive to rediscover Kant, so.

When you put it that way, I do think there's a distinction in approach. Kant attacks the argument at the root, while I'm accepting the premise and following it through to a different conclusion. I'm trying to show that it can produce a self-consistent argument, just not one Anselm intended.

Well, I mean, it comes to the same thing? The point is that the argument doesn't prove that God exists. What is the self-consistent argument that you think that it produces?

That a hypothetical or imaginary being doesn't fit the definition of God and can't accurately be called that. (To be clear, I'm not saying it's a true argument, just that it follows from the assumption the premises are true.)

feo! it doesn't matter whether or not a hypothetical / imaginary being can be called god! if it's merely hypothetical, then it doesn't exist! the whole point of the ontological argument is that it's arguing that God must exist as a matter of logical necessity (because the most perfectly perfect being must be perfect in all attributes, and existence is an attribute).

You don't need to do all this faffing around with whether or not a hypothetical being is worthy of being called God. At the point where you are saying that the ontological argument's line of reasoning is insufficient to logically necessitate the existence of God, you have disproved it. You can stop at that step of your argument. The step after that is unnecessary. It is not important whether or not the hypothetical conceptual construct of a non-existent perfect being could be called God. It does not exist.

And that crucial step - the part where the ontological argument does not actually prove the necessary existence of God - is the thing that I think is recapitulating Kant.

I was worried about that. I had trouble parsing Kant's critique, so I wasn't sure how similar it was.

If you're not sure about it, maybe try looking it up on Philpapers? Though from what I've found in my research so far, being original in counterarguments is often not in itself a key thing but more what you with that counter attack.

huh... that makes sense. well done!

[ SECRET POST #3247 ]

I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument

Re: I think I just found a new counterargument to the ontological argument