Are a priori arguments sterile and consequently, ontological arguments to prove God exists sterile too? Lets turn our efforts to infer the existence of God from the occurrence and/or nature of the world rather than the from the meaning of a concept.
Two classical writers (Gaunilo and Kant) have claimed to refute the ontological argument.
- Gaunilo did not identify any specific fault with the argument, but argued that there must be something wrong with it, because if there is not then we can use its logic to prove things that we have no reason to believe to be true.
- Gaunilo’s argument proceeds by attempting to use Anselm’s strategy to deduce the existence of a perfect island, which Gaunilo views as a counterexample to the argument form.
- Gaunilo’s objection, even if successful, only shows us that something must be wrong with Anselm’s argument, but it doesn’t show us exactly where the error lies
- One problem with Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God is that it invites parody.
- Anselm replied back to Gaunilo by saying that his argument is not in line faithfully with his. For, a perfect island is not perfect in the same sense as a perfect being is.
- According to Kant the confusion lies in the fact that existence is not a predicate
- But it is not obvious how this slogan is supposed to relate to the ontological argument. Some, most notably Alvin Plantinga, have even judged Kant’s dictum to be totally irrelevant to Anselm’s version of the ontological argument.
- While Kant’s criticism is phrased (somewhat obscurely) in terms of the logic of predicates and copulas, it makes a plausible metaphysical point.
- Kant’s objection to the ontological proof on the ground that existence is not a real property was path-breaking in Kant’s era and remains highly influential today.
- Kant simply reduced the size of Anselm’s God by telling that if something exists in our mind, and if it also exists in reality then by no means can we conclude that what exist in reality is any better than what exist in our mind. What exists in reality is only an affirmation of what exist in our mind.
A general twenty first-century reply is that a priori arguments, in general, yield only "analytic" conclusions, not "synthetic" ones.
A positivistic reply is that words can be used without naming or referring to any entity. If "god" is a vacuous term, then both "God exists" and "God does not exist" are neither true nor false, but pseudo propositions and are unknowable.
The ontological argument is a valid, sound (and strong) argument against idolatry.
No comments:
Post a Comment