Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

God: Necessary or Noncontingent?

Anselm_01 Many theists in the tradition of Anselm and Aquinas define God as a necessary being.  But if God is a necessary being, then he cannot not exist: he exists in all broadly-logically possible worlds.  The actual world is of course one of these worlds.  So it would seem to follow from the very definition of God favored by Anselmians that God exists.  But surely the existence of God cannot be fallout from a mere definition!

I have hammered the Objectivists (Randians) for their terminological mischief as when they rig up 'existence' in such a way that the nonexistence of the supernatural is achieved by terminological fiat.  So doesn't fairness demand that I hammer the Anselmians equally?  (This is one way of attaching sense to Nietzsche's notion of philosophizing with a hammer, although it is not what he had in mind.)

The trouble with defining God as a necessary being is that 'necessary being' conflates modal status and existence.  For any item we ought to distinguish its modal status (whether necessary, impossible, or contingent) from its existence or nonexistence.

The concept of God as "that than which no greater can be conceived" is the concept of a being that exists in every possible world if it exists in any world.  But from this one cannot validly infer that God exists.  For it might be (it is epistemically possible that) God exists in no world, in which  case he would be impossible.  God is either necessary or impossible: that was Anselm's great insight.  He cannot be a contingent being.

If we want one word to express this disjunctive property of being either necessary or impossible, that word is 'noncontingent.'  So we should not say that God is a necessary being.  We should say that he is a noncontingent being.

Companion post:  Necessary, Contingent, Impossible: A Note on Nicolai Hartmann

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Bill Vallicella

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5 responses to “God: Necessary or Noncontingent?”

  1. bossmanham Avatar
    bossmanham

    Hi Dr. Vallicella,
    I love your blog. I stumbled across it a few months ago. I am a young armchair philosopher hoping someday to make a living at it. Your blog is very insightful and I enjoy hashing out the ideas you present.
    This is actually, if I am correct, what Plantinga argues in his modal ontological argument. Either God is possible and therefore exists, or He is impossible and cannot exist. But I think the strength with that lies with the seeming ridiculous notion, IMO, that it is impossible that God exist. It certainly seems possible that He exists. After all we can conceive of Him.

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  2. TaiChi Avatar
    TaiChi

    Equally, we can conceive of him not existing. So conceivability tells us nothing here, even if the noncontingency of God is correct.

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  3. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    Hi Brennon,
    Glad you like the blog. Yes, it is a key ingredient in Plantinga’s modal OA, but the idea is in Leibniz and first in St Anselm in Prosblogion III.
    You are assuming that conceivability entails possibility. But it is not clear that it does. The fact that my concept of X harbors no logical contradiction does not suffice to show that X is really possible, thought itmight provide defeasible evidence of it.
    If the conceivability of God’s existence entails the possibility of God’s existence, then the conceivability of God’s nonexistence would entail the possibility of God’s nonexistence, which would in turn entail God’s nonexistence. And surely one can conceive of God’s nonexistence.
    I think one can conclude that conceivability is no sure guide to possibility.

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  4. bossmanham Avatar
    bossmanham

    I see.
    But then, if we conceived of God not existing, wouldn’t the notion of God being the being of which none greater can be conceived come into play? If this being does not exist, then can we not conceive of a greater being? Namely one who does exist? That would mean we aren’t actually conceiving of the maximally great being until we actually conceive of Him existing.
    I suppose the argument there hinges on if existence is a property that makes one “great.”

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  5. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    You are reverting to the Proslogion II argument. (I note that above I erroneously referred to Proslogion III as ProsBLOGion III!)
    You are right: the II argument hinges on whether or not existence is a great-making property.
    But even if we assume that it is better to exist than not to exist, one cannot, as far as I can see, view existence as a property that could be included in anything’s concept, not even the concept of “That than which no greater can be conceived.”
    Whether or not the maximally great being exists, the object before a finite mind will be the same. So I reject the Proslogion II argument and also the related ontol. arg. we find in Descartes. Meditation III.

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