Category: Ontological Arguments
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On Anselmian or ‘Perfect Being’ Theology
Tom O. writes, I was wondering if you have time to weigh in on the following problem. I take it you subscribe to perfect being theology as a constraint on our theorizing about God’s nature. For example, you write, “God is the absolute, and no absolute worth its salt is a contingent being. No absolute just…
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Is the Modal Ontological Argument Rationally Compelling?
I argue that it isn't.
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Four Kinds of Ontological Argument
A Substack typology.
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Nota Notae Est Nota Rei Ipsius, Kant, and the Ontological Argument
This is a re-post, redacted and re-thought, from 22 July 2011. I dust it off because something caught my eye the other morning in the Translator's Introduction to Kant's Logic. Robert S. Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz tell us that for Kant the principle of all inference or mediate judgment is the rule Nota notae est…
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Given Anselm’s Insight, How is Empirical Evidence Relevant to the Existence/Nonexistence of God?
ANSELM'S INSIGHT I take what I call Anselm's Insight to be non-negotiable. St. Anselm appreciated, presumably for the first time in the history of thought, that a divine being, one worthy of worship, must be non-contingent. If your god is contingent, then your god is not God. For if your god is contingent, and he…
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A Weird ‘Fregean’ Ontological Argument
London Ed asks: Which step of the argument below do you disagree with? a) If a sentence containing a proper name is meaningful, then the proper name is meaningful, i.e. it designates. This is a standard assumption about compositionality. BV: I have a problem right here. I accept the compositionality of meaning. But a proper…
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From the Mailbag: The Ontological Argument
P. M. writes, Thank you for your work on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God. I would really appreciate if you could answer some of my questions that are bulleted below: You discuss the following Ontological Argument in your paper: "Has the ontological argument been refuted?." Religious studies 29.1 (1993): 97-110. If the concept of an…
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Gödel: The Third Degree
An article by Graham Oppy on Kurt Gödel's ontological argument.
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Is the Modal Ontological Argument Compelling?
In a comment, Patrick Toner writes, . . . there is no substantive philosophical position for which there is *better* philosophical support than theism. I'm open to the possibility that at least one other philosophical position–namely, dualism–is at least as well supported by philosophical argument as theism. But nothing's got better support. [. . .]…
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An Ontological Disproof of God
Nothing could count as God that did not have the property of aseity, or in plain Anglo-Saxon, from-itself-ness. The concept of God is the concept of something that by its very nature cannot be dependent on anything else for its nature or existence, and this holds whether or not anything in reality instantiates the concept.…
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Again on the Ontological Argument for Truth
I gave the following argument: We have the concept true proposition. This concept is either instantiated, or it is not. If it is not instantiated, then it is true that it is not instantiated, which implies that the concept true proposition is instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept in question is instantiated, then…
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An Ontological Argument for Truth and the Correspondence Theory
A Pakistani correspondent e-mails: Regarding your recent post An Ontological Argument for Objective Reality, do you think your argument demonstrates that the correspondence theory of truth is inherent to our notion of objective reality, because we cannot meaningfully, without contradiction, even talk about truth in the absence of objective reality? If so, your argument also…
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An Ontological Argument for Objective Reality
The proprietor of Beyond Necessity has a post on objective reality which is directed against some New Age mumbo-jumbo. One of the commenters remarks, "Your argument for the existence of objective reality sounds very much like the ontological argument for God, and about as plausible." Ed, the proprietor, responds, ". . . the argument in no way…
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Nota Notae Est Nota Rei Ipsius and the Ontological Argument
(By popular demand, I repost the following old Powerblogs entry.) "The mark of a mark is a mark of the thing itself." I found this piece of scholasticism in C. S. Peirce. (Justus Buchler, ed., Philosophical Writings of Peirce, p. 133) It is an example of what Peirce calls a 'leading principle.' Let's say you…
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Does God Exist Because He Ought to Exist?
Steven, Peter, et al.: This paper has been languishing on my hard drive for some time. Comments appreciated. Abstract. Modal ontological arguments for the existence of God require a possibility premise to the effect that a maximally perfect being is possible. Admitting the possibility of such a being may appear to be a minimal concession, but…