Category: Ontological Arguments
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God: Necessary or Noncontingent?
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…
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Pavel Tichý on Descartes’ Meditation Five Ontological Argument
This post is the fourth in a series on Pavel Tichý's "Existence and God" (J. Phil., August 1979, 403-420). In section II we find a critique of Descartes' Meditation Five ontological argument. Tichý claims to spot two fallacies in the argument. I will argue that only one of them is a genuine fallacy. One could…
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Four Kinds of Ontological Argument
The essence of ontological argumentation is the inferential move from the concept/essence of F to the existence/nonexistence of F. We are all familiar with ontological arguments for the existence of God. They have been a staple of philosophy of religion discussions from Anselm to Plantinga. But there is nothing in the nature of ontological argumentation…