Now, my reaction to this is that it’s pure word-games and circular logic. If I define the Invisible Pink Unicorn to be “the Great Holy Unicorn Who is both Invisible and Pink and Who really truly exists” then golly, by definition, the IPU exists, no?
The Catholic Encyclopedia article goes on to say of arguments like mine that:
I dunno. It still seems like a pretty smart criticism to me. I don’t see how throwing the word “infinite” in there negates the fact that it’s still a purely circular semantic games. (“The Invibile Pink Unicorn is a Great, infinitely Holy unicorn, who is the perfect Platonic Ideal of both Pinkness and Invisibility, and Who really exists.”) Perhaps if a Great Debate actually gets going on this, more intelligent arguments will be offered both pro and con. I’ll go ahead and crib a much smarter sounding argument from that Britannica article:
I should also confess up front that I have no idea what that Godel guy was talking about; that stuff was way over my head.
Truthfully, I don’t know if we’re going to get a Great Debate going here or not, since a Debate necessarily implies at least two sides. Does anyone still take the Ontological Argument seriously?
If no one is really interested in kicking the Ontological Argument around, I suppose we could take a shot at presuppositionalism instead.
Anselm’s style of argument smacks of “those sets that contain themselves” type conundrums. The resolution, I think, has to do with defining specific ‘types’ of sets and, in particular, prohibiting certain sets from containing themselves.
So, in the example at hand, the idea of “aliquid quo nihil majus cogitari possit” should not be allowed to also contain the necessity of a physically existing God.
BTW, do you know about heterologous and autologous words?
Autologous words describe themselves. So, short is short, polysyllabic is polysyllabic, and English is English. These are examples of autologous words.
Heterologous words don’t describe themselves. So, long is not long, monosyllabic is not monosyllabic, and German is not German. These are examples of heterologous words.
And, you will agree that for any word “X”, one of the following statements must be true:
The autologous/heterologous paradox is just a rephrasing of the barber paradox (in turn, a rephrasing of the set of those sets that don’t contain themselves paradox).
I believe that Anselm’s Ontological Argument was pretty soundly refuted by Kant in the 1700’s. Not a bad run, I must say. I can’t think of many things which are clearly wrong, but which have taken six centuries to be refuted.
Basically, Kant’s argument againts AOA is that “existence” is not a property of an object, like “grayness,” or “softness,” or “smallness.” AOA basically breaks down to:
God is infinitely perfect.
Non-existence would be an imperfection.
Therefore, God must possess the attribute of existence.
But “existence” is not a normal property. We can say that the god who is infinitely good is better than the god who is finitely good, or the god who is infinitely good and knowing is better than the god who is just infinitely knowing. But we can’t say that the god who is existent is better than the god who is non-existent, anymore than we can say that the “small, soft, gray cat” who actually exists is superior to the “small, soft, gray cat” who only exists in my mind. The two things are not even comparable, because one of them isn’t even a “thing;” it just “isn’t!”
Basically, Anselm came up with a fancy word game that took 600 years to decipher. Maybe writing in Latin helped…
What puzzled me, and the reason I asked the original question, was why Godel even attempted to provide an onotological proof in the first place? I’m sure he was aware of the criticisms/refutations provided by earlier philosophers (like Russell), so maybe his intellectual curiosity drove him to provide a more adequate proof. He was, after all, one of the premiere logicians of the twentieth century and possibly one of the greatest of all time.
I am not a philosopher nor a logician, so I don’t really know if Godel’s use of Modal Logic is a better argument in trying to prove the existence of God. Any mathematicians/logicians like to provide their take?
I do know (from what I’ve read), that he was a Platonist - he really believed in the actual existence of mathematical entities. That is, mathematical entities (such as numbers) exist in some timeless realm. For me, I don’t know - maybe we can jumpstart this debate by asking whether or not “numbers” really exist or are a creation of the human intellect.
What about a circle?
JB began with the concept of perfect circle as that than which nothing greater can be conceived (aliquid quo nihil majus cogitari possit). To think of such a circle as existing only in thought and not also in reality involves a contradiction. For an X that lacks real existence is not that than which no greater can be conceived. A yet greater circle would be X with the further attribute of existence. Thus the unsurpassably perfect being must exist–otherwise it would not be unsurpassably perfect.
So does the perfect circle exist? Only in our minds, I would say.
There are, I believe, three good refutations to this. Aquinas rejected it because he claimed we could not really concieve “perfection.” Others have suggested that there’s a little amphiboloy; a perfect being has to exist, just as a perfect baseball bat has to have certain “baseball bat” properties. However, this is the only property that being must possess, and it’s cheating to then change the defintion of perfect. Kant suggested that being wasn’t an intristic property, which has been explained elsewhere.
You’re missing the point. A unicorn may or may not exist. A being has to, definitionally. A being which does not exist isn’t much of a being, is it? Thus, the most perfect being has to exist, an invisible pink unicorn doesn’t. In fact, I don’t think it can be invisible and pink at the same same time. Perhaps that’s one of your mysteries, I do not know, but if so you must admit you can’t present an ontological argument for it.
Even after all these years, I still get a tingle of excited curiosity each time I hear that someone has a ‘proof’ or a ‘reason’ for believing in god. It’s like some guy saying he will now make water flow uphill… you know it’s not gonna happen, but I find it intriguing to see how, precisely, he goes about trying to do it.
Seems everyone has dismantled the ontological ‘proof’ adequately. It hinges on making ‘existence’ not only a property, but a property in the same set of properties as any other property that god might, or might not, possess. The flaw is that something must perforce exist before it can have properties ascribed to it. One cannot assess or comment upon the ‘properties’ of a god that does not exist.
Yes, one can admire AOA lasting 600 years or so… but then again, this was before the invention of the SDMB, which would have put paid to it in about 6 hours.
The only thing one can say with certainty about god is that if it does exist, its properties are such that its existence cannot be tested or determined.
Well, okay, for something to qualify as a perfect “being”, it would have to be. But, perhaps there is no “perfect being”. That, after all, is the question we’re trying to answer, and trying to win the game via an argument from definition strikes me as being, well, “pure word-games and circular logic”.
…Yeah, that seems to make more sense than my IPU example. I think. I still don’t have the foggiest what idea what that Godel site was talking about, though.
well, or all beings that, you know, “be,” are equally perfect, at least as far as their “being-ness” goes.
Well, let’s not have a “niagra falls!” moment, but I think it’s more amphiboloy than circular logic, since you then change “fufills its essence” to “free-est from flaw.”
Huh. Godel appears to have restated the ont. arg. in fancy logical symbols. Presumably Copi and Cohen would help you out.
I think that part is the most sensible portion of the ontological argument, really.
Right, and the most perfect toaster has to make toast, otherwise it’s not the most perfect toaster. making toast being part of the essence of toaster-ness. I might say it’s the hinge.
Not that I have anything against Kant outright, but using one philosopher to disprove another isn’t necessarily in the best of interests. Strictly speaking, a good philosophy is pretty consistent with itself, so it should come as no suprise that they will not necessarily agree with one another.
Kant, Aquinas, so-and-so, they’ve all got problems dealing with different philisophical issues. Descartes, for example, never figured out who “I” was. Aquinas felt infinite regression was impossible as an a priori assumption (no problem there) but that means that there was merely a creator, not necessarily a perfect “god” being.
Its easy to poke holes in any particular philosophy if one doesn’t agree with the assumptions made throughout its exploration. Yeah?
Why do you think that, especially when dealing with epistemological questions?
I am not at all sure epistemological questions aren’t more or less objective
Before you can proceed any further, you’re going to have to show us how Russell and Wittgenstein disproved Rand’s favorite Aristotle passage, just to make sure you’re bringing certain knowledge to the discussion at hand here. If you’re not as tall as me, you’ll just get hurt on this ride.
No; showing us the why’s as to why you disagree with the “philosophy,” (and the ont. arg. isn’t really a philosophy, anyway) is a bit trickier than just saying “well, I reject the premises.” Note the bad argument, unicorns and islands, and the good arguments, existence isn’t a predicate.