The Ontological Argument Ontological. ( From the Greek ontos, meaning being . )

1. The Ontological ArgumentOntological. (From the Greek ontos, meaning being.) Lesson objectives: DESCRIBE the ontological argument (Grade E & D) EXPLAIN the strengths and weaknesses of the ontological argument (Grade C) EVALUATE the ontological argument and express your own view of it. (Grade B & A)

2. Starter : Against each object write its key features – characteristics without which it wouldn’t be what it is.

3. Anselm’s argument Anselm says that the definition, or essence, of God includes existence: God is a perfect being, i.e. one than which none greater can be conceived. HOW DOES THIS WORK? Lets say… 1. God exists in the understanding, but not in reality. 2. However, one can conceive of a being that not only exists in the understanding, but also in reality itself. 3. A being that exists both in the understanding and in reality is greater than a being that exists solely in the understanding. 4. Hence, one can conceive of a being greater than God. Contradiction – reject premise 1. • But the problem here is that, even if one shows that ‘God exists’ is an analytic truth, all one has done is say that existence is a necessary property of the concept ‘God’.

4. What is an analytic statement? An analytic statement tells us nothing about the world, is just a definition… SO if you said, “cold, white snow”, or “a duffle coat with toggles on it” you wouldn’t be wrong, but you wouldn’t be saying anything we couldn’t already have worked out if we knew the definition of the word. AND we wouldn’t know whether any duffle coats or snow actually exist. If a crazy, duffle-coat-hating person destroyed all the duffle coats in the world, would duffle coats still have toggles on?

5. Remember Plato? Plato used the idea that each thing has an essence without which it wouldn’t be what it is. Can you remember what Plato called the essence, or paradigm, of things that actually exist in the world? And how we can know about them? But does it make sense to say that things have some kind of existence (somewhere, if not in the visible realm) just because we can conceive of them? (Anselm had described God as perfect goodness which causes goodness in everything he creates. Sound familiar?)

6. Spot the difference… Can you tell that one of these dogs actually exists and one doesn’t just from the ideas of the dogs?

7. Gaunilo thought not. He said 1: we can’t conceive of perfection – we have no experience of such a thing, Discussion Question 1: What would Plato have said about this? Discussion Question 2: What do you think? Can you conceive of something you have no experience of? Infinity and eternity? and 2: just because you can conceive of something (he used the example of an island), doesn’t make it exist. If the fact that you think you can conceive of an existing island makes it exist, your argument must be flawed. Discussion Question 3: Is this true? If you say you are conceiving of an island that exists, you’d know really that it didn’t. You wouldn’t really being conceiving of an existing island, you’d know you were kidding yourself.

8. Descartes had his own version of the ontological argument Descartes has an idea of God as being one, perfect being. Plato thought that we gain knowledge of concepts by recollecting the time when we resided in the realm of Forms. Descartes thought that we must have got our knowledge of perfection from God, because we can have no experience of perfection in this life. Unlike Plato he doesn’t believe in a cycle of rebirth, but he does belief that God has imprinted some knowledge on us so that we know certain things whatever experience we have had in the world. Descartes says that we get our knowledge of God from God, who has left his imprint on our souls like the trademark a craftsman leaves on his work. Question: Is this feasible? Do you think we have any innate knowledge? What?

9. Kant’s objection Existence is not a predicate (just a quality, or characteristic that something has). We don’t say we have four cars: a red car, a fast car, a rusty car, and an existing car. In the same way, we can’t say that God has certain qualities: He is perfect and powerful and, oh yes, another thing, he exists. Sir John Polkinghorne’s objection At a lecture in Norwich Cathedral last week, an AS-level student asked him what he thought about Anselm’s ontological argument. He said he thought it was like “pulling a divine rabbit from a logical hat”.

10. I think… • Both Anselm’s and Descartes’ starting point was that God exists. What do you think? • Task: Write Anselm’s argument for the existence of God in bullet points. Make this the centre of a mind map. Add on Gaunilo’s criticisms and Kant’s criticism. Then add on your views.

11. The Ontological ArgumentOntological. (From the Greek ontos, meaning being.) Lesson objectives: DESCRIBE the ontological argument (Grade E & D) EXPLAIN the strengths and weaknesses of the ontological argument (Grade C) EVALUATE the ontological argument and express your own view of it. (Grade B & A)