The ontological argument (outline)

1 Two big pictures of the nature of reality

Here are some interesting questions about the nature of the world and our place in it:

1 Is there a Supreme Being, a creator and sustainer of the natural world and all that is in it?
2 Are there gaps in the causal laws of nature allowing human beings the freedom to determine their own destinies?
3 Is mind something additional to, and distinct from, physical matter,
4 Is the mind something which survives the death and decay of the physical body?
5 Is there an objective right and wrong, applying to all rational beings, which rational beings ought to obey regardless of their own particular desires.

There are quite a range of different possible collections of answers to these four questions. Indeed, there are 32 (= 2⁵) ways of answering these questions by a series of yes/no responses. Despite this, two particular sets of answers have tended to dominate the intellectual landscape. One set answers YES to the first question and then goes on to answer YES to the other three. This is the world-view associated with THEISM (= the thesis that God, a Supreme Being, exists). The other answers NO to the first (=ATHEISM), and then goes on to answer NO to the other three. This collection of answers is the world-view often called NATURALISM (= the thesis that the natural universe, a causally closed system of physical objects in space-time, is all there is).

That these two pictures are so pervasive helps to explain why the first question of the five is thought to be of such great importance. One’s answer to that has often been thought to have profound ramifications for nearly every other interesting question.

BUT, while these two big pictures do dominate the landscape, they are not the only possible pictures, and the supposed implications of theism and atheism do not in fact hold. For example, one might deny the existence of God , and yet affirm the existence of freewill, deny that the mind is physical, deny the mind survives the death of the body, and affirm the existence of objective morality. (That's Calvin's version of predestinarian theism.) Other combinations are also possible and worthy of investigation.

2 God

Over the next three weeks we are going to be investigating arguments for an answer to the first question. Does God (=the Supreme Being) exist?

As philosophers we are not interested simply in answers. We want rational answers. We are interested in determining which of a number of views is the one that we rationally ought to hold. We will look at three traditional arguments for the existence of God, one traditional argument against, and one argument for the rationality of believing in God. (Note: this last remark sounds a bit strange, but it will become clearer later).

The concept of God: before we can determine whether or not God exists we have to know what kind of being God is supposed to be. We have to analyze the concept of God. Many qualities have traditionally been ascribed to God (omnipotence, omniscience, totally good, creator and sustainer of everything else). What these ascriptions appear to be aiming at can be best captured by a single simple formula: God is the SUPREME BEING (the “Most High”).

Here we have to be careful. God is not just whatever happens to be the greatest being around. God is supposed to be the greatest possible being. God is that being such no greater being is even possible. That is why God has to be omnipotent, omniscient etc. If we wondered whether some possible being, say Darth Vader or George Bush, might count as God, we could immediately rule him/her out because we can easily imagine a greater being: one with more power, or more knowledge, or more goodness.

3 The ontological argument

The ontological argument is one of the few arguments for the existence of God the premises of which are supposed to be known a priori. (Known a priori = known without recourse to information based on sense experience.) If it is sound (that is, it has true premises and the premises entail the conclusion) then the existence of God would itself be knowable a priori. It would thus be a very powerful argument. The argument might strike you at first as ludicrous: the intriguing thing about it is that it is quite difficult to say what, if anything, is wrong with it.

(Why is it called 'ontological'? No great mystery here: the word 'ontological' is the adjective from the word 'ontology' which means the study of what exists.)

The argument was first clearly formulated by Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury.

Anselm’s argument hinges on the idea that a possible being is greater if it exists. Existence is a great-making property. Since God is the greatest possible being, s/he must have every good-making property, and so God has the good-making property of existence. That is God exists.

The premises of the argument are these:

Premise1:   God is the greatest possible being—no greater being is possible.


Premise 2:    Existence is a good-making property.

Therefore:

Conclusion: God exists

There are two ways of testing the soundness of any argument. Ask yourself these two questions:

    1    Does the conclusion follow from the premises?

    2    Are the premises true?

1 Does the conclusion follow? (Is the argument valid?)

The argument looks valid. It looks as though if you were to accept the premises you would be forced to accept the conclusion. The idea is that the Supreme Being would have to have every good-making property, and since existence is one of those, in addition to being omnipotent, omniscient etc, the Supreme Being would also have existence.

But here is a possible objection. Suppose that A and B are both good-making features. Must the greatest possible being must have both? What if it isn't possible to combine A and B in one being? How could that be? Surely every good is compatible with every other good. (Or is that obvious? Think about it.)

Some philosophers have argued that some good-making characteristics are incompatible when they are taken to the maximal degree. For example, freedom is good and (other things being equal) the more freedom the better. Knowledge is also good, and (other things being equal) the more knowledge the better. However if you know absolutely everything then you know absolutely everything about the future, and if you know that then there is only one future compatible with what you know, so the future must be already laid out and determined. But if everything is now determined then no-one is free. So if someone is omniscient, in particular that being cannot be free. Thus perfect freedom and perfect knowledge appear to be in logical conflict. Or take omnipotence and perfect goodness. To be omnipotent is to be able to do anything at all. In particular you must be able to do evil things. But a perfectly good being cannot do anything evil. And so omnipotence is incompatible with perfect goodness.

So from the fact that a feature is a good one to have it may not follow that the greatest possible being has it. There may have to be trade-offs in the attributes of the Supreme Being to maximize overall greatness.

In reply to this, Anselm might say that even if two other good attributes might be incompatible, surely existence cannot be incompatible with the best possible combination of other good-making features. (If it were not that combination wouldn't be possible in the first place—for a combination of properties to be possible is just for it to be possible for that combination to exist—i.e. to be combined with existence.)

The first version of the argument is apparently invalid, but we can add this as a third premise:

III Existence is compatible with the best possible combination of the other good-making characteristics.

Paraphrasing Anselm: if the greatest possible being, G, did not exist, we could imagine a greater being G*—where G* is just like G except that unlike G, G* has existence as well. But then G*, not G, would be the greatest possible being. That's a contradiction and so our original assumption (that G does not exist) must be false.

Now the conclusion follows from I, II, and III together.

B Are the premises true?

Premise I is a definition, and seems like a pretty good definition of God. What about premise II? Does existence always improve a thing? Wouldn’t it be worse for Satan to exist than not to exist? If that is right, existence itself is not a good-making characteristic after all. The second premise is false.

There is a way to improve the argument. Clearly the Satan counterexample shows that existence does not enhance the goodness of bad things. But here is a more restricted principle:

II* It is better for a good thing to exist than not to exist. (i.e. existence is a an extra good-making feature of anything that is otherwise good).

If we substitute premise II* for premise II then we have a new argument which seems not to be susceptible to the Satan objection

This is by no means an exhaustive analysis of Anselm’s argument. In fact it is just a beginning. I leave it to you to follow up other possible objections (like those presented in Rowe’s article) in your recitation.