Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Ontological Argument

Assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Ontological Argument for the existence of God. The Ontological Argument for the existence of God is an a priori argument. That is to say, it relies wholly on logic and reason to prove a definition to be correct, and therefore does not require empirical evidence to reach its conclusion. It is the aim of this paper to examine and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the argument. Additionally it will attempt to do so by analysing the ontological arguments from various philosophers and equally, those who have opposed them. Many philosophers would agree that this argument was first introduced by St Anselm an 11th C thinker who was the Archbishop of Canterbury for 16 years (Magee 1998:57). In Proslogion 2 Anselm lays out his argument beginning by defining God as 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived' from here he states that everybody has a concept of God and therefore god exists in the mind. But for God to be greater than anything conceivable He must exist in reality (Jordan et al 1999: 42). This came to be known as the 'Classical Argument'. Gaunilo of Marmoutier gave an immediate response to this. Using the same process by which Anselm moves from God's definition to His existence Gaunilo describes the 'most perfect island', which has to exist due to its perfection. Be that as it may Gaunilo's argument is unable to oppose Anselm's because an island relies upon other things for it to exist and as Plantinga mentions an island has no intrinsic maximum (Jordan et al 1999: 48). St Thomas Aquinas also saw faults within the Ontological Argument. Although he himself believed God's existence to be self-evident, he rebuffed the notion that it could be understood merely from the claims of the concept of God. His main issue with the argument was that many people have entirely different concepts of God and so if the argument were to work at all, it would only apply to those who see God as 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived'. Aquinas' second problem with Anselm's argument was, even if everyone had the same concept of God, that would still not signify his physical existence and only denotes existence in the mind (Himma 2001). 'Aquinas' critique was regarded as so devastating that the ontological argument died out for several centuries.' (Nolan 2011) René Descartes revived the Ontological Argument much to the surprise of his peers,when he further developed Anselm's argument. His definition, that God is 'a supremely perfect being' is the foundation of his argument. The second premise of Descartes' argument is that necessary existence is a perfection and therefore, a supremely perfect being exists. Descartes says that if God did not exist physically, it would be self-contradictory to Him being 'a supremely perfect being'. He uses the analogy of a triangle without three sides to demonstrate the illogicality of imagining God without the premise that God exists (Nolan 2011). The main opposition to Descartes' argument comes from Immanuel Kant, Kant rejects Descartes' claim that not accepting God's existence is synonymous with denying a triangle has three sides as it is a contradiction. Kant says that you can define something however you wish, whether or not anything matches that description in reality is an entirely different matter. Kant goes on to raise a second objection to tackle Anselm's use of existence as a predicate. Kant states that a predicate must give us information about about the subject, to say something exists does not comply with this rule and therefore cannot be a predicate (Jordan et al 1999: 48-49). Gottlob Frege differentiates between the 'first order' and 'second order' predicates. The first, Frege says tells us about the nature of things and the second gives us concepts of the subject being described. Frege's issue with Anselm and Descartes is they both appear to use God's existence as a first order predicate, when it is in fact a second order predicate (Jordan et al 1999: 49) Bertrand Russell reformed Anselm's argument following his own criticism of using existence as a predicate. Russell says 'to label and define something is to provide an intention concerning the object under discussion.' He comes to the conclusion that 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived' is nothing but the totality of ideas conceivable to the finite human mind. If any idea can exist then 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived' must exist because it is the totality of ideas. However this is not to say that it has a physical existence. By this reckoning Russell agrees with Anselm's claim that God is the greatest concept we can comprehend, however he does not agree that this proves God's physical existence. ( Jordan et al 1999: 50) Norman Malcolm formed a modern version of the argument based on Anselm's second argument from Proslogion 3. In which he keeps the notion that God is 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived' but this argument does not rely upon existence being a perfection; instead it requires necessary existence to be a perfection (Jordan et al 1999: 45) Malcolm's argument works on the basis that God is an unlimited being. For an unlimited being to exist it could neither be created or destroyed or else it would be limited. So if God does not exist His existence is impossible and if He does then His existence is necessary. Malcolm finishes by saying 'Thus God's existence is either impossible or necessary. It can be the former only if the concept of such a being is self-contradictory or in some way logically absurd. Assuming that it is not so, it follows that He necessarily exists.' Brian Davies a current philosopher criticises Malcolm's use of the word 'is'. He states that: there are two uses of the word, one for describing and the other to tell us there is something. According to Davies, Malcolm's use of the word tells the reader absolutely nothing about the subject and relies heavily on the readers supposition of God's existence (Jordan et al 1999: 51). Alvin Plantinga originated a different approach with the philosophical concept of 'possible worlds'. When Plantinga talks of possible worlds he is not referring to another physical world, merely a different set of scenarios that could have taken place on this world. With this concept in mind Plantinga offers that there is a possible world in which there exists a being with maximal greatness and a being can only have maximal greatness if it exists in every possible world. Up to this point Plantinga is not talking about God as he has not dealt with the factor of each possible world having a more powerful being. To overcome this Plantinga introduces 'maximal excellence'. He states that: it is possible for every world to have a being with maximal excellence and therefore, such a being exists. Brian Davies criticised this argument by pointing out that it simply suggests a God is possible and not a physical actuality. (Jordan et al 1999: 46) To recap it is possible to see both strengths and weaknesses within the Ontological Argument. The argument draws its strength from the way in which it has been formed. Being an analytic argument by nature, it uses the laws of language in a deductive way to come to conclusions contained within its premise. Additionally it requires no empirical evidence to support it although this can also be seen as a weakness. Other weaknesses include the fact that it relies heavily upon faith and is based around the notion that God's existence is self-evident. As no a posteriori evidence is required the argument is based around the definition of God, but as Kant said it is not possible to define something into existence. Perhaps the strongest thing amongst the varying arguments is the logic employed, one cannot argue that it is logically sound. However logic alone is unreliable; as can be seen with Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise which is logically impeccable but in the world of experience it would not be possible for the Tortoise to win the race. In conclusion the argument is generally flawed in too many ways to be considered a strong argument. It is unlikely to convert an atheist but for someone with faith it can illustrate the nature of God as man understands it. 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