CONCEIVABILITY AND THE

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

L E R O Y T. H O W E

I f the concept of God is t h a t of a possible being, Leibnit

argued, it entails the j u d g m e n t t h a t there exists a being t
which the concept r e f e r s : with resp.eet to God alone, possib
lity and a c t u a l i t y are identical. But, he concluded, if the 0i
tologieat a r g u m e n t is to d e m o n s t r a t e its a l i - i m b o r t a n t conch
sion, it still m u s t be proved t h a t the God-con.cept is of a po~
sible being. The phenomenon of speech about the A l m i g h t y
insufficient g u a r a n t e e t h a t the object of the speech c a a po
sess more t h a n merely verba.i significance :

F o r w h a t Descartes alleges, t h a t in, speakiI~g of (~,od v,

k n o w w h a t we are saying, a n d t h a t consequently ~
h a v e an idea, is a deceptive indication, since in sl;eakin
of p e r p e t u a l mechanical m o v e m e n t , for example, ~
k n o w w h a t we are saying, and yet this m o v e m e n t is s
impossible thing, of which, consequently, we can ha~
only all a p p a r e n t idea. (1)

Specifically, is it intelligible to s p e a k of a " S u p r e m e l y perfe

b e i n g " ? Are all " p e r f e c t i o n s " m u t u a l l y compatible, or " e o r
possible", such t h a t they could be encompassed wholly b y
single being? I f not, the ontological a r g u m e n t , based upon tl
conviction t h a t we have a coherent idea of ens p e r ; e c t i s s i m u
cannot serve as a " w h o l l y convincing p r o o f " of the bell
t h a t God exists.

On the surface, L e i b n i t z ' problem seems cogent. Alludii

only to the f a c t t h a t the t e r m " G o d " has a clear use in 01
language, Anselm could overcome G a u n i l o ' s denial of cohere
content to the concept, but this does not rule out the possi~
lity of d o u b t i n g t h a t the m i n d can e n t e r t a i n such a notion eoh
rently. G r a n t e d t h a t it is a b s u r d to d e n y all significance to
t e r m made the logical subject of allegedly m e a n i n g f u l d
course, one could have, nevertheless, some doubts tha~ t
t e r m could express an intelligible concept. A n d since Anset
claimed to d e m o n s t r a t e conclusively the reasonableness of [
lieving t h a t God exists, the f a c t t h a t doubts can be express
* Fl,orid~ Southern C~llege, U.S.A.
1. Leibnitz, New Essays COncerning Human Understanding, translated
Alfred Langley (La~alle, Illinois: Open Court PuDlishing Comp'any, 19
pp. 504--5).
4
S O P H I A

;about the Go,d-concep.t itself weakens seriously the force of his

.argument.

Rejecting usage, Leibnitz proposed a formal test for con-

ceivability by r e f e r e n c e to the c a t e g o r y of logical contradict-
ion: what is self-contradictory can neither exist nor be con-
ceived, and what is not self-contradictory is conceivable as a
logical, and t h e r e f o r e as a real, possibility. L a y i n g aside the
much disputed issue of w h e t h e r logical posibility and real pos-
sibility are at h e a r t one, this paper concerns itself instead
w i t h the problem created by positing absence of self-contradict-
ion as a criterion for conceivability: can the ontological argu-
m e n t be d e f e n d e d more rigorously within this f r a m e w o r k than
t h r o u g h an Anselmian app.eal to actual speech about God?

L e i b n i t z ' d e m o n s t r a t i o n that the idea of G~d is not self-

,contradictory rests upon defining " p e r f e c t i o n " as " s i m p l e
~tuality, positive and absolute, expressing w h a t e v e r it expresses
without any l i m i t a t i o n s . " (2) Construing definition to be a
resolving of complexes into simples, it follows that simple
9lualities, and t h e r e f o r e perfections, are indefinable. To know
-that given perfections are incompatible would necessitate de-
finition of the perfections, an impossibility; t h e r e f o r e it can-
not be shown t h a t not all perfections are compossible. F r o m
the impossibility of proving the contradictory, Leibnitz can
conclude that the term " m o s t perfect b e i n g " denotes an in-
tel!ibible concept, a concept of a possible being. (3)

As a demonstration, Leibnitz' a r g u m e n t is clearly inade-

<luate. Assuming that his definition of " p e r f e c t i o n " is intelli-
gible in itself, and that he is ~correct in his observation t h a t
inc-ompatibi~lity among perfections is not self-evident, he is
clearly mistaken in believing that this i~ t a n t a m o u n t to a
positive proof for. possibility. F r o m the fact that we are un-
able to demonstrate incompatibility, it kloes not follow t h a t
n o logical contradictions do in fact exist. I f Leibnitz is correct
in holding that the conceivability of the God-concept must be
,demonstrated positively for the ontological a r g u m e n t to be
valid, then the deficiency of his account necessitates denying
that God's existence can be demonstrated a priori.
This problem is the ma2or concern underlyi,ng Charles
H a r t s h o r n e ' s recent reconsiderations of the ontological argu-
ment. To Hartshorne, " t r a d i t i o n a l " versions of the a r g u m e n t
fail not because they a t t e m p t to deduce existence from de-
finitions, but because they assume a definition of divine per-
fection which cancels itself out in antinomies: (a) I f God's
2. Ibid., pp. 714--15.
~. Ibid.
 CONCEIVABILITY AND THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

perfection is His actuality in some absolute sense, then the

created order cannot make a difference to Him: value, incon-
sequential to God, becomes a surd in the universe; (b) God's
absolute self-sufficiency rules out any genuine relationship, to
the world.: since a necessary condition for genuine relationship
is that it have real significance for the parties involved, and
since nothing could make a difference to an absolutely self-
sufficient being, such a being cannot be said to love the w o r l d ;
(c) Absolute actuality entails that G~d's knowledge be wholly
and exclusively actual: thus, He must know as actual even
what is now only potential, which is impossible; an([ (d) Art
infinitely actual being who includes all possibilities as actual
cannot be demonstrated to exist, for it cannot be shown that
all possibilities are eompossible. (4)

In analyzing the content of the " c l a s s i c a l " God-concept

rather than its formal characteristics, i.e. what perfections
are included in the concept, rather than the bare claim t h a t
the God-concept involves inclusion of perfections generally,
Hartshorne's exposition gets at the root of the difficulty in
demonstrating the intelligibility of the God-concept; contra-
,dictions in the concept itself, which if taken seriously would
prove the impossibility of such a being. In contrast to the self-
contradictory " c l a s s i c a l " doctrine, which Leibnitz accepted
uncritically, Hartshorne conceives the divine being to include
elements of contingency, and he thus can assert God's concern
for, relation to, suffering with, and love of the created order.
The " b a r e " existence of God, that most abstract of all d i v i n e
characteristics, remains necesary, unsurpassable, immutable,
and independent, capable of being demonstrated with strict
necessity. But God's aetuMity, God in His concreteness, mani'-
fests contingencies which preclude deduction through logical
argument. (5)

In many ways, Hartshorne's attempt to show the God-con-

cept self-consistent is persuasive. Defining perfection as modal
does seem to provide a way out of dilemenas
resulting from conceiving God as totally actual. Futhermore,
allowing for contingent stages in the divine actuality enables
theism more adequately to represent the "livi,ng G o d " of
faith : depen,dent in some sense on His creation :for His c6ncrete
actuality, God can now be said to love and value the world,
to experience its evil, to be involved at every moment in a
real succession of temporal events in the world and in Himself.

4. C~harle:s t t a r t s h o r e , " T e n Ontological o r M o d a l P r o o f s for G o d ' s Exis-

t e n c e " , T h e Logic of PerfeetiOn a n d O t h e r E s s a y s i n NeoClassical M e -
t a p h y s i e s (LaSalle, Illinois: O p e n Court, 1962, pp. 4 0 - - 4 esp.).
5. C h a r l e s H a r t s h o r n e , " W h a t Did A n s e l m Disco,per?", U n i o n S e m i n a r y
Q u a r t e r l y Review, 17:213--22, M a r c h , 1962.
6
S 0 P H I A

But Hartshorne fails, as did Leibnitz, to provide the de-

:monstration he promises. Instead of proving that his definition
,of perfection, compelling though it is, is free from .~nternal
inconsistency, he merely eliminates overt contradictions in other
.definitions. And elaborating the meaning of modal coincidence
is not to show absence of logical contradiction in the sense
Hartshorne feels it must be Shown; our conviction that the
,concept of a necessary being whose actuality displays contin-
gencies is intelligible is merely a contingent feature of our
knowledge of the concept, from which cannot be deduced any
necessary proposition. In spite of ttartshorne's profound and
impressive reconstruction of the God-concept, proof that it is
free from loo'ieal contradiction turns out to be negative only,
in precisely the same sense as Leibnitz' own argument: both
thinkers believe that the absence of obvious contradiction is
sufficient warrant for concluding that there are, none. Or, to
state the matter more precisely, both proofs assume that since
the presence of logical contradiction is not self-evident, it is
necessarily false that logical contradictions are present. Clear-
]y, the conclusion is a non-sequitur.

The appropriate response to all this, however, contrary to

what Leibnitz and Hartshorne might have expected, is to note
,only that attempts to equate conceivability with logical pos-
sibility constitute mistakes ~'enerating false problems for the
.ontological argument's proponents. Seduced by the earnest-
ness of sincere doubters, even Christian doubtcr~ such as
Gaunilo, Leibnitz falsely reasoned that another argument is
called for if Ansehn's proof is to be defended adequately;
:somehow it must be proved that the doubter really has a co-
herent idea of God. But Anselm rightly profferred onty a vivid
description of actual discourse about God, for the conceiva-
bility of a concept surely is nothing but its use. His reply to
Gaunilo was not so unreflective as Leibnitz and his followers
have believed: it is enough, whenever conceivability is quest-
ioned, to cite usage. Even doubters know some uses for the
word " G o d " ; their problem is not that they are ignorant of
a further proof which could be supplied, justifying these uses,
but rather that they simply do not know, or as in Gaunilo's
ease refuse to admit, all the appropriate uses. The ontological
argument, underlines dramatically a rule, normative in reli-
gious "language-games", which doubters sometimes forget.
F u r t h e r the proof may provoke playing the game itself, within
-which a doubter could come to realize that his speech cannot be
about God if it expresses even the possibility that a being could
be supremely perfect and yet, for all that, non-existent,

In Leibnitz' philosophy as well as in Hartshorne's, if we

.are to have a metaphysical theism, it must be possible to de-
 7
CONCEIVABILITY AND THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

m o n s t r a t e with c e r t a i n t y the n o n - c o n t r a d i c t o r y character oi

f u n d a m e n t a l concepts and definitions. But if we have learne~l
an:~thing at all f r d m recent logical theory, it is that all such
demonstraiions are problematic at .best, the grammatical corn
p l e x i t y of i m p o r t a n t concepts militating' against the sorts of
proofs felt to be required. Assuming that there can be f o r m u
lated a single, unive.rsally applicable criterion of contradicto
riness, capabie' o~( confirming the intellia'ibi]ity of some appa
r e n t concepts, but not the God-concept, Leibnitz and I t a r t
shorne come to 'f~el that the i,dea of a supremely p.erfect beino
is in some way m o r e ' p r o b l e m a t i c t h a n other ideas.' But this i':
the mistake. There is no ullanimity among logicians on what
constitutes contradictoriness; more specitically, n o t e d mathe-
maticians and logicians such as Godel, Church, and Quine hav~
contended that there cannot be a' general criterion of contra
dictoriness applicable to any and all logical systems. (6) What
will constitute a coutra'diction varies within different system,
of logic, just as it will v a r y in different kinds of discourse.
While the terms, " m a t e r i a l particle having a velocity but nc
position", by way of example, express an intelligible concept
in the language of theoretical physics, there are metaplaysica'
g r a m m a r s within which such a notion must be dismissed a'~
wholly inconceivable.
This same point can be made with reference not only tc
logical contradictoriness, but to tautology as well. Frederick
F i t c h reminds us:
. . . it is often v e r y difficult to know whether or not
some complicated proposition is to be r e g a r d e d as lo
gically true. The decision often has to be made onl).
in a tentative way and in the light of a careful stud)
of many ,different systems of logic. (7)

Again, G. H. Von W r i g h t maintains their while the concept

of tautology provides the way for establishing " l o g i c a l l y t r u e '
propositions, no one has yet w o r k e d out a procedure b y whic~
a proposition can be shown to express a t~mtology in all possibh
systems. (8) The j u d g m e n t that proposition x expresses a
6. T h e s e m i n a l articles on t h i s p o i n t a r e Godel, "Uber f o r m a l uncut.
scheidbare Satze der P r i n e i p i a M a t h e m a t i c a u n d v e r w a n d t e r Systerr
I", M o n a t s h e f t e f u r M a t h e m a U k unfl Physik, 38:173--98, 1931; a n t
Alonzo C h u r c h , "A Note on ~he Entscheidungsproblem", J o u r n a l o
Symbolic L6.gic, 1:40--1, 101, 1936. Quine r e g a r d s C h u r c h ' s p r o o f as de-
c!sive. F o r a complete expositiGn of the view t~hat logical concepts deriv,
v a r i o u s m e a n i n g s in various systems, see H i l b e r t and Bernays, G r u n d l a
g e n d e r Mathematik, esp. vol. 2, pp. 392--416 (Berlin: S p r i n g e r , 1939)
A brief b u t illuminatin~ discussion of this issue c a n be f o u n d in ar
article by J o h n Myhill, "Some PhilosOphical Implications of Mathem,a
tical Logic",Review of Metaphysics, 6:165--98, December, 1952.
7. F r e d e r i c k Fitch, SymbOlic Logic (New Y o r k : R o l a n d Press, 1952) p. 13
8. 13. H. Von W r i g h t , " F o r m and C o n t e n t in Logic", r e p r i n t e d in Logica
S t u d i e s (Londvn: Routledge and K e g a n Paul, 1957).
8
S O P H I A

t a u t o l o g y results, it would appear, not f r o m proof, b u t from,

decisions made on the basis of an u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the con-
t e x t in which the given p r o p o s i t i o n functions. An illustration.
f r o m Stephen Toulmin should suffice:

The section on ' W a t e r ' in one well-known t e x t - b o o k

of I n o r g a n i c C h e m i s t r y opens with the words, ' W a t e r is
found in large quantities in the sea, rivers, etc.' To
the non-scientist this sentence is i n c u r a b l y comic: to*
the chemist it is d e a d l y serious. F o r the non-scientist
reads it as he would the sentences, ' T r o u t are f o u n d
in lar~'e n u m b e r s in the s t r e a m s of D a r t m o o r ' and
' t h e r e ' s gold in them t h a t hills.' Read this way, it looks
like a joke, since ' w a t e r ' is w h a t we oral.1 the stuff o f
the rivers and t h e sea ; so t h a t to say this is as unhelpful
as to s~y ' I ' l l tell yon w h a t I ' v e got in m y p o c k e t . . .
its c o n t e n t s . ' The chemist, on the other hand, thinks o f
w a t e r more as a chemical substance t h a n as an every-
d a y stuff, and accordingly, the trite-looking e v e r y d a y
sentence is t r a n s f o r m e d , f o r him, into the significant
statement, ' M u c h of the stuff of which the sea and ri-
vers consist can be c o u n t e d as t I 2 0 . ' Thi~ sentence is
far from t a u t o l o g o u s : it is indeed a v e r y necessary a n d
practical piece of information, for only with this assu-
rance can we confidently a p p l y to the liquid we get
from the sea the s t a t e m e n t s about I t 2 0 in the books
of chemical theory. (9)

In conclusion, both Leibnitz and H a r t s h o r n e t a k e Anselm

to task unjustifiably: it cannot be a weakness not to demon-
s t r a t e w h a t cannot in principle be d e m o n s t r a t e d . Both should
have t a k e n more seriously A n s e l m ' s u n a s h a m e d relig'[ous em-
p l o y m e n t of the a r g u m e n t , expressing inteiligibility-within-a
-system and not intelligibility as such. F o r Anselm, the issue
is not w h e t h e r in g e n e r a l p e r f e e t i o n ' s exemplification can be
d e m o n s t r a t e d , but w h e t h e r a man who speaks at all a b o u t a
s u p r e m e l y perfect being can m a k e a n y sense denying G o d ' s
existence. Affirmations a b o u t a necessary being m a d e f r o m
within a theistic interest cannot be of the sort whose denial
is intelligible; they must, by the v e r y n a t u r e of their subject,
be necessarily true, but within t h a t sphere of discourse. T o
deny them is merely to refuse to p a r t i c i p a t e in the sphere of
discourse. Not content to leave the m a t t e r there, Leibnitz and
I-Iartshor~e have proposed to m a k e a rule for speech a b o u t
God n o r m a t i v e in all g r a m m a r s generally, an a t t e m p t which
m a y be, in the strictest possible sense, logically impossible.

9. Stephen To~lmin, T h e P h i l o s o p h y of S c i e n c e : an Introduction (New

York: Har~er Torchbooks, 1960), p. 158.