The Religious Significance of the Ontological Argument

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Philip E. Devine
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Necessary Existence ◽  
The Way

It seems clear that the ontological argument can no longer be dismissed as a silly fallacy. The dogma of the impossibility of necessary existence is seriously threatened by the case of necessary existential truths in mathematics, and as for the claim that the ontological argument must beg the question, since by mentioning God in the premise his existence is presupposed, it is undermined by the fact that we often refer to things—Hamlet for instance— we do not for a moment think exist. The doctrine that existence is not a property (‘exists’ is not a predicate), insofar as it does not reduce to one of the foregoing points, is very murky, for the sense in which ‘red’ is a predicate and ‘exists’ is not has never been clearly defined. Moreover, the way many believers hold that ‘God exists’ is immune to empirical refutation strongly suggests that we are dealing here with an analytic statement, which is just what the ontological argument should be expected to produce. It seems in order, then, to conduct theological discussion under the supposition that the argument is in fact sound.

Is Existence a Predicate in Anselm's Argument?

1966 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
David M. Lochhead
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Necessary Existence ◽  
Contingent Existence ◽  
The Way

One of the most annoying things to many a student of St Anselm's Proslogion is the way in which many philosophers assume that they can make Anselm's argument disappear simply by uttering the incantation, ‘Existence is not a predicate’. Some recent studies of the argument1 have tried to rescue it from Kant's dictum by showing that this criticism does not apply to Anselm's so-called ‘second’ ontological argument. This argument appears in chapter III of Proslogion and depends on a distinction between ‘necessary existence’ and ‘contingent existence’. Both Malcolm and Hartshorne are content, however, to let the better known ‘first’ argument (Proslogion, chapter II) rest in the oblivion to which Kant assigned it.

Kant’s Radical Critique of Ontotheology

2019 ◽  
pp. 208-248
Author(s):  
Uygar Abacı
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
The Real ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the way Kant’s revolutionary theory of modality radicalizes his critique of ontotheology in the Ideal of Pure Reason. First it shows how Kant’s downgrading of his own precritical ‘only possible argument’ from an objectively valid demonstration of the real necessity of the existence of God to a subjectively valid demonstration of the necessity of assuming the idea of such a being is due to his shift from an ontological to an epistemological interpretation of the actualist principle. Second, it argues that Kant’s refutation of the traditional ontological argument in the Ideal follows a multilayered strategy, consisting of a combination of two historical lines of objection, only the second of which presupposes his negative thesis that existence is not a real predicate, as well as an additional, third objection based on his further thesis that all existential judgments are synthetic, albeit in a peculiar sense.

scholarly journals Sporting Space, Sacred Space: A Theology of Sporting Place

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 473
Author(s):  
Robert Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Ordinary Space ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
Special Places ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Way

Religion often designates locations that are considered sacred, marked off from ordinary space. Sporting venues also take on a significance for players and supporters that is seldom adequately explained in solely sporting terms. Can theological understandings of place illuminate the way in which players and spectators relate to the ‘sacred space’ of their sporting endeavors? In this paper, I explore and assess the theological and religious significance of sporting space by reflecting upon descriptions of both religious and sporting special places. I use a range of types of descriptions of experiences of such spaces together with theological ideas and concepts, including Christian notions of incarnation, sacrament, and Trinity, which are found to be useful resources, undermining a strict binary of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ space. I then build upon previous theological and empirical work with sports participants to explore a theological understanding of special sporting places and the experiences of those who play and support sporting endeavors in them.

PostscriptArguments for God’s Existence Revisited

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Garrett
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Alternate Explanation ◽  
Necessary Existence

Chapter 2 (“Spinoza’s ‘Ontological’ Argument”) offers on Spinoza’s behalf (1) an argument against the existence of substances other than God (that is, substances of fewer-than-all attributes); and (2) an explanation of why no such substances exist. In his important 2002 article “Spinoza’s Substance Monism,” Michael Della Rocca offers on Spinoza’s behalf an alternate argument and an alternate explanation, both of which he claims better serve Spinoza’s purposes and better capture Spinoza’s intentions than those provided in chapter 2. After proposing three terminological clarifications (concerning “necessary existence” and “a priori”) and two substantive amendments to the argument of the chapter, this postscript rebuts those claims.

scholarly journals Varieties of Ontological Argument

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Howard Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Necessary Existence

I consider what I hope are increasingly sophisticated versions of ontological argument, beginning from simple definitional forms, through three versions to be found in Anselm, with their recent interpretations by Malcolm, Plantinga, Klima and Lowe. I try to show why none of these work by investigating both the different senses of necessary existence and the conditions under which logically necessary existence can be brought to bear. Although none of these arguments work, I think that they lead to interesting reflections on the nature of definition, on the conditions for possessing the property of necessary existence and point towards a different, neo-Platonic ground for God’s meeting the criteria for being logically necessary.

Hartshorne's Arguments Against Empirical Evidence for Necessary Existence: An Evaluation

1977 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen A. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Ontological Argument ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Reasonable Belief ◽  
Necessary Being ◽  
Charles Hartshorne ◽  
Necessary Existence

Is experiential evidence irrelevant to acceptance or rejection of belief in the existence of a Divine Being? Charles Hartshorne answers that it is indeed irrelevant, and this answer has an initial and, for me, continuing surprising ring to it. Specifically, Hartshorne makes two distinguishable claims: (1) the traditional allegedly a posteriori arguments, the teleological and cosmological, are in fact incompatible with empiricist methodology and are disguised ontological arguments; (2) the conception of God as necessary being demands that belief in such a being's existence or non-existence in no way depend upon empirical evidence. On the contrary, I shall argue, first, that empirical evidence for God is truly empirical and second, that there is no incompatibility between empirical evidence and necessary existence. My argument will involve an attempt to understand and clarify somewhat the very difficult concepts of ‘experience’ and ‘necessity’ as they arise in the context of religious epistemology. I wish to make clear at the outset that my aim is not to eliminate ontological arguments for God in favour of empirical arguments, for I believe that Hartshorne's work on the modal ontological argument contributes substantially to providing grounds for reasonable belief in theism. Rather, my purpose is to show that ontological and empirical patterns of theistic argumentation are neither incompatible with each other nor reducible to each other.

Hartshorne, Charles (1897–2000)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Dombrowski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ontological Argument ◽  
First Century ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
Traditional Theism ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Way ◽  
Supreme Being

Despite the fact that Hartshorne often criticized the metaphysics of substance found in medieval philosophy, he was like medieval thinkers in developing a philosophy that was theocentric. From the 1920s until the beginning of the twenty-first century he defended the rationality of theism. For much of this period he was almost alone in doing so among English-speaking philosophers. He was largely responsible for the rediscovery of St Anselm’s ontological argument. But his greatest contribution to philosophical theism was not regarding arguments for the existence of God, but rather a theory regarding the actuality of God – i.e., how God exists. In his process-based conception God was seen as supreme becoming in which there was a factor of supreme being, in contrast to the view of traditional theism, wherein God was the supreme, unchanging being. Hartshorne’s neoclassical view has influenced the way many philosophers understand the concept of God. A small, but not insignificant, number of scholars think of him as the greatest metaphysician of the second half of the twentieth century.

Necessary being

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leftow
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
Necessary Being ◽  
Necessary Existence

Many think that God is perfect, or free from defect, and that being able not to exist is a defect. These infer that God is not able not to exist – that is, that God exists necessarily. Some add that what makes God perfect also makes him exist necessarily, and so trace his necessity to his immateriality (Aristotle), eternity (Plotinus) or simplicity (Aquinas). Others trace God’s necessity to his relation to creatures (Ibn Sina, Anselm). Spinoza and Leibniz held that what makes God necessary explains his very existence. Many have thought that if God exists necessarily, there is a sound ontological argument for God’s existence, or that if there is a sound ontological argument for God’s existence, God exists necessarily. But both claims are false. Some have used philosophical views of the nature of necessity – for example, that all necessity is conventional, a matter of how we choose to use words – to challenge God’s necessary existence. But the theories which best support these challenges have fallen from favour, and in fact, even if one accepts the theories, the challenges fail.

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