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.

Causal Necessity and the Ontological Argument

1974 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Humber
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Ontological Argument ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
The Past ◽  
Necessary Being ◽  
Causal Necessity ◽  
Physical Necessity ◽  
Philosophical Community

The ontological argument appears in a multiplicity of forms. Over the past ten or twelve years, however, the philosophical community seems to have been concerned principally with those versions of the proof which claim that God is a necessary being. In contemporary literature, Professors Malcolm and Hartshorne have been the chief advocates of this view, both men holding that God must be conceived as a necessary being and that, as a result, his existence is able to be demonstrated a priori. This claim has not gone unchallenged; indeed, numerous writers have argued that neither Malcolm nor Hartshorne has exercised due care in his use of ‘necessary’. That is, critics charge that the arguments of both men have only the appearance of validity, for in their reasonings the defenders of the a priori proof have tacitly assumed that God is a logically necessary being. Whether or not a being can be logically necessary, however, is a quaestio disputata. In fact, until recently the question was not in dispute at all—virtually all ‘competent judges’ agreed that only propositions could be spoken of as logically necessary, and thus that God must be defined as a physically or factually necessary being. But is the statement, ‘a physically necessary being exists’, logically true? Critics of the ontological argument think not; and in support of this view they offer analyses of ‘physical necessity’ which, they feel, not only give meaning to the phrase, but also show that a physically necessary being's existence can be proven only by some kind of a posteriori investigation.

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.

The “Second Version” of Anselm's Ontological Argument

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 665-683
Author(s):  
R. Robert Basham
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Charles Hartshorne ◽  
Necessary Existence

Chapter III of Anselm's Proslogion is quite naturally interpreted as presenting a second version of the ontological argument (the first version having been presented in Chapter II). In recent discussions it has been so interpreted by Charles Hartshorne and by Norman Malcolm. Other writers, however, have rejected this interpretation, maintaining that Anselm intended Chapter Ill, not as a second proof of God's existence (by way of showing that it is necessary that God exist), but only as a demonstration that the kind of existence which God (already proved to exist in Chapter II) has is necessary existence. Perhaps the latter writers are correct on this exegetical point, but even so, it does not follow that there is anything improper about an inquiry into the character of the distinct, modal version of the ontological argument which can be derived from this passage.

Necessary Existence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander R. Pruss ◽  
Joshua L. Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Modal Logic ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
Necessary Being ◽  
Necessary Existence ◽  
Concrete Entity ◽  
The Universe

A necessary being is a concrete entity that cannot fail to exist. An example of such a being might be the God of classical theism or the universe of necessitarians. Necessary Existence offers and carefully defends a number of novel arguments for the thesis that there exists at least one necessary being, while inviting the reader to a future investigation of what the neccessary being(s) is (are) like. The arguments include a defense of a classic contingency argument, a series of new modal arguments from possible causes, an argument from abstract objects, and a Gödelian argument from perfections. Furthermore, arguments against the possibility of a necessary being are critically examined. Among these arguments are old and new arguments from conceivability, a subtraction argument, problems with causation, and an argument from parsimony. Necessary Existence also includes a defense of the axioms of S5 modal logic, which is a framework for understanding several arguments for necessary existents.

The Missing Premise in the Ontological Argument

1973 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman L. Geisler
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Cosmological Argument ◽  
Necessary Being ◽  
Valid Form

It appears to me that most traditional criticism of the Ontological argument misses the mark because the proponents imply a premise which, if true, would validate their argument on precisely the point attacked by the opponents. In view of this possibility, I propose the following analysis:(1) state the traditional ontological argument without the implied premise;(2) state the traditional criticisms, showing how they miss the mark;(3) restate the ontological argument with the implied premise made clear;(4) offer a defence of the implied premise;(5) show how the ontological argument is still invalidated by another criticism;(6) argue that the only way to avoid this other criticism is to borrow another premise from the cosmological argument, and(7) that when these premises are borrowed the result is a valid form of the cosmological argument for the existence of a necessary being.

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.

The Ontological Argument of Charles Hartshorne

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-49
Author(s):  
Eugene H. Peters ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Charles Hartshorne

The Cosmological and Ontological Arguments: How Saint Thomas Solved the Kantian Problem

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. William Forgie
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Cosmological Argument ◽  
Necessary Being

Let us call the Dependency Theses (DT) the view, first stated by Kant, that certain versions of the cosmological argument depend on the ontological argument. At least two different reasons have been given for the supposed dependence. Given the DT, some of Aquinas' views about God's essence, and about our knowledge of God's existence, can seem, at least at first, to be inconsistent. I consider two different ways of defending Aquinas against this suspicion of inconsistency. On the first defence, based on a widespread understanding of his notion of ‘necessary being’, Aquinas' views fall outside the scope of the DT. The success of this defence is doubtful. There is, however, another defence to be found in Aquinas' work, one directed not to avoiding, but actually to rejecting, the DT. In this second defence, the DT is not a correct assessment even of those views that do fall within its scope. Its success means that Aquinas had available a principled refutation of the DT some five hundred years before it was first formulated.

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