Argument Ontologiczny - następny esej

Cześć :)

Tak siedzę i powtarzam i pomyślałem, że wrzucę jeden z moich ulubionych esejów. Pokaże on Wam dokładnie jaki jest skok z AS do A2 pod względem trudności, ilości informacji i struktury argumentu. Mam nadzieję, że się Wam spodoba. Otrzymał on ocenę 30/30 :)

Describe the Ontological Argument

The Ontological Argument was introduced by St Anselm in eleventh century and then modified by Descartes a few centuries later. It is a very different argument from the others that try to prove God’s existence. The Ontological Argument tries to arrive at the existence of God by analyzing the idea of God, namely the definition of the word “God”. Therefore, it is a priory argument, which means that we can prove this argument just by thinking about the word “God” and unlike a posteriori argument, there is no need to have any experience of God to say that he exists. What follows is that the argument is analytically true, because by thinking about the word “God” it is possible to see that existence is part of “God”.  This idea is very different from the Teleological Argument, which is a posteriori argument – it is impossible to say that God exists just by thinking about the word “God”. The experience and looking at some facts about the world can imply that God exist, for example by the order of nature suggests that there had to be a designer of it.

If the Argument succeeds, the existence of God is logically necessary and, as a matter of logic, it does not make any sense to say that God does not exist. To be a necessary truth means that it is true in all logically possible circumstances and cannot be denied without a contradiction. For example “All husbands are married” - there are no circumstances that the proposition would not be true, or if we denied it that “All husbands are unmarried”, it would simply not make any sense, because a husband, from definition, has to be married.

The Ontological Argument holds “God exists” is de dicto necessary, which means that his necessity is found in propositions and is based on how words are used (de dicto – ‘of words’. We know what the word “God” means and therefore we could not fail to see that God exists, as we could not say that a husband is someone without wife, since we know the definition of the word “husband”. The necessity is also a contingent truth, because, according to Anselm’s version, the statement that “God exists” must be true in all logically possible circumstances or conditions and cannot be denied without contradiction. The question may arise: How it may be impossible to argue that God exists is a false statement? Anselm gives a clear answer for that question and it lies in his definition of the word “God”.

Anselm starts his argument by referring to the Fool from Psalm 14:1 who says in his heart “there is no God”. He uses a method called reduction ad absurdum, which is used to demonstrate that the Fool’s statement is false by showing that a false, untenable, absurd or contradictory result follows from its acceptance. Anselm’s argument depends completely upon his definition of God, which follows: “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived”. Thus God is the greatest conceivable being that can be thought about.

Logically, things can exist in two ways – in mind and in reality. For example, I can imagine that I am the richest man in the world, but this idea exists only in my mind and it has nothing to do with reality. However, my pen exists in both reality and in my mind as an idea, because I can see it exists as well as I can think that it exists.

According to the Fool, God exists only in the mind, as an idea. Nevertheless, whatever exists in reality is greater if it only exists in the mind, For example, it is possible to imagine $1000 in your pocket, but it exists only as an idea. However, if I can have real $1000 in my pocket then clearly it is greater than existence only in imagination. Therefore, existence in reality is greater than existence in mind.

If the Fool is right and God exists only in mind, then it is possible to conceive something greater that exists in reality. However, according to Anselm, God is’ a being than which nothing greater can be conceived’ and therefore if the Fool is right there is something greater than the greatest possible being, which is a nonsense. Therefore, if we say that the greatest conceivable being exists only in mind, then we run into a contradiction. Thus, the Fool is wrong and the greatest conceivable being must exist also in reality.

Descartes’ version of the Ontological argument is slightly different than the Anselm’s one. The difference is the definition of the word “God”. Anselm’s version is: a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, while Descartes’s version is that: God is a perfect being who possess all perfections. Apart from that, they are very similar. Both are a priory, analytic and follow in a deductive way.

According to Descartes, God's existence can be deduced from his nature, just as geometric ideas can be deduced from the nature of shapes—he used the deduction of the sizes of angles in a triangle as an example, because it is not a triangle that does not possess three angles. Descartes believed, that based on his definition that God is a supremely perfect being, it is possible to conclude that God exists. It is also a deductive statement, because a conclusion follows from two logical propositions.

Descartes thought that if God is supremely perfect then he must possess all “perfections”, for example, omnibenevolence, omniscience and omnipotence. According to Descartes, existence is also a perfection. Therefore, he concluded that God is the supremely perfect being, who contains all possible perfections. He believed that existence is a perfection. Thus, if the notion of God did not include existence, it would not be supremely perfect, as it would be lacking a perfection. Because God possesses all possible perfections, then He also “possesses” existence, which means that God exists, since to exist is far more perfect than not to exist.

 

Wszelkie prawa autorskie zastrzeżone i prawnie chronione. Kopiowanie materiałów w części lub w całości możliwy tylko za zgodą autora. Cytowanie oraz wykorzystywanie fragmentów dozwolone tylko za podaniem źródła. Copyright by Wojciech Zych