Is proof of God, based solely on the definition of God, possible? St Anselm of Canterbury was up for the challenge. God did say: "I Am Who Am", so I guess Anselm figured his chances at success were pretty high.
Titled as the father of scholasticism, Anselm was an Italian Benedictine abbot in the 12th century. I was going to google him and give everyone a brief history, but I figured you could do that yourself if you wanted! Or I can do another post separately. Maybe. Provided a few nice renditions, anyways....
His monks asked him to come up with a proof of God not based on scripture, dogma, fathers of the church teachings, tradition, nothing. They wanted a fool proof extra-religious argument. Anselm said "Sure! I'd love to do that for you guys. In fact, I am going to do even better, and come up with an 'a priori' proof of God, which means a proof that does not rely on any prior experience." Well, maybe not quite in those words, but more or less. (St. Thomas' proofs of God are 'a posteriori' proofs, or require prior experience of the world.) His (Anselm's) argument is based solely on the idea of God.
Just as we had the pleasant opportunity to struggle with words and definition making, Anselm began with making a definition of God, the perfect definition of God. He came up with this: God is "that greater than which nothing can be conceived". We also played with it and turned it into perhaps a more cognitive form, saying that God is that substance which is greater than anything that can be conceived. I think this 2nd definition is more relatable to the formula of a perfect definition that we had discussed, and seeing it helped me realize that St. Anselm's definition was indeed a perfect definition, "substance" being the genus division, and "greater than which nothing can be concieved" being the particular difference. None of us could think of a better definition, and none could disagree, and none could contradict. Anselm was not defining God as creator, savior, founder of a church, but as what He is completely.
Both the "fool" and the one who believes in God must agree with this definition before they begin to argue God's existence, just like any argument, where agreement on terms must be established in order to even spend your time arguing your side. If the fool will agree to this as your definition of God, he has simultaneously agreed to His existence. Very convenient for us, but why?
As Dr. so clearly stated, if that greater than which nothing can be conceived did not exist, then that greater than which nothing can be conceived would not be that greater than which nothing can be conceived, because then the lowest thing, a rock, a worm, would be greater than that greater than which nothing can be conceived, because it possess the the quality of existence, since something that exists is greater than something that does not exist. So that greater than which nothing can be conceived must have existence, since that greater than which nothing can be conceived IS that greater than which nothing can be conceived.
At this point I really feel like I can't reread that paragraph, but kudos if you can get through it and get something out of it! So relieved I don't have to think through all that and figure it out anymore. Got it down finally. Dr. says it helps to think of "that greater than which nothing can be conceived" as "T" and it isn't so confusing sounding. So you can try that. When you get it, you can do an "I am debt free!" scream, but instead it could be an "I understand the ontological argument" scream.
Thought this would be a fun video clip to include just now, for everyone's enjoyment, and very apropos. :)
INCONCEIVABLE!
St Thomas takes St Anselm's proof even farther by saying that God is existence itself, included in His very essence. We come into and out of existence, but God eternally IS because God is the Necessary Being.
Existence is the most fundamental aspect of a thing, because without it something cannot be anything at all. Not the smallest thing, not the greatest thing!
I found it a pretty convincing argument, but am excited to hear all the objections. I assume there must be objections to the actual definition of God St. Anselm proposes too, since that would be the root of any logical argument. I guess we will find out!
Homework is to read pgs 50-56, and consider,(perhaps take a few notes as well...) If you can think about being, can you necessarily infer its existence? Hmmm....
And a final few photos on what we are up against here.
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| Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world. |
There are a bunch of crazy people out there. Thanks for Logic class Dr Chojnowski!
See ya next time!
Dani
I posted a rather lengthy comment but, because of my computer illiteracy, it appears on the home page. I would appreciate it if anyone [Dani?] can move it to appropriate section.
ReplyDeleteJim Kozin
This is all I can do, Jim... All, this is Jim's lengthy comment... :)
ReplyDeleteWell, where to begin? I left class fifteen minutes early but before I left Dr. C summed up his exposition on Anselm's a priori argument for the existence of God, if I remember correctly, as either "unassailable" or "irrefutable." This assertion was quite surprising to me since in all my previous courses, taught by Jesuits of impeccable credentials, St. Anselm's ontological argument was presented as not only not unassailable/irrefutable but one that had been dismissed early and easily by St. Thomas Aquinas in "Summa Theologica", Part 1, Q. 2. " ...Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self evident to us [i.e. no priori evidence exists]; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us...namely by effects." According to my professors, in the ontological argument posited by St. Anselm, the concept of the greatest possible being must by necessity imply the concept of its existence but from this conclusion it cannot be validly argued that it actually exists in reality. In other words, if we start with a concept without any experiential referent we can only reason to another concept..not to any actual reality. It would be, in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, a concept without content. Therefore, not only does Aquinas not extend or endorse the Ontological Argument presented to us by St. Anselm, he dismisses it clearly and quickly. My own personal opinion is a bit harsher than either St. Thomas or my professors because I see the Ontological Argument as reducing the proof of the existence of God as a mere word game, a transparently conscious attempt to construct a definition, ostensibly in order to clarify the discussion, that in reality provided its own necessary conclusion. There is also, again my own opinion, another way of looking at the definition itself and seeing a very serious problem. The human mind cannot actually conceive of any substance greater than which could not be conceived without reference to existent reality as it actually presents itself to the senses...to be able to do so the mind would be required to conceive the inconceivable. It has been my, admittedly limited, experience, that most Scholastic Philosophers dismiss, ignore, or give scant credence to Anselm's Ontological Argument while proceeding to argue the existence of God from the actual, real, existence of contingent beings. Thus, the argument presented in class is not a "proof" at all and I suggest that you look long and hard for the perfect fool who would either accept Anselm's definition or his conclusion before you attempt to put it to use.
Dear Jim,
DeleteYou left early. I went over Gaunilon's objection and indicated that St. Thomas, in the reply to the objection that you cite, agreed with that objection. BUT, we then went over what St. Thomas himself says about the self-evidence of the proposition "God exists." For a proposition to be "self-evident" the predicate has to be already included in the subject. In actual fact, the predicate does not add to your knowledge of the subject IF you truly know the essence of the subject, like "man is rational." St. Thomas says that the proposition "God exists" is self-evident in itself. He says it is not self-evident quoad nos, in relation to us, since most people do not understand who God truly is. The proposition "God exists" however, IS self-evident to the wise (the metaphysicians) since they understand the true nature of God, which is to be Existence-Itself. So if you truly understood the nature of God as existence-itself (without of course having full understanding, not possible for finite minds), you would know that God must exist. How different is this ultimately from St. Anselm? Also, St. Anselm in laying out this proof never says WHERE we get the idea of T. Only that we have it. He gives himself proofs based on an experience of nature in the Monologion, another of his texts. Also, I did not say that the proof was irrefutable. I might have said that the definition is one that both Anselm and the Atheist could accept, but not that the proof is irrefutable. It is the most logically air-tight proof certainly but all I am doing is presenting this as an example of a proof for the existence of God based on the definition, along with urging all to take it seriously. I think your professors of the past should have considered to a greater extent St. Thomas' entire consideration of the "self-evidence" of propositions.
Peter Chojnowski
I guess I got lazy in my blog post and failed to mention that Dr had included an objection, and we will be reviewing more objections as well in the coming class, from what I understood.
ReplyDeleteThe objection that you brought up seems to partially correspond to what we had reviewed in class, as far as that just because we can conceive of something does not necessarily infer its existence. Anselm, I am sure you know, agreed to this absolutely, and Dr gave the example of purple cows. Just because I can conceive of them doesn't mean they really are. Anselm replies that conception inferring existence works only in the case of God, because His essence includes existence, as He is The Necessary Being. We cannot really understand this, as we cannot really understand god or God's essence. But if we could really understand God, existence would be inferred.
As far as I could see, that seemed pretty logical, but not very solid proof, and as St. Thomas says, we do not know the essence of God. That would, as you had explained,Jim, make it a pretty useless, unsupported angle.
I must agree with you in that it does seem like a simple word game, and that is why I think that the words, that actual definition, is what must be attacked by the "other side". I have to disagree with what you had brought up regarding the definition itself. Anselm defined God as "that greater than which nothing can be conceived" , not as "greater than the greatest conceivable thing". Hid definition implies that the thing is indeed a conceivable thing, not something more, not the inconceivable.
Anselm's Ontological Argument
ReplyDeleteSince this is a class in Logic, I believe that we should clarify the issue in question in order that my objections can be put in proper perspective. First of all the issue is not whether we can prove the existence of God but, rather, does St. Anselm's ontological argument provide a valid "a priori" proof of His existence. Now my impression as I left class was that Dr. Chojnowski concluded this portion of his presentation by asserting that Anselm's ontological argument was irrefutable or words to that effect. Dr. C has corrected my impression and has stated that he merely indicated Anselm did provide us with a "logically airtight proof" [I assume, a priori] existence of God. However, whether Dr. C used words tht indicated Anselm's argument was "irrefutable" or, as he maintains above, that he merely stated that Anselm provided a definition that an atheist could/would accept, both opinions are demonstrably false. His statement on this blog that Anselm's argument provides us with a logically airtight proof for the existence of God is, as I will demonstrate, also completely without foundation. Let me make the following points crystal clear...I maintain that Anselm's ontological argument is logically invalid, for reasons that I will provide below; that no atheist has ever been known to accept the "loaded" definition of God that St. Anselm tried to impose on the "fool" and, finally, that Aquinas completely rejected Anselm's ontological argument as a valid "a priori" proof of the existence of God.
Since my memory of events that occurred in class just a few weeks ago may be faulty, I am justifiably reluctant to rely on my memory of what I learned in the classroom more than fifty years ago. So, rather than to attempt to quote my professors from memory, I will quote from the sources they used to support the objections that I have raised here. According to Cardinal Desire Mercier, the Chairman and founder of the Higher Institute of Philosophy at the Louvain, as quoted in the Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy, V2, pgs. 29-31, Anselm's attempt to provide an a priori argument for the existence of God "...is illogical. From the antecedent in which his reasoning is based, all that can be inferred...is that...if this Being exists, this existence belongs to it necessarily. St. Anselm did not perceive that the necessity of real existence which our concept of infinity includes is only a hypothetical necessity. If I conceive the most perfect possible being, I can only conceive it as necessarily existent. But this is no proof that it actually exists."
From the text book "Introductory Metaphysics, by Dulles, Demske, and O'Connell, Sheed & Ward, 1955, we have the following quote:
"Nearly all Scholastic philosophers, led by St. Thomas, teach that the Ontological argument is invalid. The defect they find with it, moreover, is essentially the same as that which Kant exposes..[i.e.] "...that [the mind] simply cannot adequately and positively conceive the Necessary Being at all...reason finds itself capable of describing only by contrast with the beings of our experience--negatively and analogicaly." Pg. 174.
"...the classic refutation, given by St. Thomas many years later...that from the concept or idea of something, to which nothing is as yet known to correspond in the real order, nothing can be inferred except another concept or idea. For all the concept tells us is what the being would be if it existed, so tht all that follows from one concept is another concept of a property that being would possess, again if it existed...from this it cannot be validly argued that it does exist---only that if it exists it does so necessarily." Pg. 177.
The Ontological Argument Continued
ReplyDeleteFrom "A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, Vol. II, Mediavel Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, S.J., The Newman Press 1952, Pgs. 337-338
"...that God exists is thus a proposition "per se nota secundum se"...but a man has no "a priori" knowledge of God's nature and only arrives at knowledge of the fact that God's essence is His existence after he has come to know God's existence, so that even though the proposition that God exists is "per se nota secundum se", it is not "per se nota quoad nos." Pg. 337.
St. Thomas adds...that the intellect has no "a priori" knowledge of God's nature...[i]n other words...we cannot discern "a priori" the positive possibility of the supremely perfect Being...and we come to a knowledge of the fact that such a Being exists not through an analysis or consideration of the idea of such a being, but through arguments from its effects, "a posteriori". Pg. 338.
Finally, from "The Christian Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas" by Etienne Gilson, Random House, 1956, Pg. 54, 58.
"...all the arguments that God's existence is self-evident depend on a common error--they mistake for God Himself what is only an effect caused by God...St. Anselm's argument contains the same error...Existence [of God] is established or demonstrated, it is not deduced."
Although there are literally reams of citations that could also be quoted in this context, I believe that the material cited above is sufficient to effectively dispose of the opinion that St. Anselm's ontological argument is either irrefutable, logically valid or, as Dr. C expressed it, "logically airtight". The quoted material strongly demonstrates that the arguments presented for the validity of Anselm's position both in class and in this blog, are not consistent with what Aquinas clearly expresses in the Summa Contra Gentiles or in the Summa Theologica; this view presented to us has been completely rejected by almost the entire Scholastic community since Aquinas examined Anselm's argument almost nine hundred years ago. I contend that that the ideas cited on pg. 174 of the above cited text book "Introductory Metaphysics" also answers Danni's rejoinder and serves to support my original contention that the mind cannot, without reference to the contingency of real beings, adequately conceive of the idea of the necessary Being at all. Perhaps the ideas expressed above also answers the objection that my former Jesuit professors at St. Joseph's College may not have adequately considered the ideas expressed by Aquinas when they taught me about the formidable logical errors of Anselm's Ontological Argument!
Have a Happy and Holy Easter Holiday,
Jim
Thanks for your feedback Jim! I am sorry I am neglecting this blog right now! I am so wrapped up in so many other things. Really appreciative to see the research and time you put into this and really enjoyed reading it, as I missed the class following this.
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