the ontological argument thesis statement

First published Thu Feb 8, 1996; substantive revision Wed Feb 6, 2019. Ontological arguments are arguments, for the conclusion that God exists, from premises which are supposed to derive from some source other than observation of the world—e.g., from reason alone. In other words, ontological arguments are arguments from what are typically ...

53. from the ruins of the past, so we may glean some meaning from the relics of a bygone proof. Instead, then, of attemptingthe thankless task of establishing the validity of the ontological argument, ask yourself its meaning. Reasoning which swayed such men as Des- cartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Wolff, Mendelssohn, to say nothing of minor minds ...

An ontological argument is a ... Paul Oppenheimer and Edward N. Zalta used an automated theorem prover—Prover9—to validate Anselm's ontological thesis. Prover9 ... given to the words. Kant claims that this is merely a tautology and cannot say anything about reality. However, if the statement is synthetic, the ontological argument does not ...

Kant introduces the ontological argument as an objection to his thesis that any concept can be consistently supposed to lack exemplification. He represents his opponent as contending that the concept of the most real being constitutes the sole counterexample to this thesis (A 595/B 623). Kant sets out the ontological.

Descartes s ontological argument, for Nolan, rests in understanding why he pre-sented it as an argument at all. Here is his thesis on this point: So the formal version of the ontological argument is merely a dressed-up version of the axiom, and the main reasons he dresses it up are to satisfy the

THEONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT AND QUESTION-BEGGING 1. Itis perhaps be to tthink of the Ontological Argument no as. a single argument butas a family of arguments ach member of which begins a concept of God and by appealing only to a priori principles end avors testablish that God actually exists. Within this family ofarguments the most important his ...

Hartt, The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God, unpublished dissertation, Yale University, 1940.) ... Posed in a variety of ways, the statements most germane to the ontological argument are those of Gaunilo, Aquinas, Kant, and the twentieth-century Positivists. Gaunilo's is an objection based on the supposed sui generis

Abstract. The term "ontological argument" was Kant's name for one member of a family of arguments that began with Anselm of Canterbury. These arguments all try to prove God's existence a priori, via reasoning about the entailments of a particular description of God. The description almost always involves God's greatness or perfection.

Abstract. The article examines Kant's various criticisms of the broadly Cartesian ontological argument as they are developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. It is argued that each of these criticisms is effective against its intended target, and that these targets include—in addition to Descartes himself—Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten.

the ontological argument. Kant argued that existence is not a great making property—knowing that something exists does not enhance the thing itself (Pojman 7). A century later, Charles Hartshorne revised the ontological argument and presented a different interpretation of God's mode of exis-tence or of the way God can and needs to be perfect.

The ontological argument is thus unsound in those cases. Regardless of whether the ontological argument is ever sound, then, it will sometimes be unsound. The objections will always be, in some sense, in the right, despite their inability to discover an internal flaw in the argument. (p. 67) This strikes me as odd.

Existence. One of the most fascinating arguments for the existence of an all-perfect God is the ontological argument. While there are several different versions of the argument, all purport to show that it is self-contradictory to deny that there exists a greatest possible being. Thus, on this general line of argument, it is a necessary truth ...

ontological argument, Argument that proceeds from the idea of God to the reality of God.It was first clearly formulated by St. Anselm in his Proslogion (1077-78); a later famous version is given by René Descartes.Anselm began with the concept of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived. To think of such a being as existing only in thought and not also in reality involves a ...

Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder, 232 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0232 e-mail: [email protected]. Abstract: The most famous objection to the ontological argument is given in Kant's dictum that existence is not a real predicate. But it is not obvious how this slogan is supposed to relate to the ontological argument.

J.R. Gilhooly, Assistant Professor of Theology at Cedarville University, explains this argument in the video below. Unlike most arguments that start with an observation about the world and work back to a Creator, the ontological argument starts with the idea that based on the meaning of the word "God," there has to be a God.

The difficulty in interpreting Descartes's ontological argument, for Nolan, rests in understanding why he presented it as an argument at all. Here is his thesis on this point: So the formal version of the ontological argument is merely a dressed-up version of the axiom, and the main reasons he dresses it up are to satisfy the expectations of ...

The ontological proof became something of a signature argument for the British Idealist movement and this paper examines how and why that was so. Beginning with an account of Hegel's understanding of the argument, it looks at how the thesis was picked up, developed and criticized by the Cairds, Bradley, Pringle-Pattison and others.

Ontological arguments amount to a priori arguments for philosophical theism: i.e. the thesis that God, in a philosophical sense of the word, exists.There are many (at least seven) types of such arguments (Oppy 2019).One of them is the modal ontological argument (hereinafter MOA), an argument formalizable in a simple zero-order language of (applied) modal logic or an (appropriately enriched ...

Ontological Proofs Today. Miroslaw Szatkowski (ed.), Ontological Proofs Today, Ontos, 2012, 513pp., $190.00 (hbk), ISBN 9783110325881. This is a volume of original contributions by twenty-one authors of international repute; each addresses some more or less contemporary problem concerning ontological arguments.

Abstract. This chapter considers the Proslogion, where Anselm supplied a proof in the "ontological argument". This argument was almost immediately misunderstood by Gaunilo, whose incomprehension has been a baneful influence on subsequent interpretations as well. By reading Anselm's reply to Gaunilo as an extension and clarification of the ...

Ontological Arguments. First published Thu Feb 8, 1996; substantive revision Fri Feb 12, 2016. Ontological arguments are arguments, for the conclusion that God exists, from premises which are supposed to derive from some source other than observation of the world—e.g., from reason alone. In other words, ontological arguments are arguments ...

Shortly after the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant's claim that the ontological proof of God's existence contains all the probative force of the cosmological argument was discussed at great length by J. F. Flatt, J. F. v. Abel and J. A. Eberhard. These early criticisms do not seem to have received the attention they deserve, even though they are extremely relevant, cogent ...