Posted by alexandra_k on October 22, 2004, at 18:11:37
In reply to an argument for the existance of god, posted by alexandra_k on October 14, 2004, at 0:10:17
I hereby define a superbanana as an eternally existing yellow fruit. Therefore superbanana exists (eternally).
The Ontological argument for the existence of God doesn't work (though I think it is amazingly beautiful and has an initial plausibility once one is able to get ones head around it). It doesn't work because you cannot just define something into existance. The 'superbanana' criticism is of the same logical form as the other two arguments, and so if we do not think that the conclusion follows in this case, then it would seem that the conclusion doesn't follow in the other two cases either, and so the argument is unsuccessful.
The original criticism came from Guanilo (excuse my spelling). He said that he could imagine a perfect island and as it would be more perfect to exist in reality than not, then the perfect island must exist. It was supposed to be a 'reductio ad absurdum' where the conclusion is supposed to be intuitively 'absurd' and thus we are led to conclude that the argument doesn't work.
There are a couple of morals that philosophers typically take from this.
(1) Just because the argument doesn't work, that doesn't mean that there might not be a better one out there. In other words, the failure of the argument does not at all lend support to the notion that god (or satan) does not exist.
(2) Is existing really more 'perfect' than not existing? It is at least unclear that perfection can apply to existence.
(3) Existance is not a predicate. Which is to say that it is not a property that something has in addition to all its other properties (don't worry too much about this).
(4) Perhaps most importantly, one cannot get from the fact that a concept exists to the reality of the thing (in terms of a mind-independent reality). Descartes tried to get from the existance of certain concepts to the existence of the material world, and he failed. Just because we have the concept of something there is no assurance that our concept picks out something in mind-independent reality. For example, Pegasus, or the Tooth Fairy.
The only response that I have heard to Guanilo's objection is that one can do this in the case of god (and perhaps satan) because there is something special and different about those concepts. But it is left to be spelt out just what it is about them that is different.
Hope you don't mind my philosophy ravings... feel free to ignore :-)
Regardless, it is a beautiful argument.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:402858
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20040914/msgs/406108.html