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 nothing but analytic, a prioriand necessary premises to the conclusion that God exists.
The first, and best-known, ontological argument was proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th. century C.E. In his Proslogion, St. Anselm claims to derive the existence of God from the concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived. St. Anselm reasoned that, if such a being fails to exist, then a greater being—namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived, and which exists—can be conceived. But this would be absurd: nothing can be greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived. So a being than which no greater can be conceived—i.e., God—exists.
In the seventeenth century, René Descartes defended a family of similar arguments. For instance, in the Fifth Meditation, Descartes claims to provide a proof demonstrating the existence of God from the idea of a supremely perfect being. Descartes argues that there is no less contradiction in conceiving a supremely perfect being who lacks existence than there is in conceiving a triangle whose interior angles do not sum to 180 degrees. Hence, he supposes, since we do conceive a supremely perfect being—we do have the idea of a supremely perfect being—we must conclude that a supremely perfect being exists.
In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz attempted to fill what he took to be a shortcoming in Descartes' view. According to Leibniz, Descartes' arguments fail unless one first shows that the idea of a supremely perfect being is coherent, or that it is possible for there to be a supremely perfect being. Leibniz argued that, since perfections are unanalysable, it is impossible to demonstrate that perfections are incompatible—and he concluded from this that all perfections can co-exist together in a single entity.
In more recent times, Kurt Gödel, Charles Hartshorne, Norman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga have all presented much-discussed ontological arguments which bear interesting connections to the earlier arguments of St. Anselm, Descartes and Leibniz. Of these, the most interesting are those of Gödel and Plantinga; in these cases, however, it is unclear whether we should really say that these authors claim that the arguments are proofs of the existence of God.
Critiques of ontological arguments begin with Gaunilo, a contemporary of St. Anselm. Perhaps the best known criticisms of ontological arguments are due to Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason. Most famously, Kant claims that ontological arguments are vitiated by their reliance upon the implicit assumption that “existence” is a predicate. However, as Bertrand Russell observed, it is much easier to be persuaded that ontological arguments are no good than it is to say exactly what is wrong with them. This helps to explain why ontological arguments have fascinated philosophers for almost a thousand years.
In various ways, the account provided to this point is rough, and susceptible of improvement. Sections 1–5 in what follows provide some of the requisite embellishments, though—as is usually the case in philosophy—there are many issues taken up here which could be pursued at much greater length. Sections 6–8 take up some of the central questions at a slightly more sophisticated level of discussion. Section 9 is a quick overview of very recent work on ontological arguments:Academic Tools
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[size=30]1. History of Ontological Arguments
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| 1078: | St. Anselm, Proslogion. Followed soon after by Gaunilo's critique In Behalf of the Fool. |
| 1264: | St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa. Criticises an argument which somehow descends from St. Anselm. |
| 1637: | Descartes, Discourse on Method. The argument of Discourse 4 is further elaborated in the Meditations. The Objections—particularly those of Caterus and Gassendi—and the Replies contain much valuable discussion of the Cartesian arguments. |
| c1680: | Spinoza, Ethics. Intimations of a defensible mereological ontological argument, albeit one whose conclusion is not (obviously) endowed with religious significance. |
| 1709: | Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding. Contains Leibniz's attempt to complete the Cartesian argument by showing that the Cartesian conception of God is not inconsistent. |
| 1776: | Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Part IX is a general attack on a priori arguments (both analytic and synthetic). Includes a purported demonstration that no such arguments can be any good. |
| 1787: | Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Contains famous attack on traditional theistic arguments. Three objections to “the ontological argument”, including the famous objection based on the dictum that existence is not a predicate. |
| 1831: | Hegel, Lectures of 1831. Hegel makes repeated assertions in these lectures that there is a successful ontological argument, though he nowhere says what the argument actually is. Some scholars have claimed that the entire Hegelian corpus constitutes an ontological argument. Since no one has ever said what the premises of this alleged argument are, there is good reason for scepticism about this scholarly claim. |
| 1884: | Frege, Foundations of Arithmetic. Existence is a second-order predicate. First-order existence claims are meaningless. So ontological arguments—whose conclusions are first-order existence claims—are doomed. |
| 1941: | Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God. Defence of modal ontological arguments, allegedly derived from Proslogion 3. |
| 1960: | Malcolm, “Anselm's Ontological Argument”. Defence of modal ontological arguments by a well-known ordinary language philosopher. |
| 1970: | Lewis, “Anselm and Actuality”. The key critique of ontological arguments. All ontological arguments are either invalid or question-begging; moreover, in many cases, they have two closely related readings, one of which falls into each of the above categories. |
| 1974: | Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity. Plantinga's “victorious” modal ontological argument. |
| 1995: | Gödel, Collected Works Volume III. Gödel's ontological argument. |
| 2004: | Sobel, Logic and Theism. Detailed critique of ontological arguments. See, especially, chapters 2–4, pp. 29–167. |
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For a useful discussion of the history of ontological arguments in the modern period, see Harrelson 2009.
[size=30]2. Taxonomy of Ontological Arguments[/size]
According to a modification of the taxonomy of Oppy 1995, there are eight major kinds of ontological arguments, viz:
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[*]definitional ontological arguments;
[*]conceptual (or hyperintensional) ontological arguments;
[*]modal ontological arguments;
[*]Meinongian ontological arguments;
[*]experiential ontological arguments;
[*]mereological ontological arguments;
[*]higher-order ontological arguments; and
[*]‘Hegelian’ ontological arguments;
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Examples of all but the last follow. These are mostly toy examples. But they serve to highlight the deficiencies which more complex examples also share.
Note: I provide no example of a ‘Hegelian’ ontological argument because I know of no formulation of such an argument. Many people assert that Hegel provided an ontological argument; but, when pressed for a list of the premises of the argument, Hegel's friends fail to deliver. Here, in my view, they follow Hegel's own precedent: his lectures on ‘the ontological argument’ are full of assertions that there is a successful ontological argument, but he gives no argumentative support for those assertions, not any indication of what the premises of the target argument might be. (For a defense of Hegel against these charges—but not for a supply of the needed premises—see Redding and Bubbio 2014.)
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[*]God is a being which has every perfection. (This is true as a matter of definition.) Existence is a perfection. Hence God exists.
[*]I conceive of a being than which no greater can be conceived. If a being than which no greater can be conceived does not exist, then I can conceive of a being greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived—namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived that exists. I cannot conceive of a being greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived. Hence, a being than which no greater can be conceived exists.
[*]It is possible that that God exists. God is not a contingent being, i.e., either it is not possible that God exists, or it is necessary that God exists. Hence, it is necessary that God exists. Hence, God exists. (See Malcolm 1960, Hartshorne 1965, and Plantinga 1974 for closely related arguments.)
[*][It is analytic, necessary and a priori that] Each instance of the schema “The
F G is
F” expresses a truth. Hence the sentence “The existent perfect being is existent” expresses a truth. Hence, the existent perfect being is existent. Hence, God is existent, i.e. God exists. (The last step is justified by the observation that, as a matter of definition, if there is exactly one existent perfect being, then that being is God.)
[*]The word ‘God’ has a meaning that is revealed in religious experience. The word ‘God’ has a meaning only if God exists. Hence, God exists. (See Rescher 1959 for a live version of this argument.)
[*]I exist. Therefore something exists. Whenever a bunch of things exist, their mereological sum also exists. Therefore the sum of all things exists. Therefore God—the sum of all things—exists.
[*]Say that a God-property is a property that is possessed by God in all and only those worlds in which God exists. Not all properties are God properties. Any property entailed by a collection of God-properties is itself a God-property. The God-properties include necessary existence, necessary omnipotence, necessary omniscience, and necessary perfect goodness. Hence, there is a necessarily existent, necessarily omnipotent, necessarily omniscient, and necessarily perfectly good being (namely, God).
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Of course, this taxonomy is not exclusive: an argument can belong to several categories at once. Moreover, an argument can be ambiguous between a range of readings, each of which belongs to different categories. This latter fact may help to explain part of the curious fascination of ontological arguments. Finally, the taxonomy can be further specialised: there are, for example, at least four importantly different kinds of modal ontological arguments which should be distinguished. (See, e.g., Ross 1969 for a rather different kind of modal ontological argument.)
[size=30]3. Characterisation of Ontological Arguments[/size]
It is not easy to give a good characterisation of ontological arguments. The traditional characterisation involves the use of problematic notions—analyticity, necessity, and
a priority—and also fails to apply to many arguments to which defenders have affixed the label “ontological”. (Consider, for example, the claim that I conceive of a being than which no greater can be conceived. This claim is clearly not analytic (its truth doesn't follow immediately from the meanings of the words used to express it), nor necessary (I might never have entertained the concept), nor
a priori (except perhaps in my own case, though even this is unclear—perhaps even I don't know independently of experience that I have this concept.)) However, it is unclear how that traditional characterisation should be improved upon.
Perhaps one might resolve to use the label “ontological argument” for any argument which gets classified as “an ontological argument” by its proponent(s). This procedure would make good sense if one thought that there is a natural kind—ontological arguments—which our practice carves out, but for which is hard to specify defining conditions. Moreover, this procedure can be adapted as a
pro tem stop gap: when there is a better definition to hand, that definition will be adopted instead. On the other hand, it seems worthwhile to attempt a more informative definition.
Focus on the case of ontological arguments for the conclusion that God exists. One characteristic feature of these arguments is the use which they make of “referential vocabulary”—names, definite descriptions, indefinite descriptions, quantified noun phrases, etc.—whose ontological commitments—for occurrences of this vocabulary in “referential position”—non-theists do not accept.
Theists and non-theists alike (can) agree that there is spatio-temporal, or causal, or nomic, or modal structure to the world (the basis for cosmological arguments); and that there are certain kinds of complexity of organisation, structure and function in the world (the basis for teleological arguments); and so on. But theists and non-theists are in dispute about whether there are perfect beings, or beings than which no greater can be conceived, or … ; thus, theists and non-theists are in dispute about the
indirect subject matter of the premises of ontological arguments.
Of course, the premises of ontological arguments often do not deal directly with perfect beings, beings than which no greater can be conceived, etc.; rather, they deal with descriptions of, or ideas of, or concepts of, or the possibility of the existence of, these things. However, the basic point remains: ontological arguments require the use of vocabulary which non-theists should certainly find problematic when it is used in ontologically committing contexts (i.e not inside the scope of prophylactic operators—such as “according to the story” or “by the lights of theists” or “by the definition”—which can be taken to afford protection against unwanted commitments).
Note that this characterisation does not beg the question against the possibility of the construction of a successful ontological argument—i.e., it does not lead immediately to the conclusion that all ontological arguments are question-begging (in virtue of the ontologically committing vocabulary which they employ). For it may be that the vocabulary in question only gets used in premises under the protection of prophylactic operators (which ward off the unwanted commitments.) Of course, there will then be questions about whether the resulting arguments can possibly be valid—how could the commitments turn up in the conclusion if they are not there in the premises?—but those are further questions, which would remain to be addressed.
[size=30]4. Objections to Ontological Arguments[/size]
Objections to ontological arguments take many forms. Some objections are intended to apply only to particular ontological arguments, or particular forms of ontological arguments; other objections are intended to apply to all ontological arguments. It is a controversial question whether there are any successful general objections to ontological arguments.
One general criticism of ontological arguments which have appeared hitherto is this: none of them is
persuasive, i.e., none of them provides those who do not already accept the conclusion that God exists—and who are reasonable, reflective, well-informed, etc.—with either a
pro tantoreason or an all-things-considered reason to accept that conclusion. Any reading of any ontological argument which has been produced so far which is sufficiently clearly stated to admit of evaluation yields a result which is invalid, or possesses a set of premises which it is clear in advance that no reasonable, reflective, well-informed, etc. non-theists will accept, or has a benign conclusion which has no religious significance, or else falls prey to more than one of the above failings.
For each of the families of arguments introduced in the earlier taxonomy, we can give general reasons why arguments of that family fall under the general criticism. In what follows, we shall apply these general considerations to the exemplar arguments introduced in section 2.
(1) Definitional arguments: These are arguments in which ontologically committing vocabulary is introduced solely via a definition. An obvious problem is that claims involving that vocabulary cannot then be non-question-beggingly detached from the scope of that definition. (The inference from ‘By definition, God is an existent being’ to ‘God exists’ is patently invalid; while the inference to ‘By definition, God exists’ is valid, but uninteresting. In the example given earlier, the premises licence the claim that, as a matter of definition, God possesses the perfection of existence. But, as just noted, there is no valid inference from this claim to the further claim that God exists.)
(2) Conceptual arguments: These are arguments in which ontologically committing vocabulary is introduced solely within the scope of hyperintensional operators (e.g. ‘believes that’, ‘conceives of’, etc.). Often, these operators have two readings, one of which can cancel ontological commitment, and the other of which cannot. On the reading which can give cancellation (as in the most likely reading of ‘John believes in Santa Claus’), the inference to a conclusion in which the ontological commitment is not cancelled will be invalid. On the reading which cannot cancel ontological commitment (as in that reading of ‘John thinks about God’ which can only be true if there is a God to think about), the premises are question-begging: they incur ontological commitments which non-theists reject. In our sample argument, the claim, that I conceive of an existent being than which no greater being can be conceived, admits of the two kinds of readings just distinguished. On the one hand, on the reading which gives cancellation, the inference to the conclusion that there is a being than which no greater can be conceived is plainly invalid. On the other hand, on the reading in which there is no cancellation, it is clear that this claim is one which no reasonable, etc. non-theist will accept: if you doubt that there is a being than which no greater can be conceived, then, of course, you doubt whether you can have thoughts
about such a being.
(3) Modal arguments: These are arguments with premises which concern modal claims about God, i.e., claims about the possibility or necessity of God's attributes and existence. Suppose that we agree to think about possibility and necessity in terms of possible worlds: a claim is possibly true just in case it is true in at least one possible world; a claim is necessarily true just in case it is true in every possible world; and a claim is contingent just in case it is true in some possible worlds and false in others. Some theists hold that God is a necessarily existent being, i.e., that God exists in every possible world. Non-theists do not accept the claim that God exists in the actual world. Plainly enough, non-theists and necessitarian theists disagree about the layout of logical space, i.e., the space of possible worlds. The sample argument consists, in effect, of two premises: one which says that God exists in at least one possible world; and one which says that God exists in all possible worlds if God exists in any. It is perfectly obvious that no non-theist can accept this pair of premises. Of course, a non-theist can allow—if they wish—that there are possible worlds in which there are contingent Gods. However, it is quite clear that no rational, reflective, etc. non-theist will accept the pair of premises in the sample argument.
(4) Meinongian arguments: These are arguments which depend somehow or other on Meinongian theories of objects. Consider the schema ‘The
F G is
F’. Naive Meinongians will suppose that if
F is instantiated with any property, then the result is true (and, quite likely, necessary, analytic and a priori). So, for example, the round square is round; the bald current King of France is bald; and so on. However, more sophisticiated Meinongians will insist that there must be some restriction on the substitution instances for F, in order to allow one to draw the obvious and important ontological distinction between the following two groups: {Bill Clinton, the sun, the Eiffel Tower} and {Santa Claus, Mickey Mouse, the round square}. Choice of vocabulary here is controversial: Let us suppose (for the sake of example) that the right thing to say is that the former things exist and the latter do not. Under this supposition, ‘existent’ will not be a suitable substitution instance for F—obviously, since we all agree that there is no existent round square. Of course, nothing hangs on the choice of ‘existent’ as the crucial piece of vocabulary. The point is that non-theists are not prepared to include god(s) in the former group of objects—and hence will be unpersuaded by any argument which tries to use whatever vocabulary is used to discriminate between the two classes as the basis for an argument that god(s) belong to the former group. (Cognoscenti will recognise that the crucial point is that Meinongian ontological arguments fail to respect the distinction between nuclear (assumptible, characterising) properties and non-nuclear (non-assumptible, non-characterising) properties. It should, of course, be noted that neither Meinong, nor any of his well-known modern supporters—e.g. Terence Parsons, Richard Sylvan—ever endorses a Meinongian ontological argument; and it should also be noted that most motivate the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear properties in part by a need to avoid Meinongian ontological arguments. The reason for calling these arguments “Meinongian” is that they rely on quantification over—or reference to—non-existent objects; there is no perjorative intent in the use of this label.)
(5) Experiential arguments: These are arguments which try to make use of ‘externalist’ or ‘object-involving’ accounts of content. It should not be surprising that they fail. After all, those accounts of content need to have something to say about expressions which fail to refer (‘Santa Claus’, ‘phlogiston’, etc.). But, however the account goes, non-theists will insist that expressions which purport to refer to god(s) should be given exactly the same kind of treatment.
(6) Mereological arguments: Those who dislike mereology will not be impressed by these arguments. However, even those who accept principles of unrestricted composition—i.e., who accept principles which claim, e.g., that, whenever there are some things, there is something which is the sum or fusion of all of those things—need not be perturbed by them: for it is plausible to think that the conclusions of these arguments have no religious significance whatsoever—they are merely arguments for, e.g., the existence of the physical universe.
(7) Higher-Order arguments: The key to these arguments is the observation that any collection of properties, that (a) does not include all properties and (b) is closed under entailment, is possibly jointly instantiated. If it is impossible that God exists — as all who deny that God exists suppose, on the further assumption that, were God to exist, God would exist of necessity — then it cannot be true both that the God-properties are closed under entailment and that there are properties that are not God-properties. Those who take themselves to have good independent reason to deny that there are any gods will take themselves to have good independent reason to deny that there are God-properties that form a non-trivial collection that is closed under entailment.
Even if the forgoing analyses are correct, it is important to note that no argument has been given for the conclusion that no ontological argument
can be successful. Even if all of the kinds of arguments produced to date are pretty clearly unsuccessful—i.e., not such as ought to give non-theists reason to accept the conclusion that God exists—it remains an open question whether there is some other kind of hitherto undiscovered ontological argument which does succeed. (Perhaps it is worth adding here that there is fairly widespread consensus, even amongst theists, that no known ontological arguments for the existence of God are persuasive. Most categories of ontological argument have some actual defenders; but none has a large following.)
Many other objections to (some) ontological arguments have been proposed. All of the following have been alleged to be the key to the explanation of the failure of (at least some) ontological arguments: (1) existence is not a predicate (see, e.g., Kant, Smart 1955, Alston 1960); (2) the concept of god is meaningless/incoherent/ inconsistent (see, e.g., Findlay 1949); (3) ontological arguments are ruled out by “the missing explanation argument” (see Johnston 1992; (4) ontological arguments all trade on mistaken uses of singular terms (see, e.g., Barnes 1972; (5) existence is not a perfection (see almost any textbook in philosophy of religion); (6) ontological arguments presuppose a Meinongian approach to ontology (see, e.g., Dummett 1993); and (7) ontological arguments are question-begging, i.e., presuppose what they set out to prove (see, e.g., Rowe 1989). There are many things to say about these objections: the most important point is that almost all of them require far more controversial assumptions than non-theists require in order to be able to reject ontological arguments with good conscience. Trying to support most of these claims merely in order to beat up on ontological arguments is like using a steamroller to crack a nut (in circumstances in which one is unsure that one can get the steamroller to move!).
Of course, all of the above discussion is directed merely to the claim that ontological arguments are not dialectically efficacious—i.e., they give reasonable non-theists no reason to change their views. It might be wondered whether there is some other use which ontological arguments have—e.g., as Plantinga claims, in establishing the reasonableness of theism. This seems unlikely. After all, at best these arguments show that certain sets of sentences (beliefs, etc.) are incompatible—one cannot reject the conclusions of these arguments while accepting their premises. But the arguments themselves say nothing about the reasonableness of accepting the premisses. So the arguments themselves say nothing about the (unconditional) reasonableness of accepting the conclusions of these arguments. Those who are disposed to think that theism is irrational need find nothing in ontological arguments to make them change their minds (and those who are disposed to think that theism is true should take no comfort from them either).[/size]
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