Ontological Arguments in the 21st Century

Many recent discussions of ontological arguments are in compendiums, companions, encylopedias, and the like. So, for example, there are review discussions of ontological arguments in: Leftow 2005, Matthews 2005, Lowe 2007, Oppy 2007, and Maydole 2009. While the ambitions of these review discussions vary, many of them are designed to introduce neophytes to the arguments and their history. Given the current explosion of enthusiasm for compendiums, companions, encylopedias, and the like, in philosophy of religion, it is likely that many more such discussions will appear in the immediate future.
Some recent discussions of ontological arguments have been placed in more synoptic treatments of arguments about the existence of God. So, for example, there are extended discussions of ontological arguments in Everitt 2004, Sobel 2004, and Oppy 2006. In my view, all serious students of ontological arguments should make a careful examination of Sobel's treatment of these arguments. Sobel provides one chapter on ‘classical ontological arguments’: Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant's critique of ontological arguments; one chapter on ‘modern modal ontological arguments’: Hartshorne, Malcolm and Plantinga; and one chapter on Gödel's ontological argument. Sobel's analyses are very careful, and make heavy use of the tools of modern philosophical logic.
There has been one recent monograph devoted exclusively to the analysis of ontological arguments: Dombrowski 2006. Dombrowski is a fan of Hartshorne: the aim of his book is to defend the claim that Hartshorne's ontological argument is a success. While Dombrowski's book is a useful addition to the literature because of the scope of its discussion of ontological arguments—for example, it contains a chapter on Rorty on ontological arguments, and another chapter on John Taylor on ontological arguments—I think that the case that it makes for Hartshorne's argument is pretty unpersuasive. This opinion has been widely shared by reviewers of the book, even those who have some sympathy for process theism.
Swatkowski (2012) is the most recent collection of papers on ontological arguments. A significant proportion of papers in this collection take up technical questions about logics that support ontological derivations. (Those interested in technical questions may also be interested in the the topic taken up in Oppenheimer and Zalta (2011) and Gorbacz (2012).)
Finally, there has been some activity in journals. The most significant of these pieces is Millican 2004, the first article on ontological arguments in recent memory to appear in Mind. Millican argues for a novel interpretation of Anselm's argument, and for a new critiq

ue of ontological arguments deriving from this interpretation. Needless to say, both the interpretation and the critique are controversial, but they are also worthy of attention. Among other journal articles, perhaps the most interesting are Pruss 2010, which provides a novel defence of the key possibility premise in modal ontological arguments, and Pruss 2009, which kick-started recent discussion of higher-order ontological arguments. There is also a chain of papers in Analysisinitiated by Matthews and Baker (2010)

Ontological Arguments in the 21st Century

Ontological Arguments in the 21st Century :: تعاليق

Ontological Arguments in the 21st Century