the ontological argument
every sunday morning for a couple of weeks now i've been meeting up with anita (chaplain/tutor in college) to discuss philosophy over interesting teas. it's been such a brainful... hard to process it all. anyway, last week's one was pretty funny so i'm going to try to explain it.
the ontological argument (first put forth by ansell i think, and descartes dabbled in it too):
1. definition of god = the greatest, most perfect, conceivable being.
2. it is greater to exist in reality than in the mind alone.
3. therefore god exists. the end.
but then we discussed the philosophical holes in the argument, which is where things get complicated.
- there is a difference between concept and reality, ie just because it's conceivable doesn't mean it's reality. so the argument breaks down because it's trying to span different domains, like using music to describe statistics or something.
- related to this is the idea that existance is not a property of the object. a property adds to a concept, existance is about a concept becoming reality. so just because a concept exists, it can't be "argued into reality". argh! hard to explain...
- Immanel Kant argued that it's not within the scope of humans to be able to conceive the greatest being. But it can be counter-argued that we can have the concept of such a being without understanding the details of what this would entail. Example that came up over dinner last night: a googol is 1 with 100 zeros after it. a googolplex is 1 with a googol zeros after it. Whilst we can't actually conceive the number, we can have the concept of that number.
and this was one of the easy ones! we also looked at the cosmological argument, the teleological argument and today the relationship between faith/reason. apparently i think like Kierkegaard, a swedish 18th century philosopher ;) tho i concluded differently.
ok back to periodontitis.
the ontological argument (first put forth by ansell i think, and descartes dabbled in it too):
1. definition of god = the greatest, most perfect, conceivable being.
2. it is greater to exist in reality than in the mind alone.
3. therefore god exists. the end.
but then we discussed the philosophical holes in the argument, which is where things get complicated.
- there is a difference between concept and reality, ie just because it's conceivable doesn't mean it's reality. so the argument breaks down because it's trying to span different domains, like using music to describe statistics or something.
- related to this is the idea that existance is not a property of the object. a property adds to a concept, existance is about a concept becoming reality. so just because a concept exists, it can't be "argued into reality". argh! hard to explain...
- Immanel Kant argued that it's not within the scope of humans to be able to conceive the greatest being. But it can be counter-argued that we can have the concept of such a being without understanding the details of what this would entail. Example that came up over dinner last night: a googol is 1 with 100 zeros after it. a googolplex is 1 with a googol zeros after it. Whilst we can't actually conceive the number, we can have the concept of that number.
and this was one of the easy ones! we also looked at the cosmological argument, the teleological argument and today the relationship between faith/reason. apparently i think like Kierkegaard, a swedish 18th century philosopher ;) tho i concluded differently.
ok back to periodontitis.