I’m part of a Christian Philosophy Club, and at last night’s meeting there were a couple of enthusiastic supporters of the Argument from Imagination (called the “ontological” argument to the high-brow crowd who apparently enjoys making up long, fuzzy words to substitute for short, clear ones). Now, you probably don’t remember this, but many, many eons ago, back when the world was young and I was still willing to think hard about unimportant things like the existence of God, I pretty much took a West Texas crap on the argument from imagination. Right here on this blog!
So you can imagine (insert ontological joke here) that my friends were pretty upset when I told them that I gave their favorite argument a “D” for a grade. And you can further imagine (don’t insert another ontological joke here; what are you, some kind of two-year old who repeats the same joke over and over?) that they will be especially upset to learn that I lied to them, because actually I gave their pet argument, not a “D”…but an “F.” Quoting from my original piece, my final assessment of their beloved thesis was: “This is the quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Only it turns out that the argument I gave an “F” to isn’t really the ontological argument at all; at least not the one that St. Anselm originally propounded. (My shame is so great that I actually refused to drink my fourth latte today. Today was only a three-latte-er. True story.) So, anyway, on behalf of my awesome Christian Philosophy Group brothers and sisters (who, fortunately for me, all have a very good sense of humor), and in the spirit of fair play, I have fully considered the real version of the argument from imagination and decided to upgrade it substantially…to a “D-” grade. (Hey, that extra 3% might be the difference – for all the little aspiring ontological arguments out there – between graduating from college and working as a poorly-paid-but-respectable-plumber.)
Below, I proudly present: A Dumb Person Crapping on the Ontological Argument, Part II. We’ll only need the bottom end of the scale for this, so I’ll limit my review of the rating scale to the lower reaches:
D = This argument makes a little sense on the surface, but it is either easily refuted or there are better arguments on the other side of the debate. Ignore it!
F = This argument is so dumb that Christians everywhere ought to hang their heads in shame. Buy the book that contains the argument, make a little effigy out of it, and throw it into the fire!
1. The Argument from Imagination (“ontological” argument)
The Argument: Originally, I said the argument was this:
God is the conception of a perfect being. We could not possibly have imagined the concept of a perfect being unless it actually existed. Therefore, God must exist.
Actually, it turns out to be this:
It’s better to exist in reality than to only exist in the mind. “God” means “something of which nothing greater can be imagined.” If God existed only in our minds, then God would not be the greatest Thing, because the greatest Thing would exist in both the mind and in reality. This is not logically possible; therefore, God must exist.
Apologetic Professor’s Grade: D-
Uh….huh. I’ll say this for the argument: It’s cleverer than I ever imagined (seriously, please, will you stop thinking of ontological-related jokes every time I say “imagined”?) it was. Logically speaking, it’s got some force and it is not as easily defeated as you’d think. I know this only too well, because I spent several delightfully fun hours arguing with my dear friend Scott about “infinitely high mountains” and all sorts of stuff like that (us philosophical types cannot get enough of paradoxes about mountains of infinite height). And I’m not sure I won the argument. (Actually – due to the fact that Scott is much, much smarter than I am – I might have been losing. I might have been losing, that is, until I put on my “wolf man” teeth and started howling. Wolf man teeth and howling have helped me win many an argument. That and the fact that I’m actually a werewolf. This seems to intimidate people. But I digress, and it’s a full moon tonight so I need to finish this before…the changes begin).
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I imagine (seriously, not again!) that St. Anselm and I would talk about the issue like this:
Me: “Dude, are you really saying that because it appears contradictory to imagine both that a greatest Being exists and yet also believe that this Being exists only in my mind – that because of that apparent logical contradiction, I must accept that God exists?”
St. Anselm: “What sayest thou? On your knees, heretic, and beg Thou’s Creator for forgiveness!”
Me: “Dude, I’m not sure that even in made-up Olde English, you’re allowed to say ‘Thou’s’ Creator. ‘Thou’s’ totally doesn’t sound right.”
St. Anselm: “I said Thou’s and I meant Thou’s! Now, on your knees, atheist heretic!”
Me: “Dude, I’m not an atheist; I just disagree with your argument. Do you realize that from your argument you can also prove that a maximally great island must exist, too?”
St. Anselm: “I knewest it! Thou art the knave Gaunilo of Marmoutier! On your knees, knave!”
Me: “Stop saying that! And I’m not Gaunilo; I don’t even know who that is.”
St. Anselm: “O vile Gaunilo, I am St. Anselm, and twenty years ago you killed my father. Prepare to die!”
Me: “OK, stop saying that, too!”
St. Anselm: “O evil Gaunilo, doesn’t thou knowest that your precious island argument hath been widely discreditedeth by almost everyone? That’s why your name has receded to the dust binneth of history, and my name has ‘Saint’ in front of it. It’s also why my action figures sell better than yours.”
[Sound of the masses rushing out to buy St. Anselm action figures].
Oh my…thank you for the kind, albeit exaggerated, remarks. I have to say I’m severely disappointed in this meager upgrade you’ve given to the Ontological Argument. The thought occurs to me that if you’re grading arguments based on their ability to persuade the skeptic they should probably all receive Fs (or D-s at the very best). Honestly – what skeptic has ever been persuaded by any argument for God’s existence? Antony Flew was convinced of deism of some sort before he died based on ID theory/teleological arguments. Man…not many others I can think of. Usually former atheists who’ve become Christians/theists attribute the change to something internal first, then perhaps they see the value of the arguments after. C.S. Lewis is a good example of someone who followed this path. The point here is that it seems a little odd to downgrade the ontological argument for its inability to persuade the skeptic without doing the same to every other argument for God’s existence. But this is exactly what you’re doing when you say that the ontological argument can’t “prove” God’s existence from imagination. Why doesn’t it? Is it that the logic isn’t valid? Well…not as far as I can tell, and nothing you said above implies that you think this isn’t the case. Is it that the premises aren’t sound? Again…no real challenge to the premises content of the actual steps in the argument. The only sense in which it doesn’t “prove” God’s existence, as far as I can gather from your thoughts above, is that it doesn’t persuade anyone. But again, it’s just not clear to me how that makes it any different from any other argument ever invented.
Last thing – your standard for meeting a D is: “This argument makes a little sense on the surface, but it is either easily refuted or there are better arguments on the other side of the debate. Ignore it!”
Given the fact that this argument has been taken seriously by some of the most brilliant philosophers in history, can’t we pretty well assume it’s not “easily defeated” and there haven’t been many “better arguments on the other side of the debate?” Any argument that withstands 1000 years of criticism to still be defended by many of the most brilliant minds in philosophy is probably not as much poppycock as you’ve described above. At the very least, given your definition of a D, it must qualify for a C-.
Thanks for your comments, Scott! Fair and well-spoken as always. In response, I will say the following:
(1) Actually, I have more sympathy with you than it seems. I have often felt that philosophy’s primary value is in logic. I remember reading a Bertrand Russell argument in favor of relativity and when he got to the obvious point that you can’t logically say “everything is relative” because that’s an absolute statement, he said something like “well, that’s obviously logically true, but you have to suspend logic here for the rest of the world to make sense.” Which I translated as: “In the only instance where philosophy might be of some value, we are going to disregard it.” Not very compelling.
So, even as I wrote my article, I felt a little hypocritical about the argument, because in a way you’re right: The argument has at least some logical force, and why am I so willing to disregard the logical force because I don’t feel like it?
On the other hand, I really do think the logical force is a kind of logical illusion that is based in some way on at least one false premise or one false leap. You are right that I don’t lay out a clear attack on that logic, and that was intentional…I just decided a long discussion about it wasn’t worth the space, and since 1000 years of philosophical banter hasn’t produced something exactly compelling to overturn it, I wasn’t sure if I could. (Plus I knew if I raised up an infinitely high mountain, you’d be there to philosophically knock it down, haha!) But if I would, I’d probably attack the “therefore” in the end of the statement: “If God existed only in our minds, then God would not be the greatest Thing, because the greatest Thing would exist in both the mind and in reality. This is not logically possible; THEREFORE, God must exist.” That “therefore” still seems a bit silly to me. There is no real reason I can think of that because I can conceive of a Being that does not exist but would be maximally great if it did, that the maximal greatness must therefore exist. That seems a false leap in my mind. It seems a perfectly reasonable state of things to say that I can imagine a maximally great being that does not exist.
(2) About the persuasion issue: I agree that most people aren’t persuaded by arguments…at least not arguments alone. I think most people want good arguments to support their personal experiences, and if the arguments all point in an opposite way, it makes them more likely to abandon their beliefs formed by personal experience, or to believe them with less fervor than they would otherwise have done.
But I’d also like to point out that arguments can be more or less persuasive to the masses – even given that most people aren’t completely persuaded by any logical argument, there are nonetheless degrees of persuasiveness. And this one isn’t persuasive to the masses…at all. Whereas the argument from morality or consciousness both played big roles in instantiating Lewis’ beliefs, and the complexity of life argument (which I find personally uncompelling) played a role for Flew, and those sorts of arguments do often seem persuasive to the masses – well, in the sense that those arguments are often persuasive (again, I don’t mean 100% certainty persuasive, but rather that they at least have some persuasive power), the ontological argument has basically zero persuasive power to the masses.
But that wasn’t really what I meant anyway. Really what I meant was that the argument isn’t persuasive to me, personally. And it isn’t just that I don’t like it in some vague way…which is also true…but I mean the logic of it seems based on a fundamental flaw. I agree that I have a hard time articulating what the flaw is in logically compelling terms, but all the same…there is something radically wrong with it.
(3) About the fact that lots of smart people have talked about it: Well, a lot of those smart people think it’s a bad argument. But you would know more about that than I do, and I certainly concede that some of the greatest minds ever have liked the argument. However, I would like to point out that there are two separate ways that an argument can intrigue smart people. (1) It may intrigue them like string theory intrigues smart physicists – because average minds have a hard time comprehending its intellectual depth and beauty and so it only appeals to smart people. Maybe the ontological argument is like that. (2) But I think it more likely intrigues smart people in the same way Hamlet intrigues smart people: Because it has a rare combination of cleverness and ambiguous fatal flaws. Smart people like to be able to argue over what Shakespeare really meant in Act III, Scene I. But the truth is that Hamlet is just a poorly-written play with some super-cool turns of phrase. Macbeth, on the other hand, is pure genius – yet scholars “like” it less than Hamlet because, as a well-written play, Macbeth’s plot actually makes too much sense for them to have much to say about it. Hamlet’s plot is, in contrast, a train wreck that is cleverly-worded.
So which category does the ontological argument fall into? You know better than me, Scott, but I’d say probably some of both. And I’d wager that there is at least some sense that the ontological argument is kinda like Hamlet. It’s a clever and interesting…train wreck. It can’t possibly be right, and I think its flaws are exposable and evident, but tricky to articulate. So tricky that people have obsessed over it for years.
(4) I have to say I had a good hearty laugh over your discussion of my rating scale. Awesome! Yes, I concede the point: Surely the argument can’t get a “D-“ based on the way I characterized a “D” stacked up against the history of the argument. All right, I give in – how about a D+? That seems to solve my logical problem. : )
Thanks, Scott! Appreciated the thoughtful comments keeping me on my toes!
I’m in over my head here, no doubt, but nevertheless: I’m pretty sure that Anselm’s “Ontological Argument” is yet one more example of what’s been called (Wittgenstein?) “the bewitchment of language,” similar to (among other examples) Zeno’s paradoxes. According to Anselm, God exists by definition and by logical necessity; according to Zeno, the arrow logically cannot move and the hare logically can never overtake the tortoise. The problem with Anselm’s argument is precisely the same as the problem with Zeno’s paradoxes: they all make perfect sense until you look at the actual world, and then they make no sense at all–the arrow moves, the hare overtakes the tortoise, and God remains a speculative possibility at best, regardless of what “logic” insists. I’ll say this for Christianity: it offers a story, not a logical axiom, and it’s all the more attractive (if, for some of us, ultimately unpersausive) for it.
I guess this discussion is just befuddling to me. On the one hand, you say the primary (perhaps only) role of philosophy is logic (a repugnant thought to me, but I’ll leave it for now). Then on the other hand you reject an argument that is truly elegant from a logical perspective for an illogical reason (no offense). Logically, you can’t just choose to reject the “therefore” in a deductive argument without rejecting a premise or without showing why, logically, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. So here, I’ll make it easier. Here is Anselm’s version of the argument in deductive form:
D: God – The being than which none greater can be conceived.
1. God exists in the understanding but not in reality
2. Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone (P)
3. God’s existence in reality is conceivable (P)
4. If God did not exist in reality then he would be greater than he is (1,2)
5. It is conceivable that there is a being greater than God is (3,4)
6. It is conceivable that there is a being greater than the being than which none greater can be conceived (5,D)
7. Therefore ~1 (6, reductio ad absurdum)
Pick one (or two, for that matter). But there is no way to doubt the “therefore” if 1-6 are valid and sound and you have any respect for logical necessity.
I think Plantinga’s version is even better simply because it is simpler. But all this talk of wanting to reject Anselm’s version for logically impossible reasons is making my head hurt.
As for this all being a problem of language’s inability to refer to the “real world”. To me, this objection to any argument in philosophy is wholly wrongheaded. In our every day lives we have no problem believing that language refers. I ask someone to pass the milk – they do. I tell my dog to sit – it does. I point out that 4+8 does not equal -78.6 – you agree. Even with more complex language, no one doubts that what we’re saying refers. The particle physicist can talk about muons and neutrinos and the Higgs Boson and no one doubts that they are referring to real things (well…presumably real, at least with the Higgs Boson). Even the word “super-string” is never challenged as not referring, despite being about the most theoretical concept in modern physics.
It seems to me that the problem of referral never comes up until people encounter either concepts that are confusing or arguments that lead to conclusions they don’t like.
We see this all over the world of philosophy. The concept of compound things seem ridiculous? Well…apparently the language must not refer. “Beauty” too abstract/subjective? Must not be real. Zeno’s paradoxes too tricky to solve? Language must not function in the realm of metaphysics.
Am I saying these questions are easy? Absolutely not, and I don’t claim to know the answers to them. But I think the response that language is inadequate is usually more lazy than thoughtful, given that when we think of these things that very language is capable of giving us a unified concept of what we’re talking about. Sometimes questions are just hard…don’t blame language for that.
One last thing. Jack – if God remains a “speculative possibility” then, according to Plantinga’s version of the argument, that fact would imply that necessarily God exists.
Fun stuff.
Re Scott: “befuddling” and “making my head hurt” are, coincidentally, the two most common responses when ordinary folks are presented with the Ontological Argument. So now you know how we feel.
I think the bulk of your last post was directed toward The Apologetic Professor (TAP) himself, but given your request that those not persuaded by Anselm should specify the logical grounds for their obstinacy, I’ll jump in. I disagree with (1) “God exists in the understanding but not in reality,” on the grounds that God no more “exists in the understanding” than does Santa Claus. What exists in the understanding is, at best, the notion or the idea of God (or Santa Claus, or my dead mother, or anything else); to move from an idea of something to the actual existence of that thing seems to defy common sense (if not “logical necessity”). In addition, it strikes me as a dubious claim that any of us can actually conceive, in any meaningful way, of a “maximally perfect being” or a “maximally excellent being” or any other way you choose to phrase it. Stringing words together doesn’t prove that a coherent concept actually exists in our minds (much less in reality); I can say “I believe in God,” but who knows what I’m actually thinking or to whom or what I’m referring? I could have “God” mixed up with the Old Man of the Mountain (who, by the way, now that I’ve imagined him, does in fact exist).
As for your distress at the supposed blanket assertion of “language’s inability to refer to the real world”: I know that I didn’t make that assertion, and I don’t think TAP did either. Language does, in ordinary usage, refer to the real world; that’s why we use it. I only suggested that sometimes language can mislead us, and that it can also be used in ways that do not refer to the real world: for example, if I were to say, “By the end of my second term as President, the lunar colony I will have established will become our 51st state” or “The best way to understand President Obama is through the lens of Kenyan anti-colonialism.” I’m not saying that Zeno’s paradoxes should be disregarded; they are in fact valuable exercises in logic (and mathematics, I’m told), but part of their value is demonstrating the limits of logic. People still struggle with the paradoxes but, as I said before, the arrow still moves and the hare overtakes the tortoise. As I understand it (or misunderstand it?), language and logic, when properly used, indeed refer to the real world and help us make sense of that world; but they are not, in and of themselves, the real world, any more than the map is the territory.
Finally: when Guanilo ridiculed Anselm’s argument by invoking the idea of “the most perfect island,” Anselm replied testily that an island is a mere contingent entity, and that his Ontological Argument specifically referred only to a “necessarily existing” entity or being. But if God is a “necessarily existing” Being, then doesn’t Anselm’s argument boil down to: God is a necessarily existing Being, so QED, God necessarily exists? You, and many other very smart people (and, for all I know, God Himself), may be impressed by that; but I, and lots of other ordinary people, remain befuddled.
You call this “fun stuff”? My head hurts.
Thanks to you both for a very stimulating discussion! Sorry, Scott, I think I mostly agree with Jack here, though you raise some very fair points. I’ll leave the language argument aside, as I’m not sure I disagree with anything either of you said. I have three main thoughts:
(1) I do agree with Jack about the “real world” issue, depending on what we mean exactly. Consider that if you can prove from a set of deductions that, say, a maximally tall vertical plane exists, then that introduces the real world: It forces you to either admit the (1) deductions are wrong somewhere, or that (2) logic itself is flawed, or that (3) a maximally tall plane exists in the real world. I’ll get back to that plane in a minute.
Here I mostly just want to point out that it is good reasoning to abandon an argument’s conclusions if those conclusions flatly contradict another known truth. And that’s what I think we have here – the argument comes up against a problem bigger than itself. Even if we grant it is a nice tight logical circle (I don’t, at least not yet…more on that below), it is a small circle like the person’s logical circle who believes everyone is out to get him. Every behavior of every person can be explained within that circle…and so you can’t talk the person out of their beliefs by arguing within their circle, only by pointing out that there is a larger world outside of it. Or, to use a better example, if I come up against a philosophy that requires me to believe the sky is not blue, then I would reject that philosophy, no matter how clever. (I don’t want to speak for him, but I think that’s what Jack means by the “real world” – and I agree with him). That would perhaps violate the logic of some interesting philosophy (the logic within the circle), but it would be good reasoning nonetheless, because it is good reasoning to reject a small logical circle when it violates an obvious large truth. Well, this argument attempts to prove that God exists because we can imagine Him. Whatever else is true, something doesn’t exist because I can imagine it. That’s simply an error, and this quaint little circle of ontology may or may not be a tight logical circle – but in my opinion it needs to be exposed to reasoning from a larger world.
(2) Now, to the tight little circle itself. Touché, Scott, for pointing out the contradiction in the first and second half of my comment – guilty as charged! I got a kick out of that. I admit I haven’t put much deep thought into the circle. But you’ve called me out, quite reasonably, and here at 2:37 AM I’m in fact thinking hard about it.
OK, I would like to first point out an obvious fact: That any “therefore” must be connected to its premise to be valid. So I could say:
1. A black cat is darker than a white cat
2. A Hortfordshire cat is a black cat
3. Jimmy the cat is a Hortfordshire cat
4. Some Hortfordshire cats have white spots.
5. Therefore, Jimmy the cat is a black cat with a white spot
Propositions 1-4 work fine; but the “therefore” is invalid because it doesn’t follow from those premises; it only superficially resembles them and it is easy to imagine other alternatives. So if I used the arguments above to try and prove the thing after the “therefore,” you would reasonably say that the onus was on me to prove the specific coherence of that conclusion with propositions 1-4. I could not reply to your objections by saying “show me what’s wrong with propositions 1-4.”
Well, that’s how I feel about the argument here (though of course the ontological argument isn’t that bad; I was only using that to illustrate the larger point which I assume we agree on). I think the onus is on you to prove why I should accept the “therefore, God does not exist only in the imagination but in reality” if it does not obviously follow from the premises (in this case, because some other conclusion which contradicts it also is consistent with the premises).
To illustrate, I think it’s useful to move the concluding statement to the end – it forces one to avoid big Latin words and to fully think through the coherence of the conclusion with the premises. I also purged the statement of one of the propositions which seemed redundant, just to simplify the argument. Now, here’s my challenge: How does proposition 5 below follow from 1-4, exactly? Because, for example, I can imagine that the statement “God cannot exist in the understanding OR in reality” equally fits with propositions 1-4. Which proposition, exactly, is that (atheist) statement in contradiction with? Maybe I’m missing something, but it doesn’t seem obvious to me at all. I think the onus falls on the argument and not on me to show why the stuff before the “therefore” necessarily means that God exists – at least, when it isn’t a super-tight syllogism.
1. Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone (P)
2. God’s existence in reality is conceivable (P)
3. If God did not exist in reality then he would be greater than he is
4. It is not conceivable that there is a being greater than the being than which none greater can be conceived
5. Therefore, God cannot exist only in the understanding, but must exist in reality
(3) OK, so let’s take a different angle and go back to the maximally tall vertical plane. (I’m going to use your original formulation here, just to make the parallel clearer).
Consider:
1. A maximally tall vertical plane exists in the understanding but not in reality
2. Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone (P)
3. A maximally tall vertical plane’s existence in reality is conceivable (P)
4. If a maximally tall vertical plane did not exist in reality than it would be greater than it is (1,2)
5. It is conceivable that there is a plane taller than a maximally tall plane is (3,4)
6. It is conceivable that there is a being greater than the maximally tall plane than which none taller can be conceived (5,D)
7. Therefore ~1 (6, reductio ad absurdum)
So what is the problem, exactly, with this argument? Because I just substituted “maximally tall vertical plane” for God without doing anything else to it, and it seems equally valid (by which I mean, it suffers from the same problem, but no more or no less than the real argument).
But, Scott, I did mean what I said about the logical force of the argument. I’m not sold on it, but I’m intrigued by it, which I wasn’t before I met you. I don’t grant that the “therefore” is totally coherent; but I also grant it isn’t totally easy to articulate why. My guess is you can do a good job of articulating why, I and look forward to that. But that’s what I meant by it has some logical force, unexpected given that it seems based on so flimsy an idea. In fact, that’s part of what makes the argument cool to me – I like arguments like that, even when I’m not persuaded by them.