philosophy

Assess the view that Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy enables us to speak significantly about God (40)

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Aquinas doctrine of analogy was intended to reconcile a philosophically credible concept of God, a God who is wholly “other”, with the human ability to speak about Him in meaningful terms.  Aquinas, who based his worldview on that of Aristotle, saw that God’s existence is best demonstrated a posteriori, from experience.  Four of his famous five ways show that God is what Aristotle called the “Prime Mover”, the originating and sustaining cause of everything which also defines the final cause of the universe and explains its teleological character.  This suggests that for Aquinas’ God, like Aristotle’s prime mover, is eternal outside time and space, impersonal and transcendent.  As Maimonides pointed out, this means that claims about God should not be understood univocally, because the edge of time and space – and thus possible experience – is like a “veil and partition” between God and us.  What it means for God to be good cannot be the same as what it means for a human being to be good… There is no time or choice for God, after all.  Nevertheless, Aquinas disagreed with Maimonides about the apophatic way being the only way to speak concerning God.  Aquinas saw that religion cannot be well supported by negative language, also pointing out that one has to have a clear concept of what God is to be able to decide what God is not.  Therefore, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy attempted to define what can be said about God in positive terms, steering people away from univocicity whilst preventing claims from being seen as equivocal either.  Nevertheless, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy does not enable us to speak significantly enough about God.

Firstly, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is too limited to support the meaningfulness of morality.  For Aquinas, I can say that God is good meaningfully.  Through analogy of proportion, by saying that God is good I know that God is 100% actual and has no potential, because the meaning of goodness is that something fulfils its nature and God, being atemporal, can do nothing other than 100% fulfil his nature.  Further, through analogy of attribution, I know that God’s goodness is unlike human goodness and yet it has a causative relationship with human goodness in the way that the goodness of the baker or the bull has a causative relationship with the goodness of the bread or the urine.  Relatedly though more broadly, through Aquinas’ analogy of being, I know that the being of created contingent things is secondary to the primary being of God.  In the way that the healthiness of a yoghurt is secondary and the healthiness of the person who eats the yogurt is primary, so the being of God is primary and supports the being of all other things, although what it means for God to be and created things to be is not the same.  Nevertheless, knowing that God is 100% whatever God is and that his goodness and being enables things in the world to be good and be does not really tell me anything significant about God’s nature, other than perhaps that he intends things to fulfil their various natures as He fulfils His timelessly.  Aquinas built his theory of natural law on this analogical understanding of God’s nature and tried to extrapolate moral norms from it, suggesting that it is God’s will that human beings fulfil their common nature and that actions which contribute to this end are good.  Yet Natural Law struggles because there is no clear and consistent account of what the common human nature, that God wants us to fulfil in order to be good, is.  For one example, while Aquinas saw procreation as a necessary part of this human nature and thus essential to human goodness, Chappell and originally Finnis disagreed, not seeing procreation as a necessary part of human nature or essential to goodness at all.  Their position is strengthened by Aquinas own argument that some goods pertain to certain men more than others, hence a priest may be celibate because he is pursuing the good of praising God which conflicts with the good of having children in practice.  The fact that people can’t agree on what a common human nature entails, despite being able to experience and observe this, emphasizes how little content there can be within the claim “god is good” – or any other claim about God’s nature – when understood analogically. Further, having so little idea of what God’s goodness entails forces us to rely heavily on a contested definition of human nature, meaning that an analogical approach to religious language fails to support morality.  This shows that Aquinas doctrine of analogy does not enable us to speak significantly enough about God, because it only serves to emphasis how little we can know about God’s goodness and fails to support morality. 

Secondly, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy does not support the meaningfulness of the Bible or central documents such as the Nicene Creed.  From the Bible we know that God spoke on numerous occasions, appeared in visions and had relationships with Prophets and with Jesus, and yet again, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy emphasizes the “otherness” of God, which undermines these essentially Christian beliefs.  At least Maimonides admitted that Scripture should be read as myths and legends, yet Aquinas never went this far. According to Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy, we can only speak analogically of God because God is outside time and space and what Tillich later called “the ground of our being”, yet this is not the impression that (most of) the Bible gives.  As Nelson Pike pointed out, the Bible’s God acts in a way that is “unavoidably tensed” and apparently at odds with an analogical interpretation of religious language.  For example, Aquinas would suggest that a claim that “God created the heavens and the earth” should not be understood univocally.  God’s creative act cannot be like a creative act of say a potter.  Rather, God’s creative act must be simple and single, as befits his timeless-eternal nature.  This means that all parts of God’s creative action are concurrent, just as all God’s various attributes are different ways of understanding God’s wholly simple nature.  There can be no division between parts of God’s act in creation, just as there can be no division between God’s goodness and power, his power and knowledge for examples.  How then can we make sense of the Biblical salvation narrative?  Analogically, Aquinas would have us believe that God’s act in creation is not like a human act, having no time before, during or after and no alternative possibilities.  How though can the creation be concurrent with the fall and with the incarnation and final judgement?  This makes no sense of central Christian doctrines.  Also, the doctrine of the Trinity is problematic, because it suggests that God is best understood through the three distinct persons of God.  Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy suggests otherwise… indeed we must focus on the very oneness of God to make sense of what we can say and mean analogically through proportion, attribution and being more generally.  This inability to support claims made in the Bible and creeds also shows that Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is too limited to enable Christians to speak significantly of God. 

Of course, Aquinas’ theory of analogy has its supporters and indeed enables us to speak more significantly about God than does the via negativa.  Aquinas’ theory of analogy is highly influential within modern Roman Catholicism and has been developed by thinkers ranging from Ian Ramsey to Austin Farrar and Gerard Hughes.  Even John Hick praised Aquinas analogical approach to religious language.  Ramsey noted how people naturally see claims made about God as “logically odd.” When we use words like power or love in relation to God, we know that we don’t intend people to interpret them in the same way as they would in ordinary language.  Words are in a sense “models” of what we mean about God; just as a model of an atom in a science lab isn’t adequate to express the structure of the atom or the concept of the light-wave to express how light works, so the word “power” isn’t entirely adequate to express that attribute of God, but it is the best means of expression that we have.  Further, Ramsey noted that we use “qualifiers” such as “Holy” to indicate that we are using a “model”, that our claim is “logically odd” and that our intended meaning relative to God is not the same as the common meaning of words such as power or knowledge.  Hick praised this aspect of analogy noting that it allows us to speak significantly about God while also preserving the essential mystery and ineffability of the divine. Hughes suggested that the qualifier “timeless” is most appropriate to signify that words are being used analogically, drawing the mind to that part of a common meaning that makes sense in relation to the timeless nature of God.  Thus for the Thomist, when I say “God is good” I should say “God is timelessly good”, ruling out a moral interpretation of the claim which would be incompatible with God’s eternal nature.  This shows that an analogical approach to language fits in with modern Roman Catholic beliefs and usage, supporting the significance of some important things that Catholics say about God.  Yet Aquinas’ analogical approach to religious language still fails to enable us to speak significantly about God for two reasons. 

  • Firstly because some Roman Catholic writers were critical of Aquinas’ analogical theory of religious language straight away.  For example, John Duns Scotus preferred the Cataphatic approach of St Anselm and St Bonaventure.  An analogical approach to language is, for Scotus, too limited to support significant religious beliefs and utterances.  Instead, Scotus argued that we should be able to speak univocally of God since the very concepts we use to describe and affirm his characteristics were created by God as part of his simple, single act of creation.  His approach owes more to Plato than it does to Aristotle, suggesting that God is more like the Form of the Good, giving definition to the concepts through which we experience reality and so knowable through reason and describable in ordinary language.
  • Secondly, because while analogy does seem intuitive to those whose worldview includes a timeless-eternal God, it is less so for those whose worldview includes a personal, immanent God.  How is the claim that God is timelessly wise, as Hughes might have it, compatible with the claim that God knows “the inmost secrets of our hearts” as the Psalmist affirms, let alone with the claim that God hears and answers prayers?  God’s wisdom should not be understood univocally, and should only be taken to mean that God has 100% of the knowledge appropriate to God, being timeless, and that God’s knowledge and our knowledge have a causative relationship of some sort, God’s wisdom being primary and ours secondary in the way that the health of a person is primary and of a yoghurt is secondary.  Neither of those understandings support the significance of my belief that God knows what is in my heart right now, or is capable of understanding and answering me personally.   

Of course, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is still better than Maimonides via negativa.  The via negativa wouldn’t let me say anything positive about God’s wisdom or knowledge at all, supporting only the claim that “God is not ignorant” for example.  Yet in practice the content supported by the doctrine of analogy is only a little more significant than that supported by the via negativa, and as has already been argued, is certainly not sufficient to do justice to the range of Christian beliefs or documents such as the Bible or the Creed.  This shows that Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy does not enable us to speak significantly enough about God.

In conclusion, while Aquinas doctrine of analogy supports us in speaking more significantly than does the via negativa, it still does not enable us to speak significantly enough about God to support Christian faith.  Being Christian demands that God is and can be said to be personal, immanent, active through the Bible and in the world today, not to mention incarnate in Jesus who was fully God as well as fully man.  Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is far too limited to enable Christians to articulate these significant beliefs.  Better understandings of religious language from this point of view include symbol and metaphor, both of which allow a greater variety of things to be said meaningfully than does analogy.

Secularists who say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong.  Evaluate this statement. [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Philosophical secularists such as Sigmund Freud and Richard Dawkins have often criticised Christianity for causing unhappiness.  Freud saw all religion as a “universal obsessional neurosis” which supported irrational beliefs and behaviour and created taboos which are often harmful to individuals.  While Freud admitted the usefulness of religion in “keeping down the masses” in his “Civilisation and its Discontents” (1927), Dawkins went further, claiming that religion is the “root of all evil” and the cause of multiple personal and social problems because it is anti-intellectual and as a meme corrosive to the critical faculties, particularly of the young.  Christianity, Dawkins suggests, may seem benign… but really indoctrinates people into a backward ideology which provides questionable moral guidance.  While these arguments seem persuasive and certainly highlight personal and social problems that religion in general, sometimes Christianity, might contribute towards, overall, they don’t demonstrate that Christianity causes unhappiness.  This is because people may well be happier with the crutch of an “obsessional neurosis” than without one, because the good the Church still outweighs the bad and because confronting the truth and being a critical thinker is rarely conducive to happiness!  For these reasons, secularists such as Freud and Dawkins are wrong when they say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness. 

Firstly, Freud argued that religion causes unhappiness because it is a “universal obsessional neurosis”.  In the same way as an individual might deal with unresolved childhood trauma by channelling tension into ritualistic behaviours such as obsessional handwashing or superstitions such as saluting magpies or not treading on cracks, societies deal with trauma by channelling it into religion.  For example, in Totem and Taboo (1913) Freud claimed that the Judaeo-Christian tradition emerged as a response to an original act of patricide, a claim which he later elaborated in Moses and Monotheism (1939).  Nevertheless, Freud’s critique of religion does not claim that Christianity is always a source of unhappiness.  People may find it easier to cope when they have a ritual which they believe influences feelings and situations which they cannot otherwise control.  Societies might well function better when they are able to process their collective guilt and grief through religious myth and ritual than they would without such an opportunity.  Just because a belief or practice is irrational and/or not based on a scientific or historical truth does not mean that it necessarily makes people unhappy.  Further, influenced by Feuerbach, Freud suggested that God is subconsciously created by human beings in an act of wish-fulfilment, rather than the other way around.  Feuerbach wrote “Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge” and Freud would certainly have agreed, judging by his “The Future of an Illusion” (1927) Nevertheless, since when did self-knowledge cause people unhappiness, especially when it results in beliefs that comfort and compensate for deficits as in this case?  Also, as Swinburne, Plantinga and Hick have pointed out, Freud can’t exclude the possibility that God might have designed us to subconsciously project God in this way.  As Alston pointed out in 1967 “Freudian theory is not logically incompatible with the truth, justifiability and value of traditional religion…”  and also, projecting God fulfils wishes and so makes people happy, not unhappy suggesting that as a secularist Freud was wrong that Christianity is a cause of unhappiness.

Secondly, Dawkins argued that religion causes unhappiness because it is “anti-intellectual” and -acting as a meme – attacks the critical faculties, particularly of young people.  Nevertheless, Dawkins has no scientific evidence for the existence of memes in the way that he describes them, and further if they do exist in this way, by Dawkins own logic they must do so because they confer an evolutionary advantage of some sort.  The fact is that more people are affected by the religious “meme” than are not – and those who are affected seem much more likely to breed! – so there must be an evolutionary justification for religion.  Of course, Dawkins would reject the claim that human beings should follow evolutionary pressures, writing “we should not live by Darwinian principles… I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free-will…” and yet he fails to explain why people should believe the free-will to do this, when there is no evidence other than a feeling to support it, or why we should try to behave in ways that make our individual and human genes more generally less likely to be reproduced.  Further, Dawkins rejects religious belief because “how can you take someone seriously who likes to believe something because he finds it comforting?” yet this line of argument shows that religion – including Christianity – makes people happy, while also admitting that secularism does not.  It is what Dawkins calls “bracing truth” that makes people unhappy, not Christian beliefs, even if they are false.  As Dawkins himself wrote “the universe doesn’t owe is condolence or consolation; it doesn’t owe you a nice warm feeling inside…” yet for many people this is precisely what they get from religion.  While Dawkins claims that “I care passionately about the truth because it is a beautiful thing and enables us to live a better life…” he fails to justify these claims.  What is beautiful about the truth of evolution through natural selection and what helps us to live a better life about confronting our own insignificance in the meaningless infinity of the universe? This shows that the secularist Richard Dawkins was wrong in claiming that Christianity makes people unhappy. 

Of course, Freud and Dawkins make sensible points when they argue that religion and particularly Christian beliefs make some individuals and some societies unhappy.  Freud is right that the guilt engendered by faith can be corrosive, leading to the state of “soul sickness” identified by both St Augustine and much later by William James.  Yet, religious faith, an ineffable sense of happiness and peace, hope and a second chance at purposeful living can sometimes be precipitated by such a state of despair, when it triggers a conversion experience.  St Augustine describes how he was saved by such an experience and James documented many other cases where religion – most usually Christianity – made somebody happy when no dosage of antidepressants were ever likely to work. Further, while Christianity can make individuals unhappy, social surveys have shown that on average religion makes people happier, more socially engaged, healthier and more long-lived.  As the Heritage Foundation Report (2006) states “a steadily growing body of evidence from the social sciences demonstrates that religious practice benefits individuals, families and communities, and thus the nation as a whole.”  Of course, Dawkins is right that religions can and have caused bitter wars and can and have fostered appalling abuse.  Christopher Hitchens powerfully enumerated the instances when the Roman Catholic Church alone has caused conflict and suffering.  Yet religion is also a force for good in societies, encouraging people to care for the weak and vulnerable, educate children, improve prison conditions and be more inclusive.  While it is difficult to do an objective cost-benefit analysis, Jurgen Habermas is right in highlighting that secular societies develop what he called “an awareness of what is missing” as they enter a “moral wasteland” in which society becomes “normatively mute” and where individuals lack any sense that their actions matter one way or another, as well as any hope beyond death.  Charles Taylor is right that secularism makes death into a taboo in a way that creates mental health issues, and that societies are forced to replace religious values and mores with secular equivalents – which lack the advantages of relative transparency and transcending human borders.  It follows that notwithstanding the unhappiness that religion undoubtedly causes some individuals and societies, on balance the effect of religion is to make people more rather than less happy.  As regards Christianity – given the scale of abuse and conflict that it has caused – the scales might be more even than in the case of other religions, yet the scale might well be proportionate given that Christianity is the largest world religion. Also, it is probably fair to say that if religion did not cause the abuse and the conflict, then something else would have.  Atheistic societies such as the USSR and Communist China were not marked for being inclusive and peaceful!   Human beings tend to cause abuse, conflict and unhappiness… and need little encouragement from religion to do so. 

In conclusion, Secularists who say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong.  While Christianity and other religions undoubtedly cause some individuals unhappiness, as well as giving cover to abuse and conflict on multiple occasions, the net effect of religions is to promote human happiness, even if this might well be the result of promoting comforting delusions.  The continuing dominance of religious worldviews suggests that they offer societies an evolutionary advantage, perhaps in helping people to be satisfied with not knowing the answers to the “big questions,” and this confirms that societies are happier and function better with religions than without them.

‘Critically discuss the theodicy presented by John Hick” [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

John Hick presented his “Theodicy for Today” through “Evil and the God of Love” (1966).  Here, Hick explored the history of the so-called Irenaean Theodicy in the work of Origen and Schleiermacher as well as Irenaeus, then crafting a new version of this theodicy which he felt more suited as a response to the logical problem of evil and suffering than the traditional Augustinian Theodicy given the atrocities of the mid 20th Century.  While Hick’s theodicy is persuasive, it does not provide a complete defence of God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence. 

Firstly, Hick adapted Origen’s idea that human beings were created in God’s image but with the potential to grow into His likeness through a life that is a “schoolroom for the soul”.  While he rejected the “exegetically dubious” distinction between image and likeness in the Hebrew – as this is more probably designed for emphasis in the original poetry than intended to make two separate points – he argued that there is truth in the claim that human beings exist on two levels, as BIOS – sophisticated animals – and as ZOE – morally and spiritually unique beings.  Hick took Keats’ phrase to argue that our lives are a “vale of soul-making”, through suffering we grow and develop from BIOS towards ZOE, meaning that suffering (and Hick includes others’ suffering as well as our own) has a purpose and is spiritually good for us, so plausibly part of the Best Possible World that an Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent God would have created.  Later, Richard Swinburne agreed with Hick, presenting his own Irenaean Theodicy which also contended that we learn from suffering, becoming better people and more able to use the freedom that God has given us.  Swinburne likened God to a parent, allowing his children to suffer in order that they might learn to make decisions independently.  This aspect of Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy seems persuasive, because there is no doubt that people do become stronger and more spiritual as a result of the suffering which is an inescapable part of life, however Hick fails to account for the extent of suffering, which most people would agree is gratuitous.  For example, William Rowe identified suffering which could and should have been eliminated by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, suggesting that innocent child suffering (such as in Rowe’s example of Sue) disproves the existence of such a God.  Ivan Karamazov would surely have agreed that the degree to which young children suffer is far beyond anything that could be proportionate to the ends of helping us develop spiritually.  While Hick appealed to the “epistemic distance” between God and human beings and while Swinburne agreed that we are in no position to know that God could have prevented such suffering without causing or permitting something worse, retreating into mystery at the first sign of difficulty is not an adequate philosophical response.  Because of this, Hick’s theodicy fails to defend God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence in the light of his allowing gratuitous, innocent, child suffering.

Secondly, Hick reasoned that God might be justified in allowing some people to suffer more than others – even if some people were broken and afflicted and so unable to develop spiritually as a result – if he provided eternal recompense for unjust suffering after death.  For example, God could be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, even if some children die embittered and afflicted after suffering years of bone cancer if God made up for it in heaven.  Nevertheless, this is unconvincing because there is no adequate theory of what heaven could be like in order to justify God in this way.  In “Death and the Afterlife” 1978 Hick recognised the problems with standard Christian doctrine in that it relies on future physical resurrection, which is neither scientifically plausible nor fair to those whose bodies are either extremely young, extremely old or dispersed/destroyed.  Instead, Hick chose to focus on St Paul’s teaching, which suggests that resurrection is spiritual before the soul is re-clothed in a spiritual body, which is then rewarded or punished appropriately.  St Paul wrote that “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable… it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 1 Corinthians 15:42, 44 Nevertheless, as Hick later realised, this account of life after death is problematic because it relies on the soul being separable from the body, albeit temporarily, when there is almost no evidence supporting substance dualism.  It also relies on all our human identity residing in an immaterial “soul”, so that “I” could be re-created into a new body and what happened to that body would still serve as just reward and punishment, incentive and disincentive.  Hick developed his famous Replica Theory to defend the possibility that a person could still be a person despite a break in the spatio-temporal-continuity that philosophers like Derek Parfit rely on to determine identity. Yet so much of human identity relates to our body that even if we accept that a replica could still be me (and ignore the possibilities of multiple replicas etc) this is difficult to accept.  Would our spiritual body be male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, old or young, Black or Asian?  If no, then how can a reward applied to some idealised and unrecognisable form really recompense for my unjust suffering… but if yes, then the spiritual body theory has few advantages over physical resurrection theory because inequalities and injustices would persist after death and heaven would not be an eternal or perfect reward but rather an endurance test which would do little but prolong the memories of suffering in this life in another location.  In the end, Hick abandoned replica theory and belief in spiritual bodies and came to believe in a form of reincarnation, showing that he didn’t believe that this aspect of his own theodicy was convincing.  It follows that because Hick’s theodicy fails to explain how an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God could make up for unjust suffering after death, it fails to provide a complete defence against the logical problem of evil.

On the other hand, Hick’s theodicy is more persuasive than the classical Augustinian Theodicy.  It does not rely on a literal interpretation of Genesis 2-3, avoids focusing on Original Sin and allows for evil to be real and not only “privation boni”, all of which make Hick’s approach more palatable in the 20th Century.  Further, Hick draws on modern science in his account of how we develop from BIOS into ZOE and in his beliefs about life after death and the impossibility of standard physical resurrection, which makes his theodicy more acceptable to a broader audience than standard Christian doctrine.  Nevertheless, a big weakness of Hick’s approach is that it fails to account for the suffering of animals.  As Rowe pointed out, the suffering of animals like the fawn he used in his example is endemic in nature.  The whole evolutionary process, which Hick accepts as characterising creation, depends upon the intense and gratuitous suffering of life-forms who have no possibility of growing or developing spiritually as a result, or of experiencing a heavenly recompense.  Hick seems to ignore and then sidestepped this question completely.  While Swinburne confronted the issue of animal suffering and included it in his version of the Irenaean Theodicy, he did no more than to speculate that animals might suffer less intensely and/or learn something from suffering, showing the inadequacy of this type of theodicy with respect to animal suffering.  Another weakness of Hick’s approach is that it defends a very limited version of omnipotence in God if he had to use suffering – and such intense suffering – as the means for human beings to grow from BIOS into ZOE.  As JL Mackie had already pointed out in “Evil and Omnipotence” (1955) theodicies which suggest that we learn from suffering assume that God could not have designed a better and more efficient way for humans to learn or created human beings with no need to learn in the first place. A God with such limitations would not reasonably be described as omnipotent.  While Hick is far from being alone in limiting God’s omnipotence to being able to do what is logically possible, Mackie’s objection to his theodicy is reasonable. 

In conclusion, Hick’s theodicy is more persuasive than many older theodicies, but does not provide such a complete defence of God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence as even St Augustine did.  Hick’s God may be benevolent, but He is extremely limited in power.  Further, while Hick’s theodicy gains strength from avoiding Biblical literalism, in moving away from the Bible and Christian doctrine in some respects, it is also weakened by not being acceptable to the mainstream Church.  Also, Hick fails to explain the extent and unfair distribution of suffering or provide an account of the afterlife that would serve as “eschatological justification”, making up for unfairness in this life, both of which leave this theodicy open to criticism. 

Gaunilo successfully defeats Anselm’s Ontological Argument. Discuss. [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

St Anselm presented his ontological argument in Proslogion books 2 and 3.  He began with a quotation from Psalm 14:1 “the fool says in his heart there is no God”, reasoning that existence is part of the definition of God, so that anybody who denies God’s existence is asserting a contradiction and so a fool.  Gaunilo, a contemporary of St Anselm, responded in his wittily titled “on behalf of the fool”, rejecting Anselm’s reasoning systematically and concluding that atheists are not necessarily fools.  Although St Anselm and Gaunilo were operating within different worldviews and with difference concepts of what existence entails, on balance and because Gaunilo’s more modern worldview dominates today, Gaunilo successfully defeats St Anselm’s ontological argument. 

Firstly, Gaunilo is successful in pointing out that the atheist can recognise the word “God” without necessarily holding the entire concept of God in intellectu. He wrote “this being is said to be in my understanding already, only because I understand what is said.”  Whereas St Anselm asserts that the atheist, in recognising the word God understands that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” and – because existence is a perfection – necessarily exists in re while simultaneously denying God’s existence, Gaunilo suggests that people often recognise a word without fully understanding what it refers to, as may be the case with God. Gaunilo later elaborates, explaining that as Anselm admits that God is unlike any other thing, it must be impossible for any person to understand what “God” is, because our understanding of new objects is usually built out of like objects. This is persuasive, as Aquinas would later agree [Summa Theologica 1,2,1] because God’s nature is to be mysterious and ineffable, so resisting all attempts to define him, let alone analyse that definition to determine whether necessary existence is part of it. Gaunilo continues by writing “I have in my understanding all manner of unreal objects, having absolutely no existence in themselves” – examples of such could be Gruffalos or unicorns – and he suggests that it would be possible to hold an idea of God who doesn’t exist in intellectu.  This also is persuasive because, as Kant later wrote, “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence…”  Existential statements must be synthetic and capable of verification through the senses; it is not possible to analyse something, even God, into existence.  While it is clear that Gaunilo (and later Kant) assume existence to refer to existence in the phenomenal world of time and space rather than to a non-contradictory concept or “clear and distinct idea” as Anselm (and later Descartes) did, it is Gaunilo’s worldview which dominates today and this supports the success of Gaunilo’s argument in defeating Anselm’s ontological argument.

Secondly, Gaunilo is successful in pointing out that the idea of God in intellectu exists prior to the existence of God in re being realised.  He used St Anselm’s (and St Augustine’s) example of a painter and painting to make this point, reasoning that the idea of the painting exists in the mind of the painter before paint is applied to canvas. He wrote “The picture, before it is made, is contained in the artificer’s art itself; and any such thing, existing in the art of an artificer, is nothing but a part of his understanding itself.”  In the same way, for Gaunilo the idea of God exists in the mind primarily and before the reality of God is admitted.  This suggests that the atheist could have the idea of God in their mind separately from the necessary reality of God, leaving the possibility that God could only be the idea of a necessarily existing being and not a necessarily existing being.  This links to Aristotle’s concept of the formal cause; the sculptor may have the form of the sculpture in his mind, but until he acts as an efficient cause on the material cause of the stone, the sculpture can’t be said to be real.  Similarly, the soul as the formal cause of the body can’t be understood to exist independently of a body, in the way that a wax seal can’t exist without wax.  Of course, Plato would disagree, arguing that forms are more real than material objects which reflect them, because they are complete and unchanging. However, Anselm’s platonic worldview has been replaced by the more Aristotelian worldview of Gaunilo today.  Few would accept that ideas are more real than material objects, so that most would agree with Kant when he wrote “If then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…” The painting is only an idea until paint meets canvas in the real world… and however perfect it may be in concept won’t change that fact. Therefore, Gaunilo is successful in defeating Anselm’s ontological argument, because he identifies Anselm’s failure to establish God’s existence a posteriori as well as a priori. 

Of course, Anselm rejected Gaunilo’s criticisms one by one in his “Responsio” reasoning that Gaunilo must be a fool if he believed that somebody could recognise the word God without appreciating that it refers to a supremely perfect being which – logically – must have the property of necessary existence.  A person saying that a triangle has four sides could only be an idiot; Anselm cannot accept that an atheist is anything other than a fool.  Further, Anselm rejected Gaunilo’s (mis)use of his analogy of the painter and painting, pointing out that while the idea of any normal object may well exist separately from and prior to its reality, this cannot apply to God who exists necessarily.  In God’s case and God’s case only, the idea and the reality must be simultaneous and identical.  However, Gaunilo’s reduction of St Anselm’s ontological argument to absurdity through the perfect island remains more persuasive than St Anselm’s indignant ripostes in the Responsio.  This is because Gaunilo appeals to common sense when he wrote that “If a man should try to prove to me by such reasoning that this island truly exists, and that its existence should no longer be doubted, either I should believe that he was jesting, or I know not which I ought to regard as the greater fool: myself, supposing that I should allow this proof; or him, if he should suppose that he had established with any certainty the existence of this island.”  In the same way Kant is persuasive when he appeals to common sense, writing “a man might as well imagine that he could become richer in knowledge by mere ideas, as a merchant in capital, if, in order to improve his position, he were to add a few noughts to his cash account.”  We all know that we can’t analyse or think anything into existence, whether holiday islands or money! 

In conclusion, Gaunilo’s criticisms of St Anselm’s ontological argument successfully defeat this attempt to prove God’s existence from reason alone… that is, for those who share Gaunilo’s modern worldview.  Of course, those with a Platonist worldview – like Anselm himself and Rene Descartes – would disagree.  As Norman Malcolm wrote “in those complex systems of thought, those ‘language games’, God has the status of a necessary being. Who can doubt that?” and yet claiming that God exist surely refers to more than a rule of one language-game?  As Gaunilo rightly pointed out, rooting our concept of what exists in mere ideas is more likely to be foolish than rooting existence in shared experience. 

‘Anselm’s four-dimensionalist approach successfully explains God’s action in time.’ Discuss. [40]

/ vardycharlotte / 1 Comment

St Anselm developed his understanding of how God relates to and acts in time on the basis of work already done by Boethius and before that by St Augustine. All these Classical Theists understood that God exists eternally, outside time and space. This means that Aristotle’s arguments for a Prime Mover, as well as Plato’s arguments for a Form of the Good, lend rational support for faith in God. Nevertheless, placing God outside time and space raises significant questions concerning if and how God can act within time, as well as what God’s knowledge of events within time is like and what God’s goodness can entail. If God is outside time and space then all of God’s actions – including every word that God says – must be concurrent within one simple, single act of creation. St Augustine, Boethius and St Anselm all attempted to resolve the particular problem of how God’s eternal foreknowledge seems to nullify human free will, and yet even St Anselm’s sophisticated understanding fails to explain for this, let alone how God could act in time, successfully.

Firstly, what Katherin A. Rogers claims to be St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism represents no real improvement over Boethius’ Universal Presentism in resolving the question of God’s relationship with time, whether regarding God’s knowledge or God’s actions. Whereas Presentism usually entails the belief that only the present moment really exists, the past and the future being illusory, in Boethius’ understanding because every moment is present to God, the future and past are as real as what we perceive to be the present. As Brian Leftow (in PRESENTISM, ATEMPORALITY, AND TIME’S WAY) explains, “Boethius is a temporal presentist… consider his classic simile: an atemporal God is as if on a mountain top, looking out on an entire future those lower down cannot see. It is part of the image that all the future is really there at once to be seen.” (p176) Yet this causes a problem for Boethius when it comes to God’s foreknowledge. If God sees the “future” in the same eternal moment as the “present”, how can any being be free? Because God knows what every being will do there are no alternate possibilities. Boethius argues that this problem results from out imperfect understanding of God’s eternal nature… “the reason of this obscurity is that the movement of human reasoning cannot cope with the simplicity of the Divine foreknowledge” Book V. Further, Boethius suggests that God’s knowledge does not make the outcomes of free actions logically necessary because God’s knowledge of them is contingent and dependent on those choices and outcomes occurring. “Boethius’s solution to the freedom-foreknowledge problem hinges on the claim that God’s knowledge is of all time at once and observational...” (Leftow, p176) Yet how can God’s knowledge of an event truly be conditional on that event taking place, such as to avoid making that event necessary, when God’s knowledge is eternal and identical with God’s power and goodness in God’s simple, single act of creation? Boethius’ analogy of the Chariot does nothing to help, because by his own admission, God’s knowledge is completely different to any knowledge we could have and because, as Boethius himself reminds us, there is no way that God could learn from us… as it seems He would have to if his knowledge of what we do depends on us. Further, St Anselm’s more developed position does little to resolve the problem. Like Boethius he contends that God’s knowledge, being of an eternal present, is not prior to events and so does not necessitate them. Whereas Boethius is what Leftow calls a “Universal Presentist”, St Anselm contends “but simply, you are, outside all time. For yesterday and to-day and to-morrow have no existence, except in time; but you, although nothing exists without you, nevertheless do not exist in space or time, but all things exist in you. For nothing contains you, but you contain all.” Proslogium XIX This suggests that every moment, whether we perceive it to be past, present or future, exist not only in God’s sight, but within God’s eternal being. Reflecting on what this might mean, St Anselm wrote in De Concordia 1.5 “although within eternity there is only a present, nonetheless it is not the temporal present, as is ours, but is an eternal present in which the whole of time is contained.” explaining that… “Eternity has its own simultaneity, in which exist all things that occur at the same time . . . and . . . at different times.” While Boethius position is so similar as to be identical in places, Katherin A. Rogers argues that this makes St Anselm the first true Four-Dimensionalist. She writes “Anselm, in a very clear and conscious way, adopts what I will call the “four-dimensionalist” theory of time, sometimes also called the “tenseless” theory. He is, to my knowledge, the first philosopher in history to do so.” She claims that St Anselm’s understanding of God’s relationship with time “does succeed in solving the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge,” which might imply that it would also resolve the question of God’s eternal action. Nevertheless, Rogers’ detailed argument concerning the differences between St Anselm, Boethius and St Augustine does little to advance St Anselm’s position. While it is true that when it comes to St Augustine and Boethius, “neither elaborates his views clearly enough to rule out other interpretations” (than four dimensionalism) it is fair to say that both philosophers positions suggest that every moment is present to God, and that God’s knowledge of events is not prior to those events occurring so can’t be understood to cause those events. Given this specific overlap between Boethius and Anselm, the technicalities of their positions as regards God and time seem largely irrelevant. Rogers ends by simply restating Anselm’s argument, that God’s knowledge of the outcomes of “free” actions does not make them happen, because although God’s knowledge of those outcomes removes any alternate possibilities God’s knowledge of what we perceive to be future events is knowledge of eternally present events to God. Yet, in all practically, this is the point already made by Boethius, that God’s knowledge of “future” events is conditional like our knowledge of a chariot passing, so not such as would influence or determine such events. Whether made by Anselm or Boethius, this argument is unsuccessful in resolving the problem of freedom and foreknowledge because by these Classical Theists’ own arguments, God’s knowledge is not like ours, being simple and identical with God’s power and being. My knowing that a chariot passes by does not make the chariot speed up or slow down, but God’s knowing is the same as his doing and his being… and his knowing, doing and being in what seems to be this moment to us is concurrent with his total knowledge, action and being because His nature is to be eternal and so wholly simple. It is difficult to accept that actions can be anything other than determined when they are part of God’s eternal necessity in this way. This shows that St Anselm’s four dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time, successfully.

Secondly, St Anselm’s so-called Four Dimensionalism is just as inadequate as Boethius’ or Augustine’s Universal Presentism in accounting for God’s actions in time. For example, the Bible’s Salvation Narrative is, as Nelson Pike once observed, “unavoidably tensed”. St Anselm’s four dimensionalist account of God’s relationship with time suggests that every moment is present in God, suggesting that the creation is a simple, single act. However, if the creation happened at the same moment as the Fall, if Moses received the Law from God at the same moment as the same Law was fulfilled in Jesus, if the incarnation, the resurrection and the second coming all really happened at once, then there seems precious little point in Christianity. Human free will and moral responsibility are null and God’s justice a joke. As St Augustine recognized in Book XII of his Confessions, if God is timeless-eternal and wholly simple, as rationally it seems that He must be, “what was spoken was not spoken successively, one thing concluded that the next might be spoken, but all things together and eternally. Else have we time and change; and not a true eternity nor true immortality…” When God said “let there be light” – as if in the same breath he said “I am what I am” and “this is my Son; listen to Him”… meaning either that all apparent “revelations” of God’s words which imply time and a sequence of events are effective fakes… or that God intended to deceive us into thinking his words and actions responded to events and individuals. Either interpretation is gravely problematic for Christians. So much of the Bible depends on God’s actions and words being sequential that accepting a timeless-eternal view of God could only result in abandoning the Bible as a meaningful source of authority. Further, suggesting that God intended to deceive us when he seemed to speak with and respond to the Prophets, or when he seems to respond to our prayers, is both incompatible with St Anselm’s own account of God’s omnipotence – which expressly excludes God’s ability to act from impotence, such as by lying or deceiving people (“Therefore, O Lord, our God, the more truly are you omnipotent, since you are capable of nothing through impotence” Proslogion Book VII) – and a fundamental assault on the Christian faith. What would Christianity be if God’s personal response to prayer and events can only be understood as the equivalent of an AI chatbot response, pre-programmed to give the appearance of personal service by some cynical cost-saving consultant! Again, it seems that St Anselm’s four dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time, successfully.

Of course, St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism would be defended by Katherin A. Rogers, who would suggest that it is successful in explaining how God can know all events without removing the possibility of free actions or the justice of holding free agents responsible for what they choose to do. She points out how St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism is an improvement over the work of other classical theists who suggest that God’s eternal knowledge is so different and abstract that God’s omniscience might entail him not knowing what day it is! Nevertheless, in making God’s knowledge of ever present knowledge a function of God’s perfect self-knowledge, St Anselm comes very close to suggesting that all of creation exists within God. This striking view implies that God’s knowledge is contingent and depends on events, rather than causing them. While this is useful in facilitating free will, because being eternal God’s knowledge is identical with God’s action and God’s being, it also implies that God’s being contains time and space, whose nature is dynamic and the precise opposite to how God’s necessary being is usually understood. How can God be immutable if God’s knowledge depends on contingent events and God’s being contains all contingencies? St Anselm can’t pick and choose, maintaining that God’s knowledge is of contingencies but God’s being is necessary and immutable… if God is eternal, He is wholly simple and, as St Anselm himself explains in Proslogium XVIII all His attributes are really one attribute. Again, it seems that St Anselm’s four dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time, successfully.

Further, the alternative explanations of the relationship between God’s eternity and his action offered by Richard Swinburne is scarcely more successful than that offered by St Anselm. Swinburne suggests that an everlasting-in-time God could do anything which is compatible with His own previous actions and his attributes of omnibenevolence and omniscience. As in, God’s omnipotence consists in His being able to do anything that He wills (as St Augustine originally contended), bearing in mind that an omniscient being would not will anything contrary to what He has previously willed or which does not bring about the best possible world. This is a coherent explanation of God’s omnipotence which is better than St Anselm’s explanation in making sense of the Bible, and in making sense of God’s tendency to act in some situations and not in others. If God, from his omniscient (although temporal) perspective, could see that X action would bring about a worse outcome than doing nothing, then He would do nothing. Nevertheless, God’s omniscience could not entail His ability to know the outcomes of free actions, because He in His omnipotence made them free, so God’s assessment of the situation must needs be dynamic and ever-changing. Despite this, Swinburne’s account of God’s relationship with time is unsuccessful in explaining how God’s actions could be omnipotent in an absolute sense… God cannot break the laws of logic (as JL Mackie demanded that an omnipotent being should be able to do) because those same laws depend on God’s previous actions in creating said laws. In this regard, Anselm’s four-dimensionalism is more persuasive than Swinburne’s understanding, because being in-time Swinburne’s God is constrained in the present moment by His own past actions, which seems more of a constraint than actions which appear to be at different times to us having to be consistent with each other within God’s single, timeless creative act. Further, while Swinburne’s God can’t know the outcomes of free actions, and while this facilitates libertarian free will and genuine moral responsibility, this also radically limits God’s knowledge of the future, as human actions affect so much, given climate-change even the existence of the Earth. In supporting God’s knowledge of how events would seem to us from any given point in time as well as maintaining God’s knowledge of every moment as present, Anselm’s four-dimensionalism makes more sense of God’s knowledge than traditional Presentism, which holds that God knows every moment as present, but not which moment is present to us. It also makes more sense than Swinburne’s account of God’s knowledge, whereby God’s knowledge is radically limited by His decision to self-limit when it comes to the outcomes of free actions. Overall, while Swinburne’s account of God’s eternity is much more useful for Christianity than St Anselm’s, it offers interpretations of God’s attributes which turn out to be almost as empty as those of the Classical Theists. It seems that while St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time successfully, so also other thinkers fail to resolve this problem.

In conclusion, St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time successfully. Yet, this problem remains without a resolution. Classical theism renders God’s attributes empty words and faith in His existence pointless and yet Theistic Personalism, such as presented by Richard Swinburne, renders God’s attributes almost equally empty and surrenders the classical arguments as direct support for their God’s existence along the way. Much as Theistic Personalists like to co-opt the classical arguments for God’s existence to serve in cumulative arguments for God’s existence, or to defend the “reasonableness” of faith… they ignore or evade the fact that these same arguments support a God who is timeless-eternal and not a God who is everlasting-in-time. In the end, they like St Anselm must make a choice… either accept all of the implications of a rationally defensible faith-position and abandon Christianity, or stop appealing to reason at all and accept that faith in an everlasting God with meaningful attributes can only be based on experience.

Critically evaluate Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument. [40] 

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

The ontological argument is the name that Kant himself assigned to arguments which attempt to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.  Starting with an a priori definition of God, such as that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” (St Anselm, Proslogion II) or that God is “supremely perfect” (Descartes, Meditation V), ontological arguments show that existence – or necessary existence – is part of that definition and thus that God’s existence is de dicto necessary, as the fact that a man is unmarried is de dicto necessary if he is a bachelor.  Having coined the term “ontological argument”, Kant went on to criticise these arguments in the opening to his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), arguing that the arguments fail because 1) all existential statements must be synthetic, 2) existence is not a perfection and 3) existence is not a predicate.  He concludes that the ontological argument is “so much labour and effort lost” because it cannot do what it sets out to do and prove God’s existence from reason alone.  Nevertheless, despite being enormously influential, Kant’s criticisms fail to establish the impossibility of an ontological argument for God’s existence because they depend on Kant’s worldview which he asserts dogmatically and fails to argue for. 

Kant’s claim that the ontological argument fails because all existential statements must be synthetic is nothing more than an assertion of his own critical worldview, developed in the years after Hume “awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers and gave a completely different direction to my enquiries…” in 1770.  Kant claims that “If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…” He points out that there is nothing self-contradictory about saying “God does not exist”, because existence cannot be part of the concept of God, but must always be established empirically, synthetically, so that existence is always contingent and includes the possibility of non-existence. Yet, what privileges a posteriori knowledge over a priori knowledge, beyond Kant’s assertion?  As GW Hegel noticed straightaway and as WV Quine late pointed out in his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) Kant simply asserts that meaningful claims must be either synthetic or analytic and that all existential claims must be synthetic.  Who says that the empirical senses are the arbiters of existence or that nothing can be said to exist that is incapable of being experienced through the senses?  How could it be reasonable to suggest that the senses of a hairless ape inhabiting temperate regions of an insignificant planet orbiting a small star on an outer spiral of the milky way provide the only window on reality?  As Plato and Descartes would have agreed, the “reality” we experience through our senses is ever-changing, imperfect and seen through the filter of senses and concepts in the mind.  Concepts and ideas are permanent and our window on them through reason less misty, so it is more reasonable to see these as ultimate reality.  Further, for followers of Wittgenstein, even if Kant’s worldview is accepted, as Norman Malcolm pointed out, Kant’s worldview and thus “language game” is just one out of many.  To those who hold a different worldview – such as a Platonic worldview in which ultimate reality is metaphysical and the means of accessing it reason – the claim that all existential statements must be synthetic is untrue and unconvincing.  It follows that Kant’s criticism fails to destroy the possibility of an ontological proof for God’s existence.  

Kant’s claim that the ontological argument also fails because existence is not a perfection fails because, as Charles Hartshorne pointed out, while ordinary contingent existence is not a perfection, necessary existence might well be.  Kant’s example of 100 thalers being the same in concept whether it exists or not, and not 101 thalers or 150 by existing, seems to make his point convincingly… and yet neither Anselm nor Descartes conceives of God’s existence being like the existence of other, contingent things.  A chocolate cake, a unicorn, a man or an island might be said to exist or not to exist, but only God can necessarily exist, so while existence might not alter the concept of cake, unicorn, man or island, necessary existence is of the essence of God as the supremely perfect being.  Charles Hartshorne suggested that Anselm’s ontological argument in Prosologion 3 might well evade Kant’s criticism that existence is not a perfection for this reason, nevertheless, Kant would reject this criticism of his point, rejecting the whole concept of necessary existence.  As he had already said, all existential statements must be synthetic, so necessary existence is, in Kant’s worldview, impossible.  JN Findlay noted this, suggesting that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.” (Findlay, 1948) And that Anselm’s ontological argument in Proslogion III, by demonstrating how God’s contingent existence is impossible, shows that God’s existence is impossible because nothing can necessarily exist.  Yet, as I have already argued, Findlay and Kant are doing nothing more than asserting their own worldview, which excludes necessary existence not because it is inconceivable but because it is not compatible with their stated position which privileges things which can be experienced through the empirical senses. Further, as Hartshorne also pointed out, if it makes sense to talk about God’s necessary non-existence then it makes just as much sense to talk about God’s necessary existence. And, as Norman Malcolm pointed out, what is possible and impossible depends more on our language game than on what it might or might not refer to objectively.  It seems that in arguing that existence is not a perfection Kant got no further than Gaunilo had in refuting the ontological argument; again he just asserted that it was incompatible with his own limited worldview.  

Finally, Kant wrongly argued that existence is not a predicate.  By this Kant meant that existence cannot be accidentally predicated of God, because – as Anselm had pointed out – God’s existence is not something that might or might not be true of God.  Also, existence is wrongly used as an accidental predicate in relation to other things, because it adds nothing to the concept of the object (is not a perfection).  Rather, existence is the basis on which anything else can meaningfully be predicated.  As Russell pointed out, if I say “the present King of France is bald” I imply that there is a present King of France, which makes my predication of baldness meaningful.  If there is no present King of France, predicating anything of him is meaningless.  Similarly, if I say that God exists, I imply that there is a God who exists, smuggling my conclusion into my premises and in this way begging the question.  It follows that existence is not an accidental predicate and could not be used as one of God even if it were.  Further, existence cannot be essentially predicated of anything because… all existential statements must be synthetic. Here again, Kant reverts to asserting his worldview.  While He is right to point out that existence is not an accidental predicate because it is not a perfection, this is beside the point when it comes to the Ontological Argument, as Anselm pointed out in his Responsio to Gaunilo.  In this context, the question concerns whether existence is of the essence and nature of God, whether God necessarily exists.  As Hartshorne reasoned, necessary existence might well be predicated essentially of God, even if contingent existence cannot be used as an accidental predicate of anything.  For Hartshorne there are three alternatives for us to consider: 

i.God is impossible 

ii.God is possible, but may or may not exist 

iii.God exists necessarily. 

because God cannot be just a possibility, since he is by definition preeminent, so God’s existence is necessary.  Hartshorne’s modal ontological argument has been refined in different ways, including by Plantinga and Craig, but in essence – for those who share his worldview at least – it proves God’s necessary existence.  It seems that Kant’s criticism that existence is not a predicate fails to undermine the ontological argument either, at least beyond those who share his worldview.   

In conclusion, Kant’s criticisms of the Ontological Argument are persuasive if and only if you share his limited and dogmatic worldview.  Of course, many Philosophers did and do share this worldview – including Lotze, Schopenhauer, Russell and Findlay – and they will not accept the existence of other worldviews because it is part of their worldview to see their own perspective as the only truthful perspective on reality.  Nevertheless, for anybody who holds a different worldview – such as for St Anselm, Descartes, Hartshorne or Malcolm – Kant’s criticisms are ineffective and there is still the possibility of proving God’s existence a priori, from reason alone.  If ultimate reality is metaphysical and accessed through reason not empirical experience, and if existence is not defined in terms of being contingent existence, then the concept of God can de dicto necessarily contain His necessary existence despite His being incapable of empirical observation.  

Is there really a moral difference between killing somebody and letting somebody die? [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

The answer to this question seems obvious. Legally, there is a significant difference between killing someone and letting them die. Killing somebody by active means, depending on the circumstances, might be treated as murder, manslaughter or causing death by dangerous driving for example, all of which are subject to serious punishments. On the other hand, letting somebody die might attract no penalty at all, because this is what we all have to do at some point when medical options are unavailable or not in a person’s best interests. In the case of Airedale NHS Trust v. Bland, the House of Lords judgement “thou shall not kill, but thou needst not strive officiously to keep alive.” When it is in a patient’s best interests it can be the right thing to do to do nothing and let them die. Even where a doctor is negligent and allows somebody to die who might have been saved the penalty is much, much less than if they actively killed somebody – and usually covered by insurance. Nevertheless, despite the obvious answer, the question concerns the moral and not the legal difference between killing and letting die. The answer to this is more contentious. On the one hand traditional Christian Ethics and Kantian Ethics would agree with the law, that there is the world of difference between killing and letting die, but on the other hand, Utilitarianism and Situation Ethics as consequentialist approaches to decision-making would reject that distinction, arguing that the effects of both are the same so as actions they are morally equivalent. Nevertheless, the claim that killing and letting die are morally equivalent is not persuasive. Consider other examples whereby the same effects are achieved by different means. Is there a moral difference between actively lying to a friend or not telling them something that you might have? Is there a moral difference between making somebody homeless and failing to help a homeless person by housing them? Most people would see acts of omission (failing to do good) as less morally serious than acts of commission (i.e. actively doing wrong), so there is a moral difference between killing and letting die.

Firstly, the fact that there is a difference between killing and letting die is supported by the Bible, which distinguishes between things we do intentionally and accidentally and things done actively and passively. In the Old Testament the penalty for murder (intentional, active killing of a person) was death [Genesis 9:6], but nobody suggested that fellow citizens should be executed for failing to feed famine victims. The moral instruction to leave crops for the poor to glean existed of course [Leviticus 23:22], but there was no specific and individual penalty for ignoring it. While Prophets warned that the people would be punished collectively for ignoring the rights of the poor and vulnerable [e.g. Amos 2], suggesting that ignoring these rights is immoral and against the will of God, there can be no doubt that there is a moral difference between active, intentional killing (murder) and letting die, whether intentionally or otherwise. On the other hand, in the New Testament Jesus equated the intention with the action in his moral teaching. In Matthew 5 He taught that anger was morally equivalent to murder, a lustful look morally equivalent with adultery. By this logic, allowing somebody to die with malign intent would be the equivalent of murder, and yet this principle has rarely, if ever, been adopted by Christian ethics. Perhaps the key to this issue is what the word “morally” means. Because it is often impossible to know what motivated an action it is not possible to put a lot of weight on intentions in law or in formal Christian ethics. A person might even be unsure about their own motivations, so it is extremely difficult to assess these objectively. Nevertheless, Christians believe that God knows the inmost secrets of our hearts, being aware of motivations that we might not even be aware of ourselves [Psalm 139]. In this case, intentions might make all the difference to the moral status of an action in God’s eyes, while in the eyes of formal Christian ethics they cannot. Having said that, a Roman Catholic might argue that the Church has been given the authority to “bind and loose” Matthew 18:18, and this would suggest that the moral judgement of the Church – which cannot give much weight to intentions – still applies in heaven. This suggests that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die, whatever the situation or motivations, although that does not mean that letting die is always morally permissable.

Secondly, most versions of Natural Law (used alongside the Bible and Church teaching as the basis for Roman Catholic Ethics) teach that actions are more significant than intentions, which suggests that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die. For example, because of Natural Law Catholic ethics would see it as far worse to use artificial contraception or abortion than to remain celibate and so childless. Contraception and abortion actively prohibit a basic human good – life – while celibacy might be necessary in order to achieve another human good, as in the case of Priests. Morally, there is a real difference between doing something – often for an evil intention – and committing not to do it for a good intention. In Summa 2i, 20, 1 Aquinas explains that an action may be good when carried out with a good intention, but morally evil when carried out with an evil intention. He uses the example of giving alms – good when done out of agape-love and evil when done for vainglory. This implies that saving a life might be good when in the best interests of a patient, but morally evil when done for other reasons, in which case allowing to die might be morally preferable. The same reasoning might suggest that killing would be morally wrong when done with a malign intention and potentially right when done with a loving intention, yet Aquinas stops short of this conclusion. He reasons that while it is a duty to follow synderesis, even if it leads us to make such a faulty decision, this does not excuse us if we carry out actions which contradict conscientia, as killing a person always would because it actively prohibits the basic human good of life. It follows that the wrongness of killing is not dependent on motivations, and yet the situation does make some difference. Aquinas acknowledged the difference between not acting in cases where you can and should act and not acting when you can’t do anything or shouldn’t because of an order etc. He wrote “the cause of what follows from want of action is not always the agent as not acting; but only then when the agent can and ought to act.” [Summa 2i, 6, 3] This suggests that letting a relative die when you can’t help or have been ordered, such as by a court, not to would be morally very different from letting a patient die as a doctor when you could and are allowed to help. Further, in Summa 2i, 76, 3 Aquinas notes that ignorance might reduce the sinfulness of an action, because it makes some actions involuntary, when “voluntariness is essential to sin.” In this way, there would be a moral difference between a person whose synderesis led them to kill an elderly relative out of compassion and a person who intentionally killed an elderly relative in order to benefit from a will. Nevertheless, this interpretation would be strongly rejected by the Roman Catholic Church today, which teaches that any active euthanasia is the moral equivalent of murder, evil. In 2020 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has reaffirmed Roman Catholic teaching that euthanasia is an “intrinsically evil act”. The letter Samaritanus Bonus: On the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life described assisted dying and euthanasia as “homicide”, and said that the sacraments must be withheld from those who are planning to end their lives. This underlines the moral difference that the Church perceives between killing somebody – regardless of motivations – and letting die.

Thirdly, Kantian Ethics agrees that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die. For Kant, the maxim behind our actions is the action considered independently of any context and, if it cannot be universalised, it is absolutely and always wrong. In this way killing a hated enemy, killing an elderly relative to benefit from their will, killing a relative who is begging for an easeful death and suicide are all morally equivalent. Because the maxim cannot be universalised, killing is absolutely wrong. Despite this, Kant also taught that intentions are even more significant in determining the moral status of an action than the action in itself. Famously, he began the “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals” (1785) by stating that “Nothing in the world—or out of it!—can possibly be conceived that could be called ‘good’ without qualification except a GOOD WILL.” If an action is undertaken out of fear or habit or for any other reason than freely, for duty’s sake, then this renders the action morally wrong, which pollutes the will and prevents it being worthy of the eternal reward which we must postulate as existing for good wills, so that they can do as they feel that they should and so that the universe is fair. Further, Kant taught that a negative duty i.e. not to kill, lie or steal always trumps a positive duty e.g. to feed the hungry. This suggests that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die; while in some circumstances both are immoral, killing (achieving the end by active means) is always worse. Nevertheless, Peter Singer would reject this conclusion, arguing that there is little moral difference between killing and letting die. In “Practical Ethics” he argued that there is no moral difference between aborting a near-term foetus because it has a disability and killing a newborn infant. In fact, he argued that it is morally preferable, even a moral duty, to kill a newborn who is suffering and who has no hope of a quality life so that money spent on neonatal care could be spent more productively elsewhere. In “Unsanctifying Human Life” Singer and Kuhse argue the same with regard to Euthanasia, suggesting that it is morally preferable to kill an elderly relative with dementia than to allow them to die – slowly and expensively – while others suffer for lack of healthcare resources. Further, in “The Life you can Save” Singer argued that neglecting an opportunity to help somebody and killing them are morally equivalent. He used the example of a child drowning in a pond, pointing out that we would feel a moral imperative to ruin expensive shoes in order to save them… and that we should equally feel a moral imperative to save a child on the other side of the world by sending the £200 our shoes cost to a charity. Through all these cases, Singer makes a fair point in pointing out that we are wrong to place so much weight on the moral difference between killing and letting die. It is helpful to consider that letting die might well cause more suffering and that killing should not be the taboo that it is to most people, when in practical terms it may be preferable. Singer is also right to point out how most people wrongly prefer people who are close to us and choose to ignore those who are further from us, whether in space or time, meaning that we tend to be thoughtless and ignore the moral imperative to use our money wisely and avoid decisions which – however unintentionally – harm others now or in the future. Nevertheless, however right Singer is to make a theoretical point as regards the equivalence of killing and letting die, in practice it is not reasonable to treat the two as moral equivalents, because the law deals in rules and generalities, not intentions and specific situations. Further, as Onora O’Neill has argued, we can’t agree that failing to help somebody in need – such as by giving money for famine relief – is morally the same as killing them. While both are morally bad, killing is worse because it is active and intentionally evil.

Despite this, most consequentialists will agree with Singer, arguing that there is no moral difference between killing and letting die, because the consequences, which justify an action or condemn it, could be the same either way. Take for example a case of assisted dying; the patient is dying, so the only factor that decides the morality of killing them or letting them die is the amount of pleasure or pain that results from the action, so far as the patient and other interested parties are concerned. As Bentham pointed out “all other things being equal, poetry is as good as pushpin” or, in other words, what you do to produce the results is immaterial; all that matters, morally, is the results. This means that there is no essential moral difference between killing and letting die such as would make one better than the other in all situations. It may be that letting someone die produces more suffering than killing them would, as in a case of a patient dying of motor-neurone disease who has asked to “die with dignity” and whose relatives and friends are all supportive. In other cases however, killing would undoubtedly cause more suffering than allowing to die, such as when the law allows passive euthanasia but not active. In such a case, killing might get a doctor struck off and even imprisoned, even when their intentions were altruistic and good. The case of Dr Cox and Lilian Boyes shows how this could be the case. While the situation makes all the difference in terms of the moral status of the action, Utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham would reject the idea that intentions make any moral difference; as he argues “nature has placed mankind under two sovereign masters; the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain” so we should “always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number…” what we intend is not at issue, only what we achieve in respect of pleasure and pain in society. This highlights one of the problems with consequentialism – what Peter Singer has identified as the biggest problem that Utilitarianism faces – the Problem of Prediction. That is, consequentialism depends on our ability to calculate the pleasure and/or pain resulting from possible actions so that we can choose the one which is morally preferable in maximising pleasure and minimising pain, in advance of doing anything. In practice, our calculations are often flawed meaning that while we intend to minimise suffering, in the end we fail to do this. Because intentions don’t count and the only thing that justifies an action, morally, is the consequences the agent takes a risk every time they act, trusting that what they intend will happen and so ensure that they have done what is right. In a case of euthanasia, for example, the situation is further complicated by the difficulty of assessing someone else’s pain, whether in the person dying or in their relatives and friends. How can we measure grief or accurately determine whether it is outweighed by the suffering a person dying, say of cancer, experiences in their final hours? Bentham’s felicific calculus, while well meant, is of little practical use when it comes to making such assessments and only serves to highlight another significant criticism of consequentialist ethics, that they are subjective. Of course, rule utilitarianism, such as that proposed by Peter Singer in recent years, gets round both the problem of prediction and the subjectivity problem by developing rules on the basis of the utilitarian maxim, which are then applied in most or all cases regardless of the details. Yet, as RM Hare pointed out, rule utilitarianism means that there is little difference between a Utilitarian and say a Kantian approach. Also, in answer to this question, it would probably mean that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die because rules tend to be framed around actions, not omissions and because it is hard to imagine a rule prohibiting letting people die being practical in many cases!

In conclusion, there is a moral difference between killing and letting die because this is the case in law, in the Bible, in Natural Law and Kantian Ethics. As has been discussed, it is also true in Rule Utilitarianism, which is really the only practical version of Utilitarianism.

There is no such thing as a soul. Discuss [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Materialists would agree that there is no such thing as a soul, arguing that we are our bodies, and the sensation of consciousness can be explained solely by the operation of our physical brains.  Dualists would disagree, arguing that “I” am separate from my body and exist primarily as a soul or mind, which might even be separable from my body, surviving death.  Overall, given developments within neuroscience, materialism is the more persuasive position, so it is fair to say that there is no such thing as a soul.

Firstly, Aristotle argued that the soul is the formal cause of the body.  It makes us human and gives us our individual personality, but it can’t be separated from the body.  He used the example of a wax-seal to make his point.  Just as the shape of the seal can’t exist without the wax, so the soul cannot exist separately from the body.  Nevertheless, Aristotle did believe that the soul is a separate substance, sufficiently as to have three parts.  He even speculated that part of the rational soul, the intellect, might survive death.  In this way, Aristotle was not a straightforward materialist.  Yet Aristotle worked millennia before science gave us an understanding of the brain.  By the 1940s Gilbert Ryle was able to refine Aristotle’s model of the soul, suggesting that the “official doctrine” of dualism was based on a category mistake and that there is no separate “soul” substance.  For Ryle, just as the foreigner watching cricket makes a mistake to ask to see the “team spirit” as if it was another player or piece of equipment, so the philosopher who identifies the soul as something with separate, let alone separable, existence is making an error rooted in our misuse of language.  Today, Susan Blackmore would agree.  While she still sees the hard problem of consciousness as unsolved, she rejects dualism as unscientific.  Daniel Dennett agrees, saying that dualism is “giving up” on the future ability of neuroscience to explain why we feel conscious and separate from our bodies but are in fact only our bodies.  In these ways, it is fair to say that there is no such thing as a soul. 

Secondly, classic arguments for dualism are flawed, so that there is no evidence for a soul beyond that most people feel they have one and, as Brian Davies pointed out, “just because I feel sober doesn’t mean that I am!” 

  • Plato’s arguments for substance dualism are archaic and unconvincing.  In the Phaedo Socrates appeals to the prevalence of opposites or dualisms in nature, to our affinity with the world of forms, to recollection and to the simplicity of the soul to support Plato’s claim that we are primarily an immortal soul.  Yet what modern Philosopher will be convinced to believe that something exists because lots of things seem to have a pair… light has darkness, day has night… so of course the body must have a soul.  What modern Philosopher would accept that our soul must be indestructible because it is simple and simple because it seems not to change as our body changes.  Not very persuasive!  Also, what modern Philosopher would accept that we must be primarily an immaterial soul because we have an intuitive grasp of mathematics or logic or an “affinity” with immaterial ideas in a speculative “world of forms”?  There is no evidence for past lives, no evidence for a world of forms and no evidence for an immaterial soul.  Plato’s argument is nothing more than assertion… I think therefore “I” must be made of thought. 
  • The same goes for Descartes, the other leading substance dualist.  His argument for the soul begins with his “foundational belief” that “I think therefore I am” from which he extrapolates that “I” am primarily what thinks… being a mind and not a brain.  Norman Malcolm identified the weakness of Descartes position when he wrote “If it were valid to argue ‘I can doubt that my body exists but not that I exist, ergo I am not my body’, it would be equally valid to argue ‘I can doubt that there exists a being whose essential nature is to think, but I cannot doubt that I exist, ergo I am not a being whose essential nature is to think’. Descartes is hoist with his own petard.” Further, even Descartes suggested that the brain must contain a seat of the soul, where the mind joins the body.  His suggestion that this was the Pineal Gland, just because it is shaped like a third inner eye, betrays the unscientific nature of his argument.  Although Popper and Eccles presented a modern version of Descartes substance dualism in Critical Dualism, suggesting that the seat of the soul is in the frontal lobes of the brain and not the pineal gland, their position still fails to attract scientific support.  As Dennett said, dualism smacks of mysticism and magic and amounts to “giving up” on science. 

In these ways also, it is fair to say that there is no such thing as a soul. 

On the other hand, Popper also suggested that World Three amounts to empirical evidence for the existence of World Two – the human mind.  The fact that great works of art, literature, architecture exist is material proof of the existence of the minds that gave them shape.  It may be that the mind is not separate or separable from the brain or body, but that does not mean that it does not exist when its products are evident all around us, including on this page.  Further, HH Price and Peter Vardy argue that the existence of the soul could make sense of the full human experience, which includes dreams and paranormal experiences.  Surely it is unscientific to dismiss all those aspects of the human experience which can’t be adequately explained without a separate soul, just because they point to the existence of a soul which can’t otherwise be evidenced?  Nevertheless, neither of these arguments for a soul are credible.  Popper’s World Three could just as well serve as evidence that human brains have amazing computational power.  When a computer generates complex, unique products like Bitcoins, nobody speculates that the products are evidence that there is something in the computer that might survive if it was unplugged and disassembled!  As Ryle would have said, this is like the myth of the “ghost in the machine” – better evidence for lazy thinking and superstition than it is for the soul.  Further, dreams and paranormal experiences have been investigated by Blackmore and can be explained in terms of (ab)normal brain activity, mistakenly interpreted, or as fakes.  The fact that even when there are credible scientific explanations of such phenomena people still want to believe in the existence of a soul, and that belief in a soul remains so “sticky”, supports Dawkins suggestion that it is a meme or virus of the mind.  We find it easier to believe in a soul than to accept that we are “blind robot vehicles for those selfish molecules known as genes.”  Yet wishful thinking is no basis to believe that something exists, so there is no such thing as the soul. 

In conclusion, there is no such thing as a soul.  Ryle, Blackmore and Dawkins were correct when they identified the origins of belief in the soul as a “category mistake”, a metaphor and a meme.  What we feel when we think, the sense that “I” am not my body and the “me” that seems to stay the same as I age… these sensations are the products of the material operations of the brain, just as works of art and architecture are.

[40 minutes, A Level notes]

Assess the view that the Ontological Argument depends on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome.

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

The Ontological Argument was first proposed by St Anselm in 1078. In the Proslogion he tried to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone, first by defining God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”… as existence “in re” rather than only “in intellectu” makes something greater, God must therefore exist, and then by claiming that necessary existence is greater than contingent existence and so must be a property of God. The Ontological Argument soon attracted criticism, first from Gaunilo of Marmoutiers whose “on behalf of the fool” suggested that it seems like a joke to suggest that something must exist just because it is perfect, and then from Aquinas, who pointed out that “because we do not know the nature of God, His existence is not self-evident to us.” Nevertheless, while most people are sceptical of Anselm’s argument, as Bertrand Russell pointed out “it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.” As it happens, the argument – while containing some logical fallacies – does not depend on these so that they cannot be overcome. It is a valid argument… the question of its soundness depends on one’s worldview.

Firstly, it could be said that both versions of Anselm’s argument depend upon the logical fallacy of bare assertion, as in they assert that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” without proper argument. Nevertheless, all a priori arguments start with a priori premises, definitions which depend on a priori knowledge (reason alone) and often cannot be argued for using evidence. For example, if I argued that as bachelors are unmarried men and Simon is unmarried, that Simon must be a bachelor, it is not reasonable for you to demand that I demonstrate that bachelors are unmarried men from observations before proceeding. Similarly, if I argued that 2+2 = 4, I must begin with a priori knowledge of the numbers 2 and 4 and the concept of addition. It is not reasonable to ask for an argument that 2=2 and 4=4 before accepting that 2+2 = 4… because any sane person knows what 2 and 4 refer to and what the concept of addition entails. Anselm pointed out that anyone who claims that God is not “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” must be a fool. How can anyone think that there could be something greater than God… if they do, then they have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of God. In this way, while Anselm does assert his premises, he is justified in doing so and this “logical fallacy” is not a serious criticism of the ontological argument. Similarly, Anselm’s argument could be accused of begging the question, meaning that his conclusion of God’s necessary existence is contained within the premises. Yet surely this is the whole point of a deductive argument! Nobody criticises the argument 2+2 = 4 because the concept of 4 contains the concept of 2 twice. What Anselm is trying to do is to clarify that our concept of God includes His necessary existence, so it is unreasonable to expect Anselm’s conclusion not to contain his premises. In both these ways, Anselm’s Ontological Argument does not depend on any logical fallacies that cannot be overcome.

Secondly, it could be said that Anselm’s argument is guilty of being ad hominem and of appealing to authority. Anselm certainly attacks atheists as fools and quotes from Psalm 14:1 as part of his argument. Nevertheless, neither Anselm’s colourful language nor his Biblical allusion are part of his reasoning, so his argument could be stated without either quite easily. More seriously, addition, Anselm could be accused of asking a loaded question of atheists. Is God “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”? The atheist is railroaded into answering yes, in which case they have already admitted the conclusion, or no, in which case they are a fool… Yet as Bertrand Russell pointed out, asking a question about the properties of a non-existent object is meaningless. If I asked you “is the present King of France bald?” I feel bound to give a yes or no answer, when in fact I can’t give either because there is no present King of France. Similarly, in asking atheists to answer the question “is God that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”, Anselm could be bamboozling the atheist into answering yes or no, when either option would mean that they cede their point. This seems a lot like the either-or fallacy as well, with Anselm excluding options other than yes or no. However, it is clear that everybody, atheists included, have a concept of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” in their minds, meaning that He undoubtedly exists “in intellectu” in a way that the present King of France, perfect islands etc. do not. As Anselm pointed out in his “Responsio” to Gaunilo, there is a difference between islands and God, in that islands can only exist contingently whereas God exists, if he exists at all, necessarily. This means that Russell’s point about the present King of France is not relevant to the Ontological Argument, as when Anselm asks “is God greater than that which can be conceived of”, he is justified in assuming that the knowledge of God exists a priori in intellectu, when the knowledge of contingent things – whether Kings or Islands – can only be a posteriori and synthetic. Kant is right to say “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence…” when it comes to any and all contingently existing things, but as Anselm pointed out, God is not like other things, so the ontological argument could only ever apply to God. It seems that Anselm’s argument survives the accusation of depending on these logical fallacies as well.

On the other hand, Kant argued that Anselm creates the whole category of “necessary existence” to get around Gaunilo’s obvious criticism that what applies to perfect Gods should apply equally to perfect islands, unicorns and such. In this way, Anselm’s argument would depend on special pleading. Kant argued that existence involves having the potential to be and not be, so necessary existence is a contradictory concept like a square circle and so impossible. He reasoned that because existence must include having the potential to be and not be, existence cannot be used as an essential predicate of anything. Later in 1948 JN Findlay went further, claiming that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.” For Findlay, if there are three options – God is impossible, God may or may not exist or God necessarily exists, then the Ontological Argument serves to show that God must be impossible and necessarily not exist, because if God may or may not exist He wouldn’t be God and necessary existence is impossible. Nevertheless, Hartshorne rejected this, arguing that if Findlay says that necessary existence is impossible, so must be necessary non-existence. Further, Kant’s definition of existence applies to contingent existence only, as does his claim that existence cannot be an essential predicate, necessary existence does not include the potential to exist and not exist by definition and so it could be an essential predicate of God. For Hartshorne, there is nothing impossible about necessary existence. We can conceive of God necessarily existing in much the same way as we can conceive of a three-sided triangle, when we cannot conceive of a square circle. As Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig have pointed out, if God’s necessary existence is even possible – in the way that a unicorn or a Gruffalo is possible but a five-sided triangle is not – then God exists necessarily in every possible world. Of course, Kant would reject this, pointing out that we have no experience of “necessary existence”, making it a “cupola of judgement”, being outside our possible existence and entirely speculative. Nevertheless, although Kant’s criticisms are coherent with and conclusively destroy the Ontological Argument within his worldview, Kant’s worldview has been criticised by Quine for depending on dogmas and is not shared by everybody. As Norman Malcolm pointed out, it is clear that “necessary existence” is possible and not contradictory within some “forms of life” and their language games. This suggests that at least within these forms of life, necessary existence is not an impossible or invented category of existence, so Anselm’s argument does not depend on special pleading.

Further, other critics suggest that Anselm’s argument takes advantage of the useful ambiguity in the word “necessary”, thus depending on the fallacy of equivocation. The word necessary can mean de re necessary, in the sense it is used in Aquinas’ third way, meaning that God is self-explaining, doesn’t depend on anything, fully actual. The word necessary can also mean de dicto necessary, in the sense that it means that God’s existence is part of the concept of God so God’s non-existence cannot be asserted without contradiction. For example, saying “this triangle has five angles” would be to assert a contradiction, because the word tri-angle necessarily and by definition entails having only three angles. Could it be that the word “necessary” means two different things and that Anselm shifts from one meaning to the other to bamboozle us with a what Schopenhauer called a “sleight of hand trick?” While the concept of necessary existence is confusing and while the word “necessary” is used in both senses in the argument, the argument does not depend on ambiguity or equivocation because there is what Hegel called a “unity of thought and of existence in the infinite.” While there are two meanings to the word “necessary” these are related in that de dicto necessity refers to concepts and the rules of logic that originate in and depend on God’s de re necessity. Of course, Aquinas’ criticism of the attempt to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone is apt here. Given that most – if not all – people struggle to “conceive of” God’s nature, how can we analyse that nature to find necessary existence – another almost inconceivable idea – within it? Aquinas as right that while God’s existence may be self-evident, it is not self-evident to us, and therefore that it is better to demonstrate His existence from what is known, observations. Nevertheless, the question asks whether the Ontological Argument depends on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome and the answer to that must be that it does not. There is no equivocation or fundamental ambiguity on which the argument depends.

In conclusion, Russell was right to say that “it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.” The Ontological Argument does not depend on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome. It is a valid argument, but depends for its soundness on the particular worldview or form of life within which it is advanced.

“Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools!” Discuss

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

In his Proslogium Chapter II St Anselm quoted Psalm 14:1 “the fool says in his heart there is no God” and then attempted to demonstrate that atheists are indeed fools in asserting a straight contradiction – that God (who necessarily exists by definition) does not exist.  Gaunilo responded in his wittily titled “On behalf of the Fool”, using his famous “perfect island” analogy to reduce St Anselm’s argument to absurdity as part of a more sophisticated multi-pronged attack.  Despite the fact that St Anselm attempted to refute Gaunilo’s points in his Responsio, Gaunilo succeeded in showing that Atheists are not in fact fools. 

Firstly, Gaunilo reduced Anselm’s argument in Proslogium II to absurdity, pointing out that “if a man should try to prove to me by such reasoning that this island truly exists… either I should believe that he was jesting, or I know not which I ought to regard as the greater fool: myself supposing I should allow him this proof or him, if he should suppose that he had established with any certainly the existence of this island…”  Anselm was right to object, noting how God is not like an island or any other thing in time and space, so that while God is capable of necessarily existing, the island is not.  “I promise confidently that if any man shall devise anything existing either in reality of in concept alone (except that than which nothing greater can be conceived) to which he can adapt the sequence of my reasoning, I will discover that thing, and will give him his island, not to be lost again…” However, in practice Gaunilo’s point still stands because asserting God’s necessary existence cannot take us beyond the world of words and ideas. As Kant (in his Critique of Pure Reason 1787) and later Russell pointed out, existence is not a predicate and adds nothing to the concept of an object to make it more perfect and therefore a necessary property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”.  Kant wrote “Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment.” Further, to exist means to exist within – or at least to have an effect within – time and space.  As Kant later pointed out, contingency is of the essence of existence – having the capability to exist or not exist, to exist here and not there or now and not then.  To use Kant’s words, all existential claims must be synthetic; he wrote “If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…”  While Kant’s criticism has been rejected by both Hegel and Quine for being “dogmatic” and based on assertion rather than proper argument, and while Norman Malcolm also rejected Kant’s claim writing  “In those complex systems of thought, those “language games”, God has the status of a necessary being.  Who can doubt that?  I believe that we can rightly take the existence of those religious systems of thought in which God features as a necessary being as disproof of the dogma affirmed by Hume (and Kant of course) that no existential proposition may be necessary…”, in practice Kant’s criticism appeals to common sense, as Gaunilo’s did.  It is unreasonable to claim that something exists when there is no way to see hear, touch, smell or taste it and when its effects are not observable on things that we can hear, touch, see, smell or taste either.  It may be true that the meaning of words depends on how they are used rather than on what they refer to in some cases, but not when it comes to existence!  Whatever people understand by the word gravity within a form of life will not change the fact that if you jump off a cliff you will fall to your death.  Similarly, you can’t define something into existence; as Gaunilo rightly pointed out, to suggest otherwise can only be construed as “a charming joke” (Schopenhauer dismissed the Ontological argument for being such) or plain foolish.  In this way, Gaunilo succeeded in showing that atheists are not in fact fools, but that advocates of the Ontological Argument might well be.  

Secondly, Gaunilo is right to point out that Anselm’s claim that Atheists are fools because they hold a contradictory idea in their minds is mistaken.  While Anselm suggests that the atheist conceives of God – who necessarily exists – not existing in much the same way as a fool might conceive of a five-sided triangle, through simply not understanding anything, Gaunilo points out that people can conceive of lots of non-existing things without being in the slightest foolish.  Take the Gruffalo for one example… many people have an idea of this frightening creature in their mind, while also knowing that there is no such creature outside the pages of a storybook.  He wrote “in my understanding, as I still think, could be all sorts of things whose existence is uncertain, or which do not exist at all…”  Aquinas agreed with Gaunilo, writing “the opposite of the proposition “God exists” can be mentally admitted.” Summa Theologica 1:2:1 and much later, Kant also agreed that it is perfectly possible to conceive of God while rejecting any claim that God exists, writing “If then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…” Anselm tries in this as well to distinguish between God and other things, writing “if that thing can be conceived at all, it must exist” because God alone, as that than which nothing greater can be conceived of, must necessarily exist.  Later, Charles Hartshorne agreed with Anselm, pointing out that either God is impossible, or that he exists contingently or that he exists necessarily.  The Ontological Argument shows that God cannot exist contingently – or He would not be worthy of worship or “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” and Hartshorne argues that God’s existence is not impossible, leaving only the possibility that God exists necessarily.  Nevertheless, Gaunilo points out that Anselm is mistaken in claiming that because we can only conceive of God necessarily existing, he necessarily exists.  This is not how we conceive of things; the artist conceives of an object before they put brush to canvas, so the idea exists “in intellectu” before and prior it it being “in re” – the idea of an object and the object are two separate and separable things in all cases, including God.  I could conceive of God as a necessarily existing being, but my conception of him would be something separate from his actual existence as what I have conceived of, leaving open the possibility that He could be only an idea in the mind, however apparently contradictory that might be. Again, as Kant wrote, “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence..” In this way as well, therefore, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools.  

Thirdly, Gaunilo argues that some atheists could recognise the word “God” without having an idea of what God is sufficiently for it to contain a contradiction, which is convincing.  I might recognize the word “squircle” – and even begin to appreciate what concept it might refer to – while still unable to conceive of a square-circle properly.  The squircle is therefore not “in intellectu”, let alone “in re” despite my accepting the definition of a squircle as a square circle.  As Russell later pointed out, if I say “the present King of France is bald” it seems like I am making a sensible proposition that is capable of being true or false, but actually because there is no present King of France, the proposition is not capable of being either true or false and is therefore meaningless.  Is it not possible that when the Atheist accepts that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” they do no more than you might in momentarily wondering if the present King of France is bald? On reflection they then conclude that there is no present King of France, so the question is meaningless.  In relation to Anselm’s argument, the Atheist then reflects on the concept of necessary existence and concludes that it is impossible, so the concept of God is impossible and the Ontological argument meaningless.  Here as well, Gaunilo showed that the Atheist is not a fool, but rather a person too sophisticated to be taken in by what Schopenhauer called Anselm’s “sleight of hand trick“.  

Finally, Gaunilo points out that nobody can have a complete conception of the nature of God, because God’s nature is to be mysterious, unlike any other thing and greater than that which can be conceived of. It follows that – Atheist or not – without a clear idea of God it is impossible to analyse that idea and find existence or necessary existence within it.  He explained “I do not know that reality itself which God is, nor can I form a conjecture of that reality from some other like reality.  For you yourself assert that reality is such that there can be nothing else like it…” Later, Aquinas agreed, writing “because we do not know the nature of God, the existence of God is not self-evident” Summa 1.2.1 Although Anselm defends against this criticism vigorously, writing “It is evident to any rational mind, that by ascending from the lesser good to the greater, we can form a considerable notion of a being than which a greater is inconceivable” and “If he denies that a notion may be formed from other objects of a being than which a greater is inconceivable… let him remember that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world are clearly seen…” Gaunilo’s point stands because Anselm’s reasoning reduces God to being the greatest of things, rather than that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.  By Anselm’s own reasoning in Proslogion III God’s nature is not like the nature of other things and God’s greatness is not like the greatness of other things.  While other things exist contingently, God exists necessarily, so it is not possible to “ascend from the lesser good to the greater” or to build an understanding of God’s nature from an understanding of created things.  Further, in 1948 JN Findlay argued that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof.  For on that day, he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.”  If Anselm is serious in Proslogion III that necessary existence is a necessary property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” then in addition to making it impossible for anybody to have sufficient grasp of the concept of God to analyse it and find existence within it, it also makes God’s existence impossible.  As Findlay reasoned, a contingent being would not deserve worship & wouldn’t really be God, but a necessary being is a logical absurdity, meaning that Anselm’s argument proves that God’s existence is impossible.  In this way as well, therefore, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools… but JN Findlay showed that Anselm was! 

In conclusion, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools.  While Anselm easily heads off his “perfect island” criticism by pointing towards the more developed version of the argument he already presented in Proslogium III in his Responsio, Gaunilo’s full critique demonstrates that Anselm’s reasoning is unsound.  While Anselm’s a priori definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is reasonable, Gaunilo showed that he is wrong to assume that accepting this definition entails having a clear enough idea of God to analyse and find necessary existence within.  Gaunilo also showed that Anselm was wrong to ignore the existence of two separate stages in conceiving of any object, that of having an idea “in intellectu” and that of appreciating that the idea exists “in re.”  As Kant later agreed, it is perfectly possible to have an idea of a necessarily-existing being (God) while appreciating that there is no instance of such a being, however contradictory that might seem, because the world of ideas and the world of existence are separate and separable and it is not possible to define something into existence or prove God’s necessary existence from reason alone.