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Philosophy Papers #4
Two fatal errors in Anselm’s Ontological Argument
In this short work, the author sets out to show that there are two fatal errors in Anselm's Ontological Argument.
This work has been withdrawn by the author and is no longer available.
This work has been withdrawn by the author and is no longer available.
7 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 5, 2014
5 people want to read
About the author
Chris I. Naylor
16Ìýbooks35ÌýfollowersChris I. Naylor grew up in the English Midlands. At university he studied philosophy, which inevitably led to him writing humorous stories about wizards. After that he worked in an office for 30 years, mainly as a way of keeping out of the rain. He now lives in the south of England with his wife and a large hairy dog, and spends a surprising amount of his time making soup.
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September 28, 2014
Don't know how to review it,so I'll just offer a brief view of the contents. Anselm's ontological argument is an important argument among the proofs for the existence of God(the others being cosmological,causal,teleological and ethical). The author of this paper is trying to find two fallacies in this oft-debated argument.
Anselm's argument(as paraphrased by the author)-
1)The Fool(i.e. The biblical fool who has said in his heart that there is no God) nevertheless understands the notion of greatest conceivable object(literally,in Anselm,'something than which nothing greater can be conceived').
2)The Fool assumes that there is only an imaginary God,not an actual God.
3)However we can conceive of a still greater object than an imaginary greatest conceivable object,namely a greatest conceivable object that actually exists.
4)Any assumption leading to a contradiction is false. Therefore the Fool's assumption that there is only an imaginary God is false.
5)Therefore there is an actual greatest conceivable object,i.e. God actually exists.
The author finds two errors with this argument-the false comparison error and the harmless contradiction error.
False comparison error- the difference between actual and imaginary is not that of quantity,but of kind. Such things can't be compared. This error was first noticed by Kant.
Harmless contradiction error- contradictions exist in the real world and has no place in the imaginary. So it is unreasonable to expect an imaginary thing to follow the logical rules of the real world.
The whole argument is so cloudy that one can make a dozen errors from it. So what I don't understand is why the author limited it to two.
It was a text with a logical flow,paraphrasing arguments and analyzing in parts.
Anselm's argument(as paraphrased by the author)-
1)The Fool(i.e. The biblical fool who has said in his heart that there is no God) nevertheless understands the notion of greatest conceivable object(literally,in Anselm,'something than which nothing greater can be conceived').
2)The Fool assumes that there is only an imaginary God,not an actual God.
3)However we can conceive of a still greater object than an imaginary greatest conceivable object,namely a greatest conceivable object that actually exists.
4)Any assumption leading to a contradiction is false. Therefore the Fool's assumption that there is only an imaginary God is false.
5)Therefore there is an actual greatest conceivable object,i.e. God actually exists.
The author finds two errors with this argument-the false comparison error and the harmless contradiction error.
False comparison error- the difference between actual and imaginary is not that of quantity,but of kind. Such things can't be compared. This error was first noticed by Kant.
Harmless contradiction error- contradictions exist in the real world and has no place in the imaginary. So it is unreasonable to expect an imaginary thing to follow the logical rules of the real world.
The whole argument is so cloudy that one can make a dozen errors from it. So what I don't understand is why the author limited it to two.
It was a text with a logical flow,paraphrasing arguments and analyzing in parts.
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