Ontological Arguments from Anselm to Gödel

Ontological arguments seek to prove God's existence from the armchair. But are they any good? Let's tour some prominent ontological arguments and some prominent objections to help us find out.

OUTLINE

00:00 Intro
1:13 Anselm's Ontological Argument
4:19 Descartes’ Ontological Argument
5:37 Parodies
14:38 Modal Ontological Argument
22:23 Gödelian Ontological Argument
30:13 Dialectical problem
43:44 Riposte
45:43 Dilemma for the riposte
50:01 Another dialectical problem
56:30 Further criticisms
58:43 Bonus soccer

LINKS

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THE USUAL...

[the_real_espada]

My partner is currently under the impression that I am slightly crazy since all she heard in the background was positive property and negative property repeated in sentences, for about an hour :D

Great video and through analysis! I have no idea why this has only 5k views after almost 9 months. Vastly underrated. Like, share and subscribe is what I can do from my end.Thank you for putting this together.

[bengreen]

32% is the worst score possible. It's low enough that it shows sheer ignorance, and high enough to rule out luck or that you deliberately didn't try to pass it.

[ebrietassmaragdina]

I am not quite sure how to deal with ontological arguments when their advocates want to claim properties such as "being of which nothing greater can be thought". That is, in what sense is that being spoken of as "greater"? It seems obvious to me that terms like "better" or "greater" only make sense if they are tied to a particular subject (e.g., one person is greater than another in relation to his or her height). Not that such concepts can make sense in and of themselves.

[juanjaimes]

Great video, MoR. Personally, ontological arguments strike me as a "therefore God" without premises; I mean, the premises are there, but reading them I can't help but wonder if there is ANYONE out there who believes (or has started to believe) in God because of this. I'm sure philosophers enjoy the back-and-forth and can work wonders with the subject, but off the field it seems to me that ontological arguments only serve to silence atheists who have never heard of them.

[allisonsutherland]

Clearly, this video is that than which no greater can be conceived. Been waiting for another video on Ontological Arguments!

[christianidealism]

As a theist ive never been persuaded by ontological arguments. I find them interesting but in terms of proving Gods existence they do not do that.

And thats ok because most of our beliefs are supported by system of evidence not by any one deductive demonstration

[MiladTabasy]

I think Anselm is refering to the unity of ontology and epistemology in the essence of God: meaning that if you give a coherent definition of God you are actually showing his external existence.
Now why are epistemology and ontology united in God as the highest reality? Here is why:
1) Truth is existent
2) Existence is true
3) therefore existence and truth are one.
This means that truth (as an epistemological concept) is the same as existence (as an ontological concept) in God as the highest reality.

[dionysianapollomarx]

Cool. Skipped to the soccer to see if you got skills. Didn’t disappoint. Now returning to the start.

[danzo]

The problem here is one of essential vs. accidental properties. The properties involved in being a perfect pizza or a perfect test score do not follow from the definition or essence of a pizza or test score. It does not follow from the definition of pizza that a pizza be a perfect pizza and that, consequently, it exists.
And so even if there were a perfect pizza, that it is perfect and exists are not essential to it, and so it could have not been perfect nor have existed.

However, when speaking of an absolutely perfect being, absolute perfection is essential to such a being, for if it be accidental, that is a lower grade of perfection. Hence it follows from the very definition of an absolutely perfect being that is neccesarily is absolutely perfect and neccesarily exists. Whereas for the definition of a perfect pizza, since perfection and existence are not essential to its essence as a pizza, it's possible that this pizza not actually be perfect and not actually exist.

[conversative]

I find that the parodies to Anselm's argument are categorically different from the original argument. By confining what "that" is into a specific item (i.e. a score by me on the test), the contingency of that item is conceded (since that item is already known, or defined, to be contingent to external factors). The generic phrase, "the greatest conceivable being" does not concede the contingency, which makes it unaffected by its parodies. Is there a good resource that adequately addresses this issue?

[azophi]

New ontological video just dropped I LOVE IT

[Alihdkflc]

I'm just here for Joe's great dribbling skills.

[miteshutube]

God Exists, by definition.

Not a good argument, IMO.

[WilliamsRivera-kmwn]

A question: do you believe that existence is a property of things?

[tnikpir]

I think the first two arguments for conceiving the greatest possible being (god) falls apart if you introduce a second person. My coworker conceives a vengeful god as the perfect god while I prefer a peaceful god. They can’t both exist as the perfect god, yet we convinced two very different gods that by our own logic must exist and the other can’t. Technically god could be either vengeful or peaceful and still be considered perfect depending on your values.

[frogandspanner]

4:52 "I clearly see that existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than its having three angles equal to two right angles be separated from the idea of a rectilinear triangle [...]'.

As the idea of a rectilinear triangle, and the geometry relating to it, is axiomatic and as all non-redundant axioms reduce the space of applicability, we conclude that the argument is restricted in scope, therefore not universal, so any God is not Universal, which contradicts the ontological argument.

[pesilaratnayake]

Dude. The argument against the Gödelian argument broke my brain for a while.
I was working off my assumption that:
(A entails B) implies not(A entails not(B)).
So saying that A entails B implies that for A impossible, that A entails all B, suggested to me that A is not impossible for any A since A cannot entail both B and not B.
But I think the point was that if A is impossible (for if a person takes A to be impossible), then the Gödelian Ontological Argument has no persuasive force.
This seems to be overly complicated, since it feels like Plantinga's comment that you alluded to earlier about how the Modal Ontological Argument doesn't have persuasive effect. Basically they rely on an IF, either explicitly or implicitly, that if denied means the rest of the argument can be ignored.

"If such great-making properties exist, then..."

"Imma let you finish, but I reject the existence of these properties. So the rest of your argument will have no persuasive effect on me. Go on..."

[zavalajoseraul]

I'm not sold on the ontological arguments, not quite. But your first parody I don't think works

[MiladTabasy]

Joe I am writing a book. Do you have time to read and give comment on my book? My book is full of models and diagrams and is an attempt to answer many philosophical problems. If so how can I send it to you or someone else with expertise in philosophy?

[TheCynicalPhilosopher]

Wouldn't it be the case that any necessary positive property A would fail to meet the second requirement (that any property B entailed by A must also be positive)? A necessary positive property would entail negatives. For instance, if the positive property A is "person X always tells the truth" then this implies the negative property B "person X never tells a lie". Or put another way, if A is "always tells the truth" and B is "sometimes tells lies" then A implies not-B.

Additionally, have you ever covered the use of paraconsistent logic in arguments for the existence of God? For instance, the 2017 paper "Theism and Dialethism" by A.J. Cotnoir?