11 Ontological Arguments: An Analysis

From Anselm to Descartes to Pruss and Nagasawa, ontological arguments have captivated philosophers and laity alike. In this video, I analyze eleven such arguments for God's existence.

RESOURCES

OUTLINE

0:00 Intro
0:45 Anselm’s First OA (Proslogion II)
27:07 Descartes’ OA
30:13 Anselm’s Second OA (Proslogion III)
36:09 Hartshorne on Anselm’s Proslogion III
36:31 Maydole’s Reconstruction
36:40 Anselm’s Other Argument
40:55 Plantinga’s Modal OA
44:59 The Phenomenal Defense of Plantinga’s Possibility Premise
56:01 Gödel’s OA
1:05:01 Pruss’s Improvement on Gödel’s OA
1:06:45 Maydole’s Modal Perfection Argument
1:13:50 Bernstein’s OA
1:18:50 Nagasawa’s Maximal God Approach

LINKS

[yourfutureself]

Amazing video. I agreed with the vast majority of your points. However, I don't think courage and the like entail imperfections. I think courage is dispositional. Just like someone can be loving even if he doesn't currently love someone, he can also be courageous if there currently isn't any danger.

[richardcrenwelge]

I don't find Anselm's argument to be convincing at all, either, but isn't the concept of God in our understanding and actual GOD really the same thing? The only way we can even talk about it is to conceptualize it, so is that distinction important? Maybe I'm missing something, though..

[Ken_Scaletta]

The word "great" doesn't mean anything. That's one of my biggest problems with the OA. You might as well talk about the "coolest" possible being. "Greatness: is a purely subjective concept with no objective or empirical meaning. Even on a subjective level, I would say that a God who creates a world without suffering is "greater" than a God who creates a world WITH suffering, therefore the greatest possible being does not exist.

Also, nothing can "exist" only in understanding." If it doesn't exist in reality, it doesn't exist unless you want to say that Santa Claus exists. A lot of the OA is just word games.

Plantinga's MOA fails in the premise that "God is possible." That has to be proved. God is only possible if God exists. If God does not exist, then God is not possible. It is not correct to say that "God is possible." That is equivalent to saying "God exists, " The only thing that can be said correctly is that it is not possible to know if it is possible that God exists, but we see no demonstrated evidence or necessity. Necessary existence is part of the definition of God. If God is not necessary then it is not possible for God to exist.

[poklar]

Wonderful as always. Any chance you'd be willing to have Jeff Speaks on? His book The Greatest Possible Being is really interesting, and I'd love to hear him talk more about it.

[nicholasnewberg]

I find it sad that a professional philosopher like Dr. Nagasawa would make a blatant burden-shifting fallacy. Shouldn't he know better? Perhaps it is just really really hard to rule out all the alternative "really good" beings his argument might make way for. The lesson? We ought to take careful time and attention in building up our arguments and rebutting potential objections; such is the lot of a good philosopher.

[TheCannoth]

Is it fair to say that most of these if, not all of these, ontological arguments create endless symmetries that don't actually support, conclusively, what they claim

[Adam-zhxz]

Hey Joe, What's your favorite argument of either side?

[franciscoabreu]

Hey Joe, I loved the video! What argumenrs for theism do you find the most convincing if any? My friend LOVES cumulative Bayesian arguments like Swinburne presents

[azophi]

Thanks, I needed this. I’m already pretty sure that you can’t just define things into existence, but this was nice as a thorough breakdown of counter arguments, their responses, and counters to those responses.

[jamesreilly]

I wonder if the Godelian ontological arguments might not still have SOME amount of force, since it does intuitively seem as though properties like "absolute perfection" (to use Rasmussen's version) are positive. Obviously a committed atheist will just bite the bullet and say that absolute perfection isn't positive (since they think it's impossible, and hence entails everything), but if somebody is on the fence regarding God's existence, it does seem like the Godelian argument could serve to push them towards theism.

[laljohnkhuptong]

I thought you were Tom Holland's younger brother

[isaacccol]

Love watching you carefully pick apart these arguments ☺️

[IgorTryp]

I can think of something more incredible than God, that is that the universe can come from nothing.
Thus the universe came from nothing.

[mistermkultra]

Joe Schmid playing Spiderman in a movie, is a possible, imposible or necessary fact ???

[legron]

It would be interesting to see you have a discussion with Michael Jones on one of these arguments, or on the cosmological arguments.

[miteshutube]

1. God is greatest conceivable being.
2. There's a burning bush called yhwh in Bible, who may be father of Jesus.
3. God is greatest conceivable being, so obviously greater than yhwh.
4. Ergo, yhwh isn't God.

[CkaZma]

great video
to me all the modal arguments just seem to be attempts at tricking people and laymen
after all, most people will intuitively grant that it is possible for god to exist since S5 isn't exactly well known

[roderictaylor]

On the phenomenal defense

Premise 2 of the phenomenal defense is "It is reasonable to believe that if it is impossible that God exists, it would probably appear to me that it is impossible God exists upon reflection." Dr McIntosh further explains what it means to say it does not seem impossible God exists as, "When I further reflect on God's existence, nothing seems unclear, impossible, or contradictory about that."

Suppose no MEB existed. Then given the definition of a MGB and the modality we are working in, no entity in any possible world could satisfy our definition of a MGB. Why would it be reasonable to believe that if this was the case, it would then appear to Dr. McIntosh that God’s existence was impossible, unclear, or contradictory? This a non-sequitur. Of course if Dr. McIntosh knew no MEB existed, then he would know it was impossible a MGB exists. But why should we assume that if no MEB existed then he would know it? The argument boils down to

1. It is reasonable to believe that if no MGB existed, I would know it.
2. I don’t know no MGB exists.
3. It is reasonable for me to believe a MGB exists.

[roderictaylor]

Plantinga’s MOA shows that if no MEB exists in reality, then there is no way the world could have been such that a MGB would have existed if the world had been that way, because even if a MEB would have existed if the world had turned out differently, that MEB would not have been a necessary being, and therefore would not have been a MGB. Therefore, if there is a way the world could have been such that a MGB would have existed if the world had been that way, then a MEB exists.

But there is nothing, absolutely nothing in the MOA that says if no MEB exists in reality then it would be epistemically impossible a MGB exists. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in the MOA that suggests that says that if no MEB existed, the definition of a MGB would be internally incoherent, or that it would be possible to derive a contradiction from it, or that there would not be symmetry breakers in favor of the MOA. Therefore, even if we could somehow establish the definition of a MGB was perfectly coherent, even if we could establish it was impossible to derive some sort of contradiction from it, even if we could find symmetry breakers in favor of the MOA, it would do absolutely nothing to justify the MOA. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in the MOA that says it can not be the case that the idea of a MGB is perfectly coherent, that it is impossible to derive a contradiction from it, that there could be symmetry breakers in its favor, and yet since no MEB exists there cannot be a way the world could have been such that a MGB would have existed if the world had been that way purely because the way we have defined our terms, the assumptions we have made about the nature of necessity and possibility, and because no MEB exists.

In the MOA we define our terms and assume a modality so that “It is impossible a MGB exists” becomes a logical consequence of the proposition “No MEB exists.” We then say, “But wait! How can it be impossible a MGB exists? The idea seems perfectly coherent!” The answer is if no MEB exists, then it will be impossible a MGB exists not because the idea of a MGB is somehow internally incoherent but purely because no MEB exists and because of the way we’ve defined our terms and because of the modality we have assumed.