Gödel's Argument for God

Kurt Gödel's argument for the existence of God, from his notebooks, as revised by C. Anthony Anderson. @PhiloofAlexandria

[gerrycoogan]

This has made me question the existence of Gödel.

[kemalkorucu]

As a Muslim I loved the ending. The final discussion about "Maximal Nature Of God" translates very nicely to the concept of "Allah-u-Akbar" (God is Greater) in Islam.

[APaleDot]

This ontological argument seems to have the same problems as the other ontological arguments. Namely, it's completely formal and therefore tells us very little about the properties this "god" must have necessarily.

The common objection, which you will find here in the comments, is that the concept of positive is subjective. This objection comes from the fact that the argument is formal and in order to give it any content whatsoever, human ideas of what is good and bad must enter into it, thereby introducing subjectivity.

I have a slightly more original objection, which is that the content of the argument can point in the exact opposite direction because the argument is purely formal, it doesn't dictate what kind of content goes into it. For instance, if we talk about _negative_ properties rather than positive properties, we can arrive at a very startling and worrying conclusion.

Consider things like doing harm, being evil, being hateful. These are negative properties. But in order to do harm, for instance, you must be powerful enough to do harm. Therefore, being powerful is a negative property (our version of Axiom 2). And furthermore existence is a negative property, and necessary existence as well.

Following Godel's argument to its conclusion we find that a being which contains every negative property must necessarily exist, and of course it has these properties to the maximal degree. It is all-powerful so that it can do as much harm as logically possible. I doubt Godel (or any christian) would accept this argument for a god of pure evil.

[yomeroyomero]

Am I the only one who thinks Godel's whole endeavor reeks of desperation? i mean, substitute the world god for the word smurf, as in the magical little blue men, then argue that in order for a smurf to be a smurf it needs to have the qualities that would justify its existence, and you can see just how f-ing ridiculous the whole thing is. I mean, just how many fallacies does one needs to overlook for one not to shut this whole thing down immediately? special pleading? begging the question? circular argument? equivocation? how is this even logic? first Godel assumes the existence of a being who, in order for it to be what he chooses that being to be, has to have certain qualities, in order for the imagined qualities of the imagined being to be evidence of the being itself.
Now, i am by no means an expert on Godel, hell im not even a fan, but maybe that's why he never published this. I wanna believe that the argument is just Godel f-king around, seeing how far he could take things on a ridiculously flaw foundation. Does anybody know if he has a believer?

[ajhieb]

The problem with this and many other ontological style arguments is that they treat "existence" as a property. Strictly speaking it isn't, at least not in the way that we typically use it linguistically. If I say that an apple exists, I'm treating "exists" as a property of the apple, and linguistically as a predicate. But technically I've got it backwards when I do that. What I'm _actually_ saying with that statement is "In the reality in which I occupy, there exists an apple." The apple existing is a property of the context (in this case "the reality I occupy") in which it is invoked. In other words, existence isn't a property of the apple, it's a property of the reality in which I occupy. To look at it another way, the concept of an apple isn't changed if I specify that it exists, or that it doesn't exist. It's fundamentally still the same concept. To say an apple exists (in reality) is like saying that an apple is a fruit eaten by man. It's confusing the nature of the relationship between the two. That apples are eaten by man isn't a property of the apple, it's a property of man. An apple would still be an apple, totally absent the concept of eating, or man. The concept of an apple is the same whether you tack on existence, or you don't.

So when we start talking about existence as a perfection, it's just begging the question. As already demonstrated, existence doesn't change the concept of an apple, so it's not coherent to say that the concept is improved by the addition of "existence." If we're not talking about the concept then that just leaves us with discussing an _actual_ (extant) apple, but that's just a tautology. To say that an existent apple that exists is better than an existent apple that doesn't exist, is silly. One option is simply incoherent and self contradictory, and the other is tautological.

Don't get me wrong. I love me some Kurt Gödel, but I think he was a little out of his wheelhouse when making this argument.

[elidrissii]

Beautiful. Gödel's elegant and simple ontological argument is really underrated. Thank you professor.

[cvdevol]

The same objection to Anselm's argument applies: Existence and nonexistence cannot be properties of a thing, because a thing by definition exists and cannot not exist (or it would not be a thing, indeed it would not BE).

[jsudubp]

thank you, daniel. I've been researching this recently and your video cleared up some confusion I was having! cheers, friend.

[Mr.FadedGlory]

🤯🧠 This is something I'm going to have to watch five times to wrap my head around.

[timg]

Strange argument. For starters, it is based on questionable axioms. It leaves undefined which properties are necessarily positive, other than the property of existence and the property of being God-like, which is also not very clear. If I understand correctly, to be "God-like" is to possess all positive properties? (All necessarily positive properties, not those that are contingent on circumstances). But we don't know what those properties are, other than the property of existence. So if the logic holds and the axioms are in fact valid, we still don't know the nature of this being we call "God"?

[rareword]

When listening to philosophers, and thinkers in general, one realizes how difficult it is to take nothing for granted,

Existence is not a property of the subject. It is a property of the concept. "My spaceship" is not a thing that exists, but it's not the spaceship that has this negated property, because, well, it doesn't exist. Instead, the concept "my spaceship" has a negation of a reifying property. Can't believe how much people trip on this simple language pitfall.

[geomicpri]

I think a bit more work is needed for an objective definition of “positive”. The definition here is very dependent on things we value as a species, like being alive vs. being dead, or “it’s preferable to be God than to not be God”. Of course a living species would value living over not, but this is an ontological argument so it needs to be ontologically positive. “Positive” needs to be something defined by its presence, & negated by its absence, like heat or strength vs. cold or weakness.

Knowledge should be positive, not because we prefer to have it than to not have it, but because it is something that can be had, while ignorance is merely the lack of having knowledge. The thing is, we may conceive of a possible world where the creatures evolved to prefer ignorance to knowledge, but there should be no possible world where ignorance is ontologically “positive” even if it is valued or preferred.

[Appleblade]

Axiom 2 is false, isn't it? For example, the capacity to commit murder seems to me a negative property, but it is entailed by the positive property of having free will.

[adbeelgarcia]

This proof is saying nothing more than simply: "good things exist in the universe, therefore good things exist." And it defines "good things" as God. I believe this is what's called a bias.

[badvibes]

What about the simple kantian objection to the ontological argument? Existence is not a predicate? Does that not undermine the entire argument?

[bigman]

But how are we determining that it is better to exist than to not exist, surely there’s not much evidence for that. I’m thinking of some eastern philosophy or Schopenhauer or someone saying existence is pain and bad, not necessarily agreeing with that just wondering how to resolve this

[oldpossum]

Gödel’s work is out of my grasp. If I understood it, I’d be a step ahead of those who applaud, “A brilliant man has an ontological argument for the existence of God.” I hope I don’t disappoint the mathies here. I am going to guess that I don’t need to worry about Gödel’s argument for two reasons. First, there are lots of excellent mathies out there; they do not seem to be standing on street corners with sandwich boards, proclaiming God Exists: Kurt Proved Him! Second, I can’t think of a serious* biologist yet who says that life was created by any god. (*sorry, Flood biologists don’t count; I have read a little of their stuff: it’s silly.)

[Fallen_Time]

Makes me wonder if both good and omnipotence are positive properties. One can’t be because if both were, then there would be no problem of evil right?

[deprogramr]

Professor Bonevac, your channel is a lantern in the darkness. A flower growing in a garbage pile. Glad I found it all those years ago, and thank you for making your videos.