Graham Oppy responds to Josh Rasmussen's Ontological Argument

Josh Rasmussen recently defended a Gödelian-style ontological argument at @CapturingChristianity's CCv1 conference. In this video, Graham Oppy joins me to respond to Josh's argument.

RESOURCES

OUTLINE

0:00 Intro
1:05 Three obstacles
14:53 Anselm’s Ontological Argument
22:20 Gödel’s Ontological Argument
38:30 Josh’s Diagnosis
53:24 A way forward?
1:00:39 Josh’s new argument
1:10:21 Perfect island parody
1:15:26 A remaining worry
1:24:56 Josh responds to my question

LINKS

[Kvothe]

Empty bookshelf. What a power move. It's all in his mind, he doesn't need reference materials!

[Lojak-exe]

Joe, you are quickly becoming one of my top three favorite youtube channels, not that my top three means anything but I thought you should know how great of work and knowledge you are providing for me and others.

[jamescantrell]

I really appreciate Josh's excellent presentation. I think ontological arguments are the toughest to support and even though I'm not ultimately convinced here, the work is exciting and bold.

[anthonyrowden]

Why don't we just invite Graham to come to the conference? Somebody contact that magic man Bameron Curtuzzi.

[MrGustavier]

P1 A proper epistemology needs to differentiate imagination from reality.
P2 The ontological argument deduces the real existence of something from the existence of the imagined concept of that thing.
P3 The ontological argument fails to differentiate imagination from reality.
C1 Therefore the ontological argument isn't embedded in a proper epistemology.

[kamilgregor]

I take his lecture as a great proof of concept for an IBE agrument about how all religious thought comes into existence. I don't see substantive difference between Josh and say Isaiah, except when Isaiah had a profound new thought and it felt like divine inspiration, he took it as evidence of actual divine inspiration, the same way how e.g. Greek poets took their ability to compose classical hexameter as the Mouses speaking through them. I think this neatly explains why we have an impression of religious thoughts developing over time. For example, it's going to be really hard to square MGB theology with a lot of the material from the Hebrew Bible (Yahweh waits, gets weary, hopes his prophecies will fail, remembers, looks forward, is surprised, rests, is provokable, curious, expresses uncertainty, changes his mind etc.). This is entirely expected on that IBE view (the MGB theology hasn't been invented yet so of course the narrative about Yahweh is not going to conform to it) while all of the other usual explanations (it's anthropomorphic language, it's progressive relevation etc.) seem like obvious cop-outs.

[BatmanArkham]

Will you ever invite Yuijin nagasawa to discuss Ontological arguments and also Brian leftow to discuss his recent book *Anselm's argument* ?

[BatmanArkham]

Joe I just finished reading a paper titled *A Bayesian formulation of the kalam cosmological argument* CALUM MILLER. I think this formulation is different from popular versions. So I just want to know if you have discussed this version somewhere or will discuss this in your series?

[kamilgregor]

Did you say "he has an SCP entry on the Ontological Arugment"?

[Paradoxarn.]

I think the point about there being different senses of "entailment" in play in considering Gödelian-style ontological arguments is a really important point.

[JohnVandivier]

Is a circle not a maximally sided shape? (Under 2d constraint and related shapes exist in higher orders)

[nahoalife]

Let's go! I've been waiting for a scholarly response to Dr. Rasmussen's new argument. I've contacted him and asked him a bunch of questions, to which he so kindly responded. I ended up thinking that he has provided at least a defeasible, independent reason to favor theism over atheism. So, before watching your video, I think Dr. Rasmussen has a successful ontological argument. But I'm excited to see what you and Dr. Oppy have to say about it!

[bigol]

1:14:51 'it's the just the same problem over again'
'it's the same problem that crops up for Josh's argument that did for the original ontological argument'

[STARSS]

Could someone spell out in more details the two premises version of the argument Joe gives at 1:38 ? Sometimes I think I get it, but probably not quite :

1. Being a necessarily existent being is a positive property
2. Positive properties don't entail negative properties

[joshua_finch]

Hey Joe, have you done a video on presuppositionalism? If not why?

[jeremyhansen]

Slight clarification. To me the statement "great making properties don't imply lesser ones" doesn't actually imply that if property G is great making, then G is possible. Rather that if a property f implies a lesser one then f is either f is a lesser property or f is not possible. A square circle is still a square, just an inconsistent one.

Afterall if G does not imply lesser properties, then that itself would be a property the G has. As such, if G is not possible, then G must have that property, given that impossible properties entail all properties.

[thespiritofhegel]

We could create a concept, call it an IsSkippy, which has all the attributes of fictional Skippy plus existence, an IsSkippy therefore necessarily exists following from the concept of an IsSkippy..

[mf_hume]

I'm genuinely curious: At one point, after Graham brings up what seems to be a very basic objection to Josh's argument from concepts, you say something to the effect of "we're not pretending like Josh is unaware of these objections." But I wonder what you think he's trying to do with this presentation, then, if he's not mentioning what people in the field think of as the most basic objections to his case? Like what do you think he's trying to do when he fails to mention the counterarguments in a presentation to laypeople? Is that just an oopsie on his part? Just an unfortunate byproduct of the time constraint? Or something more sinister?

[crockettlegendas]

We want Oppy vs. Vecchio on the Ontological Argument!

[pbradgarrison]

How are positive, negative, maximal, perfection defined here? What is it that gives these terms meaning? Are these defined by human predilections? If so, is this projecting human predilections onto all and the most fundamental?