Descartes Ontological Argument

The Ontological Argument is one of the oldest arguments for the existence of God. Using a priori logic it attempts to prove the existence of God through the concept of God himself. Descartes developed his version of the Ontological argument during the 4th Meditation whilst he was pondering upon the nature of the material objects. Watch as George and John discuss Descartes very interesting argument as to why he believes God well and truly does exist.

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[PhilosophyVibe]

Get the Philosophy Vibe Descartes Meditations eBook, available on Amazon:

[oliverblackwell]

I struggled with this topic for about an hour and then you helped me understand it in 5 minutes, thank you

[birbie]

After brainstorming through the research articles and understanding not even half of the concept YouTube came to rescue.
Whoever created this video.. man you're a genius🙏🌟
Thank you so much and please continue making more such videos

[ljubaceranic]

The problem i'm having with the last (left person's) response is that he missed the value aspect of the argument.
We're searching for a maximally great "thing", not a specific concept.
Let's take the unicorn example: a real unicorn isn't less of a great unicorn than an imaginary one for what makes a unicorn "great" isn't existence but characteristics like the horn, or tail, of size...ie existence isn't a part of "unicorn-ess". But when we look at things (which we could define as anything that isn't logically contradictory like a square circle), value characteristics are different.

Be A, a "thing" which has X characteristics, and be A' a "thing" which has X' characteristics such that X' = X + "existence".
Clearly thing A' is "greater" than A, for it has every positive trait of A, and exists (existence being a positive trait of a "thing"). Like this we can see that existence isn't a predicament we place in the definition of God, but a positive characteristic of "things" which is completely coherent and doesn't commit the "begging the question" fallacy.

Thusly, when searching for a maximally great thing, all of its positive traits must be exemplified, existence included. If existence isn't exemplified, this isn't a maximally great thing.

Let's take another example and look at the "maximally great pizza". When looking at such a concept, what makes a pizza great is its positive pizza traits, such as cheesyness, crustyness, etc. Existence isn't a part of the positive traits of a pizza, that way we can't say pizza A that exists is a better pizza than pizza A that doesn't exist, but we could say pizza A is a better *thing* than pizza A that doesn't exist, for existance is a positive trait of "thingness". And when we posit that, an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly moral etc pizza, is better than pizza A that exists, and when continuing that logic, we once again come to the concept of God.

[subconscious]

Still finding it difficult to understand

[cormacohara]

I have a request. I know this is called Philosophy Vibe, but could you do a little bit about sociology? There are philosophers like J.S. Mill, Kant, Plato and Marx who contributed greatly to sociology as well as philosophy. Just a request. Great content though!

[torineilson]

thank you so much I have been reading through so many things and they just didn't make sense and you spelled it out so nicely

[noballoffire]

Hold on, i disagree at 4:05. If the concept of a "triangle" doesn't exist, then you can't describe attributes of it, such as three sides. It doesn't exist, so it has no sides, nothing.
Edit: spelling

[afro_rush]

So is there a difference between Anselm's ontological argument and Descartes'?

[claudiozanella]

No, the almighty God simply CANNOT exist here now. Why? Because He would be expected to A) know the future AND B) be able to make decisions. But having both abilities A) and B) at the same time is impossible. In fact in front of us there can be a number of "possible futures", but ONLY ONE of them will EVENTUALLY come true and become our ONLY ONE PAST. Well, God is meant to know THAT ONE FUTURE. But this means that God must simply LET IT UNFOLD EXACTLY like it is. God is thus NOT ALLOWED to make any decision, because a decision is a free selection among a number of different possibilities. On the contrary that ONE future is well DETERMINED AND KNOWN to God. NO CHANGES ARE ALLOWED because this would mean that God made mistakes in his PREDICTION of that one future, but God makes NO mistakes. Thus, if God knows the future He CANNOT MAKE ANY DECISION.