by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: March 31, 2009   Last Updated: May 21, 2009

The ontological argument may be said to have originated with the scholastic philosophers, or at least a precursor of scholastic philosophy St. Anselm in the 11th century. It is an argument that offers the opinion that the existence of God can be demonstrated purely through intellectual means without need for empirical, anecdotal evidence. One might hope for an analytic a priori judgement implicitly true (I hope I have all of the foregoing Kantian categories right) that Kant believed implicitly contradictory. May a synthetic a prior proof would be satisfactory, yet an entirely empirical proof would have little epistemological certainty in several ways, for an event product of the criteria of existence would be contingent. Fort some reason we feel that God must be a transcending of the Universe and material of energy-mass sort of spirit independent of temporality. A priori statements may offer the best hope for a valid ontological argument for the existence of God.

I will off the opinion that the criteria or terms for the ontological argument are not dead or invalid though it is popular to say so.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-argume nts/#HisOntArg



The argument for the existence of God based upon reason has been attacked by modern, analytical oriented philosophers occasionally as a language based problem that mixes up categories and ideas. It may be the case that with words it is possible mostly to prove that other words exist and that ideas exist just in mind. It is possible to structure an irrational response to any idea of reason that negates meaning irrationally, just as one may time out the existence of legal justice with mortal limits and deny equal protection of the law for anyone through subterfuges of power. Laws with justice are effective only amongst those consenting to be governed by laws, and reason is reasonable only to those seeking to be reasonable.

Kant's categorization of kinds of linguistic propositions into those with the subject contained in the predicate implicitly-a kind of tautology, and those that draw the subject from outside the predicate, made it easier for an empirical analysis of experience and language to develop upon a technical basis for rigorous deliberation about the validity of language propositions used in ontological arguments for what Kant considered metaphysical subjects. A priori propositions would be simply based upon reason and without reliance on empirical experience. Kant did create a categorical

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>