Advocating Nagasawa's Defence of Anselm's Ontological Argument

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Tarbiat Modares University

Abstract

 
 
Since its inception, Anselm's ontological argument has been controversial in its conception of God as well as its argument to prove the existence of God. Some critics of Anselm's conception of God hold that (1) Anselmian God (that than which nothing greater can be conceived) entails OmniGod (omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being), but (2) OmniGod is impossible. Nagasawa, a contemporary philosopher of religion, contends that even if the second argument (2) were true, Anselm's argument would not be rejected, just because the first one (1) is false. According to Nagasawa, the reason that the first argument (1) is false is that Anselmian God entails MaximalGod (the being that has the maximal consistent set of knowledge, power, and benevolence) rather than OmniGod. First, this article shows that where Nagasawa's arguments presuppose scenarios in which OmniGod is impossible from a metaphysical point of view, He cannot be conceived. Second, it demonstrates that this claim has a fatal flaw and renders Nagasawa’s argument invalid.  Finally, it argues that by an adjustment, i.e. accepting conceivability, this flaw can be remedied and Nagasawa’s argument re-established.
 

Keywords

References

1. Afzali, Ali, (2017), Existential Argument in Western Philosophy and Islamic Philosophy, Tehran: Iranian Wisdom and Philosophy Institute Research.
3. Anselm, Saint, (1998), "Proslogion", In: Brian Davies, G. R. Evans (Eds.), Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press (Oxford world's classics).
 4. Blumenfeld, David, (1978), "On the Compossibility of the Divine Attributes", Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 34 (1), pp. 91–103.
2. Ghadiri, Hamed and Hosseini, Davood, (2013), "Existential Argument: Anselm n.d. the Problem of Self Comparisoning", Logic Research, No. 1, pp. 89-108.
5. Leibniz, G. W., (1996), Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding, (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), (P. Remnant & J. Bennett, Eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Mackie, J. L., (1955), "Evil and Omnipotence", Mind LXIV (254), pp. 200–212. DOI: 10.1093/mind/LXIV.254.200.
7. Malcolm, Norman, (1960), "Anselm's Ontological Arguments", The Philosophical Review, 69 (1), pp. 41–62, DOI: 10.2307/2182266.
8. Millican, Peter, (2004), "The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm's Argument", Mind 113 (451), pp. 437–476, DOI: 10.1093/mind/113.451.437.
9. Nagasawa, Yujin, (2007), "Millican on the Ontological Argument", Mind 116 (464), pp. 1027–1039.
10. Nagasawa, Yujin, (2008), "A New Defence of Anselmian Theism", The Philosophical Quarterly,58 (233), pp. 577–596, DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.578. x.
11. Priest, Graham, (2016), "Thinking the Impossible", Philosophical Studies 173 (10).

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics