The Ontological Argument as Proof of God

Thanks to mattrodstrom for challenging me to this debate. This should be fun. First let's take a look at what Anselm really presented as his ontological argument (OA): "Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality." [1] ========= The Objections ========= If one carefully reads that they will see that much of Con's objections immediately fall flat and border on straw-manning Anselm, even. For example: Con's P2 is attributing a position to Anselm that he never takes. He was not contrasting existence and non-existence and then saying that existence is greater than non-existence; he was contrasting existence-in-the-understanding (mental) with existence-in-reality (non-mental) and claiming that existence-in-reality is greater (is a great-making property) than the former. Con's second point is that is one commonly raised against OAs - the problem of the "subjectivity" of the term "greatness" or of a great-making property - but it is entirely due to the ignorance of medieval metaphysics. Many problems modern audiences have with OAs are simply due to moderns' reading assumptions into the arguments that the original arguer would never have assumed and probably would have explicitly rejected. The truth is, presupposing medieval metaphysics, there IS an objective way to measure varying degrees of greatness. It was quite common during the middle ages (the time during which Anselm lived) for philosophers and thinkers to place everything into a "great chain of being." [2] The higher up on the chain that one goes the more great-making properties something had. Great-making properties would be knowledge, power, goodness, love, rationality, existent-in-reality and so on and so forth. Under this understanding it's easy to see how a normal, adult human would objectively be considered greater than a blade of grass; a human has more great-making properties after all. Even further one could see how there are degrees of knowledge, power, goodness, love, existence (etc) and that would admit that there seems to a limit or an upper-bound on these great-making proper-making. One can see where this is leading, necessarily, God, by definition, would be the upper-bound of these degrees of great-making properties; he would be all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, perfectly loving, existent-in-reality, etc. Con says: "He needs to show that the conception of "something that is Most Great" does not differ from person to person, for, if it were to, then the argument would purportedly prove the existence of multiple different "Most Great" things, and would be nonsense." But it should be evident by now that I need do no such thing. People differ on their conceptions of a lot of things - it doesn't follow that there is no objective truth of the matter. That'd be like me arguing that since there are different conceptions of the term "good" or "moral obligation" in ethics it follows that there is no objective truth of the matter. ========== Anselm's OA ========== So, I will use a much more fair, plausible and rigorous version of Anselm's OA proposed by Robert Maydole: (1) The definite description "that than which it is not conceivable for something to be greater" is understood. (2) "That than which it is not conceivable for something to be greater" refers to that than which it is not conceivable for something to be greater. (3) The concept of whatever a definite description that is understood refers to has existence-in-the-understanding. (4) It is conceivable that something is greater than anything that lacks a great-making property that it conceivably has. (5) Existence-in-reality is a great making property. (6) Anything the concept of which has existence-in-the-understanding conceivably has existence-in-reality. (7) It is not conceivable that something is greater than that than which it is not conceivable for something to be greater. (8) That than which it is not conceivable for something to be greater exists-in-reality. [3] I conclude that as of right now Anselm's OA properly construed stands. ========= Sources ========= [1] http://wadsworth.com... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, pg 567