The Ontological Argument

Thanks Pro for the response. With only a few hours left to post your argument I thought you had ran off again. I am glad to see that this was not the case. Pro asks that I reiterate my objection to P3 and P4 in this round which I will certainly do. But to start off, I will broadly state that I believe the reason why this argument appears to be convincing is because of some very clever usage of vocabulary, which masks its own errors. These are the very same errors that Pro made in his response to my argument. Many words or phrases in any languages can have multiple meanings. For example; in the phrases “your too kind”, and “can I come too?”, the word “too” means something very different. First it was meant as “excessive”, in the second phrase it was meant as “also”. But as our language is so natural to us, we don’t even realize the discrepancy without having to stop and think about it. Keep this concept in mind. Let’s also look at what makes a syllogism logically sound. In this case the argument follows a step by step process that uses and underlying premise to form a conclusion, and uses that conclusion as the premise for the next conclusion. It basically looks like this: 1. Underlying premise = conclusion.2. If P1 conclusion then P2 conclusion.3. If P2 conclusion then P3 conclusion etc… As you can see this style of connecting logical conclusions works, but does so only if the premise of one statement begins with the conclusion of the previous statement. Now let’s take only the phrases from each statement of this argument and lay them out: 1. Possible2. if Possible then some possible world3. if some possible world then every possible world4. If every possible world then our actual world5. If our actual world then exists6. Exists As I stated, each statement must begin with the same conclusion in the statement before. Therefore the phrase “some possible world” which concludes P2 must have the exact same meaning in the beginning of P3. If it has a different meaning in P3, then P3 begins with a premise that has not been logically justified, therefore the argument is not sound. P2: Pro states that P2 does not make the leap I alleged, but instead simply reiterates that the existence of a maximally great being is possible. That is fine, however if that is the case then the phrase “some possible world” in P2 is not assumed to exist either otherwise the conclusion is not justified. P3: Since “some possible world” is not assumed to exist then “every possible world” can not be referring to anything actual otherwise P3 is saying that because something is possible then it must be actual. To keep this argument sound “every possible world” must be nothing more then a possibility as well. P4: Since “every possible world” is referring only to possibilities, we can not use it to say that a maximally great being exists in our actual world. In order to make the logical connection in P4 work we have to change the meaning of “every possible world” from one of a simple possibility that it was forced to mean in P3, to meaning all actual worlds at the start of P4. Changing the definition at the start of a premise means using a premise that has not been justified and simply assuming it, which is exactly what this argument does. And since this argument assumes the existence of a maximally great being without justification, the argument is not sound. Challenge to Pro If Pro still believes that this argument is sound, he must provide a specific definition of each of the following phrases, and show how his definitions remain constant throughout the argument. Specifically, whether the phrase is assumed to exist or simply implies a possibility: 1) Some possible world2) Every Possible world3) Our actual world