Talk:Anselm's Argument

message: Note: This page used to be titled "Ontological argument."  The following is the discussion preceding the change of its title to "Anselm's Argument."
This article shouldn't be called "Ontological argument" but "ontological argument for the existence of God". An ontological argument can be any argument in ontology, which has nothing to do with god per se, but only concerns being as a principle.
--???
I agree, this complicates the definition, requiring the difference between an "ontological" argument, and this specific use, to be clearly distinguished. There are arguments that only the existence of God can be proven ontologically, but such an assumption has no place in the page title (Gaunilo's island seems to be at least an equally worthy argument demonstrating the opposite). Arguments concerning God should be moved into a section; other ontological arguments should accompany it. Gaunilo's argument should probably be displayed twice, with the main paragraph as a rebuttal to the ontological argument supporting the existence of God.
--Sgutkind 07:09, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Page Title

message: Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the article make a distinction between the 'Greatest Conceivable Being' and Anselm's actual term of "that than which a greater cannot be imagined"?
There is a subtle difference between the two. The Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB) is not necessarily infinite, as it is confined by the limitations of the human mind to conceive. It also places some limits upon God, in that the GCB can still be described. These characteristics may also be disputed. (For instance, if my conception of the GCB is omnipotent and omniscient, but not benevolent, I can argue that benevolence does not make something greater.) On the other hand, "that than which a greater cannot be imagined" (NGC) must necessarily be infinite, because it is always possible to improve upon something by adding another characteristic. It avoids dispute upon its characteristics, as it is not necessary to define it.
I'm aware I may not have made my point very clearly, but I still think there is a difference between the two and referring to the NGC follows truer to Anselm's ideas. Trick 20:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Greatest Conceivable Being?

message: Ontological, from ontos, means being. Thus the argument is an argument from being, or that God is a neccesary being. The introduciton states that it can be proved a priori. I think this is a misappropriation of the word, especially since Anselm had access to such an idea, and did not use it himself. Correctly stated the Ontological argument is not so much a proof as Anselm's reconition of the neccesity of God's being. I recommend that we change the first sentance to something along the lines of.
:Ontological, from the greek root ontos, is a proof for the existence of God based on the statement that God is a neccesary being, that his existence is neccesitated in and of itself. (I would have made the edit myself, except that I could not find a way to do so. Enlightenment if you please.)
Regarding the rest of the introduciton, it also contains various other problems.
*"if we can concieve of God, then God exists" Unfortunately this is not quite accurate. Anselm does not make this statement, instead he states that God's definition is "a being that which nothing greater can be concieved." God exists not because we can concieve him, but because existance in reality is greater than existence in the mind. I know it's a bit nitpicky, but stated as such, this favors Gaunilo's response. Correctly this misstatement will allow for a balanced description.
*"it is self contradictory to state that God does not exist" What is contradictory is to state that a neccesary being does not exist, or rather as Anselm stated it is logically neccesary to affirm that existence is neccesary to a neccesary being. (I know my tounge is tied just writing it.) Again, while exhausting, only a more detailed definition is appropriate to accurately convey Anselm's position.
*Rather than stating that there have been a long history of detractors, something along the lines of its fame for being so heavily debated, as it happens to be by far one of the most contested proofs of God's existence.
*The final paragraph is unhelpful to the body as a whole. For the third time it summarizes Anselm, and this time includes Descartes. It would be more appropriate to list out the major contributors to the idea of the Ontological argument, and save the actual discusion of such for the specific secitions.
D. M. Arney, M.A. 11:09, 25 December 2006
: Hello, I think you are right in most of your points, but note that classification of ontological arguments is extremely difficult. The current definition is in accordance with Oppy's definition in his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry. But this is a tricky issue, see for example the discussion where he argues that the use of "referential vocabulary" is the key feature of these arguments. Clearly his detailed discussion is far too complicated for what we would like here, but I think it good to follow his general definition. There are bigger problems in this article, and you seemed interested in writing something about the response to Gaunilo, I think this is a good idea, and I would be interested in how the overload objection can be refuted, since I didn't understand Anselm's own reply. So if you will write something using a proper source, it would be excellent, and I think it is completely okay to source a Christian apologetics guide, as long as you cite the used source in the text. --Merzul 12:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: Where can we find an open source translation of Anselm's original work? This notated version is confusing, and uncited. D. M. Arney, M.A. 11:26, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are 3 translations available online: Sidney Norton Deane, David Burr, and Jonathan Barnes. The last one is used here, and is now sourced, but I don't know why this source was chosen. I don't think it is more confusing than the others :) However, I'm not sure it is quite as free as the others, and maybe the website hosting that translation is violating Barnes' copyrights. --Merzul 11:25, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Re: Heading "Anselms Argument"

message: I have now worked on verifying many sources and I've added as many as I could find. I have two questions. First, what exactly is the NPOV problem in this article; up to the revisionists, when things get complicated, there is nothing really controversial. My second questions is about the section on Plantinga, and if anybody knows exactly what Richard M. Gale argues for in that book (I added the citation using google book search), I'm concerned that he is used here completely out of context. I don't know what are his views on the revised argument, because while he does claim that the "possibility premise" begs the question, but I'm not sure he considers this a serious objection to the argument, especially in the attempt of establishing that belief is at least rational. he says if something begs the question it might still be true, etc. So anyway, the Plantinga section needs verification. --Merzul 01:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Richard Gale has argued in print that the S5 ontological argument is question-begging because a part of what it is to understand the nested modal operators in "possibly necessarily God exists" is to understand that that proposition entails that God exists.  (The clearest statement of this response is probably in Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss, "A Response to Oppy and to Davey and Clifton”, Religious Studies 38 (2002) 89–99.)  Although an argument can be sound while question-begging, I suspect Richard Gale will agree that an argument that begs the question against x provides x with no epistemically rational reason to accept its conclusion. 141.161.73.85 14:57, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ok, thank you very much for giving that reference. I should have digital access to that journal so I will take a look at it. Meanwhile, can I remove the dubious tag based on your judgment? And if you are confident this is fair representation, then maybe I won't even have to look it up :) --Merzul 15:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, yes, it is so, he would probably agree, the reference you have given is very explicit, the reason for my concern was mainly a simple naive intuition that Richard M. Gale was being used on the "wrong side" of the argument... I didn't have time to look deeper, so leaving it with a footnote would be very dangerous. --Merzul 15:19, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality and verification... 

message: We are making progress! :) I have to slow down my wikipedia activities now that the holidays are over, so I will just state my view on the remaining issues. Basically, I disagree with User:Roy Brumback on wikipedia policy. It seems we have completely different views of a good article, he objects to including a criticism recorded by Graham Oppy:
:And you have not told me why someone's personal opinion, with no reason behind it, belongs in here. Because he's really smart or important or something? Come on. You can easily then put in someone else saying they "really really" believe in it, and that's getting a little silly.
Absolutely not, it wouldn't be silly at all, provided they are, yes, notable philosophers. It is precisely the kind of article I would like to read: "Graham Oppy, in the Stanford Encyclopedia records the following general objection... However, Bertrand Russell has at some point claimed to be convinced by the ontological argument" or whatever reasonable persons we can find that "really really" was convinced by it. Instead of deleting sourced material that isn't "the truth", we should represent the different views, including yes non-truths, if it is presented by notable philosophers! Note that the section is called "Criticism" so even the criticism of Richard Dawkins is in my opinion justified. In fact, the criticism recorded by Oppy, the one given by Hume, and that of Richard Dawkins are all general objections to a priori arguments that fit quite well together. --Merzul 12:27, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But Hume gives a philosophical reason to reject ontological arguments for existence, whereas Dawkins simply says he doesn't trust philosophical arguments that don't use data from the outside world, not why he doesn't trust them, just that he doesn't.  The same goes for Oppy. Roy Brumback 07:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ok, now I understand you. You basically want us to add argumentation that is reasonable and justified by logic, not just add conclusions based on authority as I do. This is of course a reasonable viewpoint! I still believe my approach is more practical on wikipedia, because judging what is reasonable and good argumentation is very subjective. At least I understand your reasons for deleting it and so I'm no longer offended, I just politely disagree with you. --Merzul 16:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding "opinions" 

message: The "D" in deoxyribonucleic acidism Philosophy
This school of thought, began in 2002, uses "V for Vendetta" as an analogy to logically describe the existence of God.
1. A man who wields one knife is an aggressive, subhuman brute without any reason. He is the ultimate imperfect being.
2. A man who wields two knives is a talented craftsman and has high reasoning faculties. He is Man at his finest.
3. The One who wields three knives is God. Because Man at his finest can only wield two knives, only God could wield three. Therefore, God exists.
Really? If that such a school of thought exists is true, feel free to re-place it in the article. However, I believe that it is probably not, and thus I'm about to remove it.--Islomaniac 973 21:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  V for Vendetta 

message: Why is it that  René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Norman Malcolm, Charles Hartshorne, and Alvin Plantinga are spoken of as philosophers, while  David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Gottlob Frege, and Gaunilo of Marmoutiers are referred to as "great philosophers"? This shows a bias in the writing toward the latter viewpoints.--Snthor 14:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing it out, I doubt it was intentional though. --Merzul 22:36, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A question of bias 

message: It might be nice to have some mention of Hegel's unique take on the subject. 70.146.15.172 01:41, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hegel