1E Deductive - Modern Ontological

Question 1

How did Descartes define God?

Answer 1

• He is a “supremely perfect Being devoid of a supreme perfection”.

Question 2

Elaborate on Descarte’s definition.

Answer 2

• God has the very best form of all attributes and a complete absence of flaws
• The ultimate state of a positive trait.
• He has omnipotence, omnibenevolence and omniscience in their perfect state.
• If he did not possess the perfection of each and every positive attribute, he would not be the “supremely perfect being”.

Question 3

Why does Descartes insist that God exists?

Answer 3

• As God possesses all perfections, ‘existence’ must be a perfection and therefore, must exist.
• God must be unchanging - perfection can only come through being immutable.

Question 4

Explain Descartes’ triangle analogy.

Answer 4

• The two set of criteria to define a triangle are that: the internal angles add to 180° and it has three sides.
• Existence is necessary to define God. The concept of God contains the idea of his existence as necessary perfection.
• In both cases, the attributes and the idea are inextricably linked.

Question 5

Explain Descartes’ mountain/valley analogy.

Answer 5

• One “cannot conceive a mountain without a valley”, they “cannot in any way be separated one from the other”.
• Similarly, “I cannot conceive God without existence…existence is inseparable from Him”.

Question 6

What does Malcolm reject?

Answer 6

• Both Proslogion 2 and Descartes, siding with Gaunilo and Kant.
• “The doctrine that existence is a perfection is remarkably queer”.

Question 7

What does Malcolm believe?

Answer 7

• He sympathises with Proslogion 3, believing that God is the greatest possible being with necessary existence - “an absolutely unlimited being”.
• As he has no limits, he is worthy of worship.

Question 8

To Malcolm, “if God…does not exist”, then…

Answer 8

• He “cannot come into existence”.

* He would either happen, or be caused to, exist, ∴ he would be limited and his existence is impossible.

Question 9

To Malcolm, “if He does exist”, then…

Answer 9

• “He cannot have come into existence” ∴ cannot cease to exist.
• Nothing would mean that he happens to cease to exist, nor could anything cause him to cease to exist.
• As a result, his existence is necessary,

Question 10

Malcolm says that God’s existence is either impossible or necessary - how does he explain that God exists?

Answer 10

• His existence can only be impossible if the concept of such a being is “self-contradictory or…logically absurd”.
• “Assuming that this is not so, it follows that He necessarily exists.”

Question 11

Give a brief overview of Plantinga (not on spec):

Answer 11

• Influential work on modal logic

* Uses a deductive argument involving ‘possible worlds’ to illustrate that G exists