Reason

Question 1

What are ontological arguments?

Answer 1

arguments about the existence of God based on the definition or qualities of who God is

Question 2

St Anselm’s Proslogion

What is chapter two’s argument?

Answer 2

• God is the most perfect being
• uses the analogy of a painter - you can imagine painting but unless you paint it you are not a painter - the painting is only valuable if it is real

Question 3

St Anselm’s Proslogion

What is chapter three’s argument?

Answer 3

• God is a necessary being - God must exist because he cannot not exist
• everthing that we come to think of goes into one of four categories:
  1. possible to be
  2. possible not to be
  3. not possible to be
  4. not possible not to be
• God is the greatest concievable
• you cannot concieve of God not existing

Question 4

What is Gaunilo’s ‘perfect lost island’?

Answer 4

• instead of God he asks us to imagine a perfect lost island, one that is completely perfect in every way
• the island must posses the quality of existence, because as Anselm argued his makes something greater than something existing only in thought
• however we know it doesn’t exist as we cannot think something into existence like Anselm tries to do
• God connot be thought into existence so Anselms argument does not prove that God exists

Question 5

How did Anselm respond to Gaunilo’s perfect lost island criticism?

Answer 5

• God is not contingent on the existence of anything else and therefore Anselm’s argument is only applicable to God
• the concept of an island itself is not perfect or greatest whereas the concept of God itself is

Question 6

What does Anselm say God is?

Answer 6

‘God is the greatest conceivable being’

Question 7

What does Descartes say God is?

Answer 7

‘God is a supremely perfect being’

Question 8

What are Kant’s two arguments?

Answer 8

1. existence is not a predicate - predicates add to our understanding of what something is or what is doing
2. accepting the definition of God as being either supremely perfect or greatest being does not mean God actually has to exist

Question 9

What does Descartes say existence is?

Answer 9

a defining predicate

Question 10

What is something necessary?

Answer 10

A proposition that could not possibly be false

Question 11

What is something contingent?

Answer 11

A proposition that happens to be true but might have been otherwise false

Question 12

What is an analytic statement?

Answer 12

A statement that is true by the meaning of the words used

Question 13

What are synthetic statements?

Answer 13

Statements whose truth or falsity are determined by sense experience

Question 14

Are ontological arguments a-posteriori or a-priori?

Answer 14

A-priori