RE: Why ontological arguments are illogical
August 2, 2012 at 11:47 pm
(This post was last modified: August 2, 2012 at 11:51 pm by Tempus.)
I think the biggest problem with the argument is the term 'perfect'. Perfection, as with beauty, is a value judgement. A hidden assumption in the argument is that this (non-subjective) notion of perfection exists.
There's also an unaccounted for leap from perfection (assuming it does/can exist outside of being a value judgement) entailing existence to something necessarily existing because the concept representing it has been given the imagined attribute of perfection. For something to truly be perfect (again, assuming objective perfection exists) I would agree it needs to exist, just as for something to truly be made of wood it needs to exist. Concepts in our minds don't actually possess any of the attributes we assign to them, because the attributes themselves, like the concepts, are imagined.
God, when you're imagining it, is a concept - an abstraction. Imagined things do not suddenly become existent by attaching imagined properties to them. The argument, to me, necessarily implies that we can't imagine something that doesn't exist.
There's also an unaccounted for leap from perfection (assuming it does/can exist outside of being a value judgement) entailing existence to something necessarily existing because the concept representing it has been given the imagined attribute of perfection. For something to truly be perfect (again, assuming objective perfection exists) I would agree it needs to exist, just as for something to truly be made of wood it needs to exist. Concepts in our minds don't actually possess any of the attributes we assign to them, because the attributes themselves, like the concepts, are imagined.
God, when you're imagining it, is a concept - an abstraction. Imagined things do not suddenly become existent by attaching imagined properties to them. The argument, to me, necessarily implies that we can't imagine something that doesn't exist.
