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Emmanuel Kant reflected deeply on the ontological argument, as did Godel, Decartes, Spinoza, and Plantinga among others. Perhaps a bit of intellectual openness

Emmanuel Kant reflected deeply on the ontological argument, as did Godel, Decartes, Spinoza, and Plantinga among others. Perhaps a bit of intellectual openness and a touch of humility would benefit the conversation in this thread? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a lengthy discussion on the history of the ontological argument, together with various attempts to refute it and reformulate it. I find Kant's refutation most convincing. His claim is: "Existence is not a predicate." My intuition on his point is this. Let's consider the following statement: "Imagine a unicorn, with the property that it happens to be brown." There is an implicit and unstated assertion at the beginning of the above statement, that we are for the moment imagining that that the unicorn exists. We might rephrase as follows: "Imagine for the moment that a particular unicorn exists, and that it has the property that it is brown." Now we attempt to attribute to this unicorn the "property" of non-existence: "Imagine that a particular unicorn exists, and that it has the property that it does not exist." The statement is logically ill-formed, since we assert of a hypothetical entity that it simultaneously has and does not have a "property", namely that of existence. Hence, "existence" cannot be considered to be a property whose presence or absence can be attributed to a hypothetical entity. Kant argues that since Anselm's Ontological Argument depends on this logical fallacy, it is shown to be invalid. Has anyone evaluated Godel's reformulation of the Ontological Argument to see if it avoids Kant's critique? I can't help but imagine that Godel was aware of Kant's (and others') analysis of the Ontological Argument.

deleted 3y ago
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mistermann 3y ago
I think the multiple meanings of the symbol "existence" should be taken into consideration in any such discussion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness And Popper has an interesting relevant theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds And of course: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality
ghghgfdfgh 3y ago
I know you’re not allowed to say this, but I’m not sure many people here actually read the article. Many people are responding to the argument itself in ways that were already addressed in the article (for example, there’s a whole section outlining two rebuttals to the “perfect island” parody).
- keithalewis 3y ago
  This should be in bold face type at the top of every comment page of HN. RTFA before replying. Paging Emanuel Lasker...
auggierose 3y ago
Didn't read the article, but existence is obviously not a property. It is an operator, and it takes a property (e.g. "x => x is a brown unicorn"), and then searches the whole universe for something with that property. Philosophy is a funny thing. You need some word to describe what you are doing when you are thinking about something you haven't fully grasped yet, and which is on shaky foundations. That word might as well be Philosophy. But all too often Philosophy gets lost in intellectual games which make no sense. I have to read the article to see if that is one of those cases.
- auggierose 3y ago
  Just skimmed the article. Yep, this is obviously one of those meaningless intellectual games. Nothing to see there. Does God exist? Well, something makes logic, the mathematical universe, and the physical universe work. We might as well call that something God. That doesn't mean that God is a conscious being. But then again, it becomes increasingly difficult to define what a conscious being is.
- mistermann 3y ago
  > Didn't read the article, but existence is obviously not a property. It is "obviously" also a property. > But all too often Philosophy gets lost in intellectual games which make no sense. Did you consider how "makes sense" is implemented? > Philosophy is a funny thing. If you think philosophy is weird, you should check out reality!
  - auggierose 3y ago
    > It is "obviously" also a property. Nope, it is not. If it was a property, if would be everywhere true, and that's not really interesting, is it? > Did you consider how "makes sense" is implemented? You are the implementation. Does most of Philosophy make sense to you?
    - mistermann 3y ago
      > Nope, it is not. Yes it is. > If it was a property, if would be everywhere true It would only need to be true sometimes. > and that's not really interesting, is it? I think how humans generate and then perceive reality is extraordinarily interesting actually. >> Did you consider how "makes sense" is implemented? > You are the implementation. Then why are you acting if your implementation is correct? >Does most of Philosophy make sense to you? I've only read tiny portions, so no. How about yourself?
GoblinSlayer 3y ago
Gödel does the usual Gödel thing - he just breaks modal logic. Modal logic is higher order, but there's logic above modal, and property "exists in all possible worlds" is such supermodal property that doesn't obey modal logic and is supposed to be output of modal logic, but Gödel uses it as input as a normal modal property. Modal property should be limited to one world and circumstances around it should be a priori variable across worlds, then we can expect those circumstances to vary by switching between worlds, but supermodal properties aren't like that and shouldn't be used like that. Anseml's argument isn't really an argument, but a hypothesis: it concludes with "a greater thing can be thought to exist in reality", which is obviously a hypothesis.

deleted 3y ago

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mistermann 3y ago

I think the multiple meanings of the symbol "existence" should be taken into consideration in any such discussion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness And Popper has an interesting relevant theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds And of course: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality

ghghgfdfgh 3y ago

I know you’re not allowed to say this, but I’m not sure many people here actually read the article. Many people are responding to the argument itself in ways that were already addressed in the article (for example, there’s a whole section outlining two rebuttals to the “perfect island” parody).

keithalewis 3y ago
This should be in bold face type at the top of every comment page of HN. RTFA before replying. Paging Emanuel Lasker...

auggierose 3y ago

Didn't read the article, but existence is obviously not a property. It is an operator, and it takes a property (e.g. "x => x is a brown unicorn"), and then searches the whole universe for something with that property. Philosophy is a funny thing. You need some word to describe what you are doing when you are thinking about something you haven't fully grasped yet, and which is on shaky foundations. That word might as well be Philosophy. But all too often Philosophy gets lost in intellectual games which make no sense. I have to read the article to see if that is one of those cases.

auggierose 3y ago
Just skimmed the article. Yep, this is obviously one of those meaningless intellectual games. Nothing to see there. Does God exist? Well, something makes logic, the mathematical universe, and the physical universe work. We might as well call that something God. That doesn't mean that God is a conscious being. But then again, it becomes increasingly difficult to define what a conscious being is.
mistermann 3y ago
> Didn't read the article, but existence is obviously not a property. It is "obviously" also a property. > But all too often Philosophy gets lost in intellectual games which make no sense. Did you consider how "makes sense" is implemented? > Philosophy is a funny thing. If you think philosophy is weird, you should check out reality!
- auggierose 3y ago
  > It is "obviously" also a property. Nope, it is not. If it was a property, if would be everywhere true, and that's not really interesting, is it? > Did you consider how "makes sense" is implemented? You are the implementation. Does most of Philosophy make sense to you?
  - mistermann 3y ago
    > Nope, it is not. Yes it is. > If it was a property, if would be everywhere true It would only need to be true sometimes. > and that's not really interesting, is it? I think how humans generate and then perceive reality is extraordinarily interesting actually. >> Did you consider how "makes sense" is implemented? > You are the implementation. Then why are you acting if your implementation is correct? >Does most of Philosophy make sense to you? I've only read tiny portions, so no. How about yourself?

GoblinSlayer 3y ago

Gödel does the usual Gödel thing - he just breaks modal logic. Modal logic is higher order, but there's logic above modal, and property "exists in all possible worlds" is such supermodal property that doesn't obey modal logic and is supposed to be output of modal logic, but Gödel uses it as input as a normal modal property. Modal property should be limited to one world and circumstances around it should be a priori variable across worlds, then we can expect those circumstances to vary by switching between worlds, but supermodal properties aren't like that and shouldn't be used like that. Anseml's argument isn't really an argument, but a hypothesis: it concludes with "a greater thing can be thought to exist in reality", which is obviously a hypothesis.