Is a necessarily necessary God possible?
Description
Colloquium presented at The Cave Wall, a student-run philosophy club at Stellenbosch University, covering the modal ontological argument. Given the diverse interdisciplinary audience, I do not assume familiarity with formal logic.
Abstract:
In Prologion III, Anselm presents a famous ontological argument for the existence of God. The argument assumes possibility of the existence of a being whose very existence is necessary, and from this possibility alone concludes the existence of such a being. On first reading, this argument may appear abstract and unconvincing - in particular, one may doubt whether the conclusion indeed follows from the premiss. Worse still, it is equally difficult to convincingly rebut this argument without first making very precise several hidden assumptions about the modalities of “necessity” and “possibility” upon which the argument depends.
In this talk, I introduce one framework in which such alethic modal reasoning may be formalised, namely the S5 modal logic. I then formally prove Anselm’s argument in S5, and discuss the implications for the forcefulness of the argument. The main reference for this talk is Philosophical and Mathematical Logic by De Swart (2018).
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Additional details
Dates
- Created
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2024-08-30Date of presentation
References
- Biłat, A. (2021, December). The correctness and relevance of the modal ontological argument. Synthese, 199(1-2), 2727–2743.
- Davies, B. (2004). An introduction to the philosophy of religion (3rd ed.). Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
- De Swart, H. (2018). Philosophical and Mathematical Logic. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
- Garson, J. W. (2013). Modal logic for philosophers (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
- Hick, J. (1990). Philosophy of religion (4th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
- Kane, R. (1984). The modal ontological argument. Mind, 93(371), 336–350.
- Priest, G. (2008). An introduction to non-classical logic: from if to is (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
- Stacey, G. R. (2023). Modal ontological arguments. Philosophy Compass, 18(8), e12938.