How does anselm defines god

The idea here is that existence is very different from, say, the property of lovingness. A being that is loving is, other things being equal, better or greater than a being that is not. As it turns out, there are two different versions of the ontological argument in the Prosologium. The second version does not rely on the highly problematic claim that existence is a property and hence avoids many of the objections to the classic version.

Here is the second version of the ontological argument as Anselm states it:. God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist.

Hence, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that, than which nothing greater can be conceived. But this is an irreconcilable contradiction. There is, then, so truly a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist; and this being thou art, O Lord, our God. This version of the argument relies on two important claims. As before, the argument includes a premise asserting that God is a being than which a greater cannot be conceived.

But this version of the argument, unlike the first, does not rely on the claim that existence is a perfection; instead it relies on the claim that necessary existence is a perfection.

This latter claim asserts that a being whose existence is necessary is greater than a being whose existence is not necessary. Otherwise put, then, the second key claim is that a being whose non-existence is logically impossible is greater than a being whose non-existence is logically possible. This second version appears to be less vulnerable to Kantian criticisms than the first. To begin with, necessary existence, unlike mere existence, seems clearly to be a property. Notice, for example, that the claim that x necessarily exists entails a number of claims that attribute particular properties to x.

For example, if x necessarily exists, then its existence does not depend on the existence of any being unlike contingent human beings whose existence depends, at the very least, on the existence of their parents. And this seems to entail that x has the reason for its existence in its own nature. But these latter claims clearly attribute particular properties to x. And only a claim that attributes a particular property can entail claims that attribute particular properties.

While the claim that x exists clearly entails that x has at least one property, this does not help. We cannot soundly infer any claims that attribute particular properties to x from either the claim that x exists or the claim that x has at least one property; indeed, the claim that x has at least one property no more expresses a particular property than the claim that x exists.

This distinguishes the claim that x exists from the claim that x necessarily exists and hence seems to imply that the latter, and only the latter, expresses a property. Moreover, one can plausibly argue that necessary existence is a great-making property. To say that a being necessarily exists is to say that it exists eternally in every logically possible world; such a being is not just, so to speak, indestructible in this world, but indestructible in every logically possible world — and this does seem, at first blush, to be a great-making property.

As Malcolm puts the point:. If a housewife has a set of extremely fragile dishes, then as dishes, they are inferior to those of another set like them in all respects except that they are not fragile. Those of the first set are dependent for their continued existence on gentle handling; those of the second set are not. There is a definite connection between the notions of dependency and inferiority, and independence and superiority.

To say that something which was dependent on nothing whatever was superior to anything that was dependent on any way upon anything is quite in keeping with the everyday use of the terms superior and greater.

Nevertheless, the matter is not so clear as Malcolm believes. It might be the case that, other things being equal, a set of dishes that is indestructible in this world is greater than a set of dishes that is not indestructible in this world. But it is very hard to see how transworld indestructibility adds anything to the greatness of a set of dishes that is indestructible in this world.

From our perspective, there is simply nothing to be gained by adding transworld indestructibility to a set of dishes that is actually indestructible. And the same seems to be true of God. Suppose that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, eternal and hence, so to speak, indestructible , personal God exists in this world but not in some other worlds. It is very hard to make sense of the claim that such a God is deficient in some relevant respect.

It is simply unclear how existence in these other worlds that bear no resemblance to this one would make God greater and hence more worthy of worship.

From our perspective, necessary existence adds nothing in value to eternal existence. There have been several attempts to render the persuasive force of the ontological argument more transparent by recasting it using the logical structures of contemporary modal logic.

One influential attempts to ground the ontological argument in the notion of God as an unlimited being. As Malcolm describes this idea:. God is usually conceived of as an unlimited being. He is conceived of as a being who could not be limited, that is, as an absolutely unlimited being. In this conception it will not make sense to say that He depends on anything for coming into or continuing in existence. Nor, as Spinoza observed, will it make sense to say that something could prevent Him from existing.

Lack of moisture can prevent trees from existing in a certain region of the earth. But it would be contrary to the concept of God as an unlimited being to suppose that anything … could prevent Him from existing.

The unlimited character of God, then, entails that his existence is different from ours in this respect: while our existence depends causally on the existence of other beings e. Here is his argument for this important claim.

A very similar argument can be given for the claim that an unlimited being exists in every logically possible world if it exists in some possible world W ; the details are left for the interested reader. Consequently, a thing than which nothing greater can be conceived cannot be conceived not to exist and so it must exist. This can be read as a restatement of the argument in Chapter 2, although Norman Malcolm believed it to be a different, stronger argument.

Generally speaking, they are less formal arguments than natural intuition. Descartes wrote in the Fifth Meditation :. But, if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything that I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God?

Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one that I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature.

He suggested that the concept of God is that of a supremely perfect being, holding all perfections. He seems to have assumed that existence is a predicate of a perfection. Thus, if the notion of God did not include existence, it would not be supremely perfect, as it would be lacking a perfection. Consequently, the notion of a supremely perfect God who does not exist, Descartes argues, is unintelligible. Follows from 2 4. Premise 5. Computer 1 and Computer 2 could be matched against each other in a game of chess.

There could be a game of chess in which both players win. God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Definition 2. God exists in the mind, but not in reality. A minimally rational non-theist cannot accept both of these premises — they entail that God exists in every possible world whereas a minimally rational non-theist maintains that there is at least one possible world in which God does not exist.

Given that a minimally rational non-theist says that there is at least one possible world in which God does not exist, such a non-theist can offer a parallel counterargument with the following two premises:. These premises entail that God exists in no possible world, and hence that God does not exist in the actual world. Considered together, the argument and the counterargument just mentioned plainly do not give anyone a reason to prefer theism to non-theism, and nor do they give anyone a reason to prefer non-theism to theism.

Naive Meinongians will suppose that if F is instantiated with any property, then the result is true and, quite likely, necessary, analytic and a priori. So, for example, the round square is round; the bald current King of France is bald; and so on. Choice of vocabulary here is controversial: Let us suppose for the sake of example that the right thing to say is that the former things exist and the latter do not.

The point is that non-theists are not prepared to include god s in the former group of objects—and hence will be unpersuaded by any argument which tries to use whatever vocabulary is used to discriminate between the two classes as the basis for an argument that god s belong to the former group.

Cognoscenti will recognise that the crucial point is that Meinongian ontological arguments fail to respect the distinction between nuclear assumptible, characterising properties and non-nuclear non-assumptible, non-characterising properties. It should, of course, be noted that neither Meinong, nor any of his well-known modern supporters—e.

Terence Parsons, Richard Sylvan—ever endorses a Meinongian ontological argument; and it should also be noted that most motivate the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear properties in part by a need to avoid Meinongian ontological arguments. It should not be surprising that they fail. But, however the account goes, non-theists will insist that expressions which purport to refer to god s should be given exactly the same kind of treatment.

However, even those who accept principles of unrestricted composition—i. If it is impossible that God exists — as all who deny that God exists suppose, on the further assumption that, were God to exist, God would exist of necessity — then it cannot be true both that the God-properties are closed under entailment and that there are properties that are not God-properties.

Those who take themselves to have good independent reason to deny that there are any gods will take themselves to have good independent reason to deny that there are God-properties that form a non-trivial collection that is closed under entailment. Even if the forgoing analyses are correct, it is important to note that no argument has been given for the conclusion that no ontological argument can be successful.

Even if all of the kinds of arguments produced to date are pretty clearly unsuccessful—i. Perhaps it is worth adding here that there is fairly widespread consensus, even amongst theists, that no known ontological arguments for the existence of God are persuasive. Most categories of ontological argument have some actual defenders; but none has a large following. Many other objections to some ontological arguments have been proposed.

All of the following have been alleged to be the key to the explanation of the failure of at least some ontological arguments: 1 existence is not a predicate see, e. There are many things to say about these objections: the most important point is that almost all of them require far more controversial assumptions than non-theists require in order to be able to reject ontological arguments with good conscience. Trying to support most of these claims merely in order to beat up on ontological arguments is like using a steamroller to crack a nut in circumstances in which one is unsure that one can get the steamroller to move!

Of course, all of the above discussion is directed merely to the claim that ontological arguments are not dialectically efficacious—i. It might be wondered whether there is some other use which ontological arguments have—e. This seems unlikely. After all, at best these arguments show that certain sets of sentences beliefs, etc.

But the arguments themselves say nothing about the reasonableness of accepting the premisses. So the arguments themselves say nothing about the unconditional reasonableness of accepting the conclusions of these arguments. Those who are disposed to think that theism is irrational need find nothing in ontological arguments to make them change their minds and those who are disposed to think that theism is true should take no comfort from them either.

Positive ontological arguments—i. For many positive ontological arguments, there are parodies which purport to establish the non-existence of god s ; and for many positive ontological arguments there are lots usually a large infinity! Here are some modest examples:. Hence God does not exist. If such a being does not exist, then we can conceive of a greater being—namely, one exactly like it which does exist. But I cannot conceive of a being which is greater in this way.

Hence, a being than which no greater can be conceived except that it only ever creates n universes exists. Hence it is not possible that God exists. Hence, the existent perfect being who creates exactly n universes is existent. Hence the perfect being who creates exactly n universes exists. There are many kinds of parodies of Ontological Arguments. The aim is to construct arguments which non-theists can reasonably claim to have no more reason to accept than the original Ontological Arguments themselves.

Of course, theists may well be able to hold that the originals are sound, and the parodies not—but that is an entirely unrelated issue.

There are many parodic discussions of Ontological Arguments in the literature. A relatively recent addition to the genre is described in Grey , though the date of its construction is uncertain. This parody—at least in its current state—is inferior to other parodies in the literature, including the early parodies of Gaunilo and Caterus. Surely it is quite easy to imagine even more marvellous achievements—e. These arguments have been discussed, annotated and amended by various leading logicians: the upshot is a family of arguments with impeccable logical credentials.

Interested readers are referred to Sobel , Anderson , Adams b, and Hazen for the history of these arguments, and for the scholarly annotations and emendations. Here, we give a brief presentation of the version of the argument which is developed by Anderson, and then make some comments on that version.

This discussion follows the presentation and discussion in Oppy , Definition 2: A is an essence of x if and only if for every property B , x has B necessarily if and only if A entails B. Definition 3: x necessarily exists if and only if every essence of x is necessarily exemplified. Axiom 2: Any property entailed by—i. Axiom 6: For any property P , if P is positive, then being necessarily P is positive. Theorem 2: If something is God-like, then the property of being God-like is an essence of that thing.

Given a sufficiently generous conception of properties, and granted the acceptability of the underlying modal logic, the listed theorems do follow from the axioms. This point was argued in detail by Dana Scott, in lecture notes which circulated for many years and which were transcribed in Sobel and published in Sobel It is also made by Sobel, Anderson, and Adams. So, criticisms of the argument are bound to focus on the axioms, or on the other assumptions which are required in order to construct the proof.

Some philosophers have denied the acceptability of the underlying modal logic. And some philosophers have rejected generous conceptions of properties in favour of sparse conceptions according to which only some predicates express properties. But suppose that we adopt neither of these avenues of potential criticism of the proof. What else might we say against it? At most, the various axioms which involve this concept can be taken to provide a partial implicit definition.

I is the property of having as essential properties just those properties which are in the set. G 1 , G 2 , … are further properties, of which we require at least two. The creatures are distinct because each has a different set of essential properties. Then consider the following argument:. Under suitable assumptions about the nature of accessibility relations between possible worlds, this argument is valid: from it is possible that it is necessary that p , one can infer that it is necessary that p.

Setting aside the possibility that one might challenge this widely accepted modal principle, it seems that opponents of the argument are bound to challenge the acceptability of the premise. They cannot, perhaps, be said to prove or establish their conclusion. So God exists. So God does not exist. While there is room for dispute about exactly why all of this is so, it is plausible to say that, in each case, any even minimally rational person who has doubts about the claimed status of the conclusion of the argument will have exactly the same doubts about the claimed status of the premise.

Some commentators deny that St. Anselm tried to put forward any proofs of the existence of God. Even among commentators who agree that St. Anselm intended to prove the existence of God, there is disagreement about where the proof is located.

Some commentators claim that the main proof is in Proslogion II , and that the rest of the work draws out corollaries of that proof see, e. Other commentators claim that the main proof is in Prologion III , and that the proof in Proslogion II is merely an inferior first attempt see, e. In what follows, we ignore this aspect of the controversy about the Proslogion. Instead, we focus just on the question of the analysis of the material in Proslogion II on the assumption that there is an independent argument for the existence of God which is given therein.

Here is one translation of the crucial part of Proslogion II due to William Mann , —1 ; alternative translations can be found in Barnes , Campbell , Charlesworth , and elsewhere :. There have been many ingenious attempts to find an argument which can be expressed in modern logical formalism, which is logically valid, and which might plausibly be claimed to be the argument which is expressed in this passage.

To take a few prime examples, Adams , Barnes and Oppenheimer and Zalta have all produced formally valid analyses of the argument in this passage. We begin with a brief presentation of each of these analyses, preceded by a presentation of the formulation of the argument given by Plantinga , and including a presentation of some of the formulations of Lewis Chambers works with the analysis of Adams From 1 and 2.

It is false that a being greater than God can be conceived. Hence, it is false that God exists in the understanding but not in reality. Each thing which exists in reality is greater than any thing which exists only in the understanding. If a person can conceive of something, and that thing entails something else, then the person can also conceive of that other thing. If a person can conceive that a specified object has a given property, then that person can conceive that something or other has that property.

Hence the being than which no greater can be conceived exists in reality. From 1 - 6 , by a complex series of steps here omitted. From 1, 2, 3. For any understandable being x , there is a world w such that x exists in w. For any understandable being x , and for any worlds w and v , if x exists in w , but x does not exist in v , then the greatness of x in w exceeds the greatness of x in v. There is an understandable being x such that for no world w and being y does the greatness of y in w exceed the greatness of x in the actual world.

Hence There is a being x existing in the actual world such that for no world w and being y does the greatness of y in w exceed the greatness of x in the actual world. From 1 - 3. Hence There is in the understanding a unique thing than which there is no greater. Hence There is in the understanding something which is the thing than which there is no greater.

From 2 , by a theorem about descriptions. Hence There is in the understanding nothing which is greater than the thing than which there is no greater. From 3 , by another theorem about descriptions. If that thing than which there is no greater does not exist in reality , then there is in the understanding something which is greater than that thing than which there is no greater.

Since they also provide a clear reason for thinking that this new version of the argument is not persuasive, it won't be considered further here. Considered as interpretations of the argument presented in the Proslogion , these formulations are subject to various kinds of criticisms. And that is surely a bad result. Second , the Meinongian interpretations of Barnes , Adams and Oppenheimer and Zalta produce arguments which, given the principles involved, could easily be much simplified, and which are obviously vulnerable to Gaunilo-type objections.

Consider, for example, the case of Oppenheimer and Zalta. It would surely be absurd to claim that Anselm is only committed to the less general principles: what could possibly have justified the restrictions to the special cases? But, then, mark the consequences. So, by the first claim, there is at least one existent perfect being in the understanding.

And, by the second claim, any existent perfect being is existent.