The Ontological Argument Redux
This argument for the existence of God tries to deduce from the meaning of the term “God” the fact that this term also has a referent. Normally, semiotics teaches that the signified is a different beast than the referent. But is that true for the signifier “God”? It seems that when God signifies “a being than which no greater can be thought,” this conception includes within itself the fact of God’s existence in reality. So, what we do when trying to think of the greatest possible being is we start enumerating its attributes: the being than which no greater can be thought must be omnipotent, omniscient, 3, 4, 5, actually existing, 7, 8… Now here I argue that its existence remains a conception, such that “from the idea of a perfect being only an idea of its actual existence follows, not its actual existence.” Am I right?
Consider a second version of the ontological argument. Let X be a being that is pure actuality. Let also it be possible for X to exist (lest it can be argued that in not existing X has no potency to come to exist, because its existence is impossible). Then if X did not exist or existed but could corrupt and perish, then existence would stand to X’s essence as act to potency, and X would no longer be pure act, contrary to the definition. In other words, the meaning of the term “pure actuality” entails existence of pure actuality. There are two interpretations of this argument. (1) If the concept of pure actuality is not incoherent, which it’s not, then X exists. (2) If anything is pure actuality, then it has existence by its very nature, i.e., X is imperishable.
Now I’d like to suggest that there are two distinct criteria for something’s existing at work here:
(a) (∃X)(X is pure actuality) (normal existential statement); and
(b) (∀X)(X is pure actuality → X exists) (from definition of pure actuality).
Suppose that (a) is false. Then “X is pure actuality” is false for all X, and the truth value of “X exists” is undefined. And that’s exactly, as far as I see it, what Aquinas says in (ST, I, 2, 1, ad 2): “Nor can it be argued that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which nothing greater can be thought; and this precisely is not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist.” We can’t argue for the consequent of (b) unless we admit (a), and (a) is not self-evident. ◊(∃X)(X is pure actuality) is true, but we don’t know at this stage of our proof whether X exists in the actual world.
Update. (a) and (b) may be clarified as follows:
(a’) (∃X)(X’s essence is described by the phrase “pure actuality”);
(b’) (∀X)(X’s essence is described by the phrase “pure actuality” → X exists).
August 6th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Would it be necessary to say that if pure act did not exist, it must be possible? Isn’t one option that pure act is contradictory ?
Another question: Is stipulating that something is possible the same as to say it is potential? possibility is not potency: Potency is a positive state- a real ability to be other; while possibility need be nothing more than mere failure to see a repugnance between the predicate and a subject. Potency is determined by experience and sensation (an inference from some act); possibility need not be.
August 6th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Sorry, I left out what I was speaking to in your post: namely that if X does not exist, then existence stands to X as act to potency. I think Aquinas would deny this where X is “possible”. I don’t have the exact reference, bu it would be early on in his commentary of the Metaphysics, Book IX.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
hey Dmitry, I’d be interested in what you’d have to say about the discussion going on here:
http://www.doxazotheos.com/?p=38
August 7th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Thanks for the comment, Dmitry. Have you looked into Maydole’s recent work in this area?
August 7th, 2008 at 8:51 am
No, I have not; which work is it?
To conclude my response, it is conceivable that God exists necessarily and that P(a maximally great being exists); and it is conceivable that God exists contingently and that ~P(a maximally great being exists); but Plantinga’s argument gives us no means to adjudicating which pair of propositions is true. In other words, conceptual coherence buys you conceivability not possibility.
August 7th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
> Isn’t one option that pure act is contradictory?
That’s why I stipulate that pure act is possible. But where’s the contradiction?
> Another question: Is stipulating that something is possible the same as to say it is potential?
Potency is a passive power of a real thing in the actual world to be affected or to become; possibility is merely the way things could be. Potency implies, it seems to me, that there is a known process that can actualize it; even if “possibly X” we need not have any idea how to get from here to X. In other words, potency is rooted in the actual world; when dealing with possibilities we can let our fancy go wild.
> if X does not exist, then existence stands to X as act to potency. I think Aquinas would deny this where X is “possible”.
“Possible” seems to be weaker than “potential.” You are saying that a mere possibility for X is not enough for the argument. There must be a potentiality for X to exist. But let X not exist, and let God be able to create X ex nihilo. Here possibility and potentiality coalesce.
August 8th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
I don’t see why “possibility” in its weakest sense needs to mean more than “I don’t see a contradiction in thinking that”. In other words, one meaning of possibility is simply our own failure to detect contradiction, not the absence of contradiction altogether. That’s why I thought that stipulating possibility was not enough to keep the idea of “pure act” from being a real contradiction.
I say this because it seems to me that there are plenty of times when we say both sides of a contradictory are “possible”, even though we know right readily that one of them has to be impossible (say, whether some past event happened, or whether some criminal is guilty of some crime). This, I think, replies to your first two responses. I’m not sure about the last one, I’ll have to think more about that.
August 8th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
You may be confusing possibility with conceivability. The Goldbach conjecture, for example, is either necessarily true or necessarily false, but neither it nor its denial is inconceivable. “Pure act” is either possible or not, but you seem to be saying that it is conceivable that it is contradictory (and therefore impossible), and it is conceivable that it is not contradictory (and therefore possible). It is only if we know for sure that pure act is possible, that we can assert that its being contradictory is inconceivable.