In which I try to show that St. Anselm is full of shit

[Kanastrous]

^ wasn't it Voltaire who suggested that since there is dog shit on Earth, it therefore follows that earthly dog shit is merely an imperfect material reflection of the ideal and perfect dog shit that must perfectly and ideally stick to one's shoes, in Heaven...?

[Aranfan]

If you want to illustrate the absurdity, say there's a perfect tea cup sitting on the other person's keyboard and insist that it MUST exist despite the fact it obviously isn't there because otherwise it wouldn't be perfect and you'd have a contradiction. It's the exact same retardo logic.

You're thinking like an empiricist, if you want to understand Anselm's argument you have to see it with Platonic eyes. According to Plato, the perfect cup does exist, just not here where you can interact with it. It is rather in a realm were perfect and idealized originals of all objects, called "forms", reside. Here on Earth, what we see is but a crude copy of each form. Above the level of forms is a realm of abstract ideas which give rise to the forms, and above the forms is "the Good", an indefinite thing from which everything arises.

Now here's the fun part, the higher up in the scale something is, the more real it is. In other words, not only does the perfect teacup exist, it is more real than any teacup you can actually use, those are all fakes, copies, imitations.

Given Plato's beautifully crafted monument of lunacy, and the belief that pure reason is the best way to arrive at truth, the ontological argument makes perfect sense.

That's why I defined Object Z in space and time as well. By defining something in such a way that we must be able to interact with it, I show the main problem with the whole thing.

[Darth Wong]

You're thinking like an empiricist, if you want to understand Anselm's argument you have to see it with Platonic eyes.

And why is that an important exercise? This seems like philosophy wankery. Nobody says that the design of the Titanic is fantastic as long as you look at it with a non-safety mindset. Why should we say that Anselm's retarded argument is great if you use Plato's brain-damaged notion of reality being subordinate to thought?

[Samuel]

You're thinking like an empiricist, if you want to understand Anselm's argument you have to see it with Platonic eyes.

And why is that an important exercise? This seems like philosophy wankery. Nobody says that the design of the Titanic is fantastic as long as you look at it with a non-safety mindset. Why should we say that Anselm's retarded argument is great if you use Plato's brain-damaged notion of reality being subordinate to thought?

Wouldn't platonic reality basically be 40K? It fits actually- ideals with physical manifestation, thoughts are real, etc.

Of course, it goes to show why it is insane.

[Junghalli]

Wouldn't platonic reality basically be 40K? It fits actually- ideals with physical manifestation, thoughts are real, etc.

Not really, I think; Platonic Forms and the warp don't actually have much of anything in common. For starters stuff in the warp is caused by stuff in the material universe, with Platonic Forms it's the other way around. And there are a lot of other differences too; they are really not comparable at all.

[Kuroneko]

Now, I would point out that this is backward; we come up with abstracts after observation as a sort of memory/imagination "shorthand" for what we've seen. Abstracts like "perfect beings" only exist in the mind, ... .

I agree, but it's interesting that the only part Plato would disagree with is the "come up" part, if you mean it in the sense of "create." That we can experience the "Forms" only mentally was explicitly part of Plato's doctrine, which made them more real than physical objects proper, rather than less. Additionally, he taught that learning after observation is itself a kind of memory, as the soul is already acquainted with the Forms--a difficulty in learning would correspond to a difficulty in recalling something despite already knowing it.

Whatever might be said about the overall correctness of his doctrine, Plato was not naive about its logical implications. He knew exactly what he was doing when he hypostatized ideas/forms, and some of the peculiarities that might be seen as reductia ad absurdum to more empirically-minded readers would've gotten a "yes, that's exactly right" from him.

Additionally, I would point out that humans, by their nature imperfect animals, using imperfect language and imperfect brains, would not be able to recognise a "perfect being" because their view of the world is never complete and language is a nest of approximate values that we share with one another.

Indeed, and it's very much relevant because the only evidence Anselm offers that his very strong idea of God is possible (consistent) is that humans can conceive it.

We had a seminar presentation about that at our department a few years ago. The general consensus was that either Gödel was proving something inconceivably trivial, like "modal logic holds for all possible worlds where modal logic holds", or he was unjustifiably assuming that perfection means "is true in all possible worlds".

What Gödel did was introduce the notion of "positivity", subject to some axioms regarding which properties are consistent with it and which aren't, and that "necessary existence" is a positive property was one of his axioms, and went on to a formal statement that translates into something like:
-- if 'positivity' is a consistent notion, then an individual with all positive properties exists;
this is essentially the same thing as the proof outlined above except that "superiority/perfection" is explicitly formalized, so that "it is possible that God exists" is replaced with "positivity is consistent".

Don't all ontological arguments fall into the category of "in order to prove my assumption of God's existence, I will manufacture a different assumption and show that God logically follows from that?" They're all shell games, of varying complexity.

Perhaps it is something that only appeals to the mathematician's sensibilities, so I can see why one might feel underwhelmed even with the revised version. However, on the principle of charity to one's opponent I feel compelled to point it out anyway. I've come to like this particular iteration of the game, because unlike most, the different assumption appears so weak and innocuous, as
--"There is a God" [fitting Anselm's definition]
is replaced with
--"It is possible for there to be a God" [again, fitting Anselm's definition],
and the latter is all that's needed to prove the former.

Just to be clear, I don't think that the ontological argument or any other purely logical cogitations are even capable of proving anything at all about reality (at best, they only prove something about the logic systems they use); it's just that over the years I've realized that while Anselm is very wrong, he might've been a bit more clever than the repackaged version of his argument made him out to be.

God is typically conceived as being freed from any constraints, and paradoxically enough, Perfection is actually a constraint.

Aa. Actually, the neoplatonists came to the same conclusion, for pretty much the same reasons--their God ('the One')--is beyond all predication because that would imply limits. This also puts God beyond existence ('Being'), although they probably meant that existence was somehow the "essense" of being God rather than God being literally non-existent. Of course, such a notion of "God" might as well be atheism dressed up in philosophical terms to make it slightly more palatable to aggressive theistic neighbors, ala the God of Spinoza (not that it helped Spinoza).

[Darth Wong]

Don't all ontological arguments fall into the category of "in order to prove my assumption of God's existence, I will manufacture a different assumption and show that God logically follows from that?" They're all shell games, of varying complexity.

Perhaps it is something that only appeals to the mathematician's sensibilities, so I can see why one might feel underwhelmed even with the revised version. However, on the principle of charity to one's opponent I feel compelled to point it out anyway. I've come to like this particular iteration of the game, because unlike most, the different assumption appears so weak and innocuous, as
--"There is a God" [fitting Anselm's definition]
is replaced with
--"It is possible for there to be a God" [again, fitting Anselm's definition],
and the latter is all that's needed to prove the former.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems to me that if we adopt a mathematician's approach, Anselm's argument is still deeply flawed. To be more specific, let us treat Reality and Imagination as two sets R and I. His argument claims that a Supreme Being which exists in both R and I is superior to one which exists only in I. But this statement contains another hidden assumption: it assumes that I is not larger than R. If I is much larger than R, then it would be quite possible for a being existing entirely in I to be greater than a being existing in both I and R. There would be only two ways out of this dilemma:

1) Assume that the being completely fills all of both I and R, in which case a being existing in both I and R must necessarily be greater than a being existing entirely in I. To disprove this, (even without getting into an argument over God's omnipresence in reality) one need only point out that you can imagine things other than God, such as furry unicorns. Once you establish that the Supreme Being need not fill all of I, then it stands to reason that a being could exist entirely in I and be greater than a being who exists in both I and R. The limits of this being are set only by imagination, and if those limits are much greater than the limits of reality, then the purely imaginary Supreme Being could very well be greater than the hybrid real/imaginary Supreme Being. If we assume that imagination is infinite, then it would stand to reason that as I approaches infinity and some proportion of I is filled with God, then the ratio of any real God to any imaginary God would approach zero.

2) The alternate solution is to assume that R is some kind of superset of I, or exists on some higher plane than I, which implicitly grants broad superiority to R over I, which seems like empiricism to me

Or maybe I'm just blowing a lot of smoke. But I managed to amuse myself by writing this.

Just to be clear, I don't think that the ontological argument or any other purely logical cogitations are even capable of proving anything at all about reality (at best, they only prove something about the logic systems they use); it's just that over the years I've realized that while Anselm is very wrong, he might've been a bit more clever than the repackaged version of his argument made him out to be.

God is typically conceived as being freed from any constraints, and paradoxically enough, Perfection is actually a constraint.

Aa. Actually, the neoplatonists came to the same conclusion, for pretty much the same reasons--their God ('the One')--is beyond all predication because that would imply limits. This also puts God beyond existence ('Being'), although they probably meant that existence was somehow the "essense" of being God rather than God being literally non-existent. Of course, such a notion of "God" might as well be atheism dressed up in philosophical terms to make it slightly more palatable to aggressive theistic neighbors, ala the God of Spinoza (not that it helped Spinoza).

It's interesting that the notion of reality being a constricting condition is routinely applied to people: our spirits are often assumed to be vastly superior to our mortal coils. But it is rarely applied to God: to his believers, any presumed physical manifestation of God (no matter how mundane or comical, like a stain on an overpass or an oddly shaped piece of cheese) only enhances him rather than suggesting that he might be subject to real limits.

[Kuroneko]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems to me that if we adopt a mathematician's approach, Anselm's argument is still deeply flawed.

Oh, I only meant that if we can prove a hefty claim from one that looks quite innocent, that would be impressive to a mathematician, even if the latter claim is not true. So, let's see if we can do so here and make Anselm's argument at least valid, even if it falls short of being sound.

I'm not going to claim that Anselm thought in the manner I'm about to present. That's rather unlikely. In any case, the opinion of an eleventh century bishop is not very relevant; if we have to abandon the particulars of Anselm's train of thought to rescue his argument, so be it. If we can also keep his premises and his conclusion, that's interesting enough by itself.

To be more specific, let us treat Reality and Imagination as two sets R and I. His argument claims that a Supreme Being which exists in both R and I is superior to one which exists only in I. But this statement contains another hidden assumption: it assumes that I is not larger than R. If I is much larger than R, then it would be quite possible for a being existing entirely in I to be greater than a being existing in both I and R.

A translation of the original text reads:
And indeed, we believe that [God is] a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. ... But, at any rate, this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak ‑‑a being than which nothing greater can be conceived ‑‑understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist.
He goes on for another paragraph about things existing "in the understanding" and whatnot. Let's take this to mean something like this: since we can conceive of such a God (God exists in the understanding), (1) the existence of God is possible. He then continues some time later:
And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.
Thus, you're right--this goes much too far, so Anselm did indeed flub the argument (quite a bit worse that I thought, actually, so I guess he deserves the ridicule he got). But nevermind Anselm being a dunderhead for a moment--given his definition of God, we can say the following. Suppose God exists contingently. But surely it is greater to exist necessarily. Thus, (2) if God exists, God exists necessarily. Note that we've yet made no claims that God actually exists.

So far, we've kept Anselm's major premise (1) and his definition of 'God', while (2) is a logical consequence of his definition. This is where things get a little more fun. To analyze the situation, let's introduce a few carnaps symbols:
L = 'necessary', M = 'possible', ¬ = 'not', v = 'or', → = 'implies', iff = 'equivalent to'.
Subject to the following axioms:
N: Logical truths are necessary: if p is a theorem, Lp is a theorem.
K: Necessity distributes: L(p→q) → (Lp→Lq).
T: If something is necessary, then it's true: Lp → p.
E: Possibilities are necessarily possible: Mp → LMp.
Additionally, something is not necessary iff it's possible for it to not be case: (0) ¬Lp iff M¬p. Thus, negation switches L and M and also negates the inner argument.

Assume that, for some particular p, p→Lp, so we can treat this as a theorem.
(1) M¬p → ¬p (contrapositive of p→Lp + (0))
(2) LM¬p → L¬p (N + K on (1))
(3) Lp v M¬p (excluded middle on Lp + (0))
(4) Lp v LM¬p (subst. E into (3))
(5) Lp v L¬p (subst. (2) into (4))
Suppose we admit that p is possible. Then, as Mp iff ¬L¬p, modus ponens proves that Lp. By T, p follows.

Applying the above to Anselm's situation, if we grant that
(1) It is possible for God to exist.
with the term 'God' implying that
(2) If God exists, then God exists necessarily.
then we are forced to admit that
(3) God exists.
of course subject to our also accepting the above rules of modal logic. On those grounds, E is the easiest axiom to attack, although we could simply deny that such a God is even possible, since it's not at all clear that why conceivability should suffer an upper bound, or even that conceivable beings can be 'ranked' in a sufficiently well-defined manner in the first place.

It's interesting that the notion of reality being a constricting condition is routinely applied to people: our spirits are often assumed to be vastly superior to our mortal coils. But it is rarely applied to God: to his believers, any presumed physical manifestation of God (no matter how mundane or comical, like a stain on an overpass or an oddly shaped piece of cheese) only enhances him rather than suggesting that he might be subject to real limits.

I never could quite figure out whether they mean for God to be transcendent or not (they certainly say so, but if God manifests through moldy cheese, that's a rather cheap kind of transcendence). On the other hand, if we continue with the thought that the entire "essence" of God is (necessary) existence, as suggested by full transcendence, then the modal version of Anselm's argument is reduced to
-- If it's possible for a being to exist necessarily, then some necessarily-existent being exists.
Which may score a point, but the theological implications are less than clear. Heh.

[Darth Wong]

...
of course subject to our also accepting the above rules of modal logic. On those grounds, E is the easiest axiom to attack, although we could simply deny that such a God is even possible, since it's not at all clear that why conceivability should suffer an upper bound, or even that conceivable beings can be 'ranked' in a sufficiently well-defined manner in the first place.

Perhaps I'm being overly harsh, but it seems to me that the more you break down the logic, the more it appears that it's not so much a clever construction based upon a single innocuous premise as it is a group of premises, most of which are declared in the form of rules. Not only do we not need to accept that God is possible, but we do not need to accept those modal rules either, or (as you point out) this entire concept of an innate "ranking system" for conceivable ideas which he states as a self-evident truth.

I never could quite figure out whether they mean for God to be transcendent or not (they certainly say so, but if God manifests through moldy cheese, that's a rather cheap kind of transcendence). On the other hand, if we continue with the thought that the entire "essence" of God is (necessary) existence, as suggested by full transcendence, then the modal version of Anselm's argument is reduced to
-- If it's possible for a being to exist necessarily, then some necessarily-existent being exists.
Which may score a point, but the theological implications are less than clear. Heh.

Isn't that like the mathematical trivial solution 0=0?

In any case, ruminating a bit more on perfection, it seems to me that the only perfect concepts are those which exist purely in the imagination. In the imagination, I can easily conceive of a perfect 1 metre cube. I could draw it on a piece of paper, but that is merely a representation of the imaginary concept. But in reality, it is utterly impossible to create a perfect 1 metre cube. In the imagination, writers and poets can imagine the concept of perfect love. In reality, there is no such thing. The more one reads the Bible's descriptions of God's actual conduct as he interacts with his subjects on the physical plane, the more apparent it becomes that his "perfect love" is a severe case of false advertising. In the imagination, sex between lovers is such a transcendent experience that it becomes quasi-spiritual, and lovers become as one. In reality, women interrupt to say things like "Ow! You're on my hair!"

[Marcus Aurelius]

You're thinking like an empiricist, if you want to understand Anselm's argument you have to see it with Platonic eyes.

And why is that an important exercise? This seems like philosophy wankery. Nobody says that the design of the Titanic is fantastic as long as you look at it with a non-safety mindset. Why should we say that Anselm's retarded argument is great if you use Plato's brain-damaged notion of reality being subordinate to thought?

Important? Perhaps not from some point of view, but interesting for sure. It tells us a lot about how the predominant way of thinking about the reality has changed during history. If we want to understand how the mind works, it is certainly important as well. You could say that Anselm's brain was programmed in such a way that the was absolutely nothing "brain dead" or absurd about his argument to him or his contemporaries. Another way to say it is that his perception of reality was constructed coherently with the predominant philosophy of the time, which was platonism through neoplatonists and St. Augustine.

As a side note, that is also the key for understanding any religious thinking AND the key for understanding why many hard-core materialist atheists have trouble understanding religion and its importance for the majority of mankind. Understanding of course does not mean that you have to accept or endorse the religious way of thinking, any more than a criminal psychologist accepts acts of crime, if she understands the thinking and mental processes behind them.

[hongi]

Why does Anselm think it is possible to concieve of God at all?

[Darth Wong]

Why does Anselm think it is possible to concieve of God at all?

You're kidding, right? The clergy has been telling us that God is beyond human comprehension for two thousand years, but they've been confidently telling us what he thinks and what he wants for just as long. Of course they think they can conceive of God. They even condemn the wicked on his behalf, praise the righteous on his behalf, forgive your sins on his behalf, and accept donations on his behalf.

Religious people only say God is inscrutable so they can slither away from Socratic interrogation.

[Kuroneko]

Perhaps I'm being overly harsh, but it seems to me that the more you break down the logic, the more it appears that it's not so much a clever construction based upon a single innocuous premise as it is a group of premises, most of which are declared in the form of rules.

That's true, but only in the sense that evaluating the validity of any argument whatsoever involves accepting some background system of logic. As long as that system is acceptable in general, rather than tailor-made for that type of argument, it seems a bit strange to count it along with the premises of the argument--we don't ordinarily consider rules of logic as premises, after all.

Not only do we not need to accept that God is possible, but we do not need to accept those modal rules either, or (as you point out) this entire concept of an innate "ranking system" for conceivable ideas which he states as a self-evident truth.

Well, not accepting innate "rankings" would be fall under denying that such a God is possible--if things can't be thus ranked, it makes little sense to speak of an entity of greatest possible rank (alternatively, things could have innate rankings but with no upper bound on them).

I don't think that accepting the modal logic itself is very problematic. It's just a formalization of what we ordinarily mean by 'necessary' and 'possible', although since the plain-language terms are sometimes ambiguous, such a formalization would necessarily (!) pick out only one of the ordinary meanings, and it is on those grounds that one could reasonably question an axiom like E (and hence rejecting that system)--or one might also consider theological questions outside the validity of that system even while accepting that it "works" for general use. Of course I cannot demonstrate any innate reasons for accepting the above system of modal logic (or any other kind of logic, for that matter); the most I could even hope to do is illustrate that it formalizes a useful and hopefully natural way of thinking about things.

Let's try a particular example. Suppose that your boss is actually a closet sci-fi nut, and one day he asks you how to build a Dyson sphere. The straight answer would be that it's just so obviously impossible given our technological capabilities that he cannot possibly be serious, but (indulging a discussion) you might also say that it would require unobtanium materials with such-and-such properties, resources of such-and-such garangutan proportions, etc. So, in slightly more explicit terms:
-- No imaginary state of affairs ('possible world') compatible with the context of current human capabilities has a successful construction of a Dyson sphere, so you say it's not possible.
-- In every such imaginary world with a Dyson sphere, compatible with the context of classical physics but without restrictions on materials, the sphere has a tensile strength of at least X, so you say such material strength is necessary.
In this interpretation, all the axioms become trivial, with L='necessary'='the case in every possible world' and M='possible'='true in at least one possible world'. Specifically:
N: Don't bother with contexts that break ordinary logic.
K: If "p implies q" is true in every possible world, and p is true in every possible world, then q is true in every possible world: L(p→q)→(Lp→Lq).
T: If something is true in every possible world, then it's true: Lp→p.
E: If p is true in some possible world, then the sentence "p is true in some possible world" is itself true in all possible worlds: Mp→LMp.
The last being a kind of principle of uniformity, i.e., that a hypothetical person in some imaginary world, if thinking thoroughly enough, should be able to imagine the same possibilities compatible with the same context.

Isn't that like the mathematical trivial solution 0=0?

Not quite, since it has the form "if X is possible, then X."

In reality, there is no such thing. The more one reads the Bible's descriptions of God's actual conduct as he interacts with his subjects on the physical plane, the more apparent it becomes that his "perfect love" is a severe case of false advertising.

The liberal-Christian answer may be that it's possible to love someone and still punish them, but the fundamentalists usually even bother--instead of the high-minded agape love, God's love tends to be erosic, both in the sense of being conditional and in that it sometimes veers into metaphorical sodomy. This might be another example of the fundamentalists tending to know their Bibles best.