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A more recent ontological argument came from Kurt Gödel, who proposed a formal argument for God's existence. Norman Malcolm also revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work; Alvin Plantinga challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on modal logic.
In 1960 he argued that the argument originally presented by Anselm of Canterbury in the second chapter of his Proslogion was just an inferior version of the argument propounded in chapter three. [5] [6] His argument is similar to those produced by Charles Hartshorne and Alvin Plantinga. Malcolm argued that a God cannot simply exist as a matter ...
Various philosophers – including Norman Malcolm, Peter Winch, D. Z. Phillips, and Rush Rhees – have interpreted Wittgenstein as advocating a kind of fideism regarding religion. Such a fideism would imply that religious statements are only meaningful within a religious form of life and thus cannot be criticized from outside religion.
The ontological argument is a defining example of the fusion of Hebrew and Greek thought. Philosophical realism was the dominant philosophical school of Anselm's day, and stemmed from Platonism . It held, in contrast to Nominalism , that things such as "green" and "big" were known as universals , which had a real existence in an abstract realm ...
There are many notable contributors to the development of various ontological arguments. In the 11th century C.E., Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) reasoned in his work Proslogion about the existence of God in an ontological argument based on the idea that there is a 'being than which no greater can be conceived'. [11] [1] [12]
In The Only Possible Argument, Kant questions both the ontological argument for God (as proposed by Anselm of Canterbury) and the argument from design. Kant argues that the internal possibility of all things presupposes some existence: [1] Accordingly, there must be something whose nonexistence would cancel all internal possibility whatsoever.
Ontotheology, according to Kant (as interpreted by Iain Thomson), "was the type of transcendental theology characteristic of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological argument which believes it can know the existence of an original being [Urwesen], through mere concepts, without the help of any experience whatsoever". [5]
A cosmological argument can also sometimes be referred to as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, the causal argument or the prime mover argument. The concept of causation is a principal underpinning idea in all cosmological arguments, particularly in affirming the necessity for a First Cause .