A Perfect Being 2

In this follow up to A Perfect Being 1 I want to continue with Anselm's second ontological argument. I believe the second argument does much to bolster Anselm's first argument. However, before I get to the second argument I want to deal with some objections raised in comments on the blog and Facebook to the first ontological argument. To review, Dr. Doug Groothuis broke down Anselm's first argument this way:

1. God is understood or defined as a being "than which nothing greater can be conceived." Even the fool possesses this concept of God.

2. A thing exists either in (a) the understanding only (such as the idea of a painting before it is painted) or (b) in both the understanding and reality, such as existing in the mind of the painter and then existing on the canvas.

3. It is "greater" to exist in reality than to exist merely in the understanding.

4. If God exists merely in the understanding (existing only in the mind of the fool), then God is not the greatest possible being, since a being that existed in reality would be greater than a being that existed only in the understanding.

5. But God is by definition the greatest possible being (from 1).

6. Therefore, God exists not merely in the understanding (as the fool claims) but in reality as well. By reduction ad absurdum.

It is important to remember that since the argument is deductive in form and logically valid, the conclusion is inevitably true unless the premises are defeated. Any objection that does not deal with the premises fails. I discussed the argument briefly with Christian apologist Tyler Ramey, and I tend to agree with his assessment: "I think the ONTO argument is unassailable as Groothuis has presented it." Nevertheless, the onus is on me to demonstrate that conviction. I will have to apologize to some of those who commented on Facebook because I seem to no longer have access to the comments (I believe I'm having technical difficulties with my computer). I have been able to resurrect some of the objections of Andrew Magee on the basis of my very fallible memory, in addition to a google search, so some of what they said has certainly been left out.

I will begin with the objections raised in A Perfect Being 1. Someone named bob commented,

Sorry but there is no relationship between "the greatest conceivable thing" and "the greatest actual thing" any more than there is a relationship between "the fastest conceivable car" and "the fastest actual car".

First of all, let me say that if bob was trying to defeat the argument, he was hitting at the right place: Premise 4. Someone else actually beat me to the punch--scottpd responded:

Bob, I disagree that there is no relationship between the greatest conceivable being and the greatest actual being. In so much as the argument clearly addresses actuality as part of the definition of great. The argument hinges on "The greatest possible being" actually being a coherent concept, that is, is the greatest possible being even possible. And,is logical necessity entail actual necessity (aka does the universe have to be ultimately rational).

That response hits the nail on the head. In order to deny this this argument in the way that bob did, one has to deny logic. The strength of the first ontological argument is that it is a logical contradiction for the greatest conceivable being to exist only in the understanding, since an actual greatest conceivable being would necessarily be greater. From there, bob attempted to refute scottpd by comparing the greatest conceivable being to a "greatest conceivable doctor," "greatest conceivable scientist," and "greatest greatest conceivable pianist," but these objections fail because they are restricted to a greatest conceivable specialist, whereas we are arguing for a greatest conceivable being. Next scottpd responded,

I agree Bob, but with the word "being" rather than island, or pianist etc, I think we are working with more definable terms in the sense of character and ability. And so I believe the greatest possible being is a coherent concept whereas the greatest possible island is not.

bob replied,

No, using the word "being" we're working with significantly LESS definable terms.

Case in point: consider "greatest conceivable pianist". I can easily conceive of a pianist who can sight read Rachmaninov's third piano concerto, at full speed, with perfect accuracy, while devising a unique and revolutionary interpretation of the piece in real time and keeping in sync with the orchestra. That pianist does not however, exist, even though the term is not difficult to define at all. Changing from "pianist" to "being" only makes the question more abstract and more difficult to define.

Since scottpd did not respond further at this point, I will. The Perfect Being we are arguing for is in some ways harder to define than a maximally great doctor, scientist, or pianist. What of it? It is not necessary to exhaustively define a Perfect Being for the argument to work, and bob's objection is essentially the same as Guanilo's objection that we can form no concept of a maximally perfect being. Dr. Groothuis deals with that objection handily, so I'll quote him here:

We need not understand everything about this superlative being to have a proper apprehension of it; we simply need to understand the definition given by Anselm. The notion of a Perfect Being is not opaque or swamped by mystery. In fact, we can summarize the previous two paragraphs: A Perfect Being is a being who possesses every property it is better to have than to lack and who possesses this array of compossible excellent properties to the utmost degree (or to their intrinsic maximum value).

Rather than requiring an all-encompassing, rigorous definition of God, the argument still works since even the fool can conceive of such a thing as a Perfect Being. Of course, a complete and total comprehension of God is impossible if He is defined as a maximally great being. A God who can fit neatly inside the limits of human comprehension could not be God, but this is the strength of the argument, not its weakness. This realization brings us right back to the logical contradiction of premise 4. If God exists merely in the understanding (existing only in the mind of the fool), then God is not the greatest possible being, since a being that existed in reality would be greater than a being that existed only in the understanding. If God is by definition the greatest possible being (premises 1 and 5), then God exists not merely in the understanding (as the fool claims) but in reality as well (premise 6).

Andrew Magee linked to an article that claimed the argument was fallacious on the grounds that some of the claims of the argument are unproven:

The argument does not attempt to rigorously define "greatness". Without such a definition, even if the argument somehow managed to prove the existence of an object, it says absolutely nothing about the properties of this object. ...

Even if "greatness" can be defined coherently and unambiguously, it does not follow that greatness can be ranked.  ...

Even if "greatness" can be defined coherently and unambiguously, it does not necessarily follow that there is even in theory a maximum attainable greatness.  ...

Even if "greatness" can be defined coherently and unambiguously, and can be ranked, it doesn't follow that any particular imaginable level of greatness actually exists.

The author of the article fails to overcome the first ontological argument for the same reason bob did. It is simple common sense that a Perfect Being would necessarily be greater than a less than perfect being. One doesn't require a rigorous definition of "greater" to conceive this. If "greatness" cannot be ranked, what makes one thing greater than another--for instance, is Anselm's argument or the linked blogger's arguments "greater"? I'll leave that for my readers to decided for themselves, but I don't think any of us will have to rigorously define "greater" to make this distinction. The readers know intuitively that "truth" is "greater" than "falsehood." On that basis, they will decide based on their understanding of the arguments, which argument is "true" and therefore "greater" without any mental gymnastics or long research on the definition of "truth," "falsehood," or "greater."

Then next objection, that there may be no such thing as "maximal attainable greatness" may give my readers some pause, because God is supposed to be infinite. Dr. Groothuis makes a useful observation that God's infinity is qualitative, rather than quantitative. This means that God's perfections can reach an upper limit, and what this practically entails is that instead of only having some power, God is perfectly powerful (or omnipotent); instead of being ignorant of anything, He is perfectly knowledgeable (omniscient); and instead of being a mixture of good and evil, He is perfectly good (omnibenevolent). Usually when one thinks of God being infinite, one imagines quantitative infinity, and this is the source of the linked blogger's misunderstanding. We are not arguing for a God whose qualities go on and on, but a Perfect Being. Once again, for the argument to work concepts such as "greatness" and "perfection" do not need to be exhaustively defined. We can conceive of such things, and this is why the argument works.

Finally, the linked blogger insists that even if "greatness" can be defined and ranked, it doesn't follow that being able to conceive of such notions means they exist. For a rebuttal of this, see my response to the nearly identical objection raised by bob.

The video portion of the blog reiterates Kant's objection, which was dealt with in A Perfect Being 1. The blogger incorrectly accuses Anselm of equivocating concepts with beings; Anselm's argument still works because a Perfect Being would still be greater than a Perfect Concept (and here we go again with premises 4-6!). It was part of Anselm's point that a being is greater than a concept, so the linked blogger is actually making the case for the ontological argument. The blogger is actually engaging in the sort of word games he accuses Anselm of.  His replacement of the Perfect Being with cookies and unicorns was already dealt with in my response to bob, so I won't rehash what I've said already. His most damning objection may be that the Perfect Being argued for by Anselm does not match the God of the Bible. While I disagree, I'll leave my response to that particular claim for a future post. While I clearly come to different conclusions than the linked blogger (and by extension Andrew) if anyone could topple Anselm's first argument, he could have. His arguments were certainly compelling, even if I did not end up agreeing with him. I could not justly accuse anyone of being intellectually inferior for taking his side of the argument.

Let's move on to Anselm's second ontological argument.

Argument 2 is similar in some ways to argument 1, but the difference is that it introduces the concept of "necessary existence." Dr. Groothuis formally puts Anselm's second argument in this way:

1. God is defined as a maximally great or Perfect Being.
2. The existence of a Perfect Being is either impossible or necessary (since it cannot be contingent).
3. The concept of a Perfect Being is not impossible, since it is neither nonsensical nor self-contradictory.
4. Therefore (a) a Perfect Being is necessary.
5. Therefore (b) a Perfect Being exists.

As with argument 1, argument 2 is deductive and logically valid. This means that one or more of the premises must be defeated to prevent the conclusion from being true. In fact, the only way to counter argument 2 to prove that the concept of God, a Perfect Being, is self-contradictory or nonsensical. The linked blogger insisted that the concept of God as a necessary being was begging the question, but he did not take Anselm's second argument into account at all.

As [Norman] Malcolm puts it, God's "existence must be logically necessary or logically impossible. The only intelligible way of rejecting Anselm's claim that God's existence is necessary is to maintain that the concept of God, as a being greater than which cannot be conceived, is self contradictory or nonsensical." ~ Dr. Douglas Groothuis

The concept of God as a necessary being is clearly not nonsense, and probably not self-contradictory. In fact, so far we have argued that the contradiction lies in God being conceivable, but not actually existing, since an actual Perfect Being is greater than an purely imaginary Perfect Being. Whoever dissents from Anselm's argument must show that (1) God's attributes are not compossible--as argument 1 states all attributes are perfectly in harmony--or that (2) a single divine attribute is somehow contradictory.

For example, one might object that God cannot be omniscient because He is immaterial--therefore He cannot know what it is like to have a body. This is a bad objection for a couple of reasons. First of all, no theologian claims that God has a first-person experience of everything; this is simply not what is meant by omniscient, or all knowing. Omniscience means that God has knowledge--that is, justified true belief--of everything. Even a finite being like me can know, for example, that Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States, even though I have never experienced the city first hand. If God really did create all things seen and unseen, as the Bible claims, then He would know everything about the universe.

Another objection is raised by the classic dilemma, "Can God make a stone so heavy that He cannot lift it?" This dilemma is supposed to refute the idea of an omnipotent God. Once again, this argument is the result of theological ignorance. Omnipotence does not mean that God has the ability to do anything. He cannot, for instance, do anything that is logically impossible. This means that He cannot make a stone too heavy for Him to lift, or create a square circle, or a married bachelor. Or to use an example straight out of the Bible, God cannot lie. This does not limit His power in any way, and perfect power is all God needs in order to be considered omnipotent. Ability is not the same thing as power, and God does simply does not have ability to do illogical things.

These arguments can be a little difficult to understand, but as far as I can understand them the arguments are sound. The premises ring true, so the conclusion must be valid, since the arguments are deductive. It's hard to deny the necessity of a Perfect Being unless one can also prove that it is impossible for such a being to exist. Good luck with that!