Steven, Peter, et al.: This paper has been languishing on my hard drive for some time. Comments appreciated.
Abstract. Modal ontological arguments for the existence of God require a possibility premise to the effect that a maximally perfect being is possible. Admitting the possibility of such a being may appear to be a minimal concession, but it is not given that the admission, together with the uncontroversial premise that a necessary being is one whose possibility entails its actuality, straightaway entails the actual existence of a maximally perfect being. The suspicion thus arises that the modal ontological argument begs the question at its possibility premise. So various philosophers, including J. N. Findlay, A.C. Ewing, John Leslie and Carl Kordig have attempted to support the possibility premise by broadly deontic considerations concerning what ought-to-be, where this ought-to-be subsists independently of the powers of any agent. The basic idea is that God, conceived as a maximally perfect being, is possible because (i) he ought to exist, and (ii) whatever ought to exist is possible. The basic idea is that the non-agential oughtness or axiological requiredness of the divine existence certifies the possibility and in turn the actuality of the divine existence. The overall argument could be described as a broadly deontic God proof along modal ontological lines. This article sets forth and defends the argument before explaining why it is not ultimately compelling.
A Non-Agentially Deontic God Proof
Anselm of Canterbury (1033 - 1109) had a profound insight: he realized that God, understood as "that than which no greater can be conceived," must exist of metaphysical necessity if he exists at all. To appreciate it properly we must distinguish between Anselm’s Insight and Anselm’s Argument, where the latter is the modal argument of Prosblogion III. The Insight may be put as follows. God, by definition, is an ens perfectissimum, a maximally perfect being. A maximally perfect being, however, cannot be modally contingent, but must be modally noncontingent: it must be necessary (existent in every metaphysically possible world), or else impossible (existent in no metaphysically possible world). For if God were modally contingent (existent in some but not all metaphysically possible worlds), then a greater could be conceived, namely, one that exists in all worlds. I will take it for granted that a being worthy of worship, one than which no greater can be conceived, must have the modal status of necessity. God is after all a candidate for the office of Absolute, and surely no such candidate could merely happen to exist. The Insight, then, consists in the realization that the alternative that God faces is not contingent existence versus contingent nonexistence, but necessity versus impossibility. It is clear, however, that the Insight, by itself, is not a good reason to accept the existence of God. For the Insight is not that God necessarily exists, but that God either necessarily exists or is impossible. Equivalently, the insight is that if God is so much as possible, then God actually exists. Obviously, the truth of this conditional is consistent with God’s not being possible. The Insight is an insight into the divine modal status, not into the divine existence, and so leaves open the question whether God exists.
The Argument, building on the Insight, proceeds: It is possible that there be a maximally perfect being. (There is at least one possible world in which God exists.) Therefore, God exists in every possible world, whence it follows that he exists in the actual world. Briefly, if God is possible, then God is actual. God is possible, therefore God is actual.
The Insight is unexceptionable, or so I would maintain, but the same scarcely holds for the Argument. The main problem is to give a good reason for thinking that God is possible. The fact that one can conceive of a maximally perfect being without contradiction does not establish that such a being is possible in reality. Conceivability (thinkability without contradiction) is no sure guide to real, extramental, possibility. Given the finitude of our minds, what is conceivable to us may be impossible in reality. The following modal ontological argument, then, though valid, and perhaps sound, is not probative unless we can supply a good reason for supposing that a maximally perfect being is really or extramentally possible, as opposed to being merely thinkable by us without apparent contradiction:
1. If a maximally perfect being is possible, then it is actual.
2. A maximally perfect being is possible.
Therefore
3. A maximally perfect being is actual.
What we need is an argument for (2). Here is one:
4. A maximally perfect being ought to exist.
5. Whatever ought to exist, is possible.
Therefore
2. A maximally perfect being is possible.
This second argument, like the first, is valid in point of logical form, and the premises are plausible. If a being is maximally perfect, then it is presumably deontically perfect and so ought to exist. To deny this is to say that a being can be both perfect in every respect but also either such that it ought not exist (which would be absurd) or such that it neither ought to exist, nor ought not exist. Either way, a greater can be conceived, namely a being that ought to exist. The other premise, (5), is also plausible. If you were to deny it you would be saying that there are things or states of affairs that both ought to exist and are impossible.Now putting the deontic subargument and the ontological subargument together we get a deontically supercharged modal ontological argument that is not only valid but appears probative:
4. A maximally perfect being ought to exist.
5. Whatever ought to exist, is possible.
1. If a maximally perfect being is possible, then it is actual.
Therefore
3. A maximally perfect being is actual.
So a maximally perfect being exists. Whether this is "what all men call God" (to borrow the phrase with which Aquinas ends each of his quinque viae) is a further question well beyond the scope of this article. Some, like Tertullian, question what Athens has to do with Jerusalem, while others, like Pascal, question whether the God of the philosophers is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Be this as it may. If nothing else, the above argument seems at least to prove the existence of a maximally perfect being. Whether this is merely a God of the philosophers cannot be discussed here. (The contemporary sources of the above argument are in Carl R. Kordig, "A Deontic Argument for God's Existence," Nous, vol. 15, no. 2, May 1981, pp. 207-208; J. N. Findlay, "Some Reflections on Necessary Existence" in Ascent to the Absolute, Allen and Unwin 1970, p. 98 ff.; A. C. Ewing, Value and Reality, Allen and Unwin 1973, ch. 7; John Leslie, Universes, Routledge 1989, ch. 8; J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, Oxford 1982, ch.13.)
Premise (1) is about as solid as anything in philosophy. Premises (4) and (5), however, are somewhat less luminous to the intellect. The following two sections will say something in defense of these premises.
Can We Speak of ‘Oughts’ in Non-Agential Contexts?
One way of resisting the argument is by questioning the propriety of talk about non-epistemic 'oughts' in contexts in which agency and moral obligation are not relevant. For example, what could it mean to say that God, classically defined as a being who realizes all perfections, ought to exist? The ‘ought’ here is not to be taken epistemically: The idea is not that the existence of God is rendered certain or probable by anything we know. The ’ought’ is to be read ontically despite the fact that God is under no moral obligation to bring himself into existence, or keep himself in existence: if God is a necessary being, then he cannot come into existence or pass out of existence. And surely no non-divine agent could be under any obligation to bring God into existence, maintain him in existence, or refrain from killing him.
So a quick way of countering the above argument is by claiming that locutions of the form 'X ought to exist' and 'X ought not exist' are meaningless apart from contexts in which the oughts-to-exist supervene on oughts-to-do. The critic will concede that there are states of affairs that ought to be. But he will insist that for each ought-to-be there is an ought-to-do that underpins it. He will insist that every state of affairs that ought to be or ought not to be necessarily involves an agent with power sufficient to either bring about or prevent the state of affairs in question. Thus it ought to be that one feeds one’s children, but this ought-to-be supervenes upon an ought-to-do.
It may not be possible to prove definitively that there are non-agential oughts, but their postulation is in line with ordinary ways of thinking and talking and there seem to be no decisive arguments against their postulation. Consider a possible world W in which there are no moral agents, but there are sentient beings who are in a constant state of pain from which they cannot free themselves. It seems both meaningful and reasonable to say that W ought not exist, that its nonexistence is an axiological requirement. And this quite apart from the power of any agent to actualize or prevent such a world. One simply intuits the disvalue of such a world. One might express the intuition in the words, ‘Such a world ought not be.’ Non-agential oughts are axiologically required, while non-agential oughts-not are axiologically prohibited.
Or consider our world, the actual world, with its nature red in tooth and claw, a world in which life lives at the expense of life. It is filled with vast quantities of natural and moral evil. Assume that naturalism is true, that there is no God or afterlife, and that the evils of this world will forever go unredeemed. If may be false, but it seems meaningful to say it would be better if this world did not exist, that it ought never to have existed. The metaphysical pessimist may be wrong, but he is not talking nonsense when he exclaims, "Better some other world or even nothing at all rather than this sorry state of things!" On the other hand, there are those who are struck by the sheer existence of things and are moved to exclaim, "It is good that there is something rather than nothing!" Such optimists are not talking nonsense when they say that things are as they ought to be even in the absence of any agent or agents who are responsible for things being as they are.
The sense of these exclamations does not seem to depend on the existence of moral agents with power sufficient to bring about or prevent the mentioned states of affairs. That something rather than nothing exists could be good even if it is no one's duty to bring it about and no one's responsibility if it obtains. That a world of uncompensated and unalleviated misery is bad does not depend on some free agent's moral failure.
Does ‘Ought’ Imply ‘Can’ in Non-Agential Contexts?
But even if there are non-agential oughts-to-be, so that we can speak meaningfully of God’s oughtness-to-be, how does this secure the real possibility of the divine existence? It is usually admitted that 'ought' implies 'can' in agential contexts. Thus, if an agent ought to do X, then he can do X, where 'can' is interpreted in terms of ability. The idea seems correct. If I ought to feed my cat, if that is one of the things I am morally obliged to do, then it must be not only logically and nomologically possible for me to feed her, but I must also have the ability to feed her. If on a given day I am prevented from feeding her by no fault of my own, and also prevented from calling for assistance, then I cannot be held responsible for her not being fed on that day. My inability to perform an action, either in general or in some specific circumstances, absolves me of moral responsibility for failure to perform the action. Of course, qualifications would have to be added to make the preceding sentence logically 'air-tight.' For example, if I can't do my duty because I have allowed myself to become a heroin addict, this self-induced inability doesn't absolve me from my duty. And so on.
The question arises whether we can extend the 'ought' implies 'can' principle to what ought to exist in non-agential contexts. I argued earlier that 'ought to exist' and 'ought not exist' are predicates that can be applied meaningfully to states of affairs whose obtaining/nonobtaining is not traceable to any agent. Thus the existence of God (classically defined as ens perfectissimum) is not up to God or any agent, and yet it seems to be meaningful to claim that the state of affairs God's existence ought to exist or obtain, while the nonexistence of God ought not exist or obtain. If one insists on reserving 'ought' for the agential cases, then we could speak of the existence of God being axiologically required.
Suppose you agree that the existence of God non-agentially ought to be, or is axiologically required. Does it follow that God's existence is possible? In the agential case, possibility is interpreted as ability. If I ought to do A, then I can, am able, to do A. But abilities are the abilities of agents, and in the non-agential case there are no agents. So if God ought to exist, and "Whatever ought to exist can exist," then 'can' in this formula cannot be cashed out in terms of ability.
But this is not a problem since 'can' can be read in terms of metaphysical (broadly logical) possibility. Accordingly, whatever ought to exist is metaphysically-possibly such that it exists. What we have, then, are two analogically related ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principles.
Agential Principle: What an agent ought to do, an agent must be able to do.
Non-agential Principle: What ought to exist, must be metaphysically possible.
Both can be classified as ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principles, but while in the agential case the 'ought' is an 'ought to do' and the 'can' signifies an agent's ability, in the non-agential case the 'ought' is an 'ought to be' and the 'can' signifies metaphysical possibility.
By my lights, both principles are true, and indeed analytically true. If you tell me that I am under a moral obligation to do X even in circumstances in which it impossible for me to do X, then I will respond that your view is incoherent and that you do not understand the relevant concepts. Similarly, if you agree that there are non-agential contexts in which some state of affairs S ought to exist even though S is impossible, then I will respond that your view is incoherent and that you do not understand the relevant concepts. There is no sense in which what cannot exist ought to exist or is axiologically required. But then why does Nicolai Hartmann say the following? "Because something is in itself a value, it does not follow that someone ought to do it; it does mean, however, that it Ought to ‘Be,’ and unconditionally – irrespective of its actuality or even its possibility." (Ethics, vol. I, tr. Coit, Allen and Unwin 1932, pp. 247-248.) To explain why Hartmann thinks that what he calls the pure or ideal ought-to-be is what it is regardless of its possibility would require a lengthy excursus into his curious modal doctrine.
Is the Argument Circular?
God must exist of modal necessity if he exists at all. But this Anselmian Insight leaves open the possibility that God does not exist. For the Insight is an insight into the divine modal status, not into the divine existence. The Insight reveals the divine noncontingency, which is compatible with both the existence and the nonexistence of God. To show that God exists, one must show that God is possible in reality. At this point the broadly deontic considerations lately mentioned come into play. It seems undeniable that whatever ought to exist is metaphysically (broadly logically) possible. So whether or not the argument is probative comes down to the question whether it is self-evidently true that a maximally perfect being ought to exist.
Suppose one concedes that the concept of a maximally perfect being is the concept of a being that ought to exist. This concession, however, leaves us with the question whether the concept is instantiated. It is this question that our argument cannot answer, or cannot answer compellingly A maximally perfect being ought to exist – but only if it exists. For if it does not exist, then it is impossible and therefore (by the contrapositive of the non-agential ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle) not such that it ought to exist.
Thus the suspicion arises that the deontically supercharged modal ontological argument is no more able to prove the existence of God that the plain old modal ontological argument. Both arguments appear circular or question-begging. Since a maximally perfect being is possible if and only if it is actual, to know that the possibility premise of the modal ontological argument is true one must already know that the conclusion is true. But then the argument begs the question. The same goes for the composite argument under consideration in this paper. Since a maximally perfect being ought to exist if and only if it is possible, and since it is possible if and only if it is actual, it follows that a maximally perfect being ought to exist if and only if it is actual. But this is just to say that the argument begs the question.
The Price of Avoiding the Circle
I can imagine an objector who accuses me of failing to grasp the thrust of the argument:
You are missing the whole Neoplatonic point of the argument and your circularity objection is wide of the mark: the oughtness-to-exist of a maximally perfect being is what conjures it into existence. On Neoplatonism, "ethical needs for the existence of things are in some cases creatively effective." (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge 1989, p. 165, emphasis in original) This oughtness-to-exist is independent of the existence of anything, including a maximally perfect being. God’s oughtness-to-exist is not a property of God that presupposes the existence of God. Furthermore, it itself does not exist, being epekeina tes ousias, "on the far side of being." (Cf. J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, Oxford 1982, p. 231.) And so the circularity objection you bring against the modal ontological argument cannot be brought against the deontically supplemented modal ontological argument. The first argument is circular because we have no reason to accept the possibility premise apart from a prior acceptation of its conclusion. But the central premise of the second argument – A maximally perfect being ought to exist – can be known to be true apart from knowledge of the truth of the conclusion.
This objection that I have concocted brings out the strength of the composite argument. It is an argument that cannot be dismissed out of hand. Being a theist, I should like it to be a compelling ‘knock-down’ proof. But I am afraid that it isn’t, even if one accepts that (i) there are objectively prescriptive values, and thus that both ethical naturalism and non-cognitivism are false; that (ii) there are non-agential values and oughts; (iii) that there is a non-agential ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle. The main difficulty, as I see it, is the notion that there are non-agential oughts or axiological requirements that are "creatively effective" as Leslie puts it, but do not exist. It seems reasonable to protest that what does not exist is just nothing and so cannot be creatively effective or anything else.
The price of avoiding circularity is to accept that there are creative axiological requirements that are beyond Being like Plato’s Form of the Good. Thoughts that enter this dimension taper off into mysticism and leave the discursive precincts of philosophy behind. So although the argument under examination elevates our thoughts into the region of the transdiscursive, and in so doing raises a number of fascinating issues, it cannot count as a proof in any reasonably strict sense of the term.
Dr. Vallicella,
If you're not already aware, you may find John Leslie's book Value and Existence interesting. I see you reference Universes, but Value and Existence is basically a book-length defense of the title of this post.
Posted by: Chad McIntosh | Monday, March 14, 2011 at 07:21 PM
Thanks for the reference, Mr McIntosh. Does Leslie say something different from what he says in Universes?
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Monday, March 14, 2011 at 07:49 PM
'Both arguments appear circular or question-begging. Since a maximally perfect being is possible if and only if it is actual, to know that the possibility premise of the modal ontological argument is true one must already know that the conclusion is true. But then the argument begs the question.'
I think this is confused. Grant that A iff B and you deny that B.
You appear to be saying that any grounds put forward for accepting A must beg the question against you since you cannot consistently accept A without denying B.
But surely the relevant question is: do these grounds exert their force independently of a belief in A or B? Not whether you can consistently accept what they suggest about A without denying B, of course you can't.
And it seems clear that the deontic grounds you appeal to do carry their force independently of the claim that God exists - their force is intuitive. An atheist can consistently believe that
1) Intuitively, a perfect being ought to exist.
You don't need to know that God exists before you can know this, as you appear to suggest.
Posted by: Matt Hart | Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 12:29 PM
Bill,
An excellently rich and intriguing post, as usual. While there are many fascinating themes I would have liked to examine, I will focus here on your concluding remarks. Your final assessment of the Argument seems to be that while it cannot be taken as a proof, in the strict sense of the term, it nonetheless has merit. The question arises: What are the Argument’s philosophical limitations and what are its merits?
The principal merit of the Argument is that by means of rational discourse it can take us as far as countenancing the conceptual coherence of the notion of “creative axiological requirements.” The limitation of the argument seems to be that it cannot take us any further. That is, the Argument cannot establish the conclusion that whatever is axiologically required to exist in fact does exist. The upshot is that while the Argument succeeds to navigate us by means of rational discourse to the threshold of an important conceptual knowledge, it cannot gratify our yearning to discover whether a maximally perfect being actually exist. You say: “Thoughts that enter this dimension taper off into mysticism and leave the discursive precincts of philosophy behind.” In other words, ultimately our yearning to know whether a maximally perfect being actually exists can only be fulfilled by mysticism.
If I am correct in my understanding of your post, then the following concern arises.
The principal purpose of arguments for the existence of a maximally perfect being has always been to reinforce faith in the existence of such a being with a rational argument. The inevitable question arises: What considerations compel the need to supplement faith with reason? The common answer to this question is that while faith is a type of propositional attitude that is self-legitimizing, in the sense that it requires no evidence for its legitimacy, it would nevertheless be helpful to have an independent argument for the existence of a maximally perfect being.
But this won’t do, at least not as a rationale for the need to buttress faith with reason. For if faith is indeed a belief that requires no evidence for its legitimacy, then being in a state of mind that faith provides and recognizing the self-legitimizing character of this kind of state of mind ought to dispel the need to seek any further support. It is therefore unclear what explains the need for an argument over and above the presence of faith that a maximally perfect being exists and in what respect could such an argument be helpful.
I suspect that ultimately the appeal to reason has been driven by an altogether different thought or suspicion: namely, that faith alone cannot underwrite propositional knowledge. By ‘underwrite’ here I mean something more fundamental than merely that faith alone does not require nor is it sufficient to provide adequate *evidence* for the belief that a maximally perfect being exists. I rather mean that faith alone is not a propositional attitude (e.g., a belief) at all. And if faith is not a propositional attitude, then it cannot be propositional knowledge either.
If faith is not to be counted as a propositional attitude at all, then what sort of attitude is it? So far as I can see, the only alternative to faith being a propositional (or cognitive) attitude is that it is a species of a non-cognitive attitude that is based upon a blend of certain kind of sentiments. Thus, having faith in the existence of a maximally perfect being is a non-cognitive attitude, an emotively based state of mind, a state of mind that by its very nature neither requires nor admits evidence. Once we see faith in this light, it becomes clear in what sense an argument for the existence of a maximally perfect being might reinforce faith. Such an argument is not intended to provide support for the attitude of faith. Rather it is designed to justify a parallel cognitive-attitude of belief that a maximally perfect being exists and thereby supplement, rather than justify, the already existing faith in such a being.
The trouble is that if the axiological Argument falls short of justifying a cognitive belief in the existence of a maximally perfect being, as distinguished from the coherence of this notion, then it cannot serve to justify a parallel cognitive-attitude of belief that a maximally perfect being exists. And your concession that the Argument can only takes us to the doorsteps of mysticism seems to suggest that any further rational inquiry is impossible. And this means that at the very crucial step where faith needs the assistance of reason, the axiological Argument leaves us at the very same place that faith already occupies. It therefore fails to supplement faith in the manner it is needed the most. But this means that it is of no use whatsoever as a supplement of faith.
I recognize that the above conclusion relies upon the assumption that mysticism cannot yield a belief in the existence of a maximally perfect being. I suggest that this assumption is indeed correct. Thus, I maintain that whatever attitude mysticism yields, it cannot be a propositional-attitude. Rather mysticism can only enhance the non-cognitive attitude of faith spoken of above. These considerations of course lead us to the question of whether mysticism can underwrite propositional attitudes in general. I suggest that we need to discuss this matter in a separate post. Meanwhile, the present conclusion is that the axiological Argument, even if it is cogent, offers no assistance to that which faith already provides.
Posted by: Account Deleted | Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 12:34 PM
So I think your argument does raise the plausibility of the possibility premise, but not by much. I think the atheist will always be sceptical that the 'ought to exist' and 'ought not exist' predicates are really just roundabout ways of talking about intrinsic value or the sort of obligations that would be binding on agents were such agents around.
Also, W.L. Craig has dealt with the circularity/question begging criticism here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8139
He says it confuses logical equivalence with synonymity.
Posted by: Matt Hart | Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 12:40 PM
Matt,
Bill says: "Since a maximally perfect being ought to exist if and only if it is possible, and since it is possible if and only if it is actual, it follows that a maximally perfect being ought to exist if and only if it is actual. But this is just to say that the argument begs the question."
I am not sure why you think that this is confused. The bi-conditionals, if true, merely insure matching truth values for both sides of the bi-conditional. Bill's point is that even if the bi-conditional is true, we cannot tell whether either side is true without knowing that the other side is true because they both could be false.
Moreover, no one should accept your (1) unless one is certain that a maximally perfect being is possible. But how do we know that?
Posted by: Account Deleted | Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 05:45 PM
Matt writes, "1) Intuitively, a perfect being ought to exist." I make the same objection as Peter: how do you know that it is possible that a perfect being exist?
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 06:57 PM
Peter,
Thanks for that thoughtful response. You raise a number of fascinating questions. One is whether faith needs rational support or "buttressing" as you put it. (Figuratively speaking, does Jerusalem need the help of Athens?) I would say the following quickly and dogmatically.
1. Faith needs reason (philosophy) for the articulation of its own content.
2. Faith needs reason to show that what the believer believes is not logically incoherent and is thus possibly true.
3. Reason has veto power over faith. E.g., if the Trinity is logically impossible, then it cannot be true and one ought not believe it on pain of violating the ethics of belief.
4. Faith supplements reason by providing us with (possible) contact with reality that cannot be had either empirically or by argument.
5. Faith is inferior to knowledge, but on certain topics knowledge cannot be had and so faith is needed. Better reality-contact via faith than no reality-contact at all! (This is a highly controversial claim)
6. The existence of God cannot be strictly proven or disproven.
7. But it doesn't follow that the theistic arguments are useless. They help in the articulation of what the believer believes if nothing else. They also show that theistic belief is rationally acceptable, or at least the good ones do. For example, the argument presented above is very deep and powerful. It puts the atheist in the position of having to make the drastic claim that the existence of God is impossible.
8. It is folly to oppose the God of the philosophers to the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob as Pascal and Buber do.
9. There is a difference between believing-in and believing-that. To believe in my wife is to trust her, etc. It cannot be reduced to believing that she exists and has various properties. Nevertheless, I couldn't believe in her if I didn't believe that she exists and has properties. Same with God. This is why the God arguments are not irrelevant to believing IN God.
10. To hell with fideism!
11. The knowledge that completes and fulfills faith is mystical knowledge.
On this quasi-Tractarian note, I bid you all a good night.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 07:41 PM
Peter,
'Bill's point is that even if the bi-conditional is true, we cannot tell whether either side is true without knowing that the other side is true because they both could be false.'
I read Bill's point as being that because the biconditional is true any attempt to present one side as a reason for accepting the other side will beg the question. I called it confused because it suggests a confused coneption of what it means to beg the question. What matters is whether the one side can have support which doesn't depend on truth of the other side, the biconditional is neither here nor there.
Then you both ask what grounds one can have for holding that God is possible that is independent of his existence. But the answer to that is simple: conceivability. If Bill's argument is correct then we can also add intuitive deontic considerations.
'no one should accept your (1) unless one is certain that a maximally perfect being is possible.'
I've no idea why you think this is true. In general, one can consistenty believe both
(2) Intuitively, P
and
(3) ~P.
It happens all the time.
Posted by: Matt Hart | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 09:09 AM
It might help to place yourself in agnostic shoes: if you have no fixed opinion on whether God is possible or impossible, then it is not too hard to see how you might be swayed to think God is possible when presented with the evidence of conceivability.
Posted by: Matt Hart | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 09:16 AM
Matt,
"Then you both ask what grounds one can have for holding that God is possible that is independent of his existence. But the answer to that is simple: conceivability."
Nope! Conceivability is not a sufficient condition (nor is it a necessary condition) for possibility. See several past posts Bill posted regarding this matter. I don't remember the exact dates, but they may appear in the Categories section on the right side or request Bill to direct you to the appropriate posts.
"In general, one can consistenty believe both
(2) Intuitively, P
and
(3) ~P."
If so, then 'Intuitively that-P' is certainly insufficient for the truth of P, for it is not even sufficient for the belief that-P. Hence, your original (1) offers no help.
Posted by: Account Deleted | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 11:55 AM
Peter,
I agree that neither 'conceivably, P' nor 'intuitively, P' entails 'possibly, P', but it does not follow from this neither offers any reason for believing that 'possibly, P'. I think most people think they do.
But my objective here isn't to defend the Modal Onto. Arg. Merely to point out that the reason Bill gave for its failure is not a good one.
Posted by: Matt Hart | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 02:55 PM
Matt,
Sure, one might be swayed to think that God is possible because conceivable. But as I said my paper conceivability is no sure guide to possibility. Some of what we find conceivable is impossible.
The issue is whether the modal OA PROVES its conclusion. I say it doesn't for the simple reason that we have no way of supporting the possibility premise in a non-question-begging way.
Adding the deontic considerations doesn't help. We both agree that
1.The concept of a perfect being is the concept of a being that ought to exist.
and
2. Whatever ought to exist is metaphysically possible.
But the conjunction of (1) and (2) is consistent with the nonexistence (and thus impossibility) of a perfect being.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 03:48 PM
Matt,
Nothing you have said gives me any reason to change my view. But I'm glad you agree that conceivability does not entail possibility.
The task for you is to explain how 'Conceivably, a perfect being exists' gives one a good reason to believe 'Possibly a perfect being exists' given that the being in question is noncontingent and the second proposition is necessarily true.
Can any fact such as the fact that we have the ability to conceive of a perfect being raise the probability of a noncontingent proposition?
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 03:55 PM
Bill,
While I may grant that it is not outright incoherent to postulate that locutions such as 'x ought/ought-not exist' in non-agential contexts, I wonder under what conditions would such locutions be true? Surely the mere existence of x does not constitute a sufficient condition for 'x ought to exist'; likewise, the mere non-existence of x is not a sufficient condition for 'x ought-not exist'. So unless we are clear about the truth-conditions of such locutions, it is difficult to determine the conditions under which your bi-conditionals are true.
Thus, in the absence of at least some idea as to the truth-conditions of non-agential locutions of the 'ought/ought-not exist' type, it may not be possible to determine the status of the above argument.
Posted by: Account Deleted | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 04:11 PM
>>Surely the mere existence of x does not constitute a sufficient condition for 'x ought to exist'; likewise, the mere non-existence of x is not a sufficient condition for 'x ought-not exist'.<<
Aquinas would disagree with your first clause. To be, as such, is good. Ens et bonum convertuntur. Schopenhauer would take the opposite tack. To be, as such, is evil. Ens et malum convertuntur.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 04:51 PM
Bill,
So Aquinas' view is that:
(1) if x exists, then x ought to exist;
But this leads to absurd consequences. We know that killer earthquakes exist. Does Aquinas suggest that, therefore, they ought to exist? Or consider these examples: houses built unsafe due to negligence, corruption, or whatever exist; so do drunk drivers. Does it follow that house built unsafe or drunk drivers ought to exist?
Posted by: Account Deleted | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 05:14 PM
Rather than go off on a Thomistic tangent, recall the example I gave of a world with sentient beings in it, but no moral agents or free beings, the sentient beings being in a constant state of pain that they cannot free themselves from, a pain that serves no good purpose. Would you agtee that that world ought not exist? If yes, then that would be an example of a non-agential ought-not.
My main point, however, was not to defend the notion of non-agential oughts and ought-nots, but to show that even ifthey are allowed they cannot be used to make of the modal OA a genuine proof.
Both arguments given above are valid, and they may even be sound; but they are not proofs because we cannot claim to know that the premises are true.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 06:26 PM
Bill,
While a posteriori necessity can interfere with inferences from conceivability, I think the reason most people don't become modal sceptics as a result is because they think that thoese cases are a minority - it is still true that most of what we conceive is possible. So if we say that
1) In 80% of cases, if 'conceivably, P' then 'possibly, P'.
2) Conceivably, God.
Ergo,
3) Pr(possibly, God) = 80%
4) If 'possibly, God' then 'necessarily, God'.
Ergo,
5) Pr(necessarily, God) = 80%,
we seem to get by.
That said, I'm not at all up on the literature on conceivability, so I might be way off.
Posted by: Matt Hart | Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 06:00 AM
Bill,
The point was not to dispute the main thrust of your argument. I only wanted to raise the question about the truth-conditions of "ought/ought-not exist" propositions. i.e., under what conditions propositions of the form "x ought to exist" true/false?
Note that we at least have some sense about the corresponding "ought/ought-not do": e.g., x ought to do e just in case in a morally perfect world x does e.
One might adopt these tc for ought to exist: i.e., x ought to exist just in case in a morally perfect world x exists.
My problem is whether this will work for necessary beings? e.g., God ought to exist just in case....what? "In every morally perfect world God exists"? But God's necessary existence extends beyond morally perfect worlds. So this won't do and I do not know what alternative would do in such cases.
Posted by: Account Deleted | Friday, March 18, 2011 at 09:32 AM