A New Look at the Ontological Argument W/ Dr. Josh Rasmussen
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- Joshua Rasmussen (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is associate professor of philosophy at Azusa Pacific University. He is author or co-author of six books, including How Reason Can Lead to God and Is God the Best Explanation of Things: a Dialogue. Rasmussen works on questions about fundamental existence and the nature of beings.
Plantinga's argument (from possible perfection to actual perfection): joshualrasmusse...
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At 6:30 Matt says, "I suppose you can go on the web somewhere and see people debating whether or not solipsism is true-- which would be interesting who the proponent of solipsism thinks he's debating against, but nonetheless" 😆😂🤣🤯
Hoping this fresh look can help me. The modal ontological argument was one of my first "doors" into apologetics and theology.
I am excited to hear Dr. Rasmussen touch on the argument from values, which was a staple of scholastic philosophy, and forms the foundation of Aquinas’ Fourth Way, which is rarely discussed today. I would love to hear more on this. Perhaps you could do something with Fr. Pine.
The ontological argument is my favorite. It's surprisingly significant in the history of mathematics.
Can you explain how it proves God? It never made much sense to me.
How so? I have an ABD in mathematics (All But Dissertation) and I've never heard this
One of my favorites too, it's very self-sufficient and elegant.
It helps a lot for people stuck in solipsism.
@@VirginMostPowerfull Maybe you'll be able to answer. How does the ontological argument prove God or disprove solipsism?
@@tomandrews1429 *How does the ontological argument prove God*
Ontological arguments in general attempt to demonstration from _a priori_ conceptions the existence of God.
There are numerous ontological arguments. The most succinct runs: It is possible God exists. Therefore, God exists. But that, obviously, requires a bit of unpacking.
Anselm’s most famous version (he had three) is structured around a disjunctive syllogism demonstrating that, given that existence in reality is greater, any attempt to conceive a greatest conceivable being that exists only in the mind is a logical contradiction.
Another version of Anselm’s argument runs as follows:
1. If anything that cannot be conceived to be caused can be conceived to exist, it actually exists.
2. God can be conceived to exist but cannot be conceived to be caused.
3. Therefore, God actually exists.
Descartes’ ontological argument argues that if we cannot conceive any X without Y, then Y belongs to the nature of X. I cannot conceive of a perfect being which does not exist, therefore existence belongs to the nature of a perfect being. Therefore, a perfect being exists.
The most popular ontological argument today is Plantinga’s modal ontological argument (though other modal OAs also exist), which argues that so long as it is possible that a maximally great being exists then that being must exist.
I'm so glad that you are doing more videos on specific arguments for God's existence, I would like to see a video about Aquinas' fourth way, I haven't seen anyone defending that argument ever.
God bless you two
Bc The fourth way requires you to have a thorough understanding of Aristotle’s metaphysics. In particular the gradation of being. Very tough philosophy for regular non philosophy ppl to understand (my degree is in philosophy)
@@Anyone690 Rasmussen does touch on it in this video in his discussion of values. I’d also like to hear more.
@@Anyone690 I think it can be understood intuitively without an appeal to axioms as long as you use an analogy of a scale, but even then it seems more likely to just convince people morality is objective, which was enough to re-convert me.
@@TheNaturalTheologianI’ve changed my views drastically in the last 2 years about whether or not God can ground objective morality and I now disbelieve that atheists can’t have an objective morality, but the main argument that convinced me was Terence Cuneo’s companions in guilt argument for moral realism.
@@TheNaturalTheologian That’s why I said Cuneo’s argument, since it proves moral realism
Dr Josh is one of my favorite apologists he explains things in a simple way and he makes sure to refute any counter that may be brought up by atheists.
Josh, who thinks about arguments a lot, tends to forget other people don’t think about arguments a lot, and that’s why I generally prefer other apologists. He’s absolutely brilliant, but he has a really hard time keeping other people on the same wavelength as himself. I can empathize with it, but it really is a roadblock to prospective listeners and I hope he improves upon it a bit since once you can start to follow him all the way through (Which takes months of dedication at least) his genius truly shines through.
My brain hurts.. lol
So the “property of being a property” is the set of things like: blue-ness, redness, chairness, human-ness, etc.
Is this the right way to think about it?
For those who wanna hear more from Josh, check out his introductory playlist on contingency argument: th-cam.com/play/PLwkfQgsyUXKe989F1Dg_ItbbREqmswh0j.html
The Ontological argument (for me) is a shoring up of my own faith, and knowledge of God... As we begin to know and experience God, the ontological argument makes more sense... So yes, for an argument to unbelievers, it is weak.
About 20 minutes in and I feel like my brain is swimming in lactic acid. Gosh I need to work on improving my abstract thinking skills.
@@alpacamaster5992 Premise 3 is an unfounded assumption, we do not know if it is possible a greatest possible being (God) could exist. For premise 4, what do you mean by "world"? A properly formulated premise should not include an "If" statement if the conclusion is to be proven true. Premise 5 is also an unfounded assumption.
@UC9bnusM52mHIC59xGS9xyTQ Ok, what about proving the 3rd and 5 premises? I still don't understand what is meant my worlds in premise 4.
@@tomandrews1429 premise 3 was an argument against solipsism, premise 5 is like this: an Ai builds other Ai's,if there was a first Ai is it more reasonable to assume that a human built it than it formed from material by chance.
@@alpacamaster5992 Ok, but how does that make premise 3 true? For premise 5, we have a very good idea about how a being came about without another being, it is called abiogenesis, followed by evolution.
@@tomandrews1429 evolution isn't magic dude: my argument is that's it's unreasonable to believe in naturalism
An analogy I use (instead of the tree/branches) is a smart phone with an OS & apps. The physical phone is the maximally great foundation. Any cool apps you instal are merely different applications of what the physical phone is already capable of. The fanciest camera app is useless if the physical camera doesn’t work. The TH-cam app is nothing if the physical phone can’t connect to the internet. The best app there is, is limited to the capabilities of the physical device. The device is the standard of perfection, of maximality, by which all “goodness”, or functionality within the device is measured.
the philosopher explains the error or weakness of the argument very well.
Josh - “....anything that is limited in anyway, or has a lack of greatness, like a turtle...”Huh? Ha! Really though, this is fascinating stuff even though I too was struggling to comprehend at times. If he gave simpler examples I may have caught on. I’ve learned so much from your channel and I enjoy content like this. Thanks, Matt.
People who seek to prove the existence of God are so silly they think their God will survive the truth. It won't be connected to any of our Gods. And it has never contacted us.
Why is intelligence never used?
Josh's website link is wrong. It is missing a "j".
Now I can see I’ve imbibed Aristotelianism since Rasmussen is talking as if properties are things. Where as I think Aristotle would hold something along the lines of that a property is a way of talking about things which are instantiated and thus the concept “property” isn’t a “thing” in itself. This seems to be a point of misunderstanding between Fradd and Rasmussen.
Matt where did you get that shirt from?
This just proves that even an education can't make you smart.
Hey Josh,
On the topic of Plantigas ontological argument and choosing between a conceivable world where there is a necessary being or nothing:
I think this objection unknowingly reverts g-d back to possible without realizing it. In other words it takes the concept “g-d necessarily exists” and trades it out with “g-d exists”. While it’s true “g-d exists” might be true in all but the one world where there is nothing (as that would just be to call g-d a possible being), it cannot be the case that “g-d necessarily exists” is true in all but one world. Rather if there is nothing in one world that means “g-d necessarily exists” is necessarily false and cannot be the case in ANY world. That something is necessarily the case is either necessarily true or necessarily false, not possible. But before that one world was considered we did not see why it should be impossible in all the other worlds AS WELL AS the one where there is nothing. What made it impossible in the world where there was something? Additionally, saying there happens to be nothing is not enough, u would need to say necessarily g-d can’t go in the nothing world, but what stops him? We haven’t proven nothing necessarily true, we have only said it appears Possible in isolation. But that’s merely appearance. Nothing about the contingent nature of that impression has shown anything stopping the concept from being true in essence in that world and much less any other one. We need a reason why he can’t exist in the nothing world so as to be something instead showing that Nothing really was impossible
What would be the distinction between a possible world of nothing, and the utter absence of any such world (or no world at all)?
@@gustavgus4545 a possible world of nothing would just mean to say that possibly nothing could exist. To say there is the absence of such a world would be to say that there is no way there could ever be nothingness. Possible worlds just are what are possible. So to say "there is no possible world where there is nothing" is just to say in the infinite ocean of possible scenarios a state of nothing cannot be one of them.
@@Chosidchosid770
Gottcha. Thanks!
So to say that an empty world is not a possible world is to say that an empty world (the absence of anything) is not logically possible (at least in the broadly logical sense)? I am just learning about this stuff and want to be sure I am tracking.
@@gustavgus4545 That would be correct, yes. An "empty world" or, in other words, a possible state of affairs which could have consisted of Nothing existing, is not metaphysically (broadly logically) possible. Thus, there is no possible world such that there is Nothing.
Instead of arguments that a god exists, how about demonstrating that a god exists?
*A Thomistic Ontological Argument?*
It should be noted that in rejecting Anselm's OA Aquinas was not rejecting the _possibility_ of arguing to God _a priori_ in general, only the specific way Anselm was atttempting to do so. Aquinas would agree with Anselm that, if we had a sufficient grasp of God's essence, we would understand from that alone that God must exist; Anselm's argument would carry. The problem is that though the concept "God exists" _would be_ self-evident to a sufficiently advanced mind, it is not self-evident to _our_ minds.
For Aquinas, all knowledge derives ultimately from sensory experience. Without sensory experience we could know nothing, not even the quintessentially abstract concepts of mathematics. However, having once apprehended such fundamental concepts, we can then reason _a priori_ from them to all kinds of new knowledge, just as mathematicians do.
Consider Aquinas' argument for God from _De Ente et Essentia:_ God's essence and existence are identical, and there can be only one thing of which this is true. For anything other than God, essence and existence are distinct, and hence they must be _caused by_ God, either directly or indirectly. Thus, the existence of _anything_ that is not God demonstrates God's existence.
But there is nothing precluding this _anything that is not God_ from being an abstract concept itself. And granting that, Ed Feser has outlined a sketch of a Thomistic OA:
1. There is at least one proposition.
2. If this proposition is identical to God, then God exists.
3. If it is not identical to God, then either it is a substance or an attribute.
4. If it is an attribute, then it depends for its existence on a substance.
5. So, either it is itself a substance or depends for its existence on a substance.
6. But for any substance other than God, its essence and existence are distinct.
7. And anything whose essence and existence are distinct can exist only if it is caused by God.
8. So, this proposition is either itself God, or it depends either directly or indirectly on God for its existence.
9. So, God exists.
Aquinas imagined a necessary universe and God..at which an envisioned Perfect God doesn't satisfy our expectations...
My friend, I wouldn’t say a necessary universe was ever envisioned by Aquinas. Those were the errors of Plato and specially Aristotle, who he calls “The Philosopher”. The Greeks believed the universe was eternal and necessary but not the Judeo-Christian tradition, who believe in “creation” and “creator”. Actually St Thomas Aquinas effusively denies that the created reality is necessary, but sustain it demands an uncreated creator, an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause and so forth. As far as essence and existence, that makes body for the argument of contingency. I particularly think that St Thomas’ critique on the ontological argument is that it is not really “ontological” (referring to the being or in Latin to the “ens”), but it is actually “ideological” or referent to ideal and to an axiological structure that would by itself depend upon a necessary being. So I suppose St Thomas rejected the argument not because it is untrue, but rather because it could not stand on its own.
This is my guess but I am not a philosopher though.
Comment for traction
Is it me or has PWA been getting a lot of no named guests lately? Seems like ever since he moved to Steubenville, I hardly ever watch anymore.
Aquinas is good, Anselm is better.
God is the ultimate solipsist. There are no REAL angels.
I started off enjoying it~ but it got ponderous, and at times I found Rasmussen difficult, like he was making it up as he went along. The property is the property? I couldn't stay with him.
Rasmussen is a professional philosopher that is widely seen as one of the premier philosophers of religion. He is not “making it up as he went along.” Sounds like you should brush up on analytic philosophy.
@@user-or3fi7ls5y I think the OP’s criticism wasn’t so much against Rasmussen’s credentials as against this presentation. As Dr. Rasmussen himself admitted about 36 minutes in, he had kind of run ahead of himself and skipped past a number of intermediate steps to his conclusion, then Matt had to pull him back to fill in some of the gaps. For those not already familiar with some of the background, I can see where this might have made the whole thing difficult to suss.
He’s basically saying: consider we have two balls, one red and one blue. These balls have the property of “redness” and “blueness” respectively. But what Josh is saying, they also have the property of “having a property”. So the red ball has at least two properties: (1) redness, and (2) having a property. Hope that helps(: