The Ontological Argument

The Ontological Argument Getting to grips with the language

The ontological argument is a deductive proof for the existence of God which aims to establish the “God exists” is analytically true, arrived at using A Priori reasoning

What are ?

How would you prove the following are true? • All Irish people are bad tempered • All spinsters are female • All cats are black • All birds have wings

Philosophical Arguments are very civilised! They follow a specific pattern and generally fall into 2 main categories: • Deductive – you can use reason (logic) to work out whether something is true. • Inductive – these rely on evidence to test whether something is true.

INDUCTIVE arguments • These are true by experience / evidence. You might also see them referred to as A Posteriori arguments – based on what we can see / observe. If Winne the Pooh wanted to argue that all honey pots have honey all the way to the bottom, he would have to argue inductively that this was the case. i.e. according to his experience, all it is true that all honey pots have honey all the way to the bottom!

This animal has 4 legs • This animal is a vegetarian • This animal has a mane & a tail • This animal is a member of the equine family This animal is a horse Note, we still have premises that lead to a conclusion. How reliable is this kind of philosophical reasoning?

Deductive Arguments • If the premises are true, the conclusion must logically follow • Deductive arguments are philosophically more valid than inductive – the conclusions cannot be wrong, if the reasoning is correct.

Premis 1 Premis 2 Conclusion • All bachelors are male • James is a bachelor James is male If the premises are agreed to be true, the conclusion will logically follow. This kind of argument makes the conclusion necessarily true – it cannot be false if the premises are true.

How would you “unpack” the following? • If we ‘unpack’ a concept, we identify it’s component ideas: TRIANGLE: 3 sides, angles add up to 180 etc. • Mother • Dog • Car • Table

“unpacking concepts” • We can therefore deduce the obvious truth – triangles are 3 sided shapes whose angles add up to 180. • Ie, we are left with statements that have 2 component parts: • Subject & Predicate • The subject is the object we are talking about – a triangle • The predicate is the properties we are claiming the subject to have – 3 sides, angles adding up to 180.

So…. • Deductive arguments are true by definition. They can also be referred to as A Priori they are known through reason. • Come up with your own example: • Premis 1 • Premis 2 • Conclusion Some ideas to help you: triangles, sisters, brothers, circles…..

If however, we can prove that the premises are false, we can also disprove the argument. • Eg: • All men are liars • Socrates was a man • Therefore Socrates was a liar • While we can know that if Socrates was a man, and if all men are mortal, we still have to find a way of establishing that these other facts are true.

Synthetic Statements & Analytic statements: • Consider the following statements: • Dan’s brother was male • Dan’s brother was a thief • The first is analytic (arrived at using A Priori reasoning) • The second is synthetic (arrived at as a result of A Posteriori observation)

Recap... • Explain the difference between inductive & deductive reasoning • Why are deductive arguments more reliable than inductive ones? • How can a deductive argument be proven false? • What is a “predicate”? Give an example to illustrate • Explain the difference between synthetic and analytic statements

The Ontological Argument