.Anthony Kenny, in his "New History of Western Philosophy" talked about how the Dark Ages actually saw a continuation, and not a stop in philosophy. The view that this is the case originated in the Renaissance, but is erroneous. Logic actually was actually improved in the Dark Ages, and then degraded in the Renaissance because of the rejection of Aristotle and Medieval Philosophy.
A few examples:
1. Our understanding of God is a being than which no greater can be conceived..
2. The idea of God exists in the mind.
3. A being that exists both in the mind and in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind.
4. If God only exists in the mind, then we can conceive of a greater being—that which exists in reality.
5. We cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
6. Therefore, God exists.
This argument (copied from Wikipedia) gave even Bertrand Russell headaches. I don't buy it myself, since it's my position that a priori reasoning is can always be deconstructed into meaningless wordplay and God has been poorly defined in the argument.
What I'm more interested in is the God-Idea (which I'm dubbing it for now). The Medieval scholars were far beyond "old man with beard", thinking of the God-Idea with a sophistication that was surprising to me. The gist of their thought was that the God-Idea was something that no bodily attributes could be given to, a being that merely was. This "being" was the first cause that set in motion not only the universe, but reality as well.
The God-Being/God-Idea transcends matter, so it necessarily transcends objective reality, said the schoolmen. All reality, therefore, has either its cause in God or exists inside of God. But since objective morality (that existing in the world) has been shaped by the God-Idea, who some said was Goodness incarnate, and of which others said was simply nothing because he had no attributes, Goodness existed because all reality was subjugated to the mind of the God-Idea.
Cool stuff, no?
.I was wondering what you guys have to say about this. Were you mistaken about the scholastics like Aquinas or Ockham? Suddenly interested in Medieval philosophy? Just wondering.
Sun Wukong wrote:Replace "God" with "My Girlfriend" and you begin to see what's wrong with this line of "reasoning."
This counter-argument has already been made and has been refuted.
Gaunilo’s argument, thus, proceeds by attempting to use Anselm’s strategy to deduce the existence of a perfect island, which Gaunilo rightly views as a counterexample to the argument form. The counterexample can be expressed as follows:
It is a conceptual truth that a piland is an island than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible island that can be imagined).
A piland exists as an idea in the mind.
A piland that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is greater than a piland that exists only as an idea in the mind.
Thus, if a piland exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine an island that is greater than a piland (that is, a greatest possible island that does exist).
But we cannot imagine an island that is greater than a piland.
Therefore, a piland exists.
Notice, however, that premise 1 of Gaunilo’s argument is incoherent. The problem here is that the qualities that make an island great are not the sort of qualities that admit of conceptually maximal qualities. No matter how great any island is in some respect, it is always possible to imagine an island greater than that island in that very respect. For example, if one thinks that abundant fruit is a great-making property for an island, then, no matter how great a particular island might be, it will always be possible to imagine a greater island because there is no intrinsic maximum for fruit-abundance. For this reason, the very concept of a piland is incoherent.
But this is not true of the concept of God as Anselm conceives it. Properties like knowledge, power, and moral goodness, which comprise the concept of a maximally great being, do have intrinsic maximums. For example, perfect knowledge requires knowing all and only true propositions; it is conceptually impossible to know more than this. Likewise, perfect power means being able to do everything that it is possible to do; it is conceptually impossible for a being to be able to do more than this.
The general point here, then, is this: Anselm’s argument works, if at all, only for concepts that are entirely defined in terms of properties that admit of some sort of intrinsic maximum. As C.D. Broad puts this important point:
[The notion of a greatest possible being imaginable assumes that] each positive property is to be present in the highest possible degree. Now this will be meaningless verbiage unless there is some intrinsic maximum or upper limit to the possible intensity of every positive property which is capable of degrees. With some magnitudes this condition is fulfilled. It is, e.g., logically impossible that any proper fraction should exceed the ratio 1/1; and again, on a certain definition of “angle,” it is logically impossible for any angle to exceed four right angles. But it seems quite clear that there are other properties, such as length or temperature or pain, to which there is no intrinsic maximum or upper limit of degree.
If any of the properties that are conceptually essential to the notion of God do not admit of an intrinsic maximum, then Anselm’s argument strategy will not work because, like Guanilo’s concept of a piland, the relevant concept of God is incoherent. But insofar as the relevant great-making properties are limited to omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection (which do admit of intrinsic maximums), Anselm’s notion of a greatest possible being seems to avoid the worry expressed by Broad and Guanilo.
