Norman Malcolm, an American philosopher, outlined his version of the ontological argument for the existence of God in his essay "Anselm's ontological arguments". He took Kant's criticism of Descartes which states that 'existence is not a real predicate' and responded through focusing his argument on existing necessarily rather than merely existing. This is because the property of existing necessarily does meet Kant's 'real predicate' standards as it adds something to our concept of a thing, rather than existence alone which simply states that the thing as described has an instance in the world.
Malcom's argument begins with two statements. The first, is that if God does not exist then his existence is impossible. The second is that if God does exist, his existence is necessary. God's existence would have to be necessary as the definition of God states that he is immutable (unchanging). Therefore, an immutable God would be unable to change from a state of non-existence to a state of existence. He would have to infinitely and unchangingly exist i.e exist necessarily.
For the next part of his argument, Malcolm developed 4 possibilities for God's existence, which are as follows:
1.God can't exist; God's existence is necessarily false (impossible).
2.God could exist, but doesn't; God's existence is contingently false.
3.God could exist, and does; God's existence is necessarily true.
4.God must exist; God's existence is necessarily true.
Malcolm argues that the second and third statement could not possibly apply to a being like God as they automatically suggest his existence to be contingent, which goes against the definition of God. Therefore, God's existence must be either impossible or necessary. Malcolm says that, in order for a statement to be necessarily false, or impossible, the statement itself must be contradictory. For example, "this square is round" or "2+2=5" would be impossible statements as, by definition, a square cannot be round and 2+2 cannot be 5. It would go against the essence of a square for it to be round, therefore the statement is necessarily false.
Malcolm therefore argues that the statement "God exists" cannot be considered to be an impossible statement, as it does not contradict himself. Existence does not go against the essence of God, therefore it is not impossible for him to exist. This leaves only one possibility, which is that God exists necessarily. In other words; if God is possible, God is actual.
An excellent first paragraph, Beth - a really good explanation of Malcolm's incorporation of Kant's objection to Descartes' argument.
ReplyDeleteThe second paragraph is well-explained; the third suggests that it follows on from the second, but it is in fact an alternative rendering of the second - the one doesn't follow from the other, it's another way of putting it. Nonetheless, overall this is clearly explained and links Malcolm's version of the Ontological Argument to the ones that have come before. Well done.