Arguments from a prior reason

Paul Tillich

‘exists’ is not right word to use of God’

Anselm

‘a being than which none greater can be conceived’

‘fool’

‘greatest possible conceivable being must exist’

Descartes

‘existence can no more be separate from the essence of God than’ ‘the idea of a mountain form the idea of a valley’ Meditations

No agreed definition of God

Gaunilo: OA depends on ability to understand and reason about thing beyond our understanding

Aquinas: a prior can’t be proved, must search for a posteriori

Existence =/= predicate

Kant: language error to treat existence as diff logical category

• e.g. 100 thalers

• A: God exists = analytical

• K: God exists = synthetic

Russell: Men exist, Santa is a man, therefore Santa exists

Gaunilo

Lost Island example

• ‘overload’ objection

• doesn’t show God exists necessarily

• criticses Anselm’s analogy of painter

Alvin Platinga

islands have no ‘intrinsic maximum’

God’s perfection = absolute

Circular logic

Davies

if God exists → exists necessarily → if exists necessarily → God exists → if God exists etc.

Implies existence = +ve quality

Kant and Russell

Necessary?

Hume’s fork

• diff between logical and factual truth

• can conceive of anything to exist/ not exist

• existence = contingent matter of fact, cannot be logically necessary

Kant

“but the unconditioned necessity of a judgement does not form from the absolute necessity of a thing”

• can’t move from definition to reality (links to Davies circular arg)

Poor use of language

Bertrand Russell

• e.g. present king of france is bald or not bald

• can describe its properties, but doesn’t mean exists

• existence =/= predicate

Aquinas

“nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the sense”

“nihil est in intellectu quod sit prius in sensu”

= peripatetic axiom