1E Deductive - Modern Ontological

How did Descartes define God?

He is a "supremely perfect Being devoid of a supreme perfection".

Elaborate on Descarte's definition.

- God has the very best form of all attributes and a complete absence of flaws
- The ultimate state of a positive trait.
- He has omnipotence, omnibenevolence and omniscience in their perfect state.
- If he did not possess the perfection of each and every positive attribute, he would not be the "supremely perfect being".

Why does Descartes insist that God exists?

- As God possesses all perfections, 'existence' must be a perfection and therefore, must exist.
- God must be unchanging - perfection can only come through being immutable.

Explain Descartes' triangle analogy.

- The two set of criteria to define a triangle are that: the internal angles add to 180° and it has three sides.
- Existence is necessary to define God. The concept of God contains the idea of his existence as necessary perfection.
- In both cases, the attributes and the idea are inextricably linked.

Explain Descartes' mountain/valley analogy.

- One "cannot conceive a mountain without a valley", they "cannot in any way be separated one from the other".
- Similarly, "I cannot conceive God without existence...existence is inseparable from Him".

What does Malcolm reject?

- Both Proslogion 2 and Descartes, siding with Gaunilo and Kant.
- "The doctrine that existence is a perfection is remarkably queer".

What does Malcolm believe?

- He sympathises with Proslogion 3, believing that God is the greatest possible being with necessary existence - "an absolutely unlimited being".
- As he has no limits, he is worthy of worship.

To Malcolm, "if God...does not exist", then...

- He "cannot come into existence".
* He would either happen, or be caused to, exist, ∴ he would be limited and his existence is impossible.

To Malcolm, "if He does exist", then...

- "He cannot have come into existence" ∴ cannot cease to exist.
- Nothing would mean that he happens to cease to exist, nor could anything cause him to cease to exist.
- As a result, his existence is necessary,

Malcolm says that God's existence is either impossible or necessary - how does he explain that God exists?

- His existence can only be impossible if the concept of such a being is "self-contradictory or...logically absurd".
- "Assuming that this is not so, it follows that He necessarily exists."

Give a brief overview of Plantinga (not on spec):

- Influential work on modal logic
* Uses a deductive argument involving 'possible worlds' to illustrate that G exists