Ontological arguments

a priori - the type of knowledge that do not require sense experience to be known to be true or false.

Deductive - An argument whose conclusion is logically entailed by its premises e.g. if the premises are true then the conclusion cannot be false

necessarily - The claim that God’s existence is necessary = God cannot not exist

Onto from ontology - relating to being or existence

Logos - knowledge or study of

Deductive arguments:

P1: All men are mortal

P2: Socrates is a man

P3: Therefore, Socrates is mortal

Ontological arguments are different to other arguments for God’s existence, because they are a priori. Rather than starting from some sort of experience of the world (a posteriori), they rely solely on the definition of God.

Ontological arguments claims that if you understand what the word God means, then you know that he exists, because existence is part of the definition of God. The proposition “God exists” is therefore analytic and is necessarily true.

Analytic - true by the meaning of the word so its denial would be a self-contradiction.

Anselm’s ontological argument for God:

• His argument for God’s existence was contained within Proslogion (‘discourse’ in Latin) which he wrote in 1078

• The Proslogion is written as a prayer addressing God directly

• He presents the Ontological Argument in Proslogion 2 as an exercise in ‘faith seeking understanding’

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