Truth Unites - The Ontological Argument: Christian and Agnostic Dialogue (Joe Schmid and Gavin Ortlund)

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Gavin Ortlund and Joe Schmid discuss the ontological argument. Originally hosted at Unbelievable. See the original video: https://youtu.be/sqRoiSD1VcQ?si=Pr1hLGGAhfstYNE4 See Joe's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MajestyofReason Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

What does it mean for an argument to beg the question? What's the relationship between possibility and conceivability? Ontological argument is a bit of a misnomer. It's a bit of a simplification, really, because this is a family of arguments. You could think of the ontological argument almost as we're bombarded with God or we're bumping into God at the rational plane. We can get an equally convincing reverse argument for God's non-existence,

and in fact, God's impossibility, right? Hey, God's either necessary or impossible. The enduring nature of this throughout Western philosophy, I think should encourage people not to dismiss it too quickly. There's more here than meets the eye. At one point, you called this the Rocky Balboa of philosophical arguments. Welcome to Premiere Unbelievable, the show that brings you lively debates and deep conversations about all sorts of questions in theology, ethics, faith, philosophy.

I'm your host, Vince Vitale. Today, we're exploring and assessing one of the most enduring and fascinating arguments for the existence of God, the ontological argument. That can be an intimidating name for an argument. But here to help us are Christian theologian, Gavin Ortland, and agnostic philosopher, Joe Schmidt. Stay with us as we dissect this unique argument, assess its strengths and weaknesses, and consider its relevance today. Fans of the podcast will know we've tackled this topic before on Premier Unbelievable. William Lane Craig defended the argument on the show, and Stephen Law critiqued it. Be sure to check out that past episode. If you're interested in diving deeper, we'll link to it in the show notes.

But now for today's show. We welcome back, Dr. Gavin Ortland, who is the president of truth unites and theologian in residence at Emmanuel Nashville. He's a fellow of the Keller Center of Cultural Apologetics and the Center for Baptist Renewal. And he's a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor theologians. Gavin has a PhD in historical theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, as well as an MDiv from Covenant Theological Seminary. He's authored numerous academic articles and nine books, including why God makes sense in a world that doesn't. His latest book, What It Meads to be Protestant, draws from both his scholarly work and his ecumenical engagement to offer a defense of the Protestant tradition. Find out more at Gavin's website, truth unites.org. Kevin, for today's discussion on the ontological argument is philosopher Joe Schmid. Joe was highly recommended to our executive producer by Alex O'Connor, who many of you will know as a regular on the show and an extremely popular YouTuber at Cosmic Skeptic. But Joe's currently working on a PhD at Princeton University, Go Tigers. And he's published articles in metaphysics and philosophy of religion,

including co-authoring the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on ontological arguments, our topic for today. Joe has written two books, existential inertia and classical theistic proofs. That's with Daniel Linford, great title. And his other book is The Majesty of Reason, a short guide to critical thinking in philosophy. On the popular level, Joe creates lecture videos and hosts discussions on his YouTube channel of the same name. that's Majesty of Reason.

And that's also his handle on X. So be sure to check him out online. Welcome both of you to unbelievable. Really appreciate you making the time to be with us today. I'm really excited for this discussion. So let's dive right in the ontological argument. Or really we should say ontological arguments in the plural, since there are various versions of it.

But before we get into any specific versions or nuances, is I just want to ask you guys to motivate this discussion for a broad audience, for someone listening who has maybe never even heard of ontological arguments. Why shouldn't they change the channel right now? Gavin, maybe I'll start with you. You've called this argument your favorite idea ever. Big statement. Tell us why.

What's so exciting about it? Yeah, yeah. Grateful to be here. Thanks for inviting me. and I want to say at the beginning how honored I feel to talk with Joe. Joe is a fantastic philosopher, so this is a real honor for me. Yeah, I love the ontological argument. As you say, there's lots of different versions, and I'm sure we'll talk about that.

My introduction to it was through Anselm, 11th century monk who first articulated this argument. It's an a priori argument for God's existence. That simply means it's apart from any experience. It's simply meditating on the idea of God or the being of God. or the being of God. The word ontological has to do with being. Ontology is the study of being. So this is a very abstract argument.

I think the great challenge for Joe and I here might be trying to help it not get so technical and in the weeds that we lose too many people because it does get very technical. But I love the argument. I mean, I'm going to be honest and vulnerable here if this isn't too strong to state. The argument works on me at kind of a mystical level. I don't know if that sounds weird. I don't know if anyone else will be able to relate to that. It might sound really nerdy.

But this argument, it's sort of working from this deep-seated intuition of the very concept of God that we sort of intercept at the rational plane. And I'll never forget I was in 11th grade sitting at the airport, reading through a modal version from Alvin Plantiga of this argument, reading through the syllogism, thinking, surely you can't prove that God exists from just the idea. of God in your mind, couldn't prove the syllogism wrong. Didn't know. What am I missing here? Half an hour looking at this syllogism, thinking something's got to give, but I don't see what it is. And this is the enduring nature of this throughout Western philosophy, I think, should encourage people not to dismiss it too quickly.

There's more here than meets the eye. So, you know, we'll get into a lot here, but I think just the starting point is to say, the ontological argument is an introduction to some deep questions of philosophy, the nature of existence itself. What does it mean for an argument to beg the question? What's the relationship between possibility and conceivability? Some of these basic questions, you can get a good education and philosophy, or at least a good introduction to philosophy by thinking about this argument, and it leads you into a lot of other theological questions as well. Oh, I could say more, but that'll start us off. That's so fun. I'm just like picturing this teenager reading about a modal

ontological argument, like missing your flight because you just can't take your eyes off of this book. Joe, how about for you? Can you remember the first time you came across this argument and what your experience of that was like? Yeah, I think the first time I came across it was in high school. And I think I came across Anselm's version. So as you mentioned earlier, ontological argument is a bit of a misnomer. It's a bit of a simplification, really, because this is a family of arguments, a variety of different arguments that are kind of united roughly in being a priori arguments for God's existence. Yeah, arguments from the armchair. You don't need to go out and look at the world in order to justify their premises. Instead, you can just sit in the philosopher's armchair and reflect on the nature of God or the concept of God or possibility or things like that. And then conclude, from the armchair that God exists. That sounds crazy. So that's what struck me in high school when I was thinking about these arguments.

I initially came across Anselm's argument, as I said, which is different from the modal ontological argument that planning had developed. But I came across it and I just thought, this is like a trick. I mean, there's some sort of trick going on. He's pulling the wool over my eyes or something strange is up. something funky is going on. And as it turns out, it was incredibly difficult to pinpoint where exactly it was going wrong. And then the argument is developed throughout the centuries, and we get the most recent or

contemporary formulations of the argument, which are usually modal in character. They usually try to reason from God's possible existence to his actual existence. So, but yeah, that's when I came across it. It was in high school. Now, great. And maybe just say a little more, because we've used this term a priori. a couple times now to say a little bit more about what that means and how that's different from other arguments for God's existence. Maybe the comparison will help our listeners. Yeah, so an

operatory argument as we're using it here just means an argument whose premises are justified entirely independently of experience. So you don't need to go out and look at the world. You don't need to perform some kind of experiment with your senses and gather various data about the world. You don't need to look at the structure of reality. You don't need to look at the constants in the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe. Don't need to do any of that in order to justify the relevant premises. In order to justify the premises, the thought is you can sort of just see them. They're either self-evident or they're very just intuitively plausible, but we can really just reflect. Without going out and looking at the world, we can reflect from the armchair and see

that the relevant premises are true and that the conclusion follows from the premises. And so we can be justified in accepting God's existence, according to proponents of ontological arguments, we can be justified in accepting God's existence independently of experience. So that's what we really mean by a priori. And then how does that contrast with other arguments? Well, when you think of other arguments like the cosmological argument, which itself is a family of arguments, very often they're taking some feature of reality, some feature of experience that we witness. We see cause and effect. We see change. We see things around us that can fail to exist. We see. We see. various features of the universe through our observations, and we see very often that they have

explanations as well. And then we try to reason to some kind of foundational explanation of either change or contingency or cause and effect or whatever. So it contrasts with cosmological arguments and teleological arguments, right? These are arguments from design. So they look at the intricate complexities of cells and organisms, or they look at the structure of the laws of nature, or they look at the constants featuring in the laws of nature, like the cosmological constant, which governs basically the rate at which the universe expands, all this stuff. You need sense experience in order to justify the relevant premises. So ontological arguments are unlike these arguments in that respect.

That's the main way that they differ. That's great. That's really, really helpful. And it sort of explains to our listeners why it's such a wacky and intriguing idea that you can just close your eyes and think about the definition. or the concept of God. And if you really understand that definition and that concept, well, somehow, without ever opening your eyes, that's going to lead you to God's actual existence. We're going to get more into the details of how some people think that argument proceeds.

But it's sort of a crazy structure to an argument. Gavin, I was really intrigued by something that you said. You said, if God exists, that there should be a proof. Like the ontological argument is fitting. I found that a really intriguing statement and was hoping you could say some more about why you think if God exists, it would be fitting that there would be an argument like this. Yeah, one way maybe you could think of the ontological argument sort of working on us, or as we've said, the family of arguments that we put in that category is almost like if there is a God,

then we will encounter him at different planes of reality, in different realms of our experience. You could think of the ontological argument almost as we're bombarded with God, or we're bumping into God at the rational plane. The moral argument might be more the moral plane. The fine-tuning argument might be more one argument within the sort of physical plane or something like this. And maybe one thing I can make, I can say about that of a concessive nature here right up front is, I think when most people approach a dialogue about arguments for the existence of God, one of the points of interest will be, okay, so who's right and who's wrong and does this prove that God exists?

And we might even approach the discussion in a very competitive manner, like, you know, which one is going to, which side is going to win. I don't really think of the ontological argument as serving that need all that well. I'll say as one who loves this argument that I think it is rationally avoidable. I think it only works in the context of certain presuppositions that themselves are somewhat involved with theism. And so I think the value of the argument is, probably not on sort of leveraging someone from atheism into theism. I would feel embarrassed if I tried to use this argument, try to move someone into theism. For me, the value of the argument is inducing reflection on the idea of God and on the nature of God, even as a believer. So if someone

already believes in God, it still has tremendous value to think. And then, as I said, I think it has value also just in introducing people to philosophy. Okay, that's great. You know, that thought I appreciate that open-mindedness, that it can, it's an argument that can be, you know, rationally resisted, you know, from your perspective. I wonder, Joe, from your perspective, is it, is it an argument that could in some way be rationally accepted or no? That's an interesting question. So let me say something at least about, before I answer that question, let me briefly say something about the value that I see in the argument. So as your audience may be able to gather. I do not think these arguments are terribly convincing. I don't think

they ultimately succeed in showing that God exists. So then why then do I care about them? Why do I research them in fact? There are a lot of reasons. I mean, one thing is just, I really do think that reflecting on these arguments can just give us a greater understanding of reality. And that's because they raise lots of fascinating questions about the nature of possibility. the nature of argumentation, like under what conditions do you have a circular argument, an argument that presupposes the conclusion? Under what conditions can you have an argument that rationally justifies a particular conclusion? What is the nature of concepts and greatness and various other things? I think the argument raises tons of these really interesting questions and provides a kind of forum for kind of developing our philosophical toolkit in really interesting ways.

So that's one way that I see the argument is incredibly valuable. And for me, it's kind of the main reason why I'm interested in it is just because it can help us gain a greater understanding of reality. Now, as for whether or not one, there is some way where one could be rational accepting the argument and coming to accept the conclusion on the basis of accepting the premises. I think that's probably right. There are certain vantage points from which maybe the relevant premises strike one is plausible and maybe the argument is valid. And so maybe from that kind of vantage point, one can be rational in accepting the conclusion on the basis of the premises. I do think that's probably an eminent possibility. You know, like someone could find themselves from that kind of epistemic vantage point in that kind of situation.

I myself don't find myself in that kind of vantage point. And I don't think there's like a rational obligation for people to be in that vantage point. but that's very different from saying that, you know, there's no rational way to accept the argument. I don't go that far. I don't make that claim. So, yeah. Yeah, that's helpful. I appreciate actually both of your postures in that respect that you can see the reasonableness of people that might disagree over this argument, which I think is really, really helpful. And we've seen that throughout the history of this argument. I don't know, maybe Gavin, you could share a little bit more about that.

At one point, you called this the Rocky Balboa of philosophical arguments, which I, as an American born in the 80s, I definitely appreciate it. But maybe you can tell us a bit about what you mean by that and how it relates to sort of the historical persistence of the argument. Yeah, so Rocky Balboa is famous for his strategy of perseverance. You know, just don't give up. And the ontological argument is kind of enduring when it seems to be knocked down and dead. it sometimes resurrects. So we could maybe give viewers kind of a brief history here. I mentioned Anselm in the 12th century, who was really the first.

Some people argue it you can find sort of implicit arguments like this back in Augustine and earlier. But I think a good case can be made that the first pure and proper ontological argument comes from Anselm in the 12th century. And it's immediately controversial. Other believers, in fact, another monk disputes the argument. So there's an interesting interchange between Anselm and a fellow monk named, Guanillo. Thomas Aquinas, maybe the greatest medieval theologian, rejects the argument, that he wasn't really working with Anselms. This is a theme throughout the history of the reception of the argument. A lot of the people rejecting it aren't working with Anselm's version.

But I won't try to be too much of a snob and always kind of going back to Anselm and saying Anselm's better than all these other versions, but I do feel a little bit like that. So it's almost totally, not totally, it's not widely accepted for most of that. span of time, René Descartes in the modern era sort of resurrects his own ontological argument, and others like Spinoza are defending various kinds of ontological arguments. And then Emmanuel Kant has this famous objection. I hope we get into that existence is not a predicate. We'll define that when we get there.

But that was widely considered successful. So the argument was widely considered dead. And then in the 19th, so you could think of three phases, Anselm, and then the modern versions with Descartes and then in the modern era, or modern, in the last few decades, really, since the 1960s, people like Hartshorn and Malcolm and others started resurrecting, they were saying, well, there's two different arguments in Anselm. There's an argument about God's necessary existence. These modal arguments start popping up. You have Gerdelian ontological arguments, which I almost hope we don't get into those because that's going to get really technical.

But you have all these modern versions. And there, it's contested, you know, I think it's a very controversial argument, but you can find very intelligent philosophers who do defend it today as well. So that's a little historical overview, I guess, that brings us to the present moment. Yeah, that's helpful. I mean, Joe, when you think about that historical overview, is there any sense of the arguments getting stronger or weaker over time or more or less sophisticated in some way? How do you think about that history? Yeah, I do think it's a gradual progression towards increasing sophistication, plausibility, something like that. Okay.

Because, I mean, at least Anselm, arguably, this is not necessarily consensus among contemporary scholarship, but it's like a pretty solid position among contemporary scholarship that he relies on pretty controversial, metaphysical views about existence and having different ways or modes or kinds of existence. Sometimes this is called the thesis of Minongianism, where that term, minongism comes from Alexias Minong. He is, I think, a 20th or 19th century philosopher. Sorry, I don't know the history very well, but he basically posited, like, non-existent objects which subsists.

They have some kind of reality, but they don't really have the robust kind of reality that you and I enjoy. And arguably, Anselm's argument relies on something like. my non-unism when he's distinguishing between things that exist in reality and things that exist in the mind but not in reality. So very controversial metaphysics that most contemporary philosophers are going to very staunchly reject. And similarly with like a lot of a even the early modern period with Descartes and Spinoza, they're relying on various pretty controversial metaphysical principles that a lot of contemporary philosophers are going to reject. But then when you start to get into, yeah, the Hart's Horn, the Malcolm, the planning sorts of modal on logical arguments. They're kind of dealing in arguably much more respectable, much more plausible,

much more plausible metaphysical assumptions just about what's possible, the relationship between possibility, necessity, actuality, and various other things. And they're using some of the best developed tools from a 20th century modal logic, which is a fantastic innovation and immensely clarified our thinking and reasoning about the logic. of possibility and necessity. And so I really do think there is a gradual progression towards getting stronger. Maybe other people, maybe that's a tendentious opinion, but that's at least my view. Right.

Yeah. If I could say, just to jump into the quick comment, kind of agreeing with Joe there, I think it gets stronger. These contemporary arguments are very sophisticated. And there are, there are, is some, I think, naivity in Anselm and some of his language. Now, having said that, two things I want to say, just again, encouraging people to kind of hang in there and give the argument seriousness. One is that it's interesting that there isn't agreement among opponents of the argument about what is wrong with it. There's a there's at different

times there's different points that come to predominate like Kant's point. But you know, even what Kant meant when he said existence is not a predicate is very much contested. In Graham Mopi's book, he says here's eight possible ways to gloss that phrase. Okay. So and and you know, I see that everywhere in the literature. People are trying to say what did Kant mean? There's not agreement about how to enter interpret content. So it's not like there's one problem with ontological arguments that always comes up. So even though it's controversial, people have different objections, which itself is kind of interesting because you wonder, well, if it's so obviously wrong, why isn't their agreement about why? The other thing I want to say is I think Anselm's version can be updated in various

respects. We can take some of his, the basic structure of his argument and update the metaphysics to make it a little more workable today. I'm glad Joe mentioned my non-gianism, because I thought that's one word we need our viewers to leave with and look into because this gets really interesting. The other thing I'll say is just to recommend a book, there are people who argue that in Anselm himself, I've been reading this book the last two weeks in preparation for this. This is a really good book. It's from David Smith called Anselm's Other Argument. What he's basically arguing is there's a second argument in a second way that Anselm articulates an ontological argument that has to do with causation in his reply to Guanilla.

And he defends that argument. And what he's saying is this avoids some of the child. challenges that come up with the original ontological argument. So hopefully we might get into that a little bit. But just to say a few words there to try to encourage people to give the argument some open-mindedness, I guess. Thanks, guys, for a great first segment. Hopefully we piqued some interest.

Yeah, to your point, Gavin, Bertrand Russell's line is really interesting. It's easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious, this argument, than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies. but we'll be moving into some of those objections. I do want to deal with Anselm's version as that historical starting point. We will talk about manangianism, a word that you never knew that you wanted to know the definition of, but you will before the end of this episode. But first, let's take a quick break.

I'm Vince Vitale, and you're listening to Unbelievable, where today we are discussing one of the most fascinating, even mind-blowing arguments for the existence of God, the ontological argument. With us are two fantastic thinkers with differing, perspectives to some extent, but also a lot of agreement, a Christian theologian, Gavin Ortland, and agnostic philosopher Joe Schmidt. Hit the subscribe button if you're on YouTube, follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can email us at unbelievable at premier.org. org.org. We love to hear from you. And don't go away. We'll be back in just a moment.

Pretty much universally, social science suggests that many of the institutions that we hold dear that shape us that provide a social support, a huge amount of this used to have. happen any way inside of these traditional religious structures, and there really has been nothing to replace it. It's amazing how quickly ostensible deontologists transform before our very eyes into utilitarians on this question. We're talking about what the self is here. I mean, atheists believe in the self.

Everybody believes in the self. Well, no, that's not, I mean, that I find difficult to believe. Why would an atheist believe in the self? The self is a series of non-deciding mechanisms. The arguments against God are fairly compelling, and I think the arguments against atheism are fairly compelling. The difference is that most people who believe in God have expressed doubts, and a lot of people who are atheists tend to be more religious in this way than many of the people who are

God believers. If people listening agree with me that free will in fact doesn't exist and simultaneously agree with you that free will is somehow necessary for the upkeep of civilization, then I would simply ask them to consider who's relying on the delusion here. This show does seem to have an extraordinary capacity for putting me face to face with people that I've been talking smack about online. So thanks again. I'm Vince Vitale. Welcome back to the premiere, Unbelievable Podcast, where I'm grateful to be joined by Joe Schmidt and Gavin Ortland and to learn from them as they debate the ontological argument for God's existence. This weird and controversial argument has influenced philosophy and theology for centuries. Is it compelling evidence for God or, as Schopenhauer put

it, is it just a charming joke? In the first part of this episode, we gave a general sense of what an ontological argument is, why it's unique, but we can't really assess ontological arguments as a whole because each specific one makes its own distinct claims. So I want to spend a bit of time discussing Anselm's version of the argument because that's probably the most famous version of it. And it's a key historical launching point for the argument. And Gavin, you wrote your PhD, I believe, on Anselm. So maybe you can kick us off in this segment and summarize Anselm's version of the argument for us. Sure. The whole thrust of my doctoral dissertation was that there's more to Anselm's proslogian than just the ontological argument. But I do like talking about this

argument as well. The proslogian is just the name of the book in which this argument occurs. Let me state it real quickly and then give kind of two clarifying remarks and then I'll kick it over to Joe here. So basically Anselm has this language of that then which nothing greater can be thought. The basic, the basic quarter of it can be stated fairly briefly and comes from pro slogion in chapter two. He basically says, that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in the mind. Even if you don't believe it exists out in reality, you can think of it in the way that a painter can conceptualize what he's about to paint. But if it exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality as well, because if it existed only in the mind,

then an even greater being would be possible, namely one that existed both in the mind and in reality. And yes, if people feel like there is a trick being pulled upon them, then they're probably following because it does feel like that at first. But two things to say. One is that this phrase, that than which nothing greater can be thought is really important. And it's different from, they say, the Cartesian versions. Think of it as more of a negative placeholder term. It doesn't assume that we can think of God, which is the strength of it. It's a very, it's a technical phrase, but it's really important.

So it's not just saying God is you have an idea of the greatest conceivable being in your mind. some arguments work like that the use of this phrase it's kind of a negative placeholder phrase the language does not assume you are actually conceiving of god and actually later in the personal giana chapter 15 and some will say you can't think of god and he even sees that as the conclusion one of the conclusions of the argument so that's an important thing is that it's not assuming that you have a conception of god in your mind it's that then which nothing greater can be thought. The other thing to say is, I think the instinctive feeling that I usually get most from people, and I've written down four objections that I hope we can get to maybe a couple of them to work through,

but the most immediate instinctive response I usually hear from people is, but you can't just define God into existence. And I just would say to, again, to encourage patience, it's not really doing that. The argument isn't defining God into existence. It starts with the idea of God in the mind and then makes a logical inference from that fact, from a mental reality to an extra mental reality. So there's a logical movement. And if people want to say, well, you can't do that. You can't use reason to go from the realm of thought to the realm of reality. I think the response is, why? Why not? You know, why not? To say we can't do that is assuming a certain philosophy of existence. And Anselm has a very rich view. My non-Dianism came up a moment ago. Ensum has a very rich view. And Sam has a very rich

view of the mental realm. So if we think does Sherlock Holmes exist, does the stone table in Narnia exist? Do mental realities exist in some sense, in some shadowy lesser way? I think that's Anselm's way of approaching things. But like I said, I think we can update the argument and not necessarily use those exact categories. And even in Anselm's text, there's other ways he thinks. Nonetheless, it's not defining God into existence. Rather, it's really, it's really, reasoning from the mental to the extramental through a logical inference. So that's just setting it up, I guess. Great. Joe, feel free to clarify anything about the argument that you'd like to, and then I'd love to hear, you know, a couple of objections that you find compelling with respect to the argument. I realize you may not have time to numerate all of them, but a couple that you find particularly compelling.

Yeah, I think that's good by way of articulation of the argument. I don't think I have much to add by way of clarification. I guess maybe there are, I mean, there are a number of worries that I have for this argument and that philosophers have developed. None of these are unique to me, but they're just in the contemporary scholarship and I find them just convincing. So maybe I'll just go with three right now. The first one is that it does seem to be. It does seem to be. to assume, at least as Gavin articulated this particular argument, it does seem to assume what we call Minongianism. So as I was saying before the break, Minongianism, that's a term derived from the last name of Alexius Minong. He is a philosopher from either the 20th or 19th century. And the basic thesis of Minongianism is just that there are non-existent things or there are non-existent objects. So there are some things that don't exist. And the reason why we can see that this is part of the argument is, or at least this is, at least in the background of the argument, is that Anselm is saying, well, hey, even the fool, even the non-theists is going to have to grant that even though they don't think God exists, nevertheless, there is a God that exists in the understanding. So there is something, namely God, that than which nothing greater can be conceived, which exists in the understanding, but not in reality.

That doesn't actually have a kind of extramental existence. And so this is either saying that there is this thing, that than which nothing greater can be conceived, which doesn't exist. If by exist, we mean like existing in reality, in which case we're kind of like assuming a kind of Minonian picture here as a kind of background metaphysics. or else if we still want to say that, no, it does exist, it just has a different way of existence. It exists mentally as opposed to existing extramentally. Then we are assuming something called ontological pluralism. That's just the thesis that there are different kinds of existence. Like maybe there's an extramental kind of existence and then there's like a mental kind of

existence. But I say either way, whichever one of those that we're assuming, either my non-unism or ontological pluralism, those are, I mean, firstly, not obvious. at least to me. Secondly, they seem very implausible to me. I'm an ontological monos. I don't think that there are different kinds of existence. There's just one univocal sense of existence, and I also reject minonism. I don't think that there are any non-existent objects. To me, if we say that there are non-existent objects, the way that I hear that is there exist and non-existent objects. So something exists and doesn't exist. It doesn't make any sense. And there are lots of other

objections that one could pose to minoninism and ontological pluralism. But that's just one kind of style of objection that I find quite convincing to the argument, namely that it presupposes some background metaphysics that are highly controversial, non-obvious, and face very serious challenges, and the vast majority of contemporary philosophers at least reject both of these, in fact. So anyway, I think maybe we'll just pause with that one. Great, great. Fantastic. Gavin, is that, do you think that objection can be resisted, or that Anselm's argument can be revised in light of it? Or do you bite the bullet there and say, well, I'm a non-gian, so I'm good. What's your kind of response to that? Right. No, I think this is a very

good objection. I think I personally love my non-Gianism. So from a personal standpoint, I concede that it does assume that, and I'm okay with that. I would define my non-gianism a little bit differently to say there's different modes of existence or kinds or qualities of existence. Because if we just said, there are things that don't exist, but that exist, you know, that's obviously kind of contradictory. But if we distinguish between one realm or mode of existence, then the kind of shadowy kind of existence. Now, I, you know, this is really tough. You know, we get into some basic intuitional differences of, you know, to me, the realm of mathematical truth is one realm where this looks like it exists in a different way than the

realm of physical objects. And that's kind of a different discourse. Nonetheless, it's one of those things that sort of opens me up to consider this possibility of different modes of existence. having said that, as I mentioned a moment ago, I think Anselm's argument can be updated in various ways to make it less dependent on monogianism. So Graham Opi, even though he does not like the ontological argument, nonetheless, he does address this concern and that he basically says Anselm's language could be updated so that it's less dependent on this conceptual framework. And he uses the categories of concept possession and concept instantiation. So for existence in the mind, existence in reality.

So the idea is we're not saying, I've got this little idea of God in my mind over here. Then there's the real God out there and they're the exact same thing. Rather, he's saying all the argument works just like this. You just start with the idea and then reason to the instantiation of that idea. So that, in other words, that than which nothing greater can be thought, in the mind, it's greater to exist in reality than just to exist in the mind. And so that idea in my mind is then instantiated in reality itself. That's one way to respond. I think there's a few other ways to respond based upon what Anselm says in the reply to Guanillo, where basically the

whole, the very argument he's making gets cast in different ways that are less dependent on these categories of existence in the mind. Having said everything, I think I just can concede. This is a good objection and the whole idea of existence in the mind is a very controversial idea. So again, this is not a particular point I'm going to be leveraging someone else has to accept. Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say, the reason why I bring this up first is because I agree that we can give a modified rendition of Anselm's argument, which doesn't presuppose Minongianism or the ontological pluralism that I mentioned.

So I do think this afflicts Anselm's original version. and I myself just think this is a successful objection to Anselm's original version. But I think we can just maybe set this aside because, as Gavin said, there are other formulations or other revised renditions of Anselm's kind of reasoning, which don't seem to rely on Minonianism or ontological pluralism. So maybe we can go on to a second objection that I would raise. And again, the reason why I brought that up is because I think it afflicts the original argument, which Gavin originally put forward.

and I think it's at least helpful for the audience to see at least one way that contemporary philosophers think that that argument might not succeed. So then let's go on to the next kind of objection that I find reasonably compelling. And it does target Anselm's original version, and I do think, I'd like to hear what Gavin thinks about this, I do also think it targets Gavin's revised version here.

Maybe it's a version of the existence is not a predicate worry. I'm not going to explain what that is because I'm not going to rely on that terminology. Maybe it's a version of that, but I'll just lay out the objection and then we can talk about it. So the objection targets the premise

that that than which nothing greater can be thought if it existed in both reality and mind would be better than that than which nothing greater can be thought existing solely in the mind. It targets that premise. And I myself, I think that premise is mistaken. And why do I think that?

Well, because I think when we're comparing the greatness of things, we're comparing how great they would be if they were to exist. Like, take Superman and Spider-Man, right? When I say, maybe this is a controversial opinion, when I say Superman is greater than Spider-Man. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Right, no, exactly. I think Superman is greater than Spider-Man. Okay. When I'm saying that, I mean, I don't, you know, if you can imagine someone coming up to me is like, oh, you think Superman exists.

How could he be greater than Spider-Man if he doesn't even exist? It's like, what are you talking about, Joe? Like, listen, dude, when I say that X is greater than Y, in this context at least, when we're not presupposing that the thing in question exists, because we don't want to beg the question, we don't want to assume our conclusion. When we are comparing the greatness of things, we're comparing how great they would be if they were to exist. What I'm saying is, listen, if Superman were to exist, he'd be greater than Spider-Man would be if Spider-Man were to exist.

Okay? But then now let's apply that to Enselm's reasoning. Right? When Anselm's saying, that than which nothing greater can be thought would be better if it existed in reality and in the mind than if it just existed in the mind, I want to say, no, it's the same greatness. Because, again, we're just considering that than which nothing greater can be conceived. And in order to compare the greatness of that existing solely in the mind with that existing in the mind and reality, we're just asking how great would that thing be were it to exist in reality? And since we're talking about the same thing here, that than which nothing greater can be thought, it's the same reality. it's the same reality. Sorry, it's the same greatness.

It's the same greatness that it would have if it were to exist in reality in both cases. And so I actually just reject that that much nothing greater can be thought is greater if it exists both in mind and reality than if it just exists in mind. And that's because I think there's this particular analysis of greatness that we have to use when we're not presupposing the existence of a thing in question. And when we use that analysis of greatness, that greatness is just how great the thing would be if it existed in reality. and it's the same greatness in both cases. So that is a second objection that I find kind of forceful. Great one. Jump in there again. Yeah, I can interact with this.

I'm somewhat relieved that we do have at least something we disagree on. I was worried Joe and I would just agree on everything here as we go forth. Because I have a different intuition about this. So I do think this is how Cont is sometimes read that when he says existence is not a predicate, he's saying it's not a great-making predicate or a great-making quality or something that enhances a thing. And some paragraphs in Kant seem like they're saying that because he has this metaphor of money. Let's make it from his currency into American dollars. So he's saying, you know, a hundred real dollars isn't greater than 100 imaginary dollars.

But I would, that's not how it seems to me. The comparison between Spider-Man and Superman is between two different entities, both of which are fictional. The ontological argument is comparing the same entity, again, in two different modes. one existing in the mind only, one existing in both mind and reality. So the relevant comparison there would be, would a real Spider-Man be greater than a Spider-Man that's just in our minds? And I would say that we have to look at all the different ways two things can be, that we sort of compare their greatness.

So $100 that is real is not greater than 100 imaginary dollars in the way that it's greater than $99, a kind of quantitative, comparative, greatness like that. But it is greater in the qualitative sense that you can buy something with it. A real Spider-Man is greater than a just mental Spider-Man and that he can save actual people in the real world. And similarly, I would say greatness is obviously, or excuse me, existence is obviously a great-making quality. It's the sort of most fundamental one of all. It's the instantiation point for every other quality that a thing has. People speak of existing in reality as kind of giving an ontological completeness. What Robert Maydwell uses the metaphor of black and white TV versus

color TV. The color TV is not greater in every sense, say sharpness, you know, they might be the same. But the color adds this kind of quality to the whole that does enhance it. And he says the same thing if something actually exists. And so, you know, we may have different intuitions about this, to me, is something, that thing which nothing greater can be thought, if it does exist in reality as well, that's obviously greater, just like you can actually buy something with $100 that exists in real life as opposed to just $100 that is just in your mind only. So I'm glad I brought up the mind-onogic thing because the reason why, I mean, so in one sense, I agree with you and in another sense I disagree with you. Here's a sense in which I agree with you.

I agree that if we are granting some kind of reality to that than which nothing greater can be thought existing in the mind or something like that. And if we grant some kind of reality to that, and we also grant some kind of reality, and we compare the reality that that has and the greatness that that thing has, which enjoys that reality, to the greatness of that than which nothing greater can be thought, which has the additional kind of reality of existing and extramental reality or something. like that, then I can get in the headspace there. Yeah, like these things that we're hypothetically comparing, yeah, they're both, they're both things. And one of them is that in which nothing greater can be thought, which has extra mental reality in addition to mental reality. Another one is that than which nothing greater can be thought, which only has the mental reality. And I can sort of, yeah, compare the greatness between these things hypothetically, because, like, they're both there. They're both in reality, as it were. So in order to get around this

objection, well, I would agree then that we could probably compare the greatness of those. And it does seem to me, I share the intuition that the thing with the kind of robust extramental reality is better than something which is exactly like it, but which doesn't have that robust extramental reality and only has the kind of degraded mental reality. So I would agree that we can compare the greatness there. And the one which has the kind of extramental reality is going to be greater than the one which doesn't have the kind of extramental reality, but only has the mental reality. But then we're just back right at the Mainong thing, right?

Like we were supposed to be modifying Anselm's argument so that it avoided that objection, or at least that's how I thought we were proceeding, you know, like the way that you gave the argument was, well, just consider the concept. We're not talking about actually that in which nothing greater can be thought, like the being. We're not talking about God. We're talking just like about the idea of God. But now it seems like in your response, we were just going back to the point about Minongianism and ontological pluralism,

which I thought we had sort of set aside to try to modify the argument to get around that. And I think basically there's a dilemma here. Like either we we go along with the original argument or we go along with some kind of metaphysical presupposition of the original argument, and then we can avoid this objection that I just raised, the most recent objection from comparing the greatness of things. I agree that we can avoid it, but then we're just saddled back with either ontological pluralism or minongianism or monotheism or monological pluralism, and instead we articulate the argument in more updated terms in terms of like, well, you know, like the concept of the being compared to like the being itself. And if we do that, then I think the objection that I just raised is forceful to that kind of argument.

Because like, I mean, again, what are we comparing the greatness of? We're not comparing the greatness of a concept to the greatness of the being itself. Like we're supposed to be comparing the greatness of that than which nothing greater can be conceived as existing in the mind is compared to reality. We're not comparing the greatness of a concept with like the greatness of a being in reality or something like that. So anyway, I do think there's a kind of dilemma for this argument. Yeah. And maybe just a summative comment would be it's not clear to me that actually you'd need my Nongianism to make this particular response I'd give. That'd be an even richer view of how you could compare a mental idea to its instantiation.

But here, it seems to me, you could do it with any sort of philosophy of existence, just say something is greater if it actually exists. You don't need to exist to have a comparison drawn. I think we can say $100 is greater than the idea of $100, even though that idea of $100 doesn't exist. It doesn't need to exist in order for that comparison of greatness to work. There is still some philosophy of existence at work there, but I don't think it's full-blown monogianism. Well, yeah, I mean, we just have to be very careful with what we're comparing the greatness of. we can be comparing the greatness of an idea, a mental representation, something in my mind, to what the thing is represented. That's one thing we could be comparing.

Like, we can be comparing the greatness of my idea of $100 with the actual $100 existing out there in the world. I agree. We can compare the greatness of those things. Those things have some degree of greatness. And, yeah, I think the $100 is probably greater than my, like, idea or something like that. But, like, that's not the relevant comparison that we need to run the argument. Like, we need to run the argument in terms of, like, there is some thing, which would be greater if it existed both in reality and in the mind than if it just existed in the mind. I mean, again, we're not comparing the greatness of a concept with the greatness of the thing itself, or at least we'd have to reformulate the argument so that somehow it could still be valid and plausible, have all true and plausible premises by trying to rewrite it in such a way that we're comparing the greatness of an idea with the greatness of things in extramental reality.

But we weren't supposed to be doing that, right? Like we were supposed to be comparing the greatness of, like, somehow the content of the idea as having some sort of mental existence, you know, like the $100 as it's in the mind. But that's different from the idea of the $100. So, again, like, we'd have to revisit the argument maybe to see how it would work if we're just comparing the idea of $100 to $100. Like, how would it work?

Suppose that the idea of $100 just exists in the mind. and there's no corresponding thing in reality, is the thought then that, like, the thing in reality is supposed to be better than the idea? But that's no contradiction or anything like that. Like, we don't get the reductio, because, like, the reductio is supposed to be relying on that than which nothing greater can be conceived

can be conceived to be greater than. We can conceive of something greater than that than which nothing greater can be conceived. And that's because we can conceive of something having that kind of experimental reality in addition to the mere mental reality. But if we're suddenly talking about different things here, my idea of that than which nothing greater can be conceived,

and comparing that to that then which nothing greater can be conceived, we no longer get that sort of reducteo structure, and then the argument's no longer going to be valid. So we just have to be very careful about what we're comparing the greatness of, and it'll affect the argument what we're comparing the greatness of. We're going to have to go to a break in a minute here, but let me just highlight how cool this is for our listeners, Because remember, we started this episode saying what we're talking about is whether you can sit in an armchair and close your eyes and somehow get from the concept or the definition of God to his actual existence.

And I just think it's really cool that we clearly have two really intelligent, thoughtful people on the show who are able to have a robust discussion. I mean, when you hear that idea in the first place, you would probably think, well, that'll just be dismissed out of hand. Of course, you can't just close your eyes on the couch and get to the actual existence. of God without even going out and looking at the world in any sort of way. But we're able to have a robust discussion about that. So I hope you'll find this intriguing and take time to look more deeply into this argument. We're not done yet, but we do need to take one more break. If you want extra content and early access to shows, head on over to our website,

Premiere Unbelievable.com. And before you do take a moment, please to hit subscribe, rate the podcast. There's plenty more to discuss with Joe Schmidt and Gavin Ortland about one of the most unusual and resilient ideas of all time, the ontological argument for the existence of God. We'll be back in just a moment. Historians don't argue that something that happened only once in all of history is the most probable occurrence because somebody said it happened. Unless there's an incredible evidence.

The incredible evidence is that Paul said so. Not just that. Not just that. Where was the expectation of a Messiah rising in from the dead? Tell me that. How many ancient Christian rise? do we have by somebody who says in those writings that he saw Jesus? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is my turn. Let me finish. Let me finish my point.

I'm answering your question. You weren't answering the question. You asked me my question. I'll let you. Let's let out finish. That's the exciting part when we arm wrestle? Welcome back. You are listening to Unbelievable, the show that gets Christians, skeptics, agnostics, and everyone in between thinking about the topics that matter to all of us.

This is the final part of our discussion with returning guest Gavin Ortland and first-time guest Joe Schmidt. We're unpacking the ontological argument. Does it prove that the very definition of God entails his existence? Or is it a charming joke and a philosophical dead end? Let's get back to it. So for some of the reasons that we're touching on in the last segment, some thinkers have moved away from Anselm's versions of the argument, but they still hold out hope in other versions of ontological arguments,

example, what is called a modal version or modal versions of the ontological argument. Joe, maybe you could start us off here. Can you just open up what it means to say that a certain version of the argument is a modal version? And then maybe you can kind of lay out for us, Alvin Planning, those modal version, which is probably the best known. Yeah, absolutely. So modal ontological arguments are just ontological arguments. So there are a species of ontological arguments. So there are arguments that are a priori, totally proceeding from the armchair, you don't need to go out and do sense experience, and they are modal in character. And that just means that they concern possibility and necessity. And here we're really concerned specifically with what philosophers

call metaphysical possibility and metaphysical necessity. And that is just, that's really a matter of what really could have existed, like out there in the world. It's not a matter of what we know. Like sometimes we might say of some mathematical claim that we haven't checked whether it's true or false, we sometimes say, yeah, it could be true. It could be false. You know, it might be true. It might be false. But that's a more epistemic thing. That's a claim about our knowledge state. Really, if the mathematical claim is true, it's necessarily true. Like if it's like an arithmetic claim, like those can't be false. You just one plus one couldn't have failed to be two. One plus one must have been two. That is necessarily the case out there in the world. That just had to have been the case. So we're not talking about limitations of our knowledge, like what might have been the case, in the sense of, well, my knowledge doesn't really rule it out or I haven't really settled it yet in my mind or something like that.

That's not the kind of possibility or necessity that we're talking about. We're talking about a kind of robust, objective sense of being really possible or really necessary in the way. that mathematical claims are really necessary. They must have been true if they're true at all, or if they're false, they must be false. They cannot be true. One plus one could not have been three. Okay, so that's the sense of possibility and necessity that we're talking about. And now that we've got that on the table, we can move to articulating the argument itself. So there are different versions of the modal ontological argument itself. And I can basically just give the simplest possible version. And this is very simplified. This is not technically speaking planning his argument. It is

very, very close to his argument, but it's much simplified for popular presentation. So here's the argument. Premise 1. God is either necessary or he's impossible. Premise 2, God at least possibly exists. So he's not impossible. And since God's either necessary or impossible, and he's not impossible, God's necessary. So in other words, God, necessarily exists. Okay, so that's the simplest way to articulate the argument. Why might we accept that first premise that God's either necessary or impossible? Well, the idea here is that God is a perfect being. Whatever else we're talking about, we're talking about a perfect being, a being who has every perfection, every great-making feature. And a lot of people think that

necessary existence. So like existing in every way that reality could be, necessary existence seems like a great-making feature. You kind of have a robust grip on existence. You're existence is not like a happenstance fluke or like a chance or anything like that. Instead, you have a robust grip on reality. So the thought then is that if God were to exist at all, he would necessarily exist. So if there's a God at all, then God necessarily exists. He would have to be a necessary being. And in that case, like basically, since God would have to be a necessary being if he exists at all, either he's a necessary being in the case that he exists, or if he doesn't exist, he just couldn't have existed at all. So he's either a necessary being or he's impossible. And then we go on to say that,

hey, it's at least possible that God exists. And people try to wield various motivations for that premise. And from those, it follows that God necessarily exists. And so God actually exists. That's the simplest way to put it. And I'm, I'm abstracting from many, many details. Technically speaking, like to motivate the first premise that I mentioned from the thought that God, if he were to exist would be a necessary being. Technically speaking, you need to appeal to some pretty substantive logical assumptions about how these modal claims logically behave. But I think that's just too far into the weeds for the present discussion. No, that's perfect. Well, well done, Joe, boiling that down. And one thing to highlight for our listeners, which might be

interesting about this argument is that on a fairly common understanding of the of God, whereby God exists necessarily, in other words, no matter how everything else might have been, God would have existed. He has that firm grip on reality. Then the argument says, God either actually exists in reality or it's absolutely impossible for him to exist. And that's kind of an interesting feature of the conversation because, you know, a lot of people or some people might think, well, God could exist. He just happens not to. This argument is kind of pushing us in of two directions. Either he actually exists or he could not exist. It's impossible for him to exist. Is that a fair way to put it? Yeah. And just to kind of elaborate a little bit for the

audience. Like suppose, suppose one word to think that, hey, God doesn't actually exist, but like he really could have existed. There's some way that reality could be such that God exists. The basic thought then is that, well, then you're not actually granting that if God were to exist, he'd be a necessary being, right? Because you'd be saying then that here is one way that reality could be, the actual world in which God doesn't exist. But there's another way that reality could be such that God does exist. But then there are these two ways that reality could be in one of which God exists and in the other which it doesn't, in which case you're saying that God's a necessary being, right? And so if you grant that if God were to exist at all, he'd be a necessary

being, then you basically have to say that he either exists in all the ways that reality could be or he exists in none of the ways that reality could be. So he either exists in all possible worlds, in all ways that reality could be, or he exists in no possible worlds. In other words, no ways that reality could be. And so then that's the first premise. Either God is necessary, so either he couldn't have failed to exist, or else God is impossible. He couldn't have existed. And so then if you go on to say that he could exist, there's some way that reality could be,

such that God exists. Then you are committed, if you accept that first premise, to accepting God's actual existence and, in fact, his necessary existence. Right. Wow. Okay. And Gavin, reflect on this a bit for us. You know, you have a favorable assessment of Anselm's version of the Antrochalchal argument,

even though it may come with some metaphysical costs. How do you kind of compare the strength of this type of argument with Anselm's? Yeah, I like modal arguments as well. I think they're also sort of implicit in Anselm. So to think in categories of necessity and possibility, that comes in a little bit with pro slogion chapter three, but especially in his reply to Guanillo, where he kind of leans more in that direction. So I tend to see Anselm's argument and modal arguments as potentially harmonious in that not to say if one works, the other must work, but that it's not necessarily the case

that they're in competition with one another. These are two different ways of sort of teasing out what I regard as kind of a common intuition. I think that people sometimes get tricked into accepting these arguments because they don't understand what we mean when we say God is possible or it is possible that God exists. And this is where I think Joe gave a hopeful kind of delineation on the distinction between metaphysical possibility versus epistemic possibility. I don't remember if those are his exact terms. But this is the danger here. People kind of get tricked into accepting the argument because they don't realize how much ground they're giving up when they say, oh, it's possible to God exists. Well, sure. It could be. What do I know? And then they realize, oh, I shouldn't have conceded

that much because now down the road you realize, oh, we're dealing with metaphysical possibility. You just let the whole monster into the house at this point if you concede that much. I like thinking in these terms, I think it avoids certain problems. I also worry, though, sometimes modal arguments bring up worries and problems of their own. So some of the parody objections that we haven't really gotten into, I think can raise some real worries against modal versions of the argument. Yeah, so this is, it's interesting. You know, we have the Anselmian version and we say, hey, there's.

some philosophical costs to accepting that version. You might have to accept a my non-humanism or non-tological pluralism. But you might have somebody like Gavin who says, I don't find that that implausible. But then we have these other versions, immoral versions, and that might come with some assumptions that God is a necessary being. He had to have existed no matter how everything else was. And you might think, ah, that might be implausible. But then there are other people who take that to be plausible. So we have different versions and they have different costs. But it's interesting that there's a variety of sophisticated arguments of this form. And if you're willing to accept, you know, some of the philosophical costs for one or others of them, then they could be

plausible to some people. But I would, I'd love to hear, as we did with Anselm, some of the weaknesses or vulnerabilities to this type of argument, you know, again, what let's just focus in on, okay, what's the strongest objection to this type of approach? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, one objection that we didn't get to with Anselm was, indeed, like parody objections. So as Gavin mentioned, Guanelow, Gondolo, I never know how to pronounce this, but Gondolo, a monk who was a contemporary of Anselm's, put up a kind of parody to Anselm's ontological argument saying, hey, we can prove this absurd conclusion,

and there might be some technical difficulties with that parody, but contemporary philosophers they've given other parodies, which don't suffer from those technical problems. And actually, I do think that that would be a potential third way to respond to Anselm's argument that I'm actually sympathetic, sympathetic with, and parodies veer their ugly head in the context of modal ontological arguments, and I think with even greater force. So the biggest objection that philosophers nowadays level to the argument is this symmetric reverse modal ontological argument. So the modal ontological argument, as I presented it earlier, said, hey, God's either necessary or impossible, but God is possible. So God's necessary. God necessarily. God necessarily.

exists. But we can get an equally convincing reverse argument for God's non-existence, and in fact, God's impossibility, right? Hey, God's either necessary or impossible. Same first premise. So we agree with you with that. Second premise, hey, God's non-existence is possible, right? You guys said God's existence was possible. Now I'm just saying God's non-existence is possible. But look at that. If God's non-existence is possible, that means God isn't necessary, right? To say that God's necessary is to say that God couldn't have failed to exist. In other words, God's non-existence is impossible. So if we say that God's existence is possible, then it follows that God's not necessary. And so, since we have that first premise that God's either necessary or impossible, and since

God's not necessary, it follows that God is impossible. So then look at that. We just have a competing argument with the same first premise. The second premise seems just as plausible that God possibly exists and that God possibly doesn't exist. There doesn't seem to be any reason to prefer one of these over the other, at least absent some independent argument. But just in terms of the modal ontological argument, that certainly doesn't give us a reason to prefer one of these over the other. And so then the arguments are awash. We shouldn't accept the original argument's conclusion on the basis of its premises, precisely because there's an equally convincing argument for the opposite conclusion. So that's the main objection. There are other objections

like targeting the underlying modal logic and various other things that we're not going to get into, they get incredibly technical. Some of those actually have sympathies with some of those potential objections there, but this is the main objection that I just articulated. Yeah, and it might help the audience, too, to share a little bit of the history of these parody objections, because these go back to Guadillo and people may, I think, I don't think the parody responses work myself, but I think the modal versions are more vulnerable to them. but maybe just to explain for someone.

So Guanillo has this, his parody is an island. So in other words, a parody objection to an ontological argument is saying, look, if that argument works, you can use that to prove all kinds of things. Like the island than which nothing greater can be thought or could translate some object into modal categories. And I tend to think that these objections don't work. at this point I'm inclined to agree with planting that there are relevant differences between any finite object and that then which nothing greater can be thought and that if you just slap on the language then which nothing greater can be thought to an island or anything else it doesn't work and the the idea is not really coherent because the qualities that make an island great or any other finite object great have no intrinsic maximum and they can keep on being increased onto eternity you know so he talks about the number of palm trees on the island and the number of coconuts and basically what is that island than which nothing greater can be thought.

And however great you make it, you seem like you can just make it a little greater. And I've gone back and forth on that, tried to consider the objections to that that come in. But it's like, yeah, it seems to win out because, I mean, you know, you could just ask, what's the number of palm trees on the island than which nothing greater can be thought? It seems like no matter how many you have, having a few more or having them more perfectly placed, you can always keep on making it greater and greater and greater. And I think the way to respond to parity arguments, I think, is to try to highlight that this language of maximal greatness

or, in a modal version, necessity, is not transferable to other finite objects. In fact, part of its very purpose, and part of the whole intuition of ontological arguments is to gesture toward the qualitative uniqueness of God. There's this one thing at the base of reality that is absolutely not. necessary. And that's kind of the driving intuition behind ontological arguments. So that,

that's how I interact with. I think Plentica's right, so far as I can tell about the parity objections. In the modal arguments, this will come up with various other kinds of necessary beings that are less than God, but still necessary sometimes, and they'll have different names and so forth. But again, I think the qualitative uniqueness of God is one of the very points the argument is trying to gesture toward and say, you can't just use the same categories for other entities. Yeah, well, there's a lot to say there. That's great. That's interesting. So, I mean, one thing to say is, like, at least in terms of the modal ontological argument, right, like how I articulated that there weren't any, or the symmetry problem, I wasn't appealing to other entities that would be necessarily existent.

I'm solely appealing to the possibility of God's non-existence. So I don't think that your response there would target that version. But I know you were just trying to target other parody arguments in general. Now, I'm not really convinced by those responses to the parody things. I mean, for starters, there are lots of things to say. I mean, for starters, we could just, if you don't like the island example, take another example, like that score of mine on the ACT than which none greater can be conceived that has an intrinsic maximum given the rules of the ACT, it's like 36 or whatever.

And we can consider that score on my ACT than which none greater can be. be conceived, hey, it existing in reality is better than it existing just in the mind and not in reality. And so then we can use the same exact sort of reductio to conclude that, hey, there actually is my score on the ACT, which nothing greater can be conceived. So, hey, I guess I just got a 36 on the ACT. I'm going to submit to, you know, write down my ontological proof on my college application and submit it to the college board or whatever and then get into Princeton. So I would have, I would accept you. I would accept you for that essay. Right. Right. Exactly.

So, like, I do think we can consider examples where they actually do admit of intrinsic maxima in terms of the relevant great-making features. Also, I mean, or if you don't like the ACT example, just consider what I have called a solo no. Solo, S-O-L-O-D-N-O-W. This is a being, and I'm just stipulating what its essence is like. It is essentially such that its only ability. So it's a being which would be, if it were to exist, would be a necessary being. and its only ability is to know truths. Okay, and that's its only ability by nature.

Okay, now, the relevant dimensions along which this being is great, do admit of intrinsic maxima, namely knowledge. Like, that has an intrinsic maximum, namely knowing everything. And, I mean, the the atheist has to grant that that has an intrinsic maximum in order to mount to Gavin's objection, because that's one of God's great-making features, namely knowledge. And so then we can just consider that solo know than which none greater can be conceived. and the one existing in reality would be greater than one merely existing in the mine. And so we can conclude that there's this solo no out there, this necessarily existent

being whose only ability is to know every truth. And that doesn't seem right. So I really don't think the intrinsic maximum point succeeds. There are some other reasons why I think that, I mean, one is just that it's actually not clear to me that islands, that their great making features don't admit of intrinsic maxima. I mean, sometimes seemingly, when you add more coconut trees, like, I don't know, maybe that'll make the island more crowded. And so that actually makes it worse.

Maybe there's some unique concoction, unique balance of number of palm trees and number of people and number of dancing girls. As planning a famously said, he said the number of dancing girls in one of his papers, one of the great making features of an island. Maybe there's some unique concoction of those, which actually is an intrinsic maximum for the greatness of an island, beyond which it would either get too crowded or something like that. And there's already precedence for at least Christian theists to admit this, because they have to say that, if they want to mount this intrinsic maximum thing, they're going to have to say that somehow existing in three persons specifically, not four, not five, not six, not infinitely many, three persons specifically is somehow like an intrinsic maximum

with a great-making feature of existing in a number of persons or something like that. Because, I mean, we can always just, we can conceive of just adding another person, right? That would have even more love within the divine life, like four persons or five persons, or six persons, or seven persons and so on. So, like, for some reason, the Christian is already going to have to say that, Like, you know, there's something unique about three. And I think that a similar move can be made by someone who's making the island parody. They could say, well, you know, just for some reason, there's some particular number, which is uniquely graymaking.

So anyway, I mean, that's a lot there for various reasons. Oh, and like, I mean, justice and mercy, you know, like, it doesn't seem like God could have the intrinsic maximum of mercy and the intrinsic maximum of justice because, like, it seems like, you know, if you're perfectly just, you give everyone exactly what they're due, like, exactly what they're deserved. But if you're merciful to the max, right? If you're, if you're merciful to the max, you don't give everyone exactly what they're due. Sometimes you give a slight less out of mercy. So, like, it seems like God also can't have the intrinsic maxima of both justice and mercy. So, like, the the atheist is already committed to having this kind of balancing act, it seems to me. And it seems to me that then that the proponent of

these parody objections can make the exact same sort of balancing act. response on behalf of the island. But again, that's not necessary because we can just consider the ACT example or the solo no or something like that. Well, let me respond to that quickly. I don't know how much time we have left, Vince, but just to flag a few responses, not necessarily to resolve these issues, but just to sort of represent the other side. Joe's right on the modal, my response about the parity was not on the modal ontological arguments. So this is a further terrain to be explored, like the symmetry breakers, you know, is there a good symmetry breaker in those things? I would just sort of flag for discussion, people looking into that. Actually, David Smith has a good treatment of that

on pages 23 and 24 of this book. He's basically saying there's a difference between epistemic possibility and metaphysical possibility. What is relevant to the modal ontological argument is metaphysical possibility. So yeah, it's true that epistemically, you know, we may not know whether God exists, but the point that is relevant is if God existed at all, could he have failed to? And the answer to that would be no. So I don't act. My response to the symmetry breaker conversation is I don't actually accept that there is a symmetry to be broken. The second thing is on the ACT score and the solo, no, I don't think those are parity arguments. I think that's just a different argument altogether. And they're not an ontological argument. An ACT score is a score and a test, not a being.

And I don't, I don't think that the language then which nothing greater can be thought applies to scores in the way it applies to beings. the concern came up here about the Trinity, three persons in the godhead, why not have four? Would this be a greater being? I don't know that persons works the same as attributes like knowledge and power. So it's not clear to me that a four person God is greater than a Trinity in the way that an omniscient God is greater than a God who has less than all knowledge, but it's just super smart. Knowledge, the more knowledge, the better. I'm a not sure that Parsons works the same way. Granted, that's kind of rough waters getting into that. The concern about justice and mercy and are God's attributes harmonious, I think all that a theist is committed to is, with respect to God's justice and mercy, do you have the maximally great proportion of both in relation to each other? That would be sufficient for an entity that we ascribe to be that than which nothing greater can be thought. Anselm addresses that in

proselygian 7 through 11. That's kind of the first set of objections he raises as basically are gods attributes harmonious with one another? And this is one of the other big objections we really haven't covered is, is the idea of a maximally great being even a logically coherent idea? And I think part of where Anselm's response to that has a safeguard is it's using this language of that than which nothing greater can be thought, which doesn't require that every single particular attribute a human mind can identify must be pushed to the max irrespective of the other attributes. So I think that than which nothing greater can be thought can be conceived to simply have the maximally great proportion of different attributes in conjunction with one another.

Right. Well, that's exactly my point, right? I mean, my point is that you're not, you're granting that there's going to be some maximally great proportion, and that's exactly what the proponent of the island parody can say. You said, you know, it'd be greater if you just added one other coconut tree. But no, that's not going to go through because we can just say, no, there's going to be some maximally great proportion of coconut trees and balancing that against the dancing girls and so on. You're actually just granting my objection there.

Likewise with the number of mercy and justice. That'd be true for mercy and justice, but not for knowledge and power. I mean, if you say there's an... I wasn't saying it's true of all of the divine attributes. I'm just saying you're already going to have to grant this. maneuver in that case, and the proponent of the parody argument can just make that exact same maneuver in the case of the parity argument. And so you no longer have an objection from intrinsic maxima to the original argument. So the theist can identify a target in terms of that

in which nothing greater can be thought for the instantiation of these attributes. What would be the maximally great number of coconuts and trees and so forth for the island? I think for that to be a true parity, it would need to give some kind of target that we can envision. Yeah. Guy, I mean, yeah, That's fine. Yeah, I'm so sorry to jump in, guys, because this has been fantastic. I'd love to continue talking all day. I mean, we've covered a lot of ground with two excellent guests. And they cover a lot more ground. That's what I want to say to our listeners elsewhere. So please be sure to check out Gavin Ortland at Truth Unites and Joe Schmidt at Majesty of Reason. Amazing conversation, you know, and you think back to Gavin sitting in an airport as a teenager. you know, almost missing his flight because he's just thinking about how these complex issues of the mind relate to the deepest questions of life. And I think you've seen today how that can go deeper and deeper. And maybe you like Gavin have even had something of a mystical connection to this conversation and you want to learn more. These would be two of the very best people to continue

to learn about this topic and others from. So go and check out truth unites and majesty of reason. and I hope you've enjoyed today's episode as much as I have to explore our other podcasts at premier unbelievable.com. Please rate and review the podcast on whatever platform you're using. That's a huge help to the show. I'm Vince Vitale, and it's been a privilege to be with Joe Schmidt, Gavin Ortland, and with you, our listeners. We'll see you next time for the next big question, the next big debate on Unbelievable.

Until then, from me and the team. Goodbye.