Download Rethinking the Ontological Argument by Daniel A. Dombrowski PDF
By Daniel A. Dombrowski
In recent times, the ontological argument and theistic metaphysics were criticized by way of philosophers operating in either the analytic and continental traditions. Responses to those criticisms have essentially come from philosophers who utilize the conventional, and not easy, thought of God. during this quantity, Daniel A. Dombrowski defends the ontological argument opposed to its modern critics, yet he does so by utilizing a neoclassical or procedure idea of God, thereby strengthening the case for a latest theistic metaphysics. hoping on the idea of Charles Hartshorne, he builds on Hartshorne's the most important contrast among divine lifestyles and divine reality, which permits neoclassical defenders of the ontological argument to prevent the conventional feedback that the argument strikes illegitimately from an summary idea to concrete truth. His argument, hence, avoids the issues inherent within the conventional inspiration of God as static.
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5. Therefore, there is no being whose nonexistence is demonstrable a priori (from 1, 4) (Barnes 1972). Oppy wonders whether it is really possible to make sense of the concept of necessary existence. Here, however, his primary concern is to allege that this Humean argument is simply question begging. This is because it conflates inconceivability, which is a psychological notion, and selfcontradiction, which is a logical notion. By mixing psychological and logical considerations, Hume has made it too easy, on Oppy’s view, to refute the ontological argument, which is claimed by its defenders to be logical.
It should be emphasized at the outset that this chapter deals more generally with the possibility of metaphysics than do the other chapters, which deal more explicitly with the particular metaphysical project found in the ontological argument. Some Important Concessions Rorty’s debt to Hartshorne, however, is not solely that of a student who continues to be appreciative of the fact that his former teacher helped him to find the right career. I have already mentioned Rorty’s dissatisfaction with Whitehead’s “Platonic” eternal objects, a dissatisfaction that was no doubt encouraged by Hartshorne’s own criticism of this aspect of Whitehead’s philosophy.
Only the bare essence and existence of God, taken as an a priori abstraction, is established as a result of the ontological argument, not the more concrete actuality that specifies how God exists from moment to moment. Oppy is correct to emphasize Leibniz’s improvement over Descartes regarding the coherence of, and hence the possibility of, divine existence. This is an improvement that was already anticipated by Duns Scotus’ effort to weed out any contradictions in the concept of God. But Oppy trivializes this improvement when he suggests that consistency in the concept we have about God is not one of the fundamental questions that must be addressed in an evaluation of the ontological argument.