on zalta on anselm’s ontological argument

Reflections on Gödel’s Ontological Argument

On the Logic of the Ontological Argument∗

Saint Anselm of Canterbury offered several arguments for the existence of God. We examine the famous ontological argument in Proslogium ii. Many recent authors have interpreted this argument as a modal one.1 But we believe that Jonathan Barnes has argued persuasively that Anselm’s argument is not modal.2 Even if one were to construe the word ‘can’ in the definite description ‘that than which no...

The Ontological Presuppositions of the Ontological Argument*

JLhe most recent stage in the analysis of St. Anselm's Ontologi cal Argument is the modal-logical stage : if one wants to get clear as to what is wrong (or right) with it, one should phrase it in S5.1 I have misgivings about this maneuver, if it is claimed in the name of historical exegesis. While I think that the connnections between the Ontological Argument and modal logic are insightful and ...

The Modal Ontological Argument

We know more today about the second, or so-called 'modal', version of St. Anselm's ontological argument than we did when Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm brought it to the attention of philosophers some years ago. But there is still much to be learned. Criticisms of the modal ontological argument focus on its premises, namely (i) the claim that perfection, or maximal greatness, implies nec...

The Ontological Argument in PVS ∗

The Ontological Argument, an 11th Century proof of the existence of God, is a good candidate for Fun With Formal Methods as nearly everyone finds the topic interesting. We formalize the Argument in PVS and verify its correctness. The formalization raises delicate questions in formal logic and provides an opportunity to show how these are handled, soundly and efficiently, by the predicatively-su...

avicenna’s ontological argument as viewed by averroes

averroes does not accept avicenna’s argument for the existence of the necessary bing. some maintain that averroes disagreed with avicenna, since he could not understand the relationship between essence and existence and could not make sense of the essential possibility and that he did not distinguish between potential possibility and essential possibility. in this paper, we argue that averroes ...