“The ontological argument does not succeed in going beyond defining God” to what extent is this true?
The ontological argument, originally proposed by Anselm in his book ‘The Proslogion’ and later adapted by philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and Descartes, defines God as “a being that which nothing greater can be conceived”. In my opinion the argument does not only fail to go beyond this definition, but we cannot be sure than it defines God correctly either.
Firstly we cannot argue that the argument goes beyond the definition of God because as Kant points out the argument has a major flaw, the ontological argument is based on an assumption that to exist is a property of perfection. He uses the analogy of money saying that 100___ that existed in reality were no different in value to 100___ that existed hypothetically as both, in theory were worth the same and therefore equal. Bertrand Russell makes a similar point, he claims that the ontological argument uses the word ‘exists’ incorrectly and that existence is not a property of things, but of the idea of those things. Russell uses the example of dragons, saying that if someone says a dragon does not exist what they mean is of all the things that exist the word dragon refers to none of them, however this fact is not part of the definition itself and changes nothing about the description of the features of a dragon, therefore existence is an extension of an intention and not a definition.
Alvin Plantinga attempts to redeem the ontological argument with his possible world’s theory, planting argues that if it is coherent to believe that in a possible world a maximally great being could exist then in order for him to have maximal greatness he must exist in all possible worlds and therefore in our own. Although at first this argument seems to have solved Kant’s criticism however the lesser known philosopher Van