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13 - Modal Arguments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2009

Alexander R. Pruss
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

THE STRATEGY

One strategy for substantiating a principle is to start with a weaker and thus dialectically more acceptable principle, and then show that the weaker principle implies the stronger one or that the kind of intuitions that lead to the weaker one also lead to the stronger one. Nowhere has this strategy been as prominent as in ontological arguments for the existence of God. Instead of asking the atheist to accept that God exists, the ontological arguer asks the atheist to accept a prima facie weaker and more plausible claim, such as that possibly God exists or that we have a coherent concept of God. However, the theist has either previously defined God to be a being whose existence is necessary or in some way from which necessary existence provably follows. Therefore, the theist's interlocutor becomes committed to the claim that possibly necessarily God exists. But by the axiom S5 of modal logic, if possibly necessarily p (i.e., MLp), then necessarily p (i.e., Lp). Hence, necessarily God exists.

When formulated so baldly, the argument simply begs the question. Consider it written out:

  1. (103) ML(God exists).

  2. (104) Therefore, by S5, L(God exists).

It is a difficult problem to make precise the notion of “begging the question.” This example argument does not beg the question merely because it has only one nonlogical premise. After all, any valid argument with multiple premises can be replaced by one with a single conjunctive premise. The reason this ontological argument begs the question is subtler.

Type
Chapter
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The Principle of Sufficient Reason
A Reassessment
, pp. 231 - 248
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Modal Arguments
  • Alexander R. Pruss, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: The Principle of Sufficient Reason
  • Online publication: 27 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498992.013
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  • Modal Arguments
  • Alexander R. Pruss, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: The Principle of Sufficient Reason
  • Online publication: 27 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498992.013
Available formats
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  • Modal Arguments
  • Alexander R. Pruss, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book: The Principle of Sufficient Reason
  • Online publication: 27 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498992.013
Available formats
×