An ontological argument is a philosophical argument, made from an ontological basis, that is advanced in support of the existence of God. Such arguments tend to refer to the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments are commonly conceived a priori in regard to the organization of the universe, whereby, if such organizational structure is true, God must exist.
The first ontological argument in Western Christian tradition was proposed by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in his 1078 work, Proslogion (Proslogium), in which he defines God as "a being than which no greater can be conceived," and argues that such a being must exist in the mind, even in that of the person who denies the existence of God. From this, he suggests that if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality, because if it existed only in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible—one who exists both in mind and in reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality. Similarly, in the East, Avicenna's Proof of the Truthful argued that there must be a "necessary existent".
Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes employed a similar argument to Anselm's. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which center on the idea that God's existence is immediately inferable from a "clear and distinct" idea of a supremely perfect being. In the early 18th century, Gottfried Leibniz augmented Descartes' ideas in an attempt to prove that a "supremely perfect" being is a coherent concept. A more recent ontological argument came from Kurt Gödel, who proposed a formal argument for God's existence. Norman Malcolm also revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work; Alvin Plantinga challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on modal logic. Attempts have also been made to validate Anselm's proof using an automated theorem prover.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy that existed through the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century until after the Renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval philosophy, understood as a project of independent philosophical inquiry, began in Baghdad, in the middle of the 8th century, and in France, in the itinerant court of Charlemagne, in the last quarter of the 8th century.
The Proslogion (Proslogium) is a prayer (or meditation), written by the medieval cleric Saint Anselm of Canterbury in 1077–1078, serving to reflect on the attributes of God in order to explain how God can possess seemingly contradictory qualities. This meditation is considered to be the first-known philosophical formulation that sets out the ontological argument for the existence of God. The original title for this discourse was to be Faith Seeking Understanding.
The proposition that existence precedes essence (l'existence précède l'essence) is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence (the nature) of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence (the mere fact of its being). To existentialists, human beings—through their consciousness—create their own values and determine a meaning for their life because the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value.
Discrete mathematics is a discipline with applications to almost all areas of study. It provides a set of indispensable tools to computer science in particular. This course reviews (familiar) topics a
In this course, students learn to design and master algorithms and core concepts related to inference and learning from data and the foundations of adaptation and learning theories with applications.
Explores the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis in quantum systems, emphasizing the random matrix theory and the behavior of observables in thermal equilibrium.
The concept of novelty is central to questions of creativity, innovation, and discovery. Despite the prominence in scientific inquiry and everyday discourse, there is a chronic ambiguity over its meaning and a surprising variety of empirical measures, whic ...
Emerald Publishing Limited2022
We develop techniques to study the phase transition for planar Gaussian percolation models that are not (necessarily) positively correlated. These models lack the property of positive associations (also known as the 'FKG inequality'), and hence many classi ...
The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex/dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dmPFC/dACC) is a brain area subject to many theories and debates over its function(s). Even its precise anatomical borders are subject to much controversy. In the past decades, the dmPFC/d ...