Modal Recall: a Response to Micah Ministries on the Ontological Argument

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1. God and Magicians

    Yesterday, Micah Ministries released an article defending William Lane Craig's modal ontological argument from the "misunderstandings" of its detractors. It is apparent to me that Micah Ministries fares no better in their evaluation of the argument than they suppose the common atheist does. I've had a post on ontological arguments in the works for a couple weeks and I still plan to release that at a later date, but in the meantime I thought this would be a good opportunity to apply some of the ideas from that post.

    Micah Ministries (hereafter referred to as 'MM') gives the following syllogism:

(1) It is possible that a maximally great being exists.

(2) If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.

(3) If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.

(4) If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.

(5) If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.

(6) (Hence) A maximally great being exists.

    They correctly point out that (2)-(6) are not popularly contested. A majority of the discourse surrounding modal ontological arguments such as Craig's is focused on (1), the infamous 'possibility premise'. In its defence, MM cites Craig as saying, "[...] it remains the case that the concept of a maximally being is intuitively a coherent notion and, hence, it might be argued, possibly instantiated. In order for the ontological argument to fail, the concept of a maximally great being must be incoherent, like the concept of a married bachelor"[1]. MM proceeds to endorse this relationship between possibility and coherence several times throughout the article, never once reflecting on the plausibility of the presupposition. Willaim Rowe provides compelling reason to doubt its truth[2].

[Consider] the idea of a 'magican', an existing magician. It so happens that some magicians have existed-- Houdini, The Great Blackstone, etc. But, of course, it might have been otherwise. Suppose, for the moment, that no magicians have ever existed. The concept magician would still have application. For it would still be true that Merlin was a magician. But what about the concept of a 'magican'? Would any possible object be picked out by that concept? No! For no non-existing thing could exemplify the concept 'magican'. And on the supposition that no magicians ever existed, no existing thing would exemplify the concept 'magican.'4 We then would have a coherent concept 'magican' which would not be exemplified by any possible object at all.

    Following Sobel[3] we may translate this into the modal language of Craig's argument as such: something is a 'magican' in a possible world if it exists and is a magician in the actual world. If there were no magicians in the actual world, then there could be no 'magicans' in any possible world, because for there to be a 'magican' in a possible world, there must exist a magician in the actual world. There does not appear to be any issues with "encoding" (to use Graham Oppy's term) into 'magicans' existence if there are no issues with encoding into a maximally great being existence as Craig does. But this leaves MM with a counter example to their defence of (1): if there were no magicians, then there would be no possible world in which a 'magican' existed, yet simultaneously there are no inconsistencies to be found in the concept. It is perfectly coherent yet impossible.

    But perhaps there are some concepts, unlike 'magican', that are fairly inferred to be possible merely from the coherence of their concepts. Why might we think that "maximally great being" ought to be listed alongside 'magican'? Because like "is a magican", the predicate "is a maximally great being" is existence-entailing. One necessary condition for something to be a maximally great being in a possible world is that it exists and is maximally great in the actual world. If there is no maximally great being in the actual world, then there is no possible world in which a maximally great being exists--yet this does not commit us to the claim that a maximally great being is incoherent. It commits us merely to the claim that, in fact, there are no maximally great beings. This cuts both ways: it is not as though stating that God is metaphysically necessary is tantamount to stating that the non-existence of God is incoherent. Neither the theist nor the atheist needs to endorse their respective 'possibility premise' out of pain of incoherence or a priori self-contradiction. 

2. A Misunderstanding

    MM conflates the argument in chapter two of Anselm's Proslogion with the modal argument attributed to Plantinga. After pasting in Oppy's formulation of Anselm's argument, MM says that "The language used makes it less understandable, but is equivalent to William Lane Craig’s rendition." No. The sloppy equivocation between the arguments from William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, and even St. Anselm one thousand years before makes this section difficult to fully understand. Anselm does not speak in modal terminology, and he especially does not speak in S5 modal logic. Anselm talks only of existence in the understanding and existence in reality, concepts meaningfully distinct from possibility and actuality--and that function different logically. It is quite ironic considering MM prefacing their post with the claim that "the Ontological argument isn’t well understood by detractors of the argument." I will leave this for now and address MM's response to Oppy.
    With little support, MM states that Oppy "[...] seems to be jumping to the conclusion [that God is impossible]." This is a vicious misunderstanding of Oppy's argument. To see why, let's look at what MM quoted[4]:

On the one hand, the idea “being than which no greater can be conceived“ encodes the property of real existence – this is what the reductio argument establishes (if it establishes anything at all). On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to entertain the idea of a being than which no greater can be conceived – and to recognise that this encodes the property of real existence – without attributing real existence to a being than which no greater can be conceived [...].

    Nothing Oppy says here is reliant on or entails the impossibility of God. Oppy says only that one can understand an idea which encodes real existence (e.g. "really existent Santa Claus" or "a really existent Martian") without from the concept's inclusion of existence concluding that any such being exists.

    A different way to understand this is as a distinction between universal and existential generalisations. The claim that a being than which no greater can be conceived encodes real existence can be written as

(7) (∀x) [(g(x)=m & ∼C(∃y(g(y )=n & n>m)) -> (Rx)], or in English, if something is a being than which no greater being can be conceived, then it exists in reality.

    (7) is not a claim of existential import: one does not commit themselves to the existence of anything at all by agreeing to it because it is a description or universal generalistion.  By entertaining the idea of such a being which includes real existence in its concept, we have not conceded that there is an object which answers to that concept. And if there is no being which satisfies the antecedent of the above conditional, then there is no such being that really exists.

    MM says next that "[...] as far as [they] can understand it, Oppy fails to give adequate force to question the validity of the argument." Well we're in full agreement. Oppy intended to do no such thing with that passage, so this shortcoming can hardly be held against him. 

3. Conclusion

    After giving a brief evaluation of Micah Ministries' defence, I think there is nothing contained within it that should make the atheist reconsider. Plantinga himself was right when he said of the modal ontological argument that "I don't think it proves the existence of God".

[1] Craig, William Lane. (2008). Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. Crossway Books.

[2]  Rowe, William L. (1976). The ontological argument and question-begging. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (4):425 - 432.

[3] Sobel, Jordan Howard (2003). Logic and Theism: Arguments for and Against Beliefs in God. Cambridge University Press.

[4] Oppy, Graham (2006). Arguing About Gods. Cambridge University Press.


Comments

  1. Luis De TrejoFebruary 12, 2022 at 7:19 PM

    Good post. Nothing of value to add, just an insignificant note: I think you made a mistake when you are referencing Sobel's book in the text. It should be '[3]', like it is written in the references.

    ReplyDelete

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