Transcript The Ontological Argument

The Ontological Argument
Getting to grips with the language
• The ontological argument is a
deductive proof for the
existence of God which aims
to establish the “God exists” is
analytically true, arrived at
using A Priori reasoning
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What are
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How would you prove the following
are true?
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All Irish people are bad tempered
All spinsters are female
All cats are black
All birds have wings
• Philosophical Arguments are very
civilised! They follow a specific pattern
and generally fall into 2 main categories:
• Deductive – you can use reason (logic) to
work out whether something is true.
• Inductive – these rely on evidence to test
whether something is true.
INDUCTIVE arguments
• These are true by experience / evidence. You
might also see them referred to as A Posteriori
arguments – based on what we can see /
observe.
If Winne the Pooh wanted to argue that all honey
pots have honey all the way to the bottom, he would
have to argue inductively that this was the case.
i.e. according to his experience, all it is true that all
honey pots have honey all the way to the bottom!
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This animal has 4 legs
This animal is a vegetarian
This animal has a mane & a tail
This animal is a member of the equine family
This animal is a horse
Note, we still have premises that lead to a
conclusion.
How reliable is this kind of
philosophical reasoning?
Deductive Arguments
• If the premises are true, the
conclusion must logically follow
• Deductive arguments are
philosophically more valid than
inductive – the conclusions cannot
be wrong, if the reasoning is correct.
1. All bachelors are male
2. James is a bachelor
James is male
Premis 1
Premis 2
Conclusion
If the premises are agreed to be true, the
conclusion will logically follow. This kind
of argument makes the conclusion
necessarily true – it cannot be false if the
premises are true.
How would you “unpack” the
following?
• If we ‘unpack’ a concept, we identify it’s
component ideas: TRIANGLE: 3 sides,
angles add up to 180 etc.
• Mother
• Dog
• Car
• Table
“unpacking concepts”
• We can therefore deduce the obvious truth –
triangles are 3 sided shapes whose angles add up
to 180.
• Ie, we are left with statements that have 2
component parts:
–Subject & Predicate
• The subject is the object we are talking about – a
triangle
• The predicate is the properties we are claiming
the subject to have – 3 sides, angles adding up to
180.
So….
• Deductive arguments are true by definition.
They can also be referred to as A Priori they
are known through reason.
• Come up with your own example:
– Premis 1
– Premis 2
– Conclusion
Some ideas to help you: triangles, sisters, brothers,
circles…..
If however, we can prove that the premises are
false, we can also disprove the argument.
• Eg:
• All men are liars
• Socrates was a man
• Therefore Socrates was a liar
• While we can know that if Socrates was a
man, and if all men are mortal, we still have to
find a way of establishing that these other
facts are true.
Synthetic Statements & Analytic
statements:
• Consider the following statements:
• Dan’s brother was male
• Dan’s brother was a thief
• The first is analytic (arrived at using A Priori
reasoning)
• The second is synthetic (arrived at as a result
of A Posteriori observation)
Recap...
1. Explain the difference between inductive &
deductive reasoning
2. Why are deductive arguments more reliable
than inductive ones?
3. How can a deductive argument be proven false?
4. What is a “predicate”? Give an example to
illustrate
5. Explain the difference between synthetic and
analytic statements