I don't know if Anselm of Canterbury was a medieval-era philosopher but check out his ontological argument. No one, till date, has been able to refute it but it proves something that people have a difficult time buying into viz. the existence of god.

Sure they have. To "refute" it you have to understand it, and most folks who try, don't. The right way is to breathe, relax, and then read it somewhat closely, It is an argument that says if you think a certain way and believe certain things, then certain conclusions follow (according to Anselm). Or, if you think and believe the moon is made of green cheese, then very likely mice would like it there. There is no refuting this kind of argument. And in his reply to his critic Gaunilo, Anselm made it clear he understood exactly the nature and kind of his argument - and better than almost all of his critics to date.

Sure they have. To "refute" it you have to understand it, and most folks who try, don't. The right way is to breathe, relax, and then read it somewhat closely, It is an argument that says if you think a certain way and believe certain things, then certain conclusions follow (according to Anselm). Or, if you think and believe the moon is made of green cheese, then very likely mice would like it there. There is no refuting this kind of argument. And in his reply to his critic Gaunilo, Anselm made it clear he understood exactly the nature and kind of his argument - and better than almost all of his critics to date. — tim wood

The crux of the argument is in treating existence as greater or as having something to do with greatness. Expressed logically, the key premise of the ontological argument is:

1. If great then exists.

There's an active thread on antinatalism on the forum titled "everything wrong with antinatalism" and the essence of antinatalism is nonexistence is better than existence. How would you reconcile the antinatalist viewpoint with statement 1 above? Antintalism is premised on the claim that,

2. If not exists then great.

It only takes a moment to realize that Anselm's central premise directly contradicts Antinatalism's.

Then there's the so-called experience machine argument made by Robert Nozick which, all said and done, proves that people prefer the real over the faux which, when rephrased as a conditional which it is, becomes,

3. If great then real

Statement 3 is a just a variation on Anselm's premise, statement 1

My personal take on the issue is that existence is an empirical claim and being so requires empirical data/evidence as proof. Anselm's key premise, statement 1. If greater then exists makes what looks like an illegal move from the a priori to the a posteriori, from the ideal to the empirical (I hope I got that right). This is clear and apparent in Anselm's original sentence which is "god is that than which nothing greater can be conceived". Conceiving is an a priori activity and existence is an a posteriori claim. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there's a yawning chasm, unbridgeable to my reckoning, between conceived greatness in our imagination and existence in the reality.

Having said that there's the small matter of theoretical physics. Wolfgang Pauli was supposed to have predicted, purely by a priori reasoning, the existence of neutrinos, later confirmed a posteriori. Odd!

There's a lot to process and I just don't have the energy. I'll leave it at that.

The crux of the argument is in treating existence as greater or as having something to do with greatness. Expressed logically, the key premise of the ontological argument is: — TheMadFool

Nope. The crux, as you call it, lies in recognizing that the existence of God is presupposed in all the thinking that Christians do. And each of the religions in each its own way. Which of course is a way of saying that God certainly exists - just not, at all, in the way some people understand it.

Nope. The crux, as you call it, lies in recognizing that the existence of God is presupposed in all the thinking that Christians do. And each of the religions in each its own way. Which of course is a way of saying that God certainly exists - just not, at all, in the way some people understand it. — tim wood

The ontological "argument". No presuppositions. If you have issues with it, refute it. I'd like to see it done.

refute it — TheMadFool

Refute what? And where do you imagine "ontological" came from or what it refers to? And it is not possible to get out of bed in the morning, nor into it at night, without presuppositions of various types and qualities.

To my way of thinking, the existence of something like a particular brick is easily enough demonstrated, certain criteria being granted. The existence of any god being a somewhat different question. And perhaps the question would never arise if instead of the one word "existence," we had several for the several different kinds of existence.

But it's you who wish to have demonstrated the efficacy of something you take for a proof, as proving what you want it to prove. Or perhaps to have it confounded. The terms either way being those it was never intended to be subject to.

I assume Anselm wrote his "proof" in Latin, and that translations are adequate. What, then, does he mean by existence? Not what you understand, but what he means. This is one place to start.

You might be interested in Plotinus. He developed a "Neo Platonist" system that is demonstrated in the Enneads. He was around late enough in the Roman time to have become annoyed with the various Christians of the time.
Late pagan shaking fist at incoming party.

Obviously, I have found Luther and Avicena and a couple of others. — Kakarrott

Luther was no philosopher. He said Aquinas was doing Satan's work. He was also not 'medieval'.

If you're a general reader, I would start with a general introductory work, or something very grounded in history of ideas. You could do a lot worse than starting with Will Durant's Age of Faith https://www.amazon.com.au/Age-Faith-Story-Civilization-IV-ebook/dp/B004ZZRZIG

Refute what? And where do you imagine "ontological" came from or what it refers to? And it is not possible to get out of bed in the morning, nor into it at night, without presuppositions of various types and qualities. — tim wood

Yes, this is an attempt at refutation. Can you be more specific about Anselm's presuppositions? The ontological argument has only two premises:

1. If greatest then exists
2. God is the greatest
Ergo,
3. God exists

What are the presuppositions?

By the way the mathematician Kurt Godel had his own version of the ontological argument which is much longer I presume but that's another story.

And perhaps the question would never arise if instead of the one word "existence," we had several for the several different kinds of existence. — tim wood

I suppose so. Existence in the imagination can be distinguished from existence in reality. This is what I touched upon in my earlier post, that there's an illegal move from a priori existence (imagination) to a posteriori existence (reality).

However, what do you make of theoretical physics? Mathematical models of the universe seem to predict the existence of certain physical objects and mathematical models are, to my knowledge, a priori in that they don't rely on actual observations but thus predicted objects like neutrinos and the Higgs-Boson have been confirmed to exist in reality in experiments a posteriori. I consider such instances of amazing predictions made by theoretical physicists to be ones in which existence in reality can be proved by existence in imagination.

This leads us to the interesting question, is there a mathematical model of the universe that requires god to exist? Anselm, it seems, had anticipated/prefigured theoretical physics as a legitimate discipline. Of course reducing god to math is going to be a tough nut to crack but that there's a possibility of proving god using a branch of science (theoretical physics) that has a good track record is an opportunity we must seize with both hands. Mind you, I'm not a scientist so some or all of this may sound bizarre, crazy, or worse, stupid.

The crux of the argument is in treating existence as greater or as having something to do with greatness. — TheMadFool

Actually, the original notion from ancient philosophy, was that being is a good and that non-being was, therefore, an imperfection. I suppose you could argue against the idea that 'being is good', but if you're not inclined to find that intuition resonant, then probably there is no point in arguing it.

The SEP article on Medieval Philosophy gives a short overview. I would start here. If you like podcasts, History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps has a section on medieval philosophy, with an intro episode.

Actually, the original notion from ancient philosophy, was that being is a good and that non-being was, therefore, an imperfection. I suppose you could argue against the idea that 'being is good', but if you're not inclined to find that intuition resonant, then probably there is no point in arguing it. — Wayfarer

Interesting! When you put it that way, it kinda rings a bell. Since you mentioned that "...being is good..." I'd like to explore the moral dimension of Anselm's argument. The aspect of morality that's germane to the ontological argument is morality's ultimate vision viz. the world, people, ought to be a certain way and not how it is. If so, then the existence of morality is evidence for either the nonexistence or imperfect nature of the good. If that's the case, how does Anselm reconcile his belief that the perfect good must exist with morality which is, at the end of the day, an admission that the good either doesn't instantiate or if it does, it's imperfect? Ethics, predicated on the reality of an imperfect world and Anselm's assertion that the perfect exists strike a discordant note. It's like someone who believes there are no elves but that there's an elf god. :chin:

I mean 4500 pages of brain-meltingly hard, interesting and greatly written (or maybe it is the translation, who knows) work of Thomas Aquinas must be, for now, the pinnacle of my search for interesting reading outside of the box (the book I have been mentioning in my guided tours for years, ironic.) But Avicenna's Medicine looks also incredible (despite it maybe being little non-philosophical) — Kakarrott

If you are truly interested in what Aquinas wrote, then it would be beneficial to read some Aristotle. Much of what Aquinas wrote, was an attempt to make sense of Aristotle, from the perspective of Christian theology. In my understanding, I'd describe Plato as a pinnacle. Following Plato, there were two distinct directions which evolved, the Aristotelian interpretation of Plato, and the interpretation of the Neo-Platonists. The Neo-Platonist perspective was incorporated into early Christian theology through people like Augustine, and served in the formation of some fundamental theological principles. The works of Aristotle were held by the Islamic world, and were introduced into Christian thought later, by people like Avicenna and Averroes. At this time, there was no accepted consistency between the Neo-Platonist and the Aristotelian philosophies. So some, like Averroes could highlight differences, while others like Avicenna could highlight similarities. I believe the reason why Aquinas appears as such a genius, is because he took it upon himself to establish consistency between Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism through the arduous task of interpretation. so this point of unification could be described as another pinnacle.

The works of Aquinas are immense and great. I do think Metaphysician uncovered is right, it makes no sense to just go and read Aquinas, I would say familiarise yourself with Aristotle a bit. Philosophy is a huge field so I would consider first what kind of questons you are interested in and then delve into a certain tradition. There is way too much out there to just hop on and go I think. Say you are interested in Heidegger and want to know where he came from, then it makes sense to read John Duns Scotus, indeed a medieval philosopher. If your are interested in Schopenhauer, maybe a sort of neo-platonism like Plotinus might be interesting. I myself thought of similarities between Hegel and Scotus Eriugena. When you are into spinoza you might also find Maimonides interesting... There are libraries full of interesting things, but I would advice you to read up more on a certain philosophical tradtion, so you can better place the works of the original thinkers. There are books on eno platonism and on the heritage of Aquinas etc. Look into those and then decide what you want to read.

1. If greatest then exists
2. God is the greatest
Ergo,
3. God exists — TheMadFool

Presuppositions and premises not the same thing, as your italics already suggest you know perfectly well.

I invite you to inventory as many presuppositions as you have patience for, even in your three premises.

And from the preface to the Proslogium, "The author writes in the person of one who contemplates God, and seeks to understand what he believes."

And this by itself will do. He, Anselm, starts with God. The original of the argument may (as) well have been,
1) God exists
2) God is the greatest
3) I have a conception of God
4) I can conceive of the greatest; my conception exists
God exists.

Anselm just turned it upside down. It's not surprising - or should not be - if in starting with God, you end with God. And if on he other hand you insist on definitions and not presuppositions, then it falls faster than a two-legged tool.

But there is evidence that Anselm was perfectly well aware of the weakness of his argument as argument.

From his reply to his critic, Gaunilo:
---------------------------
ANSELM'S APOLOGETIC
IN REPLY TO GAUNILO'S ANSWER IN BEHALF OF THE FOOL.

IT was a fool against whom the argument of my Proslogium was directed. Seeing, however, that the author of these objections is by no means a fool, and is a Catholic, speaking in behalf of the fool, I think it sufficient that I answer the Catholic.

CHAPTER I.

A general refutation of Gaunilo's argument. It is shown that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived exists in reality.

You say -- whosoever you may be, who say that a fool is capable of making these statements -- that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived is not in the understanding in any other sense than that in which a being that is altogether inconceivable in terms of reality, is in the understanding. You say that the inference that this being exists in reality, from the fact that it is in the understanding, is no more just than the inference that a lost island most certainly exists, from the fact that when it is described the hearer does not doubt that it is in his understanding.

But I say: if a being than which a greater is inconceivable is not understood or conceived, and is not in the understanding or in concept, certainly either God is not a being than which a greater is inconceivable, or else he is not understood or conceived, and is not in the understanding or in concept. But I call on your faith and conscience to attest that this is most false." (Italics added.)
-----------------------------

I point out to you the last sentence. In essence he says to Gaunilo, "Hey, look! We are both committed to an unquestioning belief in an existing God. My argument simply employs and uses that belief."

Which is in sum that Anselm's argument rests on and elevates the absolute presupposition of an existing God, which becomes the conclusion of his "demonstration."

Nothing to refute, but of no substance when the presupposition is not in fact presupposed. The argument itself is question-begging and circular.

Presuppositions and premises not the same thing — tim wood

There are two parts to an argument - premises and conclusion. In which of these two will presuppositions make an appearance? :chin:

if in starting with God, you end with God — tim wood

Whatever the ontological argument is, it's not a circulus in probando. It begins with a definition dealing exclusively with god's greatness. The other, more important, premise establishes the critical link between greatness and existence.

The aspect of morality that's germane to the ontological argument is morality's ultimate vision viz. the world, people, ought to be a certain way and not how it is. If so, then the existence of morality is evidence for either the nonexistence or imperfect nature of the good. — TheMadFool

In many schools of ancient philosophy and religious lore, the vision of 'what truly is' is itself redemptive. As I noted in another thread, 'avidya' or ignorance is not 'seeing how things truly are'; conversely, 'the sage' by definition, sees with an unblemished vision, 'the eye of wisdom'. In Christian cultures, the impediment is sin, which all humans are born into due to the fall of man.

(Arguably, the effort to 'see things as they truly are' was itself one of the sources of modern science, as Peter Harrison argues in his book The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (which is on my 'must read soon' list.) Although I don't think 'avidya' and 'sin' are synonyms, but that is a separate topic.)

In any case, in terms of Anselm's 'ontological argument', I think the ancient ancestor of such arguments was the 'vision of the Good' which gives rise to the intuition of the 'pleroma', which is the 'abundance of the Divine', forever a source of all created beings (symbolised in ancient lore by the goddess Fortuna and the Horn of Plenty, the 'cornucopia'). And that in turn is linked with Aristotle's dictum that 'nature abhors a vacuum', which follows logically, as a vacuum is a symbol of absence or non-being.

I think that has to be borne in mind when evaluating Anselm's ontological argument. Threadbare statements about whether 'God exists' just don't cut it.

Thank you a lot for this answer, I mean this is exactly what I am looking for. As a person that wants to live his live trough literature, it only comes naturally that I also want to know a lot about history and philosophy, but unfortunately, as I am not as well versed in these disciplines as I am in the literature itself. I know Aquinas because I talk about him a lot because as I said we have the copy of his book in our monastery, but I am lost when it comes to others, his predecessors and his successors, and that's why I am asking this question and this is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for.



As I mentioned above, I do not want to study Philosophy as my main topic, I am just really interested and want to see it all. As someone interested in writing myself I am sure that Aesthetics would be the right kind of study for me, but I would love to have the general knowledge that goes a little deep than one-liners to describe the whole Philosophical persona. And it is a lot of work, but so is reading Proust, Joyce or Gaddis (as an ESL it is really freaking hard :D ) but I hope that I can enlighten myself and become a more educated person.
So basically it is "everything" that I would like to read, just because it is interesting how can a couple of people completely change a worldview of so many (Like Hegel, Aquinas and of course Plato and Aristoteles) also I would love to be able to eventually connect some of the big ideas with my favourite novels or my favourite novels with some really interesting philosophy.

I was thinking about eventually reading of each volume of "History of Philosophy" and then read books (at least their most known) by the names dropped in these books.

A couple of things regarding the wisdom-ignorance duo in relation to god

1. Socratic Paradox

I know that I know nothing — Socrates

Socrates is the wisest — Delphic Oracle

2. God Of The Gaps

God of the gaps is a theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence. — Wikipedia

It's a pet theory of mine and maybe completely off the mark but I'd like to bounce it off you. I believe that all religions have as their ultimate foundation the Socratic Paradox - wisdom is recognizing one's ignorance - and thus God is, even if other things, essentially the embodiment of our ignorance - the God of the gaps. In short, when we worship god, we're confessing, even if unknowingly, our ignorance and that's wisdom.

What's the greatest form of ignorance? Not knowing anything, right?

Not knowing anything = An Ignoramus (the greatest ignorance) = God

Therefore Anselm's argument becomes,

[Anselm]1. God = An Ignoramus (the greatest ignorance)

2. If x = An Ignoramus then x exists [to be an ignoramus, one has to exist]

[Anselm]3. If God = An Ignoramus then God exists [from 2]

Ergo,

[Anselm]4. God exists [An Ignoramus exists]

I finally have an argument that supports Anselm's premise viz. If greatest then exists which appears as 3. If God = An Ignoramus then God exists.

My previous remark avoided your question.

I think the quickest way to get up to speed is read all of Augustine and read Duns Scotus soon afterwards.

A bracketing, if you will.

I think the quickest way to get up to speed is read all of Augustine and read Duns Scotus soon afterwards. — Valentinus

There's an underlying issue of intellectual history which might be of interest to you and the OP. My knowledge of it is only sketchy, but it revolves around Duns Scotus introduction of the idea of the univocity of being. This is the idea that the human and the divine are of the same kind of being. In contrast to this, Aquinas (following an earlier tradition) held that God's being, and being as understood by humans, are of different kinds, and that we only ever understand the divine being by analogy.

Now this innovation of Scotus' has been criticized a movement called Radical Orthodoxy, who hold that Scotus' collapse of the distinction between human and divine being opened the way to the development of a purely physicalist view of the Cosmos:

Now this [late medieval nominalist] philosophy was itself the legatee of the greatest of all disruptions carried out in the history of European thought, namely that of Duns Scotus who for the first time established a radical separation of philosophy from theology by declaring that it was possible to consider "being" in abstraction from the question of whether one is considering created or creating being. Eventually this generated the notion of ontology and an epistemology unconstrained by, and transcendentally prior to, theology itself.

John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward (eds.), Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1999) p. 23.
...
According to Milbank, there was a generally agreed upon outlook in which human beings and the created order participated in the divine life, but this 'participatory ontology' became problematic with Scotus’ univocity of being. If it is true that we can apply the term “being” to God and to his creatures in the same way – which is what univocity means – then “being” becomes an overarching category in which God and creatures both share, and this will have profound implications for epistemology and ontology. If "being" is a genus under which both God and creatures are species, then God and creatures are different poles in the ontological scale, wide apart as they may be; and epistemologically, it follows that, rational creatures can know things in the same way God does (even if not as much as he does). 1 — Marcelo P. Souza

My interpretation is, that this was the beginning of the end of the notion of the 'great chain of being' within which being itself exists on a heirarchy - from matter (at the lowest level) to the divine intellect (at the highest, with humans somewhere between creatures and angels). This move eliminated the vertical dimension - gradations of being - which opened the way to seeing the universe in terms of a single substance - that which was to become, centuries later, matter~energy, which many will insist is the only real substance.

I don't know if Anselm of Canterbury was a medieval-era philosopher but check out his ontological argument. No one, till date, has been able to refute it ... — TheMadFool

I disagree re: Kant. Otherwise, even if Anselm's OA is valid, it's clearly not sound.

@Kakarrott The only (medieval) scholastics I've taken interest in (for their respective impacts on early modern philosophy) are:

Augustine of Hippo
Johannes Scotus Erigena
(Ibn Rushd)
(Moses ben Maimon)
William of Ockham
Jean Buridan
Luis de Molina

:up:

Johannes Scotus Erigena — 180 Proof

Second that. There's a good essay on him in SEP here by Dermot Moran, who also wrote a book on him (with an entire chapter on Euriugena as philosopher). Eurigena was originally Irish, and astonished his peers by being fluent in ancient Greek, which, considering his historical situation and country of origin, was indeed astonishing. He translated the works of what have now come to be called the pseudo-Dionysius from ancient Greek, and flirted with heresy by developing what some have called a sophisticated pantheism.

I see how Duns Scotus established a ground for those changes.
The claim that a "natural knowledge" of God was not possible also framed the personal in a new way.
This site has a good bit of actual text.

A commons where the peculiar appears.