Kant has the same concern with the cosmological proof. He states “whether we can successfully bridge the gap between our idea of a perfect being and demonstrative proof of its existence” The teleological proof proves that God is the existence of creator. However he wonders the idea of the first creator would lead back to the flaws of the ontological proof. He uses his concept “Moral Postulates” to demonstrate God. First moral behavior is rational, we have reason to be moral such as we know our duty for school work, job and family.
In Anselm’s “Proslogion” and Descartes’ “ Meditations on First Philosophy,” Anselm and Descartes offer their own answers to one of the most important questions in life, which is whether God exists. I will point out similarities and differences in the two arguments, and I will argue why Descartes ‘proof’ is more persuasive. Anselm’s argument for the existence of God is quite simple. He first proclaims that humans can grasp in their mind “something than which nothing greater can be thought” (Anselm 7). This “something” is an all-perfect God.
If minds did not exist to perceive things then how could anyone know anything? In conclusion, I have established that it’s possible to know things from the external world even if god is not the base of knowledge. One of Berkeley strongest argument was that knowledge and god go hand to hand. Through several arguments that I made I have proven that god is not essential for the course of knowledge. Believing that god is the one who makes us have ideas, without concrete proof would be reckless.
John Locke, Berkeley and Hume are all empiricist philosophers. They all have many different believes, but agree on the three anchor points; The only source of genuine knowledge is sense experience, reason is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge unless it is grounded in the solid bedrock of sense experience and there is no evidence of innate ideas within the mind that are known from experience. Each of these philosophers developed some of the most fascinating conceptions of the relationships between our thoughts and the world around us. I will argue that Locke, Berkeley and Hume are three empiricists that have different beliefs. The first philosopher, John Locke, laid the foundations of modern empiricism.
Descartes’ first foundational argument asserts that one can have knowledge of one’s own existence. The claim is essential to many arguments that follow because it survives his “Deceiver Hypothesis.” This hypothesis states that “there may be a powerful deceiver of supreme power who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me” (Med III, p. 17). This demonstrates that we cannot know, or be sure of, anything based on sensory experience alone. However, Descartes supports the idea that some things can be known entirely outside of sensory experience; through the use of logic and re... ... middle of paper ... ...undational premises, such as the existence of God and the mind, do not provide indisputable groundwork for Descartes’ argument. First begging the question to prove the existence of the mind via dualism, and then conflating logic with cultural and personal ideals, these two tenets cannot stand on their own.
On the basis of philosophy and the claims of science to know, only philosophy, in its yearning for certainty, has tried to suggest that there is such a thing as a law of cause and effect. Science rests content in making predictions based on experience without claiming any kind of certainty or privileged reasoning to back these predictions up. Hume might then also defend his own philosophy, saying that he proceeds according to a similar method. So, in the terms of causal relation, we are left with uncertainty unless we rely on these laws that describe cause and effect. And what of these laws then?
Having established the parameters for this essay, I will first assess the plausibility of Anselm’s version of the ontological argument. However, I will argue that this version of the ontological argument is ultimately foiled by both Gaunilo and Kant. This essay will then argue that the modal ontological argument is the most convincing before concluding that while it alone is not convincing, the fact that it merely requires the possibility of God’s existence rather than the actuality of it, means that it makes the existence of God far easier to accept. Anselm’s ontological argument can be viewed as a proof by contradiction - taking God to refer to Anselm’s “being than which nothing greater can be conceived” : (1) God exists in the understanding but not in reality. – premise (2) Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone.
The Ontological Argument The Ontological Argument, put forth by Saint Anselm in his Proslogium, attempts to prove the existence of God simply by the fact that we have a particular concept of God - that God is "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." Saint Anselm presents a convincing argument that many people view as the work of a genius. It is also quite often considered a failure because, in William L. Rowe's words, "In granting that Anselm's God is a possible thing we are in fact granting that Anselm's God actually exists." In other words, it "assumes the point it is supposed to prove", primarily because is assumes that existence is a great-making quality, and for God to be truly great, he must exist. I disagree with Rowe's point that Anselm's definition of God invalidates his argument because it later helps to prove Anselm's argument.
Philosophers say this proves that it cannot have been just random chance. Design qua purpose looks at the evidence of design in terms of how all ... ... middle of paper ... ... to change your beliefs. I.e. it won't convince an atheist. However, the idea of the universe just being here, a brute fact, a product of blind chance and nothing more is a personally unsatisfactory one due to the extraordinary nature of the universe and so whist the Design Argument may not conclusively prove the existence of God it suggests that the existence of a Designer, who we know as God, is a more probable likelihood than not.
Everything can be traced back to a single moment in our lives. Empiricists understand that reason is necessary in helping us make our experience intelligible, but reason alone cannot provide knowledge. The third anchor point is; there is no evidence of innate Ideas within the mind that are known apart from experience. What this means is the mind does not possess ideas that are not backed by experience. In no case are there a priori truths that can both tell about the world and are known apart from experience.