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Causal Necessity and the Ontological Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

James M. Humber
James M. Humber
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Georgia State University
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Extract

The ontological argument appears in a multiplicity of forms. Over the past ten or twelve years, however, the philosophical community seems to have been concerned principally with those versions of the proof which claim that God is a necessary being. In contemporary literature, Professors Malcolm and Hartshorne have been the chief advocates of this view, both men holding that God must be conceived as a necessary being and that, as a result, his existence is able to be demonstrated a priori. This claim has not gone unchallenged; indeed, numerous writers have argued that neither Malcolm nor Hartshorne has exercised due care in his use of ‘necessary’. That is, critics charge that the arguments of both men have only the appearance of validity, for in their reasonings the defenders of the a priori proof have tacitly assumed that God is a logically necessary being. Whether or not a being can be logically necessary, however, is a quaestio disputata. In fact, until recently the question was not in dispute at all—virtually all ‘competent judges’ agreed that only propositions could be spoken of as logically necessary, and thus that God must be defined as a physically or factually necessary being. But is the statement, ‘a physically necessary being exists’, logically true? Critics of the ontological argument think not; and in support of this view they offer analyses of ‘physical necessity’ which, they feel, not only give meaning to the phrase, but also show that a physically necessary being's existence can be proven only by some kind of a posteriori investigation.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 291 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 291 note 1 Malcolm, Norman, ‘Anselm's Ontological Arguments’, The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXIX (1960)Google Scholar; Hartshorne, Charles, The Logic of Perfection (Springfield, Illinois, 1962), pp. 50–1.Google Scholar

page 291 note 2 Hick, John, ‘God as a Necessary Being’, Journal of Philosophy, 57 (1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘A Critique of the “Second Argument”’ in The Many Faced Argument, ed. Hick, John H. and McGill, Arthur (New York, 1967), pp. 341–56Google Scholar; Penelhum, Terence, ‘Divine Necessity’, in The Cosmological Arguments, ed., Burrill, Donald R. (New York, 1967), pp. 143–61Google Scholar; Rainer, A. C. A., ‘God and Necessity’, Mind, 58 (1949), pp. 75–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anscombe, G. E. M. and Geach, P. T., Three Philosophers (Oxford, 1961) pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

page 291 note 3 Ibid., Hick, Penelhum, Rainer.

page 291 note 4 Nasser, Alan G., ‘Factual and Logical Necessity and the Ontological Argument’, International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. XI (09, 1971).Google Scholar

page 292 note 1 Nasser, Alan G., ‘Factual and Logical Necessity and the Ontological Argument’, International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. XI, p. 386.Google Scholar

page 292 note 2 Ibid., p. 397.

page 293 note 1 Nasser, , p. 389Google Scholar; Hick, , ‘God as a Necessary Being’, p. 733.Google Scholar

page 293 note 2 Nasser, , p. 389Google Scholar; Hick, , ‘A Critique of the “Second Argument”’, p. 348.Google Scholar

page 293 note 3 Nasser, , p. 390Google Scholar; Penelhum, , p. 159.Google Scholar

page 293 note 4 Nasser, , p. 390: ‘Hick would, I am sure, be prepared to admit that “God is a factually necessary being” is a necessary truth. For any being who lacks either eternity or ontic independence (or both) is not properly called “God”.’Google Scholar

page 293 note 5 Ibid.

page 293 note 6 Ibid., p. 401.

page 293 note 7 Ibid.

page 295 note 1 It should be clear that Nasser cannot claim that God's power of self-existence could be exercised in all possible worlds and that, as a result, God still could exist (must exist) in all such realms. An argument of this sort is ruled out by the fact that if this reasoning were accepted, God's power of self-causation would have to be itself either: (A) eternally uncaused, or (B) eternally self-caused. If (A) is accetped, the power can no more exist than an eternally non-dependent being can. Given (B), however, the power is contingent and could not exist in that possible world in which its cause was absent.

page 298 note 1 Admittedly, this analysis grossly simplified Hume, and fails to do justice to the variety of ways in which ‘cause’ is used in ordinary language. Simplification does not necessarily lead to distortion, however, and since the above statement is adequate for our purposes, nothing would be gained by the introduction of greater detail.

page 298 note 2 Harre, R., The Principles of Scientific Thinking (London: 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Madden, E. H., ‘A Third View of Causality’, The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 23 (1969)Google Scholar; ‘Hume and the Fiery Furnace’, Philosophy of Science (1971); ‘Causality and the Notion of Necessity’, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1969).

page 298 note 3 Humber, James and Madden, E. H., ‘Nonlogical Necessity and C. J. Ducasse’, Ratio, Vol. XIII (December 1971)Google Scholar; Humber, James and Madden, E. H., ‘Natural Necessity’, The New Scholasticism, Vol. XLVII (Spring, 1973).Google Scholar

page 299 note 1 I have been extremely liberal in my statement of selected aspects of Madden's theory. I trust, however, that his intent is fairly represented.