What Was The Best Argument Against The Ontological Argument? Perhaps the best known criticisms of ontological arguments are due to Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason. Most famously, Kant claims that ontological arguments are vitiated by their reliance upon the implicit assumption that “existence” is a real predicate. What is wrong with the
How Does Descartes Prove Human Existence? In the Fifth Meditation and elsewhere Descartes says that God’s existence follows from the fact that existence is contained in the “true and immutable essence, nature, or form” of a supremely perfect being, just as it follows from the essence of a triangle that its angles equal two right
Is Existence A Predicate? Some commentators have taken Kant’s arguments that existence is not a predicate to rest on the claim that a thing must exist in order to have any predicates at all, i.e., that existence is a necessary condition for having predicates. Can existence be treated as a predicate? necessary existence is a
Is Necessary Existence A Property? This hinges upon “necessary existence,” a property with even higher value than “existence.” A being that necessarily exists cannot coherently be thought not to exist. And so God, as the unsurpassably perfect being, must have necessary existence—and therefore must exist. Who is a necessary being? The notion of necessary being,