PHIL 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Ontological Argument
Document Summary
Over the years, the ontological argument has raised considerable discussion and several counterarguments. One of them by william l. rowe, a modern professor of philosophy, describes its failure and downfall. According to rowe, the fool gives away too much by allowing god-as-defined a possibility to exist. What he means by that is the fool should not even allow the possibility of god to exist as in anselm"s argument. A thought-provoking example he gives is the case of the magican and magico (22). Let"s suppose for a minute that the definition of a magican is a magician which exists and a magico is a magician which does not exist. Therefore nothing that exists is a magico and anything that does not exist cannot be a magican. If magicians did not exist, than there would be nothing that we could call a magican by definition. The same concept applies to anselm"s argument (23).
