Ontological argument

“ Ontology, or the science of true Being, undertakes to demonstrate what true Being is, what alone absolutely exists. But our ignorance being, beyond all question, excessive, we must get the ontological demonstration into such a shape that we shall be able to affix the same predicate to absolute existence—to declare with certainty what it is, whether we suppose ourselves to know it, or to be ignorant of it. By working the system into such a shape that the result is the same on either alternative, a valid ontology may be constructed. ”

“ For, since men form different and divergent and conflicting conceptions as to the natures of things, and so have different views and standards of truth for things, ontological truth would seem, according to the exposition just outlined, to be not one but manifold, not immutable but variable: consequences which surely cannot be admitted? The answer to this difficulty will lead us to a deeper and more fundamental conception of what ontological truth really is. ”

“ Thus while in the ontological order all substances, whether we think of them as universal or as individual, are the ultimate subjects of inhesion for all real accidents, in the logical order it is only the individual substance that is the ultimate subject of attribution for all logical predicates. ”

“ What he claims is, that in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas which are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do actually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology. ”

“ We have turned from popular usage to study the more elaborate efforts of the philosophers to purify or to harmonize the ontological concepts. Of the four resulting forms of the ontological predicate which, as we asserted, are prominent in the history of philosophy, we have now briefly outlined two. As a result, we have before us definitions of Being which are the polar opposites of each other. ”

“ All the more philosophical conceptions of being are due, in part, to an attempt to take note of the same aspects of human experience which the three classes of popular ontological predicates have from an early stage recognized. And, as a fact, the ontological concepts are limited in their range of variation by a situation in which we all find ourselves, and of which the foregoing variations of the popular vocabulary have already reminded us. ”

“ But once exclude matter per se from the pale both of our knowledge and of our ignorance, and an ontology becomes, for the first time, possible. Because in answer to the question, What is real and absolute Being? we must either reply, It is that which we know, in which case it will be object plus subject, because this is the only Knowable ”

“ Whence does the human mind derive these ideal types, these concepts or definitions of the nature of things? It derives them from actually experienced reality by abstraction, comparison, generalization, and reflection on the data of its experience.163 Hence it follows that the ontological truth of things is not known by the mind antecedently to the formation of the mental type. ”

“ Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics: we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged. Our ontology is determined once we have fixed upon the over-all conceptual scheme which is to accommodate science in the broadest sense ”

“ Further, I advanced an explicit standard whereby to decide what the ontological commitments of a theory are. But the question what ontology actually to adopt still stands open, and the obvious counsel is tolerance and an experimental spirit. Let us by all means see how much of the physicalistic conceptual scheme can be reduced to a phenomenalistic one; still, physics also naturally demands pursuing, irreducible in toto though it be. Let us see how, or to what degree, natural science may be rendered independent of platonistic mathematics ”

“ Hence, in so far as a reality becomes an actual object of human knowledge it has formal ontological truth in relation both to the human mind and to the Divine Mind; while antecedently to human thought it is fundamentally true, or intelligible, to the human mind, and of course formally true in relation to the Divine Mind. ”

“ Now how are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula “To be is to be the value of a variable”; this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard. ”

“ What deceives the exclusive psychologists, and makes them regard their inductions of ontology from psychological facts as valid, is the very important fact that there are no exclusively psychological facts; and in their psychology, though not recognized by them as such, and according to their method ought not to be such, there are real ontological elements—elements which are not psychological, and without which there could be no psychological elements. ”

“ Thus we see that whatever is real is ontologically true; that ontological truth is really identical with real being; that, applied to the latter, it is not a mere extrinsic denomination, but signifies an intrinsic, positive aspect of reality, viz. the real, essential, or transcendental relation of all real being to Mind or Intellect: a relation which is logically or conceptually distinct from the notion of reality considered in itself. ”

“ If we are cognisant of Absolute Existence, it must be object plus subject, because this, and this alone, is what any intelligence can know. If we are ignorant of Absolute Existence, it must be still object plus subject, because we can be ignorant only of what can be known—and object plus subject is what alone can be known. Thus the concluding truth of the ontology is demonstratively established, and comes out all the same whether we claim a knowledge, or avow an ignorance, of that which truly exists. ”

“ To countless and to endlessly various objects this first form of the ontological predicate has accordingly been applied by the thinkers who have used it. Both matter and mind have equally been called real in this first sense. Realism has, of course, no necessary tendency towards Materialism, although the materialists are realists. Since all here turns upon the ontological predicate, and not upon the what of the subject to which a given realistic philosopher applies this ontological predicate, you never know in advance but that a realist’s world may prove to be full of minds. ”

“ But if we have anywhere thought which is thus internally coherent, and from its own nature must remain so, however knowledge may extend, we have it surely in our metaphysical conception of the real as the absolutely individual. Thus the ontological proof appears, in any sense in which it is not fallacious, to amount merely to the principle that significant thought gives us genuine knowledge; and therefore, since the thoroughgoing individuality of structure of its object is presupposed in all significant thought, Reality must be a perfect individual. ”

“ But since all truths are concerned with realities they must have ultimately real reasons, i.e. explanatory principles inherent in the realities themselves. The knowledge of these real or ontological principles of things is the logical reason of our understanding of the things themselves. ”

“ It observes that when you declare any object to be real, you are in possession of an idea, however exact, or however inexact, however transient and relative, or however universal and eternal, — an idea to which you attribute an essentially teleological significance; since you assert that this idea is true, is valid, or in other words, is adapted to its ideal end. Our present conception regards this adaptation of the idea to its own end as the primary topic of any ontological assertion, and as the object which any one who asserts Being first of all inevitably means. ”

“ And thus, after a discussion, at the outset of the present lecture, of the general nature of the ontological predicate, we have proceeded, first, to sketch three different meanings that the popular use of language seems to have especially had in mind in asserting that any object is real. ”

“ The basis having been thus laid in the history of the subject, our lectures, at various points in the historical summary, will have at some length to undertake a critical comparison and analysis of the various meanings of the ontological predicate. Such an analysis will constantly show us unexpected connections of these meanings with the concrete interests of religion. We shall find it with ontology, as it certainly is with ethics. People often regard moral philosophy as a topic very abstract and dry. ”

“ Any reasoned ontological conclusion establishing what alone absolutely exists, is obviously impossible in a system which admits our ignorance without entering into any critical inquiry as to its nature; while, on the other hand, the ontology of a system which denies our ignorance, or passes it over sub silentio, must either rest upon a false ground, or upon no ground at all—on a false ground if our ignorance is denied—on no ground at all if it is not taken into account. ”

“ When the acorn grows into the oak the whole process has its ontological truth; that of the acorn changes, not into falsity, but into another truth, that of the oak.170 We see, then, that as things change, their truth does not change in the sense of being lost or giving place to falsity: the truth of one state changes to the truth of another while the ontological truth of the changing reality perseveres immutably. ”

“ Is truth one, then, or is it manifold? Logical truth is manifold—multiplied by the number of created intelligences, and by the number of distinct cognitions in each. The primary ontological truth which consists in the conformity of all reality with the Divine Intellect is one: there is no real plurality of archetype ideas in the Divine Mind; they are manifold only to our imperfect human mode of thinking. ”

“ By this long series of instances of our third type of real beings, I have meant to show that there are reasons why a philosophical conception, specially planned to meet such cases, should be attempted as a conception of the meaning of the ontological predicate. ”

“ Among "possible" worlds, in the Leibnizian sense, there will be worlds having one, two, three, ... individuals. There does not even seem any logical necessity why there should be even one individual [43] —why, in fact, there should be any world at all. The ontological proof of the existence of God, if it were valid, would establish the logical necessity of at least one individual. ”

“ As the psychological does not and cannot exist without the ontological, and, indeed, not without the creative act of the ontological, science is possible only on condition that the ontological and the psychological, as to their ideal principles, are intuitively given, and given in their real synthesis, as it has been abundantly shown they are given in the ideal formula. ”

“ All being is true; The real and the true are convertible terms”. For in the first place there is no [pg 164] mode or category of real being, of which the human mind actually thinks, to which it does not attribute ontological truth in the sense of conformity with the right human conception of it. Moreover, the proper object of the human intellect is reality; all true knowledge is knowledge of reality. Reality of itself is manifestly knowable, intelligible, and thus potentially or fundamentally true ”

“ In the ontological order, or the order of reality, because if the object is not at the same time one and multiple, how can those conditions of the mind be satisfied?
The intelligence, then, in order to live, must be able to travel from unity to multiplicity in an ascending or descending process, and to do so, not arbitrarily, but for reasons resting on reality.
In this lies the life of the intelligence; science is nothing but this synthetical and analytical movement. ”

“ For the knowledge of a law, even as a generalized fact, is a knowledge that claims to pass beyond the limits of the individual's present and remembered experiences. But there can be no rational justification, whether psychological or ontological, for the certain reliability of such a step, in the philosophy which logically reduces all certain knowledge to the mere awareness of a flow of successive sensations supposed to constitute the total content of the individual consciousness and the total reality of human experience.471.Cf. Maher, Psychology, ch. ”

“ We shall, I believe, become convinced that the answer to ontological problems depends in a larger measure than has been acknowledged upon the answer given to epistemological problems. Only the final chapter will concern itself with values. ”

“ The second point to be grasped is that the seat of Error is not in any defective configuration of the ‘object,’ but in its relation to a cognitive purpose. That some errors consist in the affirmation of non-existent objects is not only unimportant, but wholly irrelevant. It is irrelevant because it involves a confusion of an ontological with a logical ‘object’. The logical ‘object’ is never non-existent, even though we may be discussing Centaurs, Chimaeras, Absolutes, intellectualistic theories of knowledge and other ontological nonentities. ”

“ The ontological proof of the being of God from the concept of an original Being is either that which from ontological predicates, by which alone it can be thought as completely determined, infers absolutely necessary being ”

“ Each new ontological theory, from time to time propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and 69so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result arrived at being the negative one above stated—that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown. ”