The Ontological Argument and
the Motivational Centers of Lives
October 27, 2008
Alvin Plantinga’s maximally great being (MGB) argument (Plantinga 1982, Chapter 10):
(2) It is possible that there exists a maximally great being. (Premise.)
(3) Therefore, there exists a being that is perfectly good, omnipotent and omniscient in all worlds. (From (1) and (2) by S5).
Assuming a modal logic that includes S5, the argument is valid. The main controversial premise is the possibility premise (2). I will now offer a new way to make the possibility premise epistemically probable. If it is epistemically probable, then the conclusion of the argument is also epistemically probable, and hence probably there is a maximally great being.
The simplest form of the argument I am offering for the possibility premise is as follows:
(6) Therefore, probably, it is possible that there is a MGB.
The argument is valid. I now proceed to explain and defend the premises in the argument, as well as consider a sharpening of the argument. I then consider an objection from two-dimensional semantics, and discuss how two-dimensional semantics allows one to improve on the ontological argument, and end by considering an objection from non-theistic religions.
Some of our beliefs are motivationally peripheral. I believe that the globular cluster M13 primarily consists of very old stars. But this belief affects very few of my actions. If I came to believe that M13, unlike other globular clusters, consists of young stars, my life would not significantly change. Other beliefs, however, are more central. For instance, I believe that I have a wife and kids. If I ceased to believe that, my life would change in wide-spread and significant ways. My belief in the existence of my wife and kids, then, is one of the beliefs that are motivationally central to my life. Centrality and peripherality is, of course, a matter of degree. Somewhere intermediate between my belief that I have a wife and kids and my belief that M13 is mainly composed of very old stars, there is my belief that brushing teeth is healthy, for instance. The centrality and peripherality of a belief differs from person to person, and some variation is appropriate. It is appropriate that the belief about M13 be more central to the life of an astronomer specializing in stellar evolution than it is to my life. Moreover, note that when I talk of a belief being motivationally central, or at the motivational center of a life, I am not claiming the belief is the centermost belief—indeed, all claims of centrality in this paper are to be understood as capable of holding by degrees.
Beliefs can be false but central, and maybe even central to a flourishing human life. One can imagine a doctor who leads a flourishing and intellectually sophisticated life bringing an expensive cancer treatment to the needy. A belief in the effectiveness of the treatment will be motivationally central to her life, but her life is not much less a flourishing human life should it turn out that all the studies that claimed the treatment to be effective were in fact wrong.
However, while a false belief might be found at the motivational center of a flourishing and intellectually sophisticated life, it seems less likely that there be an impossible belief at the motivational center of a flourishing and intellectually sophisticated life for a significant length of time.
One reason for this is that an impossible proposition entails all propositions. An intellectually sophisticated person or community reflects particularly on the entailments of beliefs that are motivationally central to her life, and some of the motivational centrality is apt to transfer to the entailed claims. As a result, there is some likelihood that if a motivationally central proposition were in fact an impossible proposition, then the person or, especially, community would come up with an entailment q of the motivationally central proposition such that believing q would be damaging to flourishing. For instance, if they believed that circles are squares in a motivationally central way, they might draw the logical conclusion that pleasures are pains, and torture people in order to give their victims pleasure. But to commit torture is significantly harmful to one’s flourishing.
Second, an important aspect of human flourishing involves humanly, and hence morally and intellectually, excellent activity flowing from motivationally central beliefs. Maybe it is possible that humanly excellent activity would flow from beliefs that are so far wrong as to be impossible, but it does not seem very likely. A humanly excellent life would be an examined life, and a part of the point of the examination is to ensure the compatibility of one’s beliefs.
Normally, in fact, we would expect humanly excellent activity to flow from motivationally central beliefs that are not just possible but true. But we can imagine everyday cases where a mistake about, say, a scientific matter underlies an instance of humanly excellent activity. We can, perhaps at a stretch, imagine a case where humanly excellent activity flows from some impossible and motivationally central belief, but those cases are even less probable. If humanly excellent activity flows from some motivationally central belief, then, in the absence of any further information, we should say that the belief is more likely than not to be at least possible.
Therefore, we have reason to accept premise (4).
Premise (5) is easily argued for by citing plausible examples: Abraham Heschel, al Ghazali, Alvin Plantinga, Augustine of Hippo, Clairvaux Abbey, Francis of Assisi, Jean Vanier, Teresa of Ávila, the Pittsburgh Oratory and the student groups associated with it, the Taizé Community, Thérèse de Lisieux, Thomas Aquinas, and various personal friends of mine whose humility I won’t embarrass by naming them. Some of the examples that make (5) true are famous, many others less so, and we can all add to the list.
By (4) and (5), we conclude that probably it is possible for a MGB to exist, and hence by S5, there exists a being that is perfectly good, omnipotent and omniscient in all worlds.
We can, I think, sharpen (4) by specifying that the probability of the possibility of the belief increases roughly in proportion to how motivationally central the belief is, how flourishing the individual or community x is, how much of x’s humanly excellent activity flows from that belief, how intellectually sophisticated x is, how long the time span involved is, how large a community x is if x is a community, and so on. The examples I gave in support of (5) differ to some extent in respect of some of these factors, and hence the support they offer to the existence of the MGB varies. However, in all of the cases, at least it seems to be true that the belief that there is a maximally great being love for whom should consume one’s entire life is very close to, if not at the very center of, the motivational life, and the flourishing life of virtue is largely motivated by that belief.
Moreover, the greater the number of individuals and communities there are that satisfy the conditions in (4), the more probable it is that the belief in question is possibly true.
There are, however, a number of Kripkean cases where an impossible belief may be at the motivational center of a life. The issue is that Kripkean views raise many empirical errors to the level of metaphysical impossibilities. Consider three examples, the first two perhaps fictitious, but if so then not by much, and the third entirely factual: (i) George believes that Dorothy is his biological daughter and this belief is near the motivational center of his life, but let us suppose Dorothy is not his daughter, having been swapped at birth. (ii) Patricia believes that electrons are manifestations of a field, and her life-work as a physicist is centered on this belief, but in fact electrons are essentially particles. (iii) A fair amount of Dr. Livingstone’s activity was based on the assumption that the Lualaba River was the Nile; but, in fact, the Lualaba was Upper Congo, and so it is metaphysically impossible that the Lualaba be the Nile.
It seems quite likely that in some such cases, and perhaps actually in the case of Livingstone, the false belief could be pretty close to the motivational center of a flourishing life. One response would be simply to concede this claim, but hold that such cases are relatively rare—most beliefs that are motivationally central in most flourishing lives are in fact possible. This concession, however, while it preserves my argument for the probability of the possibility premise of the ontological argument, does allow that the existence of these cases lowers the probability of the possibility premise.
A more daring response to the Kripkean cases would be to affirm that the motivational centrality of the beliefs in the three cases, and in most similar cases, detracts from the flourishingness of the lives and the human excellence of the activities. At the end of the last section, I suggested that the more flourishing the life and the more the humanly excellent activities flow from the belief, the better the case for the belief’s possibility, and hence in these cases the argument is, as is to be expected, weaker. George would flourish more if he focused less on the biological aspects of paternity. Patricia would live a more intellectually open scientific life if she was more open to the possibility of field theories of electrons being false. And Dr. Livingstone would perhaps have done more good to the science of geography were he not focused on a Quixotic quest for the sources of the Nile.
I leave it to the reader to judge the plausibility of responses of this sort. I think there is something to them. But instead, I want to press a two-dimensionalist response, which requires modifying (4).
A fairly standard way to see what is at the heart of two-dimensionalism is to consider the sentence s “Water is H2O”, and two worlds: w0 being the actual world, and w1 being a world very much like this one, except where the predominant colorless, wet, tasteless, life-supporting liquid with all the same behavior as H2O is not H2O but XYZ. We can then say the following two things. First, the sentence s expresses a proposition, that water is H2O, which is true in both worlds, even though in w1 the word “water” as used by the denizens of w1 picks out not H2O but XYZ. This is related to the standard Kripkean claim that the proposition that water is H2O is necessarily true. It is usual to call the proposition that water is H2O the “secondary intension” of s. But there is a another way to consider s and the two worlds. We can talk of the “primary intension” of s, which in w0 says of the colorless, wet, tasteless, life-supporting liquid predominant in w0 that that liquid is H2O, and which in w1 says of the colorless, wet, tasteless, life-supporting liquid predominant in w1 that that liquid is H2O. The primary intension of s then is true at w0 but false at w1. A rough and ready way to think of the primary intension of s is as what s would have meant had s been said in the world at which its truth value is being checked.
We can then distinguish between a sentence token s being metaphysically necessary, namely its secondary intension being true at every world, and its being a priori, namely (simplifying slightly[1]) its primary intension being true at every world. We can likewise say that s is metaphysically possible provided that s’s secondary intension is true at some world, and s is conceivable (in this technical sense) provided that (simplifying again) s’s secondary intension is true at some world. Now we can modify (4) to say:
The examples (i)-(iii) are no longer a problem. It may be metaphysically impossible that Dorothy is George’s biological daughter, but it is certainly conceivable: there are possible worlds where the primary intension of “Dorothy is George’s biological daughter” is true—i.e., worlds where George’s biological daughter grows up under George’s parentage, and is named “Dorothy”. There are, not implausibly, possible worlds where the primary intension of “Electrons are manifestations of a field” is true—worlds where a field rather than particle theory holds. And there is a world where a river named “the Nile” that ends in Egypt extends back to the river named the “Lualaba” in the Congo, and that is a world where the primary intension of a sentence expressing Dr. Livingstone’s belief about the source of the Nile is true.
Of course now we have a gap between what we can conclude from (4*) and (5), and what we want to conclude. What we learn from (4*) and (5) is that either possibly or conceivably a MGB exists. What we need for the possibility premise of the ontological argument is that possibly a MGB exists.
However, the conceivability of the existence of a MGB entails the possibility of a MGB existing. It is a standard claim in the two-dimensionalist literature that “There is a god” has the same primary and secondary intensions (see, e.g., Chalmers 2006), and it seems plausible that the same is true of “There is a maximally great being.” After all, “There is a maximally great being” does not contain indexicals, and does not appear to make reference to any individuals picked out de re like “Dorothy”, or to any ostensively referred-to qualities or kinds like “water”. One might, of course, think that greatness is picked out ostensively, as a quality that is paradigmatically had by sperm whales in respect of size, Albert Einstein in respect of intellect, Francis of Assisi in respect of peace, etc. But that seems mistaken. If it were picked ostensively, we would have to say that it is conceivable that a mass murderer exhibits greatness in respect of peace, since there is some world where the best known person named “Francis of Assisi” is a mass murderer, and that just does not seem right.
If this is right, then from (4*) and (5) 0 we conclude that, probably, it is the case that possibly or conceivably a MGB exists. Since the conceivability of the existence of a MGB entails the possibility of a MGB existing, we conclude that, probably, possibly a MGB exists, and hence, by S5, a perfectly good, omnipotent and omniscient being exists in all worlds.
It may be that not all cases can be handled by the two-dimensionalist move. For instance, it could well be that materialism about minds is a priori false, in which case a neuroscientist whose flourishing life is centered on materialistic assumptions about the mind will be a case of someone who leads a flourishing life motivationally centered on an assumption that is neither possible nor conceivable. I myself suspect that materialistic assumptions harm the flourishingness of one’s life. But even they didn’t, (4*) only claims that the belief is probably possible or conceivable, and it seems plausible that cases of beliefs that are neither possible nor conceivable but which occur at the motivational center of a flourishing and intellectually sophisticated life will be quite rare.
In any case, the two-dimensionalist move of replacing (4) with (4*) decreased the number of counterexamples, and hence improved the argument.[2] And we can make (4*) into a proportionality claim the way it was done with (4) at the end of Section 3.
One kind of objection to the argument is cases of people or communities whose lives are flourishing and are centered on beliefs whose possibility and even conceivability is incompatible with belief in a perfectly good, omnipotent and omniscient being exists, beliefs such as those of atheists or of non-theistic religions. But if such beliefs are possibly or conceivably true, then we have an incompatibility with the conclusion of our ontological argument which says that a perfectly good, omnipotent and omniscient being exists in all worlds.
In response, note first that this line of criticism leaves (4) and (4*) intact. These claims embody probabilistic principles, so there is nothing wrong with noting that sometimes they will lead us astray. As applied to theistic cases, they raise the probability of theism, and in the absence of other evidence they would raise it above a half. But now the worry is whether the existence of non-theistic or atheistic cases of application of (4) and (4*)0 doesn’t provide evidence against theism that neutralizes the evidence for theism that (4) and (4*)0 gave us.
I shall argue that non-theistic and atheistic cases are not as worrying as one might initially think. Consider some paradigm cases. One kind of non-theistic case is provided by Eastern religions according to which all existence is illusion. There, I want to say that the belief that all existence is illusion detracts from human flourishing. A central part of human flourishing is love for others. But to love someone is incompatible with disbelieving in her existence. One can love the idea of someone while disbelieving in her existence, but that is a different state. Love calls on us to appreciate people for qualities that they in fact genuinely possess, and in loving someone, we do appreciate the person for qualities we take or at least hope her to possess. But if we disbelieve in the person’s existence, we surely have to disbelieve in her qualities as well, and insofar as our disbelief is firm, we do not even hope that she has these qualities. Granted, a person who believes that all existence is illusion can exhibit love inconsistently with that belief. But given how central love and friendship is to human flourishing, this will not be a case where the central excellences in human activity flow from the belief, and hence this will be a case where the more precise version of the principle at the end of Section 3 (or its possibility/conceivability variant) does not assign all that much probability to the possibility of the belief that all existence is illusory.
Pantheism is a different story. One kind of pantheism simply states that, as a matter of fact, all of reality is God. Applying (4) and (4*)0 to this kind of pantheism only yields the claim that it is conceivable or possible that all of reality is God. But the traditional theist agrees with this conceivability or possibility claim. For there is indeed a possible world where God does not create anything, and hence he is the whole of existence.[3]
But what about the flourishing pantheist who thinks pantheism is necessarily true. It is not completely clear that the necessity claim is what is at the motivational center of the flourishing pantheist’s life. But suppose it is. It now seems likely that our pantheist will agree that God, or the whole of existence, is a maximally great being. We may now be able to distinguish what is at the motivational center of the life of pantheists into two separate beliefs: (i) the belief that there is a maximally great being, and (ii) the belief that necessarily the whole of existence is the maximally great being. It could be that in some cases (i) is much more central than (ii), and much more productive of a flourishing life. Moreover, (ii) makes it difficult to take seriously the presence of evil, since a maximally great being does not have any evil as part, quality or privation, while the whole of existence plainly does have evil as part, quality or privation. And, of course, battling evil is an important aspect of human flourishing. Thus, while (ii) may promote certain kinds of flourishing, such as love of nature, it detracts from the struggle against evil that is an important part of our flourishing under our present circumstances.
But there is a different move I could make in both the case of illusionism and pantheism. We have decisive arguments against the possibility of illusionism and the possibility of necessary pantheism (i.e., of the doctrine that pantheism holds necessarily). These arguments defeat the weight that (4) and (4*)0 give to these possibilities, and leave theism unaffected. The argument against the possibility of illusionism is that, plainly, if something is illusory, then there is someone to whom it appears as an illusion or else at least there is an illusion, and in neither case is all of existence illusory. The argument against necessary pantheism, and hence by S5 against the possibility (or conceivability—for in this case, like that of theism, conceivability and possibility come to the same thing) of necessary pantheism, is that God is perfectly good, and a perfectly good being cannot have evil as part, quality or privation, while in fact there is evil in reality, so it cannot be that necessarily God is the same as all of reality.
Of course there is more to be said about these arguments, but the basic strategy is clear. I can argue that the doctrines decrease flourishing, or else I can just directly argue against the possibility of the doctrines.
Of course, my opponent might make the same moves. The disadvantage of a probabilistic account is that it is always open to responses that attempt to decrease the probability of the conclusion through independent arguments, in this case presumably the argument from evil. But of course this paper is not the place to give a response to the problem of evil—to do that, I would have to avail myself of all the available proposed theodicies, and maybe a dollop of skeptical theism.
The final, and most difficult case, is that of the atheist (I take an atheist to be someone who disbelieves in the existence of God, and does not espouse any non-theistic religious view). Here I will bite the bullet and say that there are very few if any cases of atheistic individuals or communities where the atheism as such contributes significantly to flourishing and humanly excellent activity. Atheism is a negative doctrine, and one does not expect belief in purely negative doctrines to make significant contributions to flourishing when they are motivationally central—our lives should be focused on how things are rather than on how they are not.[4] While atheism may make one somewhat more self-reliant, it is also a view that takes away from the apparent value and meaning of the universe and other people. For any intrinsic value in the universe or in other people that the atheist can acknowledge is one that the theist can acknowledge just as well—but the theist can also acknowledge a deeper value of the universe and people in virtue of divine creation and participation in divine goodness.
Moreover, it seems likely that while theism tends to be central to the motivational life of theists, in many atheists, atheism is not motivationally central. The atheist probably does not kiss her husband because she thinks there is no God, and it is, I submit, unlikely that she helps the needy because she thinks there is no God[5], and so on. But a theist might well kiss her husband because she believes that the spousal relationship is a reflection of God’s love, and she might help the needy because the needy are children of God. In fact, it seems to me that there is something crabbed in a life centered motivationally on a negative doctrine like atheism.
The present argument gives us reason to believe that there exists a being that is perfectly good, omnipotent and omniscient in all worlds. But the full evaluation of the probability of this conclusion would require one to examine arguments to the contrary, most notably the argument from evil.
Chalmers, D. (2006). Two-dimensional semantics. In E. Lepore and B. Smith (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plantinga, A. (1982). The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon.
Pruss, A.R. (2001). Śamkara’s principle and two ontomystical arguments. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 49, 111–120.
[1] Chalmers makes a sentence a priori provided that its primary intension is true at every scenario, where a scenario is a world centered on a person and a time (Chalmers 2006). However, the centering will be irrelevant to the sentences that I will be considering.
[2] The two-dimensionalist move can also be used to improve the “onto-mystical” argument of Pruss (see Pruss 2001).
[3] The traditional theist does not countenance universals as something necessarily existing over and beyond God—God is the creator of everything other than himself.
[4] A potential counterexample to this thesis is apophatic theology. But I think the apophaticist in the end cannot maintain that the sentence “God exists” expresses a negative claim. Still, what about the apophaticist who says that her life is motivationally centered on the claim “God is good”, and that this is a negative claim? I think such an apophaticist misunderstands the nature of her beliefs. For the belief that God is good entails that God exists, and hence has some positive content. If the claim “God is good” did not entail that God exists, it would be prima facie compatible with atheism. And a “God is good” claim that is prima facie compatible with atheism presumably would not play the motivationally central role in the apophaticist’s life that she thinks it plays there. Thus, I think a better understand of her beliefs is that her “God is good” claim has some positive content.
[5] Admittedly, we could imagine that the atheism plays some partial role—maybe the atheist thinks that there being no God, helping the needy is incumbent on her. But of course the theist can have a corresponding belief that God assigned helping the needy to her.