1. If I think of God, s/he is the greatest possible being I can think of.
2. This idea of God is in my mind only. S/he may not exist.
3. But if the God in my mind could exist in reality, that God outside of my mind would be greater than the God inside my mind because s/he has real existence.
4. This means I can think of a God outside my mind that is greater than the original God I thought of inside my mind.
5. But this fact contradicts statement (1) when I said that the greatest possible being was in my mind, only.
6. Therefore, I have to deny statement (1) and accept that a m
ore perfect, existing God is greater than one which only has reality in my mind (Anselm, Proslogion, trans. T. Williams (Hackett, 1995).
In spite of the fact that statements (1-6) make logical sense, we somehow recognize them as unreasonable. Just because I can logically make the preceding statements does not make God exist. For centuries, logicians have attempted to debunk Saint Anselm’s ontological (order of being) argument.
My own reaction is to answer YES to each of the statements, then to scratch my head and try to find the illogical reasoning step. In his book, T
he God Delusion, (1995) Richard Dawkins says he has a feeling Anselm’s argument is unsound, but he does not exactly state why.
Philosophers try to avoid proving or disproving statements because they feel they are incorrect. They want proof. There are several interesting rejections for Anselm’s ontological argument. Both Thomas Acquinas and Emmanuel Kant rejected it. It was not revived seriously until the second half of the thirteenth century (History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell).
Optical Illusions
Everyone is aware of the way optical illusions gnaw at both logic and reason. Many seem to be logically correct at first glance until we realize
they are impossible. Our eyes keep jumping around trying to uncover exactly why they are unreasonable. See Diagrams A, B, and C.
In Diagram D, where one is supposed to find the hidden baby, we tend to look over the scene until, ah-hah, we realize the whole gestalt of the picture is the outline of an infant. Yet, even when our mind realizes the weirdness of these illusions, we shake our heads and continue looking because the illusion is so unreasonably provoking. Reading Puzzles
Article comments
1 - Jeannie Danna
This was a fun article to read. My husband is teaching science next year so we have been watching the science Chanel lately. One of your exercises just blew me away! "how we can read as long as the fisrt anbd lsat lteters are corerct!" ...:) thanks
2 - Regis
The mind, or whatever it is, sure is full of surprises, isn't it?
3 - Dr Dreadful
Infinity: it helps if you think of it as a variable rather than a number, which it isn't.
St Anselm: His fundamental error is that he claims in step 1 that the God inside his mind is the greatest one he can think of. He then claims that the God outside his mind is greater than the one inside. He can't possibly know this. This greater God is still in his mind only.