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Q&A: What’s the problem with the ontological proof?

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

What’s the problem with the ontological proof?

Question

Kant attacks the argument by saying that the analytic is empty and cannot invent new things.
Intuitively, that’s the initial distrust one has toward such a proof: how on earth do you define something and then decide that it exists?
But I don’t understand. Causality is an assumption I make about the world, and I take it for certain that this is how the world behaves, even though I’ve never actually seen it, as Rabbi David Yom discussed at length.
Now, suppose causality were not so simple for me, and instead I had to prove by a logical proof that this is how I grasp reality—would that be an ontological proof? If so, then what exactly is different about the concept of causality, which can make an assumption about the world, as opposed to an ontological proof? Is the only ‘problem’ with the proof that it is not directly accessible to me, and I need to do conceptual analysis in order to understand that this is how I perceive things?
Kant claimed that conceptual analysis cannot add information about the world, and the answer would be that indeed the analysis adds no information at all—it merely shows me that this is how I perceive the world. Anyone who wants to argue that I perceive it this way but that reality is actually different is welcome first to challenge causality.
What is incorrect about this?

Answer

If you follow the booklet (and even more so in the book The First Existent, which contains an updated version of it), you’ll see that I distinguish between apriority and conceptuality. An ontological proof is based solely on an analysis of the definition of a concept. An a priori proof is indeed possible, but it is not based on definitions; rather, on a priori assumptions. That is something entirely different. The principle of causality is an a priori assumption (although in my opinion even that is not really precise), but not a definition. A factual conclusion from a definition is impossible. A factual conclusion from an a priori assumption is a synthetic a priori proposition.

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