Q&A: The Ontological Argument
The Ontological Argument
Question
Hello Rabbi, first I wanted to thank the Rabbi for the books and articles—I read them and enjoy them very much, thank you.
I thought that maybe one could attack the argument from its first part, which claims that one can conceive of an infinity that is the most all-encompassing infinity. But it seems impossible to conceive of such an infinity, because for any infinity we can conceive of, there is already an infinity greater than it, as we see in mathematics: the cardinality of the infinity of sets of numbers that can be generated from an infinite quantity of numbers will be stronger than the previous infinite quantity of numbers, and so on. And there is also the simple intuition that for any reality, as great as one can conceive it, there is a reality greater than it. For example, we cannot conceive of what is at the end of the universe, because there cannot simply be nothing there; there has to be something there. I would be happy to know what the Rabbi thinks about this. Thank you very much.
Answer
Which argument? From which part? Of what? What are you talking about here?
Discussion on Answer
For a more detailed analysis of the proof, you can look at the first booklet here on the site.
As for your claim:
First, it is not clear that every such infinity can really be conceived by us.
Second, one can think of the greatest infinity, at least in a potential sense (the limit of all Cantor's infinities). That may depend on the question of what it means to conceive something. I can think the concept "the greatest infinity." Does that count as having conceived it? Maybe.
I meant the ontological proof for the existence of God. I saw this proof in the Rabbi's book "Two Wagons and a Hot-Air Balloon," and the Rabbi said that all the attacks on the proof that he knows of target the part that says existence is a property, and therefore God cannot lack the property of existence. And if I understood correctly, the Rabbi said that existence is not a property, so it is not correct to say that someone who does not exist is more lacking than someone who does exist. I thought of attacking the proof from its basic premise—that one can conceive of that than which nothing greater can be conceived—because for anything we can conceive of, we can conceive of something greater than it. (And I brought support for this from mathematics, where for every infinity there is an infinity with a greater cardinality.) And I wanted to know whether that sounds right.