I read the entire discussion and still couldn’t understand the proof. I explained my difficulty in my question above: how do we infer from the deficiency of a being that does not exist that there exists a being that does exist in actuality? Maybe no such being exists, and indeed it is impossible to conceive of a being perfect in that respect as well.

Even though I wrote again and again that there is no connection at all between the possibility of conceiving something and the question of its actual existence, you still keep tying the two together. His proof assumes that such a being can be conceived, and from that concludes that such a being exists. If you don’t agree with the assumption, fine (though I don’t see what’s unreasonable about it). But there is no begging the question here, nor any logical problem.

I don’t understand how one can conceive of an “existing” being without having before him some datum indicating its existence. As long as I haven’t played with the neurons in the brain, there is technically no possibility of doing that [and even if I do, it would be mere imagination and not greater perfection].
But let’s assume that it really is possible to conceive such a being. How do we know we aren’t mistaken? What proof is there that such a being exists rather than does not exist? How does the fact that we imagine such a reality in our minds suddenly make such a being exist?????

If you can conceive of such a being, that undermines the assumption that the previous being you conceived was the most perfect one. From this it follows that a God who does not exist is not God (because by definition He is the most perfect being that can be conceived). And from this it follows that God exists.
It is explained there in great detail. There is no point repeating things that are explained there.

“And from this it follows that a God who does not exist is not God (because by definition He is the most perfect being that can be conceived). And from this it follows that God exists.”
Why, if a God who does not exist is not God, have we learned that God exists? Maybe we should conclude that indeed no existing God exists, and that we can’t even conceive Him [because of the limitation mentioned above].
Please notice my difficulty and answer it. I read the discussion and still didn’t manage to find the answer.

Because we reached a contradiction in the definition of the concept God. Assuming the concept is coherent (a reasonable assumption), one must conclude that it is instantiated in the world in order to escape the contradiction.

We create a concept, and because of its problematic nature we assume reality conforms to its definition???
Cancel the concept and that’s that. There is no concept called a perfect being, period.
I just can’t understand it.

I understand this is the same questioner (the nickname changed). If you don’t understand or don’t agree, I have nothing to add. The matter is explained in painstaking detail in the book. I don’t have anything better than that.
Happy holiday.

Wikipedia: Anselm is proceeding here along the path of the Platonic conception of the “realist” school in medieval philosophy, according to which concepts like “red,” “beautiful,” or “large” (“universals”) have real existence outside human imagination. According to this view, if something can be conceived (such as the concept of God), that is a sign that it has reality in the realm of universals.
Doesn’t the Rabbi mention this in the book?

Well, isn’t that complete nonsense?

I assume it’s a whole body of teaching that has to be studied.
Shmuel Bergman, in his book on Kant, brings a refutation of that claim, if I understood him correctly.

Rabbi, first of all I want to thank you for a very detailed explanation that is understandable even to people without prior philosophical knowledge. But there is something I didn’t understand, and I’d appreciate an explanation.
After the Rabbi nicely explained that the difference between an existing concept and a non-existing concept is the addition of translation sensors,
I don’t understand why it isn’t much more reasonable to assume that although I can understand that the greatest possible being that can (theoretically) be conceived (which for convenience I’ll now call God) is one that exists—with the translation sensors—in practice I cannot conceive it as existing until it is proven to me in a way that activates those sensors. Therefore, the greatest being I can conceive is either a concept with all perfections but without existence (at least until proven otherwise strongly enough to activate those translation sensors), or some other existing thing (depending on the relation between the perfections—not really relevant to the question).
And just as Anselm himself (perhaps) argues that although the painting exists in the painter’s mind, until he actually paints it he does not understand it as something existing (with translation sensors), because for that he needs its existence to be demonstrated to him (in that case, by seeing it).
Therefore, even if I can conceive that given sufficient proof of God’s existence, the existing God would be the greatest concept I can conceive (which is actually rather meaningless once it’s already been proven to me), until then I cannot conceive Him as existing, and the greatest thing I can conceive is, as stated, either a concept with all perfections but without existence, or some other existing concept.
I’d appreciate a response.
Thank you very much.

This claim is discussed in the book The First Being, in the first discussion, and it’s worth looking there.
I no longer remember exactly what is written there, except that even if one accepts this claim, there is still an assumption here that this concept can be conceived even without its actually existing, and that means the argument is not ontological (that is, assumption-free). Worth taking a look there.
But for now I’ll say that in principle those translation neurons can also be activated artificially (by electrodes). In other words, the existing concept—even if I can’t conceive it spontaneously—is still a concept that in principle can be present in the mind. If so, God is not the most perfect concept that can be present in the mind.

It’s advisable not to fall into the trap of their fantasies and delusions.

Those thought-dreamers think they are making some logical move in this proof.
But there is no need for that logical move, since of course God exists. And there is nothing special about that—everything that can be conceived exists.

In the mind. Or in other words, in the imagination of those imagining.

Maybe what they’re trying to do is convince others that they have a perfect imagination, and therefore the world is really a simulation of their imagination. But I don’t think any normal person is buying that.

I still haven’t looked in the book, but regarding the argument the Rabbi raised at the end, it seems to me a very reasonable assumption that translation sensors activated artificially do not add perfection to the concept. At least according to my logic, what makes the existing concept more perfect is not the subjective “experience” that it exists, but the fact that I trust that experience as highly likely to say something about reality.
If we bring in the option of playing with neurons, that no longer validates those sensors, and it doesn’t seem reasonable to me to say they add perfection.
If, for example, there are concepts that do not exist in reality but thinking about them itself causes various subjective feelings (revulsion, disgust, and the like) that cannot be artificially produced (maybe the examples I gave can be, so let’s say we find one that can’t)—then do they contain some perfection that the most perfect thing I can conceive lacks (assuming it doesn’t evoke those feelings in me)?
Therefore (since I think the answer is no), it doesn’t seem to me that a mere subjective sensation that arises when thinking about a certain concept adds any perfection to it. Rather, the point is that the sensation points to something I generally trust as indicating that the concept exists in reality—and that is an addition of perfection to the concept itself.
Also (though this says nothing about the body of the argument), I assume that in Anselm’s time there was no possibility of conceiving such a concept artificially, so at least he did not mean that option.

If you are talking about the perfection of a concept, then that has no connection to whether it exists in reality. Only if it is conceived as existing—then it is a different concept—can you speak of its greater perfection.

1. If only the feeling of translation is the difference between the concepts, and not the fact that this feeling leads me to conclude that it exists in reality, then the assumption that this concept has more perfection than a concept without that feeling is no longer so trivial (for that matter I’m not sure of it at all—I don’t distinguish it from any other feeling that thinking about a concept might cause me, and I don’t see in it any perfection added to the concept).
2. If I understand correctly, then this proof wasn’t valid until we were given the possibility of playing with neurons? Even though that doesn’t point to a flaw, it smells very problematic that our ability to do this is what validates the proof.

1. Indeed, only the feeling, as I explained. That assumption really isn’t trivial, and I’m not sure it’s correct.
2. The neurons are a measure we use today, but they are not necessary to the proof itself. In any case, the question is whether the proof is good or not, and it isn’t especially important to me what Anselm meant or whether in his time it was good or not. This is not the study of history but the study of philosophy.

What I meant to say in the second argument is that the basis for the assumption that one can conceive such a concept comes from our ability to manipulate the brain (before that, it was more reasonable to assume that one could not conceive such a concept).
Therefore, even though that doesn’t point to a flaw in the proof, it at least gives me an intuition to resist the proof, since by manipulating the brain we managed to argue for a factual claim. That gives me motivation to try to reject the proof (for example by not accepting the assumption that an existing concept is more perfect than a non-existing one).

I’d like to suggest an explanation for why the ontological proof does work, even if it isn’t a proof in the strict sense.
Its mechanism can be described in Frege’s terms of sense and reference. According to this, the basic idea is that the “sense” of the concept referring to God (an absolute entity) is not coherent unless one also gives it “reference.” Someone who says roughly this: true, we have a concept of an absolute entity, but it doesn’t have to correlate with anything in reality—is actually using the concept of absoluteness imprecisely.

However, I am not claiming that every use of the feature of absoluteness requires positing existence of a correlation in reality, but only in the case of God. And in a more vulgar formulation: relative claims in our world carry no cognitive weight unless there is at least one absolute essence that “makes” them possible.

What makes those claims possible is language, the ability to speak.

I want to ask a follow-up to the discussion with Matan, and I’ll restate the same question in different words.

After the Rabbi nicely explained that the difference between an existing concept and a non-existing concept is the addition of translation sensors, the atheist could argue that although I can understand that in principle the greatest being that can be conceived is one that exists—with translation sensors—in practice I cannot conceive of something that does not exist (or whose existence is doubtful) as existing. And since the greatest being does not exist, I cannot actually conceive it as existing, and therefore the greatest being I can actually conceive is a concept with all perfections except existence.

And to that the Rabbi answered:

“This claim is discussed in the book The First Being, in the first discussion, and it’s worth looking there.
I no longer remember exactly what is written there, except that even if one accepts this claim, there is still an assumption here that this concept can be conceived even without its actually existing, and that means the argument is not ontological (assumption-free). Worth taking a look there.”

I looked there and did not see any treatment of this point.

The Rabbi continued:

“But for now I’ll say that in principle those translation neurons can also be activated artificially (by electrodes). In other words, the existing concept—even if I can’t conceive it spontaneously—is still a concept that in principle can be present in the mind. If so, God is not the most perfect concept that can be present in the mind.”

Here the Rabbi distinguished between conceiving something spontaneously—what I called actually—and conceiving it in principle.

But the problem still remains. Suppose that in principle it is possible to conceive such a being, but in principle we can also grasp non-existent things as existing, and that is exactly what I just did. Although in my view the greatest existing being is not something that can actually be conceived, I agreed that in principle we can imagine it as existing, because in principle one can conceive the non-existent as existing—so where does that argument get us? That in principle one can conceive the greatest existing being, but conceiving something in principle says nothing about reality! And that is why the fool agreed that this is possible. Only actual conceiving says something about reality.

And this is not ordinary skepticism, because it is obvious that in principle one can imagine the non-existent as existing, and that is exactly what the atheist did in this discussion. Ordinary skepticism casts doubt on things that can actually be conceived.

That is exactly the whole point of Anselm’s argument: the very possibility of conceiving it is what proves existence. True, one can conceive a non-existent entity as existing, but when we conceive it that way, it is more perfect than the parallel non-existent entity. Therefore, specifically regarding God (who is defined as the greatest being that can be conceived), this proves that He exists (otherwise He would not fit His own definition).
In fact, if you understood the argument, then your very claim is the basis of the argument, certainly not a refutation of it. If it were impossible to conceive a non-existent being as existing, the argument would collapse (because then the assumption that it can be conceived would already smuggle in its existence, and that would be too direct a case of begging the question). Pay close attention.

My claim is that this very conceiving, which makes it possible to grasp a non-existent entity as existing, says nothing about reality. Because the atheist is essentially claiming that the greatest being that can actually be conceived is the non-existent being, since one cannot conceive the non-existent as existing (= translation sensors). He only agreed that in principle one can conceive such an existing being, meaning that he can see that another person who is convinced that such a being exists could conceive it that way. But that says nothing about reality. After all, at the end of the day I cannot conceive it. And I did not agree that one can conceive it except in a place where truth and falsehood are all mixed together and one can imagine the non-existent as existing.

It seems you do not understand the ontological argument. Go through the argument via its premises and you’ll see that your claim is irrelevant. I explained above why.

Actually I understand this argument quite well. I read the booklet more than once, and I also read other sources. I believe the Rabbi did not properly understand my counter-argument. I’ll try to explain myself better. I’ll use “possible worlds” to clarify what I mean.

Atheists believe that in the actual world God does not exist, so there is no contradiction in saying that the greatest conceivable being does not exist, since one cannot conceive of such an existing being in the actual world because we cannot grasp a being that does not exist as existing. So the greatest conceivable being is in fact the one that does not exist.

But the atheist agrees that in a possible world we can conceive of the greatest conceivable being as existing. That is, in a possible world where He exists, we can in fact grasp Him as existing. But that is not the case in our world. Here He does not exist, so we cannot think of Him that way. And what is the case in possible worlds tells us absolutely nothing about the real world.

In chapter 15 the Rabbi raised the argument that what is in the mind says nothing about reality, except that the Rabbi’s claim is that this is ordinary skepticism. But from what I have just clarified, that is not correct. If someone doubts what he knows is true in our world, that is skepticism; but if it is something we imagine might be found in a possible world, there is no basis at all for saying it is true in our actual world.

I don’t understand the argument. Are you disputing the assumption that one can conceive of a non-existent being as existing? The interpretation in terms of possible worlds changes nothing here, as far as I can see. To conceive of something non-existent as existing means to think of our very reality as one in which that thing exists. It makes no difference whether you call that another possible world or our world in another state.

Aharon,
I understand the ontological argument as persuasive in the following way: the theist is in effect saying that the atheist’s concept of God is confused. In his eyes, the atheist is trying to get rid of the assumption that the concept has a real counterpart. But when he does that, he is no longer talking about God at all. The atheist, the theist claims against him, is stepping outside the bounds of the discussion without noticing.

The same move can be formulated a bit differently. The atheist argues against the theist that all talk about God is just a language game that says absolutely nothing about God and about His very existence. The theist answers that this specific language game is possible from the outset only on the assumption that it is not really a game (at least not at its base).

Yes, I am arguing against the possibility of grasping a non-existent entity as existing. And therefore, according to the atheist, the greatest conceivable being is only the one that exists.

And I add that if someone argues that even the atheist can grasp Him as existing, that only means that the atheist can see that if He existed we would be able to grasp Him as existing—just as if a unicorn existed we would be able to grasp it as existing (and I call this “possible worlds,” as is often used by some philosophers)—but this says nothing about what the atheist believes is actually true.

There is a mistake in the previous comment, and it should read: And therefore, according to the atheist, the greatest conceivable being is only the one that “does not” exist.

So we’re back to the starting point. Anselm assumes that one can conceive as existing even a being that does not exist. That is indeed his assumption, and in my view it is a very reasonable one (as with the artificial stimulation of the translation neurons). I pointed out in the book as well that there is an assumption here (and therefore his argument is not really ontological).

But artificial stimulation of the translation neurons says nothing about reality. It only says that if there were such a reality, we would be able to conceive it.

In other words, if we really can grasp the non-existent as existing, then our mind is no longer reliable, and what we grasp as existing is not necessarily actually existing.

Incorrect. You are repeating the same mistake. The proof is not built on the idea that from the fact that we grasp it as existing, it follows that it exists. That would just be an empirical proof, and of course it would be wrong. The ontological proof assumes that one can conceive (not: grasp) as existing even what does not exist, and precisely because of that, He does exist!!!

I’ll try from another angle. One way to present the argument is to say that the statement “the greatest conceivable being does not exist” is contradictory, and therefore the greatest conceivable being must exist.

But that is not true; the statement is not contradictory at all. To show this, I’ll again use the notion of “possible worlds,” which are ways the world is or could have been. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world

When the atheist agrees that we can conceive of the greatest being as existing, what he means is that we can conceive of a possible world in which God exists.

So the statement simply says that the greatest being we can conceive as existing in possible worlds does not exist in our actual world. There is no contradiction here.

And if you say that existence in our actual world is greater than existence in a possible world, and therefore the greatest conceivable being must exist in our world—that is true, but that is something the atheist can no longer conceive.

We’re just going in circles. I’ll try one last time, and stop here.
The atheist can certainly conceive of God as existing in our world. One has to understand that to conceive of something as existing in our world means to imagine another world exactly like ours, except that in it God exists.