A
simple,
devastating blow to the
Ontological Argument can be laid down by a
confrontation with the
liberties which the
first requirement takes with the very
nature of
conception itself. As the first step in the argument is to define "
God" as "that than which no greater can be conceived," we must consider: what exactly is it which we are
capable of conceiving?
The Ontological Argument requires us to first conceive something which is
perfect, as a step towards requiring the actualisation of this perfection on the basis of existence itself being a higher state of perfection. Though
Immanuel Kant's
refutation, denying
existence itself as a
quality, goes to the
heart of such a claim of existence being
tautological, he is applying that, I think, to a purported conception which itself never exists in the first place. For, in fact, it is impossible for something approaching "
perfection" in any
capacity to actually be
conceived.
Picture, for a moment, an infinitely long piece of
string. Try and get that
image in your
head. Well, really, whatever you've
thought of, it is a
certainty that you are not actually picturing something "infinite" -- perhaps you imagine
infinity by picturing that string trailing off
into the distance, to the point where we can no longer see it at all, but (we tell ourselves) it continues on forever outside of our view, or ability to picture. Or, you may picture a string running straight across a
horizon, your image pulling back from it as your field of view expands by orders of magnitude.
We do these things in place of
undertaking the
impossible task of picturing such a string as it actually goes on,
forever. To
contemplate an actualisable infinite string, we would need to spend an infinite amount of
time on the thought itself. And so it is this way, in which we imagine perfection, by modeling an actually imperfect mental construct that comes as close to perfection as our minds are able to contemplate, but does not in fact achieve the conceptual step prerequisite to actualisation. Seeking a more abstract conception, consider the greatest or most perfect piece of
music composable. The
phrase "the greatest piece of music composable" is not, itself, utterly devoid of meaning, as we can imagine that such a thing might be -- but there is no means to conceptualise the actual tune for which that description would be universally true. We can not hum a few
bars and know our conceptualisation to be objectively correct.
Simply put, perfection -- being "the greatest conceivable" in any
field -- is a form of infinity, a
projection that is infinite along the lines of perfectness. And, since we really can't truly conceive of an infinite, no conception actually exists to require this illusory conceived infinite be perfected along some tautological additional dimension of actual existence. Not only can we not conceive the infinite, we are, in fact (indeed, by definition) unable to truly fully conceive of things that are merely incomprehensibly large. For example, we can look at a book's worth of pictures of
Jupiter and descriptions of its characteristics, but we can no more construct a fully accurate mental image of the sheer vastness of that planet than we can
circumnavigate it by crawling naked for the length of the
Jovian equator.
Reflecting upon the
limitations of the
human mind to do anything more than model limited versions of abstract infinites, we can see the impossibility of actually conceiving "that than which no greater can be conceived." Where
David Hume, in the previous node, says the
ideal can exist only in the human mind, he has already gone a step too far, for it is only model of the ideal that can therein persist. And, anticipating one remaining possible challenge, if we remove this humanistic consideration, then the Ontological Argument itself ceases to exist, for it is only a construct of human thought. As an absolute premise, the argument requires the human reader giving it consideration to first conceive the perfection suggested -- to suppose that God must exist because God would be able to conceive God is to
beg the question.