Dissertation Creation - The UK's original provider of custom dissertations and dissertation help...

Free Dissertations - Philosophy Dissertations

We Are Back To Having A Concept Called God, Whom We Endow With The Powerful ...

We are back to having a concept called God, whom we endow with the powerful ability to create and order, but these predicates ‘give no determinate concept at all, and do not really tell us what the thing is in itself' (A628). Just like the cosmological argument, the physico-theological argument starts from experience but in the end has to rely on the already defeated ontological argument (A630).
As Gardner (1999:242) argues, Kant's critique of the traditional arguments that try to prove God's existence have been well accepted in philosophy, even by those philosophers who are generally hostile to Kant's philosophy. But this does not mean that Kant's critique is immune to criticism. Kant's argument is based upon the claim that existence is not a real predicate (as in the ontological argument), but he cannot show any strict incoherence in the claim that existence is a real predicate.
The rational theologian may simply say that existence is a real predicate, in addition to its having the positing function described by Kant, and reject Kant's assumption that analytic judgments cannot extend our knowledge as tendentious (Gardner 1999:243).
Kant is successful however in showing that the traditional arguments, such as the cosmological and physico-theological arguments, surreptitiously rely on the theoretical ontological argument, even though they claim to be based from experience. Kant also shows us how the ontological argument invalidly ascribes existence to concepts. Although, as Gardner notes above, a rational theologian could simply state that existence is a real predicate, this is more of a plea than an argument. It is interesting to note that Kant does not completely rule out the thought of God however. In his Critique of Practical Reason, he argues that it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God in order for us to assume and work towards the highest derived good and best possible world (5:125). This is only subjectively necessary however; we have no objectively necessary duty to assume the existence of anything. But in any case, returning to the Critique of Pure Reason, the attempt to prove God's existence for Kant (A602) is ‘so much labour and effort lost', and in showing us how the traditional arguments rest on the invalid ontological argument, he presents a very strong case as to why this is so.
Bibliography

Adorno, T. W. (2001) Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Palo Alto: Stanford University
Press
Descartes, R. (1996) Meditations on First Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gardner, S. (1999) Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. London: Routledge.
Grier, M. (2001) Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kant, I. (1929) Critique of Pure Reason. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Kant, I. (1996) ‘Critique of Practical Reason' in Practical Philosophy, pp133-272.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Please note: The above dissertation snippet was written by a student and then submitted to us to display and help others. Thanks to all the students who have submitted their work to us.