Commentary on “The Possibility of God”

Faith and Philosophy 4 (2):202-206 (1987)
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Abstract

Clement Dore has offered a demonstration that God is possible. This is important because the Ontological Argument shows that if God is possible, it is necessarily true that God exists. Dore’s demonstration parallels Descartes’s Meditation V argument: (roughly) God by definition has all perfections; but (Dore proposes) possible existence is a perfection; therefore, God is possible. However, Leibniz recognized that Descartes’s argument is incomplete, omitting proof that the concept of God is consistent. Dore’s demonstration fails for just this reason. Dore’s defense misses this objection. If the concept of God is consistent, that directly establishes that God is possible, making assumptions about perfections irrelevant.

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Citations of this work

More on the Possibility of God.Clement Dore - 1990 - Faith and Philosophy 7 (3):340-343.
Existence as a Perfection.Michael Wreen - 2017 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 20 (1):161-172.

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