Idealistic Ontological Arguments in Royce, Collingwood, and Others

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (4):411 (2012)
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Abstract

This essay examines how, in the early twentieth century, ontological arguments were employed in the defense of metaphysical idealism. The idealists of the period tended to grant that ontological arguments defy our usual expectations in logic, and so they were less concerned with the formal properties of Anselmian arguments. They insisted, however, that ontological arguments are indispensable, and they argued that we can trust argumentation as such only if we presume that there is a valid ontological argument. In the first section I outline the history of this metalogical interpretation of the ontological argument. In the subsequent sections I explain how Royce and Collingwood each developed the argument, and how this impacted their respective conceptions of both logic and metaphysics.

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Kevin Harrelson
Ball State University

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References found in this work

Can God's existence be disproved?J. N. Findlay - 1948 - Mind 57 (226):176-183.
XV.—The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God.Albert A. Cock - 1918 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 18 (1):363-384.
Idealism, essence, and existence.R. A. Schermerhorn - 1935 - Journal of Philosophy 32 (15):408-414.
Situations and representations.Janet Dean Fodor - 1985 - Linguistics and Philosophy 8 (1):13 - 22.

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