BibTeX
@MISC{Derives07fromthe,
author = {Hartshorne Derives and Jordan Howard Sobel},
title = {from the premises that and that,},
year = {2007}
}
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Abstract
“There is a perfect being, or perfection exists,” “perfection is not impossible,” “perfection could not exist contingently. ” (Hartshorne 1962, pp. 50-1.) Rowe, pointing the finger at common grounds since Anselm for premises such as the second one, says why, when it is a question whether certain kinds of things exist, it cannot be settled that it is at least not impossible, that is, that it is at least possible, that they exist, simply by observing that we understand the natures of these kinds and that our ideas of them harbour no contradictions. Hartshorne’s premises are, on certain assumptions, equivalent to at least close approximations of corollaries to which Anselm was committed of the premises of the major argument in Proslogion 2. and “Something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought exists in the mind.” “That-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought cannot exist in the mind alone [and not also in reality].” (Charlesworth 1979, p. 117: quotations from the Proslogion and ancillary documents are, unless otherwise indicated, from this work. M. J. Charlesworth’s translation of Proslogion 2 is in Section 1 below, and of Proslogion 3 and 4 in Appendix B below.) Hartshorne’s conclusion is similarly related to the conclusion of that argument, “Something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists both in the mind and in reality.” Rowe’s point can be found ‘in embryo ’ in Gaunilo’s Pro Insipiente 2. These venerable clerics, Anselm and Gaunilon, are ‘re-matched ’ in Hartshorne and Rowe for another look at how all this began and might soon have ended.
