The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

SCANNED PD

1. All valid arguments for God's existence are a priori, since no a posteriori argument for God could possibly be valid. Either an a posteriori argument would be valid, but would not be an argument for God's existence, or else it would be an argument for God's existence, but would not be valid. 

2. The distinctive thing about the ontological argument is not that it is a priori, since all valid arguments for God's existence must be so, but that its premise is the transcendental idea of God, assumed to be a clear and coherent idea. 

3. Essential to the transcendental idea of God is that God could not possibly be surpassed and therefore must exist necessarily, since anyone or anything existing not necessarily but only contingently would eo ipso be surpassable, because it could be surpassed by someone or something existing not contingently but necessarily. The ontological argument for God's existence exploits this point. 

4. Any other valid argument for God's existence has as its premise some transcendental idea other than God, assumed to be a clear and coherent idea. 

5. In the nature of the case, all transcendental ideas necessarily imply one another-either because they are convertible (as, e.g., are being, unity, truth, goodness, beauty) or because they are disjunctive (as, e.g., are concrete/abstract, subject/object, contingent/necessary, relative/absolute, effect/cause, or God/non-God). All of the other valid arguments for God's existence exploit this point, insofar as any transcendental idea other than the idea of God necessarily implies this transcendental idea, which, like all transcendental ideas, cannot fail to be instantiated. 

4 October 1989; rev. 12 April 1997

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