# Every Proof of God Collapses

Speaker: Reed Winegar
Course: Kant’s Three Questions
Watch: https://ergo.org/videos/reed-winegar-every-proof-of-god-collapses
Transcript: https://ergo.org/videos/reed-winegar-every-proof-of-god-collapses/transcript/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J1cFn3uo6M

When quoting, name the speaker and link to the watch URL.

In this lecture, Reed Winegar walks through Kant's famous critique of the three classical arguments for God's existence: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, and the design argument (which Kant calls the "physico-theological" argument). Winegar explains how Kant challenges each in turn, showing why existence is not a real predicate, why the cosmological argument cannot bridge the gap between a necessary being and God, and why the design argument still falls short of proof. Winegar also reveals how these three arguments are deeply interconnected in Kant's analysis. The lecture then turns to Kant's counterintuitive argument that our inability to prove God's existence is actually a good thing. Rather than something to lament, this limitation protects the foundations of religion and morality. Kant even finds a positive role for the idea of God as a guiding principle in scientific inquiry.

## Overview: Knowledge of God's Existence

One of Kant's best-known set of arguments is a set of arguments for the claim that we're not able to have knowledge one way or the other, regarding God's existence. What I'm going to do in this lecture is look at the particular arguments that Kant gives, for why he claims that we're not able to have this kind of knowledge. And then say a little bit about why Kant actually thinks our inability to have this kind of knowledge is good for us, rather than something to lament. And then, finally, a little bit about how even though Kant thinks that we can't have knowledge of God's existence, that the idea of God plays an important regulative role, for Kant, in terms of orienting us and regulating our empirical inquiry into the world.

## God as the Most Real Being (Ens Realissimum)

Let me start off by going over Kant's basic conception of God, and then from there, the different criticisms that he provides of traditional arguments for God's existence. When Kant's talking about God in the *Critique of Pure Reason*, he's working with a specific conception of God, namely the notion of God as the ens realissimum, the most real being. Kant thinks that our faculty of reason inevitably leads us to this notion of a most real being.

In particular, when he's talking about the notion, it's important to highlight that when he's talking about the notion of real here and most real, we shouldn't interpret real to mean existence. Rather, he's using the notion of real here the way that various medieval philosophers use the notion of perfection, where he wants to talk about certain predicates, certain, we might say, properties, as what he calls realities. Where to be the most real being is to have the being who possesses those realities in their most unlimited form.

As an example, you might think that something like power is a reality. And the most real being, therefore, would be a being that was powerful, and as the most real being was not simply powerful or very powerful, but all-powerful, omnipotent. So to say that God is the most real being is to say that God has all of the different realities in their most unlimited, maximal form.

Kant thinks that various philosophers have tried to argue from the notion of a most real being, from the basic idea or notion of a being of the most reality, to the existence of a being that matches that concept or matches that idea, that lives up to the status of being the most real being. And one of Kant's major moves in the *Critique of Pure Reason* is to try to undercut the arguments that philosophers have tried to give, on theoretical grounds, for the existence of a most real being or of God.

## Three Types of Arguments for God's Existence

Kant divides the different traditional arguments for God's existence into three main categories. He refers to what he calls the ontological argument, the cosmological argument and the physico-theological argument. The ontological argument, there's lots of various ontological arguments, but Kant thinks that what's definitive of ontological arguments is that they attempt to argue for God's existence based on simply the concept of God. So trying to move from the idea of God, the concept of God, the notion of God, to the claim that an object exists or being exists, God, who satisfies that concept, matches that concept or that idea.

Cosmological arguments are going to be arguments that argue from the general existence of the world as a contingent entity, to the existence of God as a necessary being who grounds the world's existence. And then physico-theological arguments are going to be arguments that don't argue from really general features of the world, like the world's, overall world's contingency, but that appeal to much more specific features of the world, like the structure of the solar system or the structure of plants and animals, in order to argue for God's existence.

And what Kant does in the first critique is he claims that all of the different arguments that fall under these three headings fail in what they set out to do, that none of them is actually able to demonstrate the existence of God.

## The Ontological Argument Explained

I'm going to start with the ontological argument, and then I'll move to the other two. The way that Kant understands the ontological argument is that the ontological argument aims to move from the notion of a most real being to the existence of such a being by analyzing the notion of a being of the most reality in the following way. A version of the argument would say something like to exist, existence itself is a kind of reality. I'm powerful, I'm wise, I exist. The same way that to be powerful or to be wise might be seen as realities, that existence is also a reality.

And so to say that we have the notion of the most real being as the being that has all of the realities in their unlimited form seems to entail that that being is also going to be a being that possesses existence as a reality. So it's part then, the argument says, of the notion of a most real being that that being is going to exist. If it didn't exist, it wouldn't be the most real being because it would lack a reality, namely the reality of existence. So if it is a most real being, then it's going to have to exist because it's going to need to possess that reality of existence.

## Why Existence Is Not a Real Predicate

Kant's critical of this argument. It's worth noting that his worries with this argument predate the *Critique of Pure Reason* by about 20 years. In his earlier text known as the *Beweisgrund*, he already criticizes this kind of ontological argument. His basic move is to deny that existence is a reality, or as it's oftentimes put, he denies that existence is a real predicate.

The way that Kant's argument here is typically construed is in the way that it was understood by and influenced the logician Frege, who was really critical for the development of formal logical systems in the late 1800s into the early 1900s. What Frege took from Kant, from Kant's criticism of the ontological argument, and the way that Kant's criticism is typically understood is in the following way. That if I have a concept, then I can ask the question whether there is an object that instantiates that concept, whether there's an object that's an instance of that concept. And in doing so, I'm not looking at the content of the concept itself. Rather, I'm asking a question about the overall concept, namely the question, is there an object that instantiates that particular concept?

To say that something exists is not to say that the predicate existence is contained in the concept. It's rather to say that the concept with its content is instantiated. In the case of God, we have the concept God. And the traditional ontological argument that Kant is criticizing would want to say that existence is a mark that belongs to this concept, that is part of the content of the concept. Kant denies that existence is the sort of thing that can be a mark that is part of the content of a concept. Rather, it would be the case that there either is or isn't some being that realizes that concept or that instantiates that concept.

## The Hundred Dollars Example

In order to motivate the idea that existence is not part of the content of a concept, not one of the marks that belongs to a concept, Kant provides some kinds of intuition pumps. The example that he really likes is the example of an actual hundred dollars versus a possible hundred dollars. Or he talks about dollars. We have the notion of a possible hundred dollars. I think to myself, "I really want to get a hundred dollars for my birthday." There's nothing in the world I want more. I'm entertaining the notion not of an actual hundred dollars, but a possible hundred dollars. This possible hundred dollars that I hope to receive.

And then my birthday comes along, and my family listened to me and got me what I wanted. They got me a hundred dollars. And I say, "Oh, great, I got the hundred dollars that I wanted." I got the hundred dollars that I wanted. In that case, what I'm saying is that the actual hundred dollars that I received is the same sort of thing as the possible hundred dollars that I wanted.

But what would be the case if existence was a real predicate, if existence was part of the content of a concept? The concept of a possible hundred dollars doesn't include existence, because this is supposed to be a merely possible hundred dollars, not a hundred dollars that exists. Whereas this notion does include existence, because this is the actual hundred dollars. And so if existence was a real predicate, then in saying I wanted a possible hundred dollars, I was saying something different than when I said that I received a hundred dollars. My claim of "Oh, I got what I wanted" would technically be misleading or false. Because what I wanted was a possible hundred dollars, and that's not what I got. I got an actual hundred dollars. I should be disappointed, because I didn't get the thing that I was asking for.

The issue here is that for Kant, concepts are individuated by their marks. They're individuated by the content. And so if existence is taken to be part of the content of a concept or one of the marks of a concept, then if you're talking about a possible hundred dollars, you're employing one concept. If you're talking about an actual hundred dollars, you're employing a different concept.

And Kant thinks that that's just a bridge too far. We're talking about the same thing when we're talking about the possible hundred dollars and the actual hundred dollars. We're not employing different concepts. In both cases, we're just talking about the concept of a hundred dollars, and then we're saying either that concept has an instance, is instantiated, or it's not, or at least as far as we know, it's not. So on the basis of these kinds of examples, Kant

## Influence on Frege and Formal Logic

He wants to say, we shouldn't say that existence is a real predicate, the way that we might think that something like power is a real predicate. We shouldn't think that existence is one of the marks that belongs to the content of a concept. Rather, when we're talking about whether something exists or not, that's a way of saying, is this concept instantiated or is the concept not instantiated?

So this way of thinking about Kant's argument was historically influential for Frege, who in his systems, or in the systems that derive from his early work, will oftentimes have a predicate, like a predicate F. And then we'll say, there exists some X such that X is F. So if F meant powerful, there exists some X such that that X is powerful. Or alternately, we would say that there does not exist some X such that X is powerful.

And so in these cases, what we're doing is, we're either saying that there is something that satisfies this predicate or there is nothing that satisfies this predicate. So we have the predicate with its content, and then we're just asking whether or not there is or isn't something that satisfies that predicate or is an instance of that predicate.

## How Significant Is the Ontological Argument?

Kant says so much for the ontological argument. You might find this to be in a way short work for what's been a prominent argument in the history of philosophy. But it's worth noting that Kant himself has always been of the persuasion that the ontological argument is the argument that's only of interest to academics or philosophers at the university. He doesn't think that most people are grounding their religious beliefs on these abstract arguments like the ontological argument.

And there's a way in which he doesn't actually in some way see it as the most forceful of the different arguments that he's actually considering. There's ways in which, although it gets oftentimes less attention, that he sometimes seems to see the physico-theological argument as a bigger target or worry that he has to contend with. And so I'll talk about that in a few minutes.

## The Cosmological Argument's Two Stages

The second type of argument that he considers is the cosmological argument. Cosmos, of course, is relating to the notion of the world. So the cosmological argument, remember, is an argument that starts off by looking at some really general feature of the world, like the world's existence as contingent, and then infers from that contingency to the existence of God.

The way that Kant sees the cosmological argument going is it starts off by saying that there exists some contingent thing, and then suggesting that a contingent thing needs to have some kind of ground that explains its existence. If that ground is itself a contingent thing, then it needs some ground that explains its existence. And so on pain of an infinite regress, we're going to end up with saying that there is some necessary being at the bottom of the chain, that supports the contingent existence.

One way that Kant wants to criticize the cosmological argument is he seems to want to indicate that we're not able to know that the contingent item at the end of the day is grounded on some necessary being. He has argued elsewhere in the first critique, for example, in the fourth antinomy, that at the end of the day, if there was a necessary being that grounded contingency, then that being would need to be at the level of supersensible things in themselves, and we can't have knowledge of supersensible things in themselves. So what he wants to say is that we can't know that there's a necessary being grounding contingency.

But the criticism that he oftentimes actually seems to put more weight on is the following, that there's a gap between claiming the existence of a necessary being

## The Gap Between Necessary Being and God

and claiming the existence of God. God, remember, is being thought of here as the ens realissimum, the most real being. If I prove to you that there was some necessary being, that is not immediately guaranteeing that that necessary being is the most real being. Maybe there is a necessary being that's lacking in certain realities, or maybe the necessary being's powerful but not omnipotent, for example. Kant suggests that philosophers standardly think the cosmological argument provides a proof of God's existence because they think, "All right, I've shown there's a necessary being. What would a being need to be like in order to exist of necessity or to be a necessary being? Oh, it would need to be a being that contained existence as one of its predicates. It would need to be the most real being."

In other words, philosophers say, if we have the notion of a necessary being via the rationale of the ontological argument, that necessary being must be the most real being, the ens realissimum. Because the only way to account for its necessity would be to say it's the most real being that contains existence as one of its realities, as one of its real predicates. And Kant says, look, we already showed that the ontological argument doesn't work. We already showed that existence isn't a real predicate. So there's no reason to claim that the only way there could be this necessary being is if it were also the most real being.

Maybe there could be a necessary being that somehow exists of necessity in some way that we can't comprehend, but there's no rational inference from the mere fact of a necessary being to the claim that necessary being is God understood specifically as the most real being. In other words, Kant sees the cosmological argument as moving in two stages. It first moves from the idea there's some contingent thing to the claim there's necessary being. Kant's skeptical about this stage as providing us knowledge there's a necessary being.

But beyond that, the argument has the second stage of saying that there's necessary being and that necessary being is God. And Kant's adamant in criticizing this step of the argument, saying that there's no way to go from the notion of a necessary being to the claim that being would have to be God. People have been tempted into making this mistaken move because they were following the rationale of the ontological argument, at least implicitly. That argument's no good. This is not a licensed move.

## The Design Argument and Its Limits

The final argument that Kant considers is the physico-theological argument. And this is the kind of argument that's more standardly referred to today in terms of design arguments. Remember, the ontological argument began just from, not from the claim of something that exists, but just from the concept of a most real being. And then the cosmological argument wasn't starting from a mere concept, it was starting from some given fact, like the world exists as a contingent thing. There is some contingent item. But that fact was a very general, it didn't matter which item. It was just there's some contingent item that exists.

The physico-theological argument is moving from the observation that some specific type of item exists to the claim that God exists as somehow the ground of that item's existence. And so the kinds of examples that Kant has foremost in mind, in talking about the physico-theological argument, are things like order in the heavens and the kinds of structures that we find in organic beings, plants, and animals. So a standard physico-theological argument would say something like, "Animals have a kind of structure that can't be explained on the basis of merely mechanical laws. What would account for their existence? Oh, there must be some sort of further provisions provided for their existence over and above the mechanical laws of nature, and the ground of those provisions must be God." So making this kind of argument from the existence of these specific sorts of entities to the existence of God.

And Kant thinks that the physico-theological argument also doesn't get what it set out to demonstrate. It set out to demonstrate the existence of God as an ens realissimum, and it doesn't get there. And why not? Well, if you're talking about the case of plants and animals, Kant says, even if you granted the argument that there needed to be some kind of mind that accounted for the arrangement of the matter in the plants and animals, there's no reason to think that that being would need to have been the creator of matter itself rather than just the organizer of matter. Or in Kant's terms, they would need to be a creator instead of a mere architect.

But an ens realissimum, God as an ens realissimum, which is what Kant thinks that the argument set out to prove, would not be a mere architect, but would need to be a creator. So if the argument fails to prove the existence of a creator of matter, and at best only shows the existence of an arranger of matter, then it hasn't proven what it set out to prove. It hasn't proven the existence of God as an ens realissimum.

## Potential Rejoinders from Traditional Metaphysics

Similarly, maybe in order to arrange the cosmos in an orderly way or to provide provisions in nature that allow for the existence of plants and animals, somebody could grant the argument in principle that there needs to be some kind of powerful being. Would that being really need to be omnipotent in order to carry out those tasks? And so once again, Kant thinks no, it's not obvious the being would need to be omnipotent. And so once again, the argument hasn't demonstrated what it set out to do. It hasn't demonstrated the existence of God because it hasn't demonstrated the existence of a most real being, an ens realissimum.

Now, for both the cosmological argument and the physico-theological argument, there could be a critic of Kant, or a proponent of traditional metaphysics who could be happy to grant Kant that the argument doesn't get all the way to a most real being, but nevertheless try to say that it does get us, in the case of the cosmological argument, to the existence of a necessary being, and to say that that's not a bad metaphysical result. To try to say that the first step of the argument should be taken as providing us knowledge of a necessary being. Kant himself seems to want to push back against that, just saying, "No, no, no, that's supersensible. We can't have knowledge of the supersensible." But the traditional metaphysician might worry that that's begging the question. They're saying, "No, we do have this knowledge. These contingent things have to have a necessary being as their ground. They're contingent. There is necessary being. Kant, you got to do more to convince us."

Similarly, with the physico-theological argument, a traditional kind of metaphysician might say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe this argument doesn't get us all the way to the most real being, but why not think it's getting us to a more limited claim, like the existence of a very powerful being?" And it's not obvious that in these particular texts that Kant, in these particular sections of argumentation, has really done anything to properly push back against those kinds of rejoinders that a proponent of traditional metaphysics might try to make against him. Which is unfortunate, that he doesn't say a bit more here, regarding these potential rejoinders, and how exactly he would want to handle them.

## How All Three Arguments Are Connected

In any case, the conclusion that Kant draws is the following. He thinks that people have been mistakenly tempted into thinking that the physico-theological argument provides a demonstration of God's existence because he thinks people have erroneously reasoned in the following way. They have said, "We're going to note that there's these specific kinds of beings in the world, like plants and animals. We're going to say that the arrangement of these plants and animals seems contingent relative to the mechanical laws of nature. The mechanical laws of nature can't account for their existence. But contingency ultimately has to be explained. And so if this is contingent, then it must have some ground, and if that ground's contingent, it must have some ground. And then you need to have a necessary being on pain of an infinite regress."

In other words, philosophers have actually just once again rehearsed the first step of the cosmological argument, and then have once again made that fallacious move of thinking that the necessary being would have to be the most real being because they have mistakenly bought into the ontological argument's rationale. And so Kant says philosophers think the physico-theological argument works because they conflate it with the cosmological argument, and they think the cosmological argument works because they mistakenly think the ontological argument works and that that proves the necessary being's the most real being. And so the fact that the ontological argument doesn't work actually means that none of the other arguments are able to prove the existence of a most real being either. The cosmological argument and physico-theological argument ultimately rest on the ontological argument for their persuasive power. The ontological argument fails. These arguments therefore also fail.

Now, that gives a kind of importance to the ontological argument argumentatively into Kant's criticism of the ontological argument. But like I mentioned before, Kant tends to think of the ontological and cosmological argument as both very abstract arguments of interest to professional philosophers, but not necessarily persuading a lot of people out there in the world. And that's in contrast to the physico-theological argument, which he continually says appeals to common sense. So as much as Kant's criticisms of the ontological argument have carried a lot of interest, maybe in large part because of the influence on Frege and this notion of existence, in Kant's own context, the physico-theological argument is in many ways a more prominent argument or an argument that he thinks is more likely to actually be convincing to your everyday person than these other arguments.

Now, there's a way of reading these sections of the first critique and seeing Kant as a watershed moment in the emergence of modern secular culture, seeing these criticisms of these proofs of God as aiming in many ways to undermine traditional tenets of religious belief. And Kant has oftentimes been read and interpreted in that way. But that particular reading of Kant is a little misleading about Kant's own aims and intentions, because Kant actually thinks that his criticisms of these arguments for God's existence are good for various kinds of religious purposes.

## Why Not Proving God Benefits Religion and Morality

Kant makes three main points in this regard. First, Kant emphasizes that he has shown that one is not able to prove the existence of God, but by the same token, he thinks that one is not able to disprove the existence of God. If our metaphysical arguments have no purchase on proving or disproving claims about the supersensible, then they have no purchase on proving God's existence, but also have no purchase on proving God's non-existence. So Kant, in a way, sees his position as helpful for the philosopher who wants to avoid a dogmatic atheism, or a proof of atheism that isn't the sort of thing that can be established. It might be the case that God exists as far as we can know on theoretical grounds. It might be the case that God doesn't exist as far as we can know on theoretical grounds, but we can't disprove God's existence.

Second, Kant thinks that there is a big concern with how people portray or represent God. In particular, Kant is very worried about anthropomorphic representations of God that attribute various features to God that a most perfect being couldn't actually possess. So, for example, we're human beings, and we have limited minds, and we are in time. And as beings with limited minds in time, we think in a series of representations, and we don't represent everything all at once. Rather, many of our representations leave certain bits of information out. We have general concepts that leave out some information, and we do things like make inferences where we say, "Oh, I know this, and I know this, and on the basis of that, I infer this."

And Kant thinks that it would be inappropriate to claim that an ens realissimum did things like consider ideas in succession, or employed general representations that left out some information, or made inferences from things it knew to some further thing that it previously didn't take itself to know but now took itself to know since it had been inferred. And Kant worries that if we were able to have knowledge of God's existence, then there would be a worry that the knowledge that would be provided would be knowledge of an anthropomorphic God, and thus not God at all, actually yielding an incoherency. It's like in the case of the physico-theological argument, if you're thinking of that argument in terms of something like an intelligent designer. Kant thinks that notion of an intelligent designer can seem very anthropomorphic. And if we're picturing a human mind, a human artisan portraying God in those kinds of ways, if the physico-theological argument actually provided us with knowledge of the supersensible, maybe it would be providing us with knowledge of the existence of this artisan God, this anthropomorphic God, but then that wouldn't be an ens realissimum. And so it would actually, in a way, be a threat to the existence of God as an ens realissimum. It would be providing knowledge that there's actually just this lesser deity rather than God properly speaking.

Third, Kant thinks that our inability to know if God exists is also morally important. He claims at various places, for example, in the critique of practical reason, that if we knew that God existed, then we would know that God would punish us for acting immorally and would reward us for acting morally. And Kant maintains that in such a situation, it would be, psychologically speaking, basically impossible for people to refrain from acting or not acting based on fears of punishments or promises of reward. And the issue is that in Kant's moral philosophy, the way to actually act morally is not to act either on the basis of fears of punishments or promises of reward, but rather to act out of merely respect for the moral law.

And so Kant worries that if people knew that God existed, then they wouldn't, psychologically speaking, really be able to properly act out of respect for the moral law. Rather, they would be continually driven to act in ways that were based on fear of divine punishment or hope for divine rewards, and this would make it substantially more difficult, maybe even impossible, for people to truly act morally, because they wouldn't be able to act on the right kind of moral incentive or motivation. So for these types of reasons, Kant thinks that his limits on providing knowledge of God are actually helpful for the religious believer, because they show God's existence can't be denied, and they help ward against an overly anthropomorphic conception of God, and are also important morally, because they help prevent a scenario where people are unable, or at least find it much more difficult, to act on the right kind of motivation because they're too worried about divine punishment or divine rewards.

## The Regulative Idea of God in Science

Finally, although Kant claims that we can't know if God exists, he still sees a use for the idea of God in theoretical contexts. In particular, Kant maintains that the idea of God should serve as a kind of regulative idea for orienting us and guiding us in our scientific inquiry into nature. Kant's thought is that in investigating nature scientifically, we're aiming normally at arriving at a representation of nature's laws as forming some kind of system. And for Kant, the notion of nature as a system of laws should be a notion that's guiding our inquiry into nature. But how are we supposed to make sense to ourselves, or how are we supposed to think about nature as this system of laws?

In Kant's time, people took it to be the case that if nature had a systematic structure, that was because it had been given that type of structure by God, that that's how it had arrived at that kind of structure. And so Kant continues in that vein, no longer claiming that the only way that nature could have a systematic structure would be if God existed, but nevertheless claiming that if we represent nature as if it had been created by God, then that can provide us a means for representing nature as potentially having this kind of systematic structure, the kind of structure it would have if God existed and had created it. And then that can serve us as a heuristic or a guideline for our scientific inquiry into nature.

And Kant thinks, and in his context rightly so, that picturing nature in this sort of way was something that working scientists did, and that scientists in some cases had found helpful in various contexts. So he has in mind people like Newton, for example, or people investigating the anatomical structure of organic beings. And he thinks that in their cases, operating with this regulative idea of God has actually facilitated further inquiry and discoveries in the sciences, more properly speaking.

And so at the end of the day, Kant's view is that we can't have knowledge of God's existence, but it's good that we can't have that kind of knowledge of God's existence. Indeed, it's good for religion that we can't have that kind of knowledge of God's existence, and also good for morality. And even though we can't have knowledge of God's existence, the idea of God can still serve this important, orienting, regulating role, in having us represent nature to ourselves as if it were created by God in such a way that will facilitate the investigation into the different order of nature, aspects of nature, and help to facilitate scientific inquiry into the systematic structure of nature. Thanks.