Kant on the Ontological Argument

Kant claims the ontological argument is unsound because existence is not a predicate. Since existene is not "something' that can be part of our concept of a thing, it can not be part of our concept of God. Basically Kant thinks existence consists in the application of a concept to reality. He foreshadows the Russellian view of existence as a second order property.

My concern with Kant's critique lies in the relationship between two claims:

(1) Existence is not a real predicate

and


(2) Existence is not a first order property


I don't think (1) entails (2)

To be a "real predicate" is to be part of the concept of a thing. To be a property is to be part of a thing (or instantiated by the thing--the point is properties deal with reality, predicates with concepts)

Suppose there was a feature of reality that could not be part of the concept of a thing. Surely we cannot rule out a priori the possibility of such a property.

But how could such a property be known? if it is not part of the concept, how do we even thing about it?

My answer is to suggest that thinking by means of concepts is only one way to understand something. I can think of pain by means of a concept (i had a bad headache yesterday) OR I can think of pain by directly experiencing the pain. Only the former requires a concept.

I think that the cogito provides us with an example of a property being present phenomenologically, but which may, as Kant says, never be a part of our concept of something. When I know I exist, I know something about me intuitively, not by means of concepts. So I have reason to think that existence is a property even if Kant is right that existence is not a real predicate.

Another way of making the same point is to consider whether it is proper to think of consciousness as an object at all. Perhaps our concepts are limited to cognition of objects, but that which is aware of objects is of a radically different ontological kind.( compare Berkeley on notions and ideas.)

Could there be a non-existent consciousness?

My earlier argument pretty quickly assumed that If existence is a property of consciousness, it is a necessary property. I took for granted that there could not be non-existent consciousness, though there may be non-existent objects.


But why suppose this to be the case. Of course there are those who either deny existence is a property or hold that it is a property that everything has. I think there is at least a phenomenological distinction between:


(1) I am aware of a chair


and


(2) I am aware of my self (or my awareness)



Only (2) contains the guarantee of existence. Indeed, if (1) guaranteed existence, skeptical arguments would no longer keep us up at night.



But consider this case: In a dream I encounter Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is presented as a person, not as an inanimate object. Therefore there is a sense in which if we allow non-existent objects, we need, on similiar grounds to allow non-existent persons. And if we allow that persons are conscious, it then follows that there is non-existent consciousness.


This conclusion can be avoided by denying non-existent objects altogether. Stubborn Meinongian that I am, I am not going to take that route.


Rather I propose we recognize that there are two different ways in which we can be aware of a consciousness, and it is only the first person way, my awareness of my awareness, that guarantees existence.


Sherlock Holmes is presented, in the dream, as being conscious--but his consciousness is not presented to me in an intuitive way. Rather it is presented after the manner that the back of a building is presented. In Husserl's terminology, it is presented as "merely meant." There is no intuitive grasp of consciousness when we are presented with the other

But this does not solve the problem. We are considering not whether or not we have an intuitive grasp of Sherlock Holmes' consciousness--if we did, we would know it to exist, and Sherlock Holmes would cease to be a nonexistent person. And here we see a disanalogy between consciousenss and nonexistent objects. While I may merely think of a unicorn, i can also have an intuitive awareness of a unicorn (in a dream or hallucination). But I can never have an intuitive grasp of a non-existent consciousness--if I did, I would then know the consciousness to exist.

Furthermore, if we suppose that "there are" nonexistent consciousness, then we would have to allow that Sherlock Holmes could perform the reductio. Just as the nonexistent holmes can have the property of walking, so to the nonexistent holmes can, it seems, have the property of thinking about his thinking and concluding that he exists.

But this, I take it, is absurd.

What we need to do, I think, is to go back and limit the class of nonexistent objects to those that can be presented in a intuitive way. An "object" which can only be "meant", which can never be present in person, must be understood in some other way. Similiarly, just because I can seem to think of an impossible object (the last prime number, for example) is not, by itslef, sufficient to suppose that there are impossible non-existent numbers. I have never been happy with the example of the round square--to me, all that I can think of in this case is "roundness," squareness" and the incompatibility of the two properties.