Descartes’s Ontological Argument – David McCarty, UI, Bloomington

Abstract: Both Descartes and Anselm subscribed to the classical notion of grades of being: that all things are organized into a hierarchy with places determined by the amount or extent to which a given thing exists. By embedding the order on grades of being into a Boolean-valued model, I give a straightforward formalization, over such models, of Descartes’s ontological argument from his Meditations. The formalization reflects elements of the interpretation history of the argument, and suggests responses to some standard objections lodged against it. No extensive background in Boolean-valued model theory is presupposed; needed technical matters will be introduced and explained as required.

Happy New Year! The L&M Workshop will be running again this semester as usual. Mondays 4.15-6.15, CUNY GC. Room still to be fixed. The program as it currently stands is as follows. Details of each meeting will be announced in due course. Note that we will be starting on Feb 27, and May 8 is still to be fixed.  Hope to see you at some of the meetings.  Graham