Shotgunning Anselm's Ontological Argument with a Catholic Philosopher
16Had this guy join my discord and agitate, claiming to be earning a philo PhD and using spurious reasoning and strange tactics w/ regards to veganism and empiricism. We eventually started debating theism and it caused a ruckus. A few days later a more formal debate is agreed on neutral ground.
For the debate - he produces the ontological argument on the spot (neither party had any real prep time or much advanced notice at all) and I improvise an objection while he attempts to defend. We have a moderator. Here's the handout:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1muFzK6NGMnCn3TMU69a1eOk8ibZ2Z-Vl/view?usp=sharing
He claims to be a theist on the merit of this argument.
Full disclosure, I'm on friendly terms with the moderator and have known him for years, but he he's a philosophy PhD and was intent on upholding neutrality and rigour for this debate.
Some observations.
34:50 Cites excluded middle and then when immediately corrected on his failure to precisely describe it, describes the principle of bivalence instead, while claiming to be a teacher of logic. This was and still is very conspicuous to me, and apparently to the moderator too. It seemed extremely glaring, regardless. See the "Sorites paradox" for further info.
59:20 he incorrectly claims that begging the question can only happen in the first premise, but the position of any given premise has no significance, so this was bizarre and enables absurd circular reasoning (which ontological arguments are always full of) - so long as the question begging does not occur in P1 (which it did anyway). This could only be stated and then determinedly insisted upon in the absence of a basic inherent understanding of what makes begging the question such a big problem in the first place.
at around 1:09:50 I misspoke and claimed sound premises in a validly structured argument will necessarily produce a true conclusion, but what I meant to say was that a validly structured argument with true premises is a sound argument for which the conclusion is therefore necessarily true. I would never usually misspeak like this and I was not corrected properly at the time so I'm self-correcting here. 3am debating.
Thanks nuke for moderating: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb_RDdiqkypS6kGrC3DRY8A
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