Historically, the philosophical literature on the ontological argument has primarily been concerned with the assessment of the argument in terms of its validity or lack thereof. Rarely have the logical foundations of validity itself been investigated in their relation to the argument. My thesis seeks to remedy this omission by investigating the correlation between changing conceptions of logic and ontological argumentation. To do so, I discuss the conceptions of logic employed by three of the most notable modern expositors of the ontological argument: Leibniz, Kant and Frege. I characterize their conceptions of logic in terms of formality and modality and subsequently relate these characterizations to their respective critiques of the ontological argument, establishing that an important correlation exists between ones conception of logic and ones assessment of ontological argumentation. In conclusion, I argue for the importance of understanding ontological argumentation not only in terms of its validity within a given conception of logic, but also in terms of the validity of the conception of logic itself.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-12072009-223643 |
| Date | 25 January 2010 |
| Creators | Lanros, Wynne Elizabeth |
| Contributors | Paula Kane, Nicholas Rescher, Steven Anthony Edwards |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12072009-223643/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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