Factual and Logical Necessity and the Ontological Argument

Abstract

Philosophers from anselm and scotus to hartshorne and malcolm have argued that the true claim that god is a necessary being implies that theism is a-priori demonstrable. philosophers such as hick, penelhum, and geach have denied this, contending 1) that god's necessity is factual, indicating his eternal independence, rather than logical, indicating his existence in all possible worlds, and 2) that from the former nothing follows a-priori about the truth or falsity of theism. i argue that factual and logical necessity are conceptually inseparable, that god can be demonstrated to exist in all possible worlds. i take statements about the modalities of existence of things to be equivalent to statements about the modalities of instantiation of concepts, and argue that the concept god is necessarily instantiated, i.e., that god necessarily exists. the argument is compared and contrasted to a similar argument of hartshorne's.