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‘Ontological’ arguments from experience: Daniel A. Dombrowski, Iris Murdoch, and the nature of divine reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2012

ELIZABETH D. BURNS
ELIZABETH D. BURNS*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Heythrop College, University of London, Kensington Square, London W8 5HN, UK e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Dombrowski and Murdoch offer versions of the ontological argument which aim to avoid two types of objection – those concerned with the nature of the divine, and those concerned with the move from an abstract concept to a mind-independent reality. For both, the nature of the concept of God/Good entails its instantiation, and both supply a supporting argument from experience. It is only Murdoch who successfully negotiates the transition from an abstract concept to the instantiation of that concept, however, and this is achieved by means of an ontological argument from moral experience which, in a reversal of the Kantian doctrine, depends ultimately on a form of the cosmological argument.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 459 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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