플라톤의 수염, 칸트의 백 탈러, 존재론적 증명

초록

‘Plato’s beard,’ as Quine calls it, shows how difficult it is to say of non-existent things that there are no such things. Although it is not an easy matter to expose the trick, we have a good reason to doubt any arguments which depend critically on Plato’s beard in their trial to establish something’s existence. Kant’s ‘a-hundred-thaler argument’ states that being is not a real predicate, and that to affirm the existence of an object is not to add anything new to the contents of its concept. Moore clearly shows what Kant’s statement means. Plantinga tries to make cases against this argument; his case, however, should be viewed with suspicious eyes since he touches Plato’s beard at several places. His case cannot be agreed because he exploits a device in which ‘exist’ behaves like other normal predicates. Further Plantinga argues that a-hundred-thaler argument is irrelevant to the soundness of Anselm’s ontological proof. The author argues that Plantinga’s stratagem cannot succeed; that a-hundred-thaler argument contradicts the essential premise of Anselm’s proof. Kant’s a-hundred-thaler argument implies that the greatness of a real object is equal to that of a possible object, if they can be significantly compared.

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