https://sites.google.com/site/goedelontologicalargument/

The project is granted to be financed by the National Centre of Science attached to Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (registration and decision nr (DEC-) 2013/08/M/HS1/00439). 

The project "Gödel’s ontological argument: history, modifications, extensions, and controversies" is devoted to one of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical problems: the issue of existence of the Absolute, this time using modern tools of formal logic (modal logics with their contemporary semantics). It covers research within analytic philosophy and involves formal-logic methods in application to analyses of specific and fundamental ontological problem.

The aim of the project is to give a new presentation and some supplements of Kurt Gödel’s ontological argument from the manuscript “Ontologischer Beweis” (1970). The members of the project intend to reconstruct the Gödelian idea of the ontological proof on the ground of formalized ontological theories within which the argument is philosophically acceptable – i.e. it is conclusive in view of the accepted specific axioms of these theories, which are extensions of appropriately chosen logics. The planned investigations are (i) modal, (ii) based on relational concepts (on causality, sufficient reason), (iii) intensional, and (iv) such that it is possible to formulate a question about the existence of God and the answer is provided by constructing a (modified) Gödelian ontological argument. They are inspired by Gödel’s philosophical views and linked with some conceptions of classical philosophy (Saint Anselm, Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes). In result it is planned to propose new classifications of known studies of Gödel’s text, to point further possible modifications of it and to rephrase old objections concerning Gödel’s argument assessing their potential validity in the known formalizations.

The project is conducted in an international four-member research team: prof. Johannes Czermak (Salzburg, Austria), prof. Srećko Kovač (Zagreb, Croatia), prof. Edward Nieznański (Warsaw, Poland), hab. dr. Kordula Świętorzecka (Warsaw, Poland; project manager). The material effect of the cooperation will be a preparation of the first monography on Gödel’s ontological argument and its modifications.