I recently was sent an upcoming article by Andrew Chignell from Allen Wood about Kant's ontological argument. Here are some thoughts that I sent to Professor Wood about Chignell's article and a brief analysis of the seeming incoherency (or incompleteness) of Kant's account.
As far as I can tell, Chignell seems to think that Kant's proof doesn't end up working because he has yet to show that all of the 'fundamental' properties are 'harmonious' - ie. that their combination in a single subject is metaphysically possible, where metaphysically possible means that the properties in question actually do not conflict, rather than it being the case that one cannot concieve their non-conflict (this Kant takes to be the characteristic form of logical possibility). Of course, as Chignell states, Leibniz's proof is certainly merely logical in this sense, since he takes properties to express 'reality' or 'positive degrees of perfection' which cannot conflict with one another due to contradictions arising only 'through negation'. Chignell maintains that Kant does not (and cannot) prove the material coherence of all of the fundamental properties with one another and so his proof rests on the same shaky footing as Leibniz's.
I wonder though, about the status of Kant's assumption of real, metaphysical possibility being fundamentally conditioned by actuality. As you know, there are many philosophers who think that an actualist metaphysic fails because of singular existential statements involving non-existent entites - the worry is: how do you ground the fact that there might have existed some obect x, wholly distinct from every other actual object? Of course, I think Adams' "true at" and "true in" distinction of possible world semantics solves this problem well enough.
But there is another worry that I wonder about - so-called 'Aristotelian Actualism' (as laid out by G.W. Fitch) wherein what is possible is conditioned solely on what is (contingently) actual. Notably, in Plantinga and Adams' abstractionist possible world ontology, worlds exist necessarily in order to secure the (seemingly) infinite 'ways things might have been'; this is not to say that only actualists have such a populated ontology, certainly Lewis has not only population but crowdedness! The Aristotelian actualist though, claims that possible worlds are both abstract objects (propositional or otherwise) and that they exist according to how things happen to be in this world. 'Actual' here is not an indexical term (as it is for Lewis), nor is it a term picking out a world that 'obtains' (as it is for Plantinga and Adams), since, strictly speaking, other worlds' existence is contingent upon actuality - ie. actuality is a kind of primitive.
I think Kant's idea in 'One Possible Basis...' is something akin to Aristotelian actualism. Granted, the Divine Mind serves as a place wherein all properties are safely secured and in this sense, possible worlds (being, as Leibniz had it, so many compossible collections of properties) are necessary in a certain sense. And yet, there is the comittment that if it were the case, per impossible, that God was not an actual being, but instead merely possible, there could be no possible worlds either. It seems to me that if one is to be an Aristotelian actualist, one must eventually find a ground in a Necessary Being. Fitch seems to think that since it is the case that 'Socrates could have been a gymnast' would not be true in worlds wherein Socrates doesn't exist - such a proposition is only possibly possible. I tend to think though, that in an actual world wherein Socrates does not exist, it is still a necessary truth that there are some worlds wherein Socrates does exist and presumably wherein (at least one of these) he is a gymnast. In short, I think that possibly possible just collapses into possible simpliciter. And if one thinks such a thing with a strong comittment to S5, then eventually there will have to be something that is necessarily actual in order to house all of these de re possibilities.
Regarding Kant's proof, I wonder whether or not the onus is on someone who posits a Necessary Being to do the housing to show that all of the properties which go to make-up worlds have to be metaphysically compossible (in Kant's sense). Why think that the 'housing of properties' in the Divine Being has to be conjunctive between possible worlds? That is, why can we not say that God's Understanding contains many self-contained (metaphyiscally) possible worlds? I don't see the need for Kant to claim that all properties must be metaphysically compossible; even Leibniz thought that some concepts were incompossible with other concepts. And if he could claim that there are many self-contained metaphysically possible worlds, perhaps each with the same fundamental material make-up, there seems to be no need for him to show that any properties do not metaphyisically conflict with one another.
All one has to say, I think, is the following: "The possibility of any world that is actual obtaining - whichever world happens to be actual - is grounded in an actually necessary being wherein every metaphyiscally compossible world exists". One would not have to go on to attempt to prove that certain properties are metaphysically compossible - all he would have to say is: since this world is actual, it is clear that there is, in the Divine Mind, a certain world in which the properties (fundamental or otherwise) are not metaphysically inharmonious. Once Kant has shown that something like Aristotelian actualism is true - that what is metaphyiscally (or really) possible must have materially harmonious elements - then he can go on to present a picture of the Divine Mind as securing those truths by means of self-contained (metaphysically) compossible worlds.
The thought here is, I think, that if what Chignell calls the 'modal principle of sufficient reason' can be shown to be the correct analysis of possibility, why should Kant have to say anything on which properties are metaphysically possible and which aren't? There simply is actuality, revealing (some of the) possibilities which are metaphysically possible and, given that there must be an ultimate root - there is a Divine Being that is necessarily actual housing any possibilities that might turn out to be actual.
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