Definition of "ontological argument" []

• A type of argument proposed by a number of philosophers, including St. Anselm and Descartes, which maintains that the existence of God can be deduced from an analysis of the concept of God. (noun)

Wiktionary.org : Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• "St. Anselm's ontological argument tries to establish an existential proposition without reference to experience; it confounds the order of things with the order of ideas."
• "Kant's attempt to stigmatize the deduction of infinity from self-existence as a return to the ontological argument, was a failure; for our deduction starts from the actually existing God, not from mere ideas, as the ontological argument does."