New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion

General Editor: W. D. Hudson, Reader in Moral Philosophy,

University of Exeter

This series of monographs includes studies of all the main

problems in the philosophy of religion. It will be of particular
interest to those who study this subject in universities or colleges.
The philosophical problems connected with religious belief are
not, however, a subject of concern only to specialists; they arise
in one form or another for all intelligent men when confronted
by the appeals or the claims of religion.
The general approach of this series is from the standpoint of
contemporary analytical philosophy, and the monographs are
written by a distinguished team of philosophers, all of whom
now teach, or have recently taught, in British or American
universities. Each author has been commissioned to analyse
some aspect of religious belief; to set forth clearly and concisely
the philosophical problems which arise from it; to take into
account the solutions which classical or contemporary philoso-
phers have offered; and to present his own critical assessment
of how religious belief now stands in the light of these problems
and their proposed solutions.
In the main it is theism with which these monographs deal,
because that is the type of religious belief with which readers
are most likely to be familiar, but other forms of religion are not
ignored. Some of the authors are religious believers and some
are not, but it is not their primary aim to write polemically,
much less dogmatically, for or against religion. Rather, they
set themselves to clarify the nature of religious belief in the light
of modern philosophy by bringing into focus the questions about
it which a reasonable man as such has to ask. How is talk of
God like, and how unlike, other universes of discourse in which
men engage, such as science, art or morality? Is this talk of
God self-consistent? Does it accord with other rational beliefs
which we hold about man or the world which he inhabits? It
is questions such as these which this series will help the reader
to answer for himself.
New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion

IN THE SAME SERIES

Published

D. Z. Phillips Death and Immortality

Richard Swinburne The Concept of Miracle
Vernon Pratt Religion and Secularisation
W. W. Bartley III Morality and Religion
Jonathan Barnes The Ontological Argument
Thomas McPherson The Argument from Design
T. R. Miles Religious Experience
Ninian Smart The Concept of Worship

In preparation

D. J. O'Connor The Cosmological Argument

Humphrey Palmer The Concept of Analogy
I. T. Ramsey The Problem of Evil
Kai Nielsen Scepticism
David Jenkins The Authenticity of Faith: Existentialist Theology
and the Problem of the Knowledge of God
W. D. Hudson Wittgenstein's Irifluence on the Philosoph:J of
Religion
Michael Durrant The Logic of 'God'
The Ontological Argument

JONATHAN BARNES
Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Oriel College, Oxford

Palgrave Macmillan
 © Jonathan Barnes 1972
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1972

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.

First published 1972 by

THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York Toronto
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras

Library of Congress catalog card no. 72-785 72

SBN 333 10495 1

ISBN 978-1-349-00775-2 ISBN 978-1-349-00773-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-00773-8
Contents

General Editor's Preface Vll

Author's Preface Vlll

1. The Arguments 1
1 Anselm's Argument 2
II Descartes' Argument 15
III The Modal Arguments 18
IV Gaunilo's Island 26

2. Necessary Existence 29

3. Existence and Predication 39

1 Logical Predicates 39
II 'Everything Exists' 45
111 Logical Nihilism 50
IV Existence and Quantification 55
v The Ambiguity of 'Exist' 59
VI The Meaning of 'Exist' 62
vu Summary 65

4. 'God' 67
1 Names and Definitions 68
11 The Grammar of 'God' 70
III The Logical Form of the Ontological Argument 71
IV The Sense of 'God' 81
v Postscript 85
Appendix A: Chronology of Anselm's Life 87
Appendix B: Anselm's Reductio 88
References 91

v
General Editor's Preface

Is there an argument for the existence of God which amounts to

conclusive proof? Anselm thought that he had discovered such a
proof and propounded it in what has come to be known as the
Ontological Argument. Not surprisingly, his argument aroused
interest and controversy at the time. That it has continued to
do so through the centuries down to the present time is evidence
of the importance of the subject and the fascination of the in-
tellectual issues involved.
Mr Barnes in this scholarly and penetrating monograph
reviews the moves and counter-moves which have been made in
discussion of the Ontological Argument by all the important
thinkers who have given their minds to it. Anselm, his contem-
porary Gaunilo, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and our own
contemporaries, Findlay, Hartshorne, and Malcolm, all receive
careful consideration.
The exposition is clear and precise and the author's analysis
of essentially relevant concepts such as necessity, predication,
existence, etc., is throughout detailed and illuminating. Mr
Barnes is not only critical of Anselm but of much that has been
regarded by other critics as either the unchallengeable pre-
suppositions or the irrefutable conclusions of their criticism.
The Ontological Argument is important for at least two
reasons. It provides a paradigm case of a philosophical argu-
ment and will therefore be illuminating to anyone who wishes to
understand philosophy. In that it concerns the existence of God,
it is moreover about a matter which could scarcely be of higher
concern to anyone given to serious reflection. This monograph
will interest not only the scholar and the student but all who
feel that it is important to make up one's mind about religious
belie£
W. D. HuosoN
University of Exeter

Vll
Author's Preface

The Ontological Argument has been debated for eight centuries,

and never more energetically than in the last decade. The
present essay is less concerned to break new ground than to
harrow land already ploughed. Thus Chapter 1 expounds, per-
haps rather more particularly than is customary, some of the
chief versions of the Ontological Argument; while Chapters
2-3 attempt to appraise and then to outflank the two main
manreuvres which opponents of the Argument have essayed.
Finally, Chapter 4 outlines and advocates a more elementary
plan of attack.
My goal has been to state, as plainly as I can, what the
Ontological Argument is, and what is and is not most wrong
with it. But I have tried to keep in mind a secondary objective,
and to provide some intimation of a few of the wider philo-
sophical issues which the Argument raises. For even those
philosophers who are sceptical of the merits of the Argument
itself must allow that it has inspired and stimulated some con-
siderable work in philosophical logic, and that it still offers a
pointed introduction to a number of peculiarly recalcitrant
problems.
The literature on the Ontological Argument is of daunting
magnitude, and it swells almost daily: I am acutely conscious
of broad lacunae in my reading, especially of the more theo-
logically inclined matter. Nevertheless, my debts to the pub-
lished thoughts of others are frequent and heavy; I have tried
to acknowledge the most important in the text.
Anthony Kenny is responsible for my writing this book;
Martin Hughes provoked and criticised my first ideas about
the Argument; and I have been greatly helped by many pupils
and friends at Oriel, particularly by Nicholas Measor and by
Robert Delahunty, who perused and generously annotated a
draft of the whole manuscript. I thank all these people warmly.

jONATHAN BARNES
Oriel College
29 February 1972

Vlll
1 The Arguments

In the preface to his Proslogion Anselm audaciously claims dis-

covery of 'a single formula which needs no other to prove itself
but itself alone, and which by itself suffices to establish that God
truly is, and that he is the greatest good needing no other, and
that which everything needs if it is to be and be well, and what-
ever else we believe about divine being' (93.6-10). Anselm pub-
lished his argument in 1077 or 1078. The dispute immediately
kindled was bright but brief; and after Anselm's death his
argument lay fallow for some hundred years. Then, in the
thirteenth century, it was widely debated, and widely accepted
(Daniels; Charlesworth, pp. 3-7), until it received the author-
itative disapproval of StThomas Aquinas.
In the seventeenth century Descartes discovered and vigor-
ously defended an argument for the existence of God which was
plainly similar to and allegedly identical with Anselm's argu-
ment. Controversy over the Cartesian argument culminated
with Kant; in a section 'On the Impossibility of an Ontological
Argument for the Existence of God' in the Critique if Pure Reason,
Kant performed for Descartes the service Aquinas had rendered
Anselm. Incidentally he gave the argument a title, imposing,
universally adopted, and wholly opaque.
Mter Kant's assault the argument again languished - for the
Hegelian claim to have revived it is specious (Ryle [3]). In
recent years, however, philosophers and theologians have
again looked with favour, or at least attention, on the Onto-
logical Argument. In this renaissance of interest a new version
of the argument has been brought to birth; Norman Malcolm
and Charles Hartshorne, its independent obstetricians, both
maintain that the new version, unlike the old, does provide a
proof of the existence of God.
This outline of the historical fortunes of the Ontological
Argument suggests a convenient expository plan: I shall look in
turn at Anselm, at Descartes, and at the recent production of
1
Malcolm and Hartshorne. I shall spend most time on Anselm's
argument; partly because his is the most complex and the most
debated version of the Ontological Argument, partly because
Anselm is after all the fans et origo of the whole enterprise.

In his biography of Anselm, Eadmer relates how his master

conceived the Ontological Argument in a sudden moment of
illumination, one night during Matins (Eadmer, I 19; cf.
Anselm [2] 93.16-19). The tract in which Anselm set down his
discovery first appeared anonymously under the title Fides
Q.uaerens Intellectum (Faith in Search of Understanding); later, on the
urging of his friends, Anselm put his name to it, and gave it the
title Proslogion (Allocution) (Anselm [2] 94.6-13- Anselm wrote
as a matter of course in Latin).
Soon after copies of the treatise circulated abroad there
appeared a reply to sections II to IV, entitled 'On Behalf of the
Fool' and composed by Gaunilo, a monk from Marmoutier near
Tours (Charlesworth, pp. 83-4). Gaunilo's piece was sent to
Anselm 'who read it with pleasure and, thanking his critic,
wrote his reply to it which he attached to the piece which had
been sent to him, and returned to the friend who had passed it
to him, requesting him and any others who deigned to possess his
treatise to write out at the end of it the criticism ofhis argument
and his reply to the criticism' (Eadmer, I 19). The two appen-
dices have survived and offer useful glosses on the arguments
of the Proslogion itself. In none of his many later philosophical
writings did Anselm reconsider his Ontological Argument (nor,
it may be remarked, did he return in them to the heightened
and ornate prose style which embellishes the Proslogion).
Here is a literal translation of the second section of the
Proslogion:

101.3 Therefore, Lord, who grant understanding to faith,

grant me that, in so far as you know it beneficial, I
understand that you are as we believe and you are
5 that which we believe. Now we believe that you are
something than which nothing greater can be
imagined. Then is there no such nature, since the fool
2
 has said in his heart: God is not? But certainly this
same fool, when he hears this very thing that I am
saying - something than which nothing greater can
be imagined - understands what he hears; and what
he understands is in his understanding, even if he
10 does not understand that it is. For it is one thing for a
thing to be in the understanding and another to
understand that a thing is. For when a painter
imagines beforehand what he is going to make, he
has in his understanding what he has not yet made
but he does not yet understand that it is. But when
he has already painted it, he both has in his
understanding what he has already painted and
understands that it is. Therefore even the fool is
bound to agree that there is at least in the under-
standing something than which nothing greater can
15 be imagined, because when he hears this he
understands it, and whatever is understood is in the
understanding. And certainly that than which a
greater cannot be imagined cannot be in the
understanding alone. For if it is at least in the
understanding alone, it can be imagined to be in
reality too, which is greater. Therefore if that than
which a greater cannot be imagined is in the
102.1 understanding alone, that very thing than which a
greater cannot be imagined is something than
which a greater can be imagined. But certainly
this cannot be. There exists, therefore, beyond doubt
something than which a greater cannot be imagined,
both in the understanding and in reality.

(Three brief notes: (i) Of the two desiderata at 101.4-5 the first
('Quia es sicut credimus', i.e. that God exists in the way in
which we believe him to exist) is supplied by sections II-IV (cf.
104.5-7), the second ('/quia/hoc es quod credimus', i.e. that
God has those attributes we believe him to have) occupies the
rest of the Proslogion. (ii) The remarks about the painter should
be compared with [1] 24.26, 26.5, and Gaunilo, 126.14-28; the
theory of artistic creation they imply goes back to Aristotle (cf.
e.g. [3] Z 7, 1032 a26-b20). (iii) The phrase at 101.19, 'at least
in the understanding alone', is awkward and has caused doubts.
3
The text is made certain by [3] 132.29; Anselm means to make
it perfectly clear that he does not assume that his supreme being
exists in reality - so much so that he starts his reductio by
assuming the contradictory, that it only 'exists in the under-
standing'.)
The title of section 11 of the Proslogion is 'That God truly is'
(the section headings are due to Anselm himself: cf. [1] 8.22;
[9] 43.4), and that is what, in his Preface, Anselm promised he
would prove (93.7). However, what is formulated as the con-
clusion of section 11 (102.2-3) is the quite different proposition
that there exists something than which a greater cannot be
imagined; and the bulk of the section is spent arguing for just
this proposition. If we are to construe Anselm's argument as he
wishes us to, we must suppose that this conclusion functions as
one of the premisses in an argument for the conclusion that God
exists; and that most of section 11 is a 'pro-syllogism' - an argu-
ment supporting a premiss of the argument proper.
The argument needs another premiss in addition to the
conclusion at 102.2-3; and that can only be found inside the
first sentence of section 11: 'we believe that you are something
than which nothing greater can be imagined' (101.5). The
structure of section 11 then miniatures the structure of the
Monologion: there section 1 sets out God's defining characteristics;
II-LXXIX argue that there exists just one being with those
characteristics; and the last section of the work concludes that
God exists. This parallelism is presumably not fortuitous.
At first blush, then, Anselm's argument seems to be this:

( 1) We believe that God is something than which a greater

cannot be imagined.
(2) Something than which a greater cannot be imagined
exists.
Therefore:

(3) God exists.

This is patently and scandalously invalid. It helps to prune
(1) to:
(la) God is something than which a greater cannot be
imagined.
4
But this is not enough. (Ia) and (2) do not entail (3) since (la)
is consistent with there being more than one thing than which a
greater cannot be imagined, and (2) might be satisfied by one
of those things other than the one identical with God.
This difficulty can be avoided by emending (la) either to:
(lb) God is the thing than which a greater cannot be
imagined
or else to:
(lc) Anything than which a greater cannot be imagined is
God.
The inference from ( 1b) and (2) to (3) appears to have the
form:
(A) a is the F.
(B) There exists an F.
Therefore: (C) a exists.
And the inference from (lc) and (2) to (3) appears to have the
form:
(A') Anything F is identical with a.
(B') There exists an F.
Therefore: (C') a exists.
Inferences of both these forms are valid.
It may be thought that there is textual evidence in favour of
(lb) rather than (lc). Anselm's cardinal phrase 'than which a
greater cannot be imagined' is sometimes prefaced by 'some-
thing' ('aliquid quo .. .': some thirteen occurrences in [2] and
[3] together), but at other times by 'the thing' ('id quo .. .' or
'illud quo .. .': eleven occurrences); and the latter phrase is
required for ( 1b). But it is unwise to rest much on this usage;
for as far as I can see Anselm uses 'something' and 'the thing'
indifferently - and he most often uses neither prefix, writing
simply 'quo .. .' (some forty-five times).
I shall not, then, press the claims either of ( 1b) or of ( 1c) to be
regarded as the legitimate modification of (1a). But I must at
least try to show that (la) itself is Anselmian.
(1) asserts that (la) is believed. Anselm's word is the formal
'credimus' (101.5; cf. [1] 13.9), and credere is the proper term for
religious belief or 'faith'; perhaps Anselm is to be granted (la)
5
because it is an article of Christian faith. This view was advanced
by Karl Barth: according to him, Anselm had no desire to
convince or confute the psalmist's Fool; 'the knowledge which
the proof seeks to expound and impart is the knowledge that is
peculiar to faith, knowledge of what is believed from what is
believed' (Barth, p. 102; on 'credere' see pp. 76-7, 101-2;
Mascall, pp. 70-1). Barth's view has been widely applauded,
but there is overwhelming textual evidence against it: the
decisive passage is in the Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi (20.16-21)
where Anselm states that his intention in the Monologion and the
Proslogion was to prove 'by necessary reasons' and 'without the
authority of Scripture' that certain Christian beliefs were true.
Whether or not he succeeded, Anselm certainly intended to
present an argument for the existence of God which presupposed
no articles of faith; he had no wish to indulge in the curiously
futile exercise Barth puts upon him. (See, in more detail,
McGill, pp. 42-6; Charlesworth, pp. 40-6; and the excellent
paper by Barth's friend Heinrich Scholz.)
How, then, would Anselm have parried the Fool's obvious
retort to (1): 'You may believe it, but I don't'? It has some-
times been thought that the end of Proslogion III provides the
missing support for (la) (cf. Barth, pp. 152-4; McGill, p. 40;
and already Henry of Ghent, tl293 -Daniels, p. 80). There
Anselm concludes: 'Thus you so truly are, my Lord God, that
you cannot be imagined not to be. And properly. For if any
mind could imagine anything better than you, a creature would
climb above its creator and pass judgement on its creator; which
is quite absurd' (103.3-6; cf. [4] 18.3-7). This might, I suppose,
pass as support for (la); but it is illusory support, since it is not
absurd that a creature should, in the required sense, judge its
creator (cf. Flew [3] p. 49). Moreover, the place of the passage
in Anselm's text marks it as an appendix or corollary to the
argument, and not as a prop to its first premiss.
It is better, I think, to take a hint from the opening sentence
of section 11, where Anselm prays that God will 'grant under-
standing to faith'; success in his prayer would allow Anselm to
replace 'we believe' by 'we understand' and hence to pass from
(1) to:

(ld) We understand that God is something than which a

greater cannot be imagined
6
This is certainly something which Anselm believed: in the
Monologion he says: 'Everyone who says that God is ... under-
stands by that nothing other than some substance which he
deems to be superior to every nature which is not God' ([ 1]
86.19-21). Since in general 'a understands that P' entails 'P',
proposition (ld) entails (la).
But if the Fool can reasonably deny ( 1), surely he can also
deny (ld)? Such a denial is at least less appealing if (ld) is taken
to mean that (la) is a conceptual truth- to express, as we might
put it, the way in which Anselm means the word 'God' to be
understood. There are four reasons for taking (ld) in this way.
First, it gives Anselm's argument a decent start. Secondly, it
agrees with the most natural reading of the sentence I quoted
from the Monologion. Thirdly, Anselm twice asserts that the Fool
who denies the existence of God does not properly understand
the meaning of the word 'God' ([2] 104.1; [3] 137.3-5).
Fourthly, there is the matter of the historical source of (la). A
number of passages in Augustine and Boethius (with both of
whom Anselm was well acquainted) contain phrases very close
to 'aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest', the terms in which
Anselm first introduces his cardinal formula (cf. Anselm [2]
102 n.; Charlesworth, p. 56, n. 4 - the formula later appears
in several trivially different guises); but the very phrase itself
occurs in the Preface to Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones: 'What is
God? The mind of the universe; everything that you see and
everything that you do not see. His greatness, than which
nothing greater can be imagined (qua nil maius cogitari potest), is
only attributed to him if he alone is everything, if he holds his
work from the inside and from the outside' (I 13). A surviving
library catalogue shows that there were two copies of Seneca's
book in the library at Bee at the beginning of the twelfth cen-
tury; and it is probable that at least one was there in 1077, when
Anselm was Prior (Southern, p. 59). It is likely that Anselm
knew the work, and that the formula on which his argument
turns was suggested by this sentence from its Preface. If this is
so, then there is a further reason for supposing that Anselm took
(la) as a conceptual truth; for in Seneca the phrase 'something
than which a greater cannot be imagined' is used precisely to
explain what God is, or to define the word 'God' (cf. Augustine
(1] I 7).
I conclude that (la) is a proper expression of Anselm's first
7
premiss; and that it was intended by him as a conceptual truth.
This interpretation is thoroughly traditional. Aquinas sum-
marises Anselm's argument like this: 'But as soon as the signi-
ficance of God is understood it is seen at once that God exists.
For by this word is signified that thing than which nothing
greater can be imagined' ([1] Ia, q.2, a.1, ad.2; cf. [1] 1 x). One
of Anselm's successors at Canterbury, John Pecham (t 1292),
called the argument 'the argument taken from a definition'
(Daniels, p. 44); and that is what St Bonaventure meant when
he described the Ontological Argument as starting from a
'universal conception of the human mind' (Daniels, p. 38: cf.
Anselm [1] 86.19-21; Boethius, III x). Even Barth accepts this
tradition and calls the premiss a definition (pp. 75, 106), though
he does not explain how a definition can be an article of
Christian faith.
The tradition has sometimes been rejected on the grounds
that it ascribes a patently perverse hope to Anselm - the hope
that God's existence can be proved from a definition. But the
folly of this hope is not patent; and the alternative suggestions
made by these critics, which are many and heterogeneous
(McGill, pp. 69-110), are either false, like the two I have dis-
cussed (p. 6 above), or else simply unintelligible.

The second premiss of the argument, proposition (2), is reached

by a complex piece of reasoning which Anselm puts in the form
of a reductio ad absurdum (cf. 102.1). The reductio needs four
premisses:

(4) Something than which a greater cannot be imagined is

understood by the Fool.
(5) Whatever is understood by someone is in his under-
standing.
(6) Whatever is in someone's understanding can be imagined
to exist in reality.
(7) It is greater to exist in reality than to be in the under-
standing alone.

Premiss (4) appears at 101.7-8, where the Fool is said to under-

stand what he hears; (5) is stated at 101.15; (6) and (7) are both
implicit in 101.16-17. A striking characteristic of these premis-
ses is their obscurity.
8
 (i) Anselm uses 'intelligere', 'to understand', in a variety of
ways. He explicitly tells us to disregard the use in which the
verb is followed by a that- clause ([2] 101.9-13; [3] 136.3-21),
a use which Gaunilo glosses by 'scientia comprehendere', 'to
grasp with knowledge' (125.21 ). In the Monologion Anselm refers
to God's understanding of himself (e.g. 54.10-12, 73.8-18), but
he seems to indicate that this puzzling notion is not required in
the Proslogion (103.19; cf. [3] 138.4-15). Thirdly, Anselm regu-
larly speaks, in Aristotelian vein, of understanding a thing, of
knowing its essence or what it is (e.g. [4] 147.5-16, 149.19-22;
[5] 191.28). He seems to think that we can understand God in
this sense (cf. [8] 18.18, 22.8), but again he makes it clear that
this is not the sort of understanding required by the Ontological
Argument. He carefully distinguishes this sense from the sense
in which 'intelligere' is used of knowing what a word means ([3]
138.4-11; cf. e.g. [1] 41.21-6, 42.2-7, and cf. 'intellectus',
'intelligentia', used for 'sensus', 'sententia', or 'meaning', e.g.
[1] 34.18-22, 40.29, 62.15-17). This is how the verb is used in
premisses (4) and (5) of the reductio; both Anselm's language (cf.
[I] 101.7-8; [3] 132.10-13, 136.9 - 'audiens intelligit quid
dicens significat'; cf. William of Auxerre, t 1232, Daniels, p. 27)
and also his reasoning at [3] 138.4-19 make this plain.
(ii) The phrase 'esse in intellectu', 'to be in the understand-
ing', is less frequent in Anselm, and its few occurrences outside
the Proslogion are unilluminating. ([7] 249.8-17 and [11]
336.14-36, if they use 'in intellectu' in the same sense as the
Proslogion does, show a change in doctrine; for they argue,
contrary to premiss (5) of the reductio, that some words, notably
'nihil', can be understood without establishing anything 'in the
understanding'. [4] 149.13 uses 'in intellectu' to mean 'in
sententia', i.e. 'in meaning'.) 'Intellectus' often means 'mental
faculties' or 'mind' (e.g. [1] 19.20, 49.12-14; [8] 7.10-8.4); and
in this sense 'esse intellectu' is often contrasted with 'esse actu'
(e.g. [3] 131.8-10; [8] 7.10-8.4). 'Esse intellectu' sometimes
seems to mean no more than 'intelligi' (e.g. [I] 20.1-4: cf. [2]
104.3); if, then, we assimilate 'in intellectu' to 'intellectu', we
can gloss 'is in the understanding' simply as 'is understood'. This
is what several commentators have done (e.g. Malcolm, p. 41 ;
Charlesworth, p. 93; perhaps Gaunilo, 125.20- cf. Anselm [1]
20.4). However, this interpretation makes premiss (5) a trivial
tautology; and that can hardly have been Anselm's intention.
9
 The suggestion that 'est in intellectu' means 'is logically
possible' (cf. Charlesworth, p. 63) escapes this objection, but is
open to another; for 'esse in intellectu', like 'intelligi', carries a
reference to a person (something is in the intellect of someone: cf.
[1] 101.9; [3] 130.12; Gaunilo, 125.14), which 'is logically
possible' does not.
It will help if we ask what need Anselm has of premiss (5). At
some point in the reductio he must move from talk about words to
talk about things; indeed, this move is the very crux of the
Ontological Argument. We have just seen that the predicate
' ... is understood', as it is used in the reductio, applies to words
and phrases. Thus a more accurate version of (4) is:
(4a) The Fool understands (the phrase) 'something than
which a greater cannot be imagined'.
(The inverted commas found sporadically in texts and transla-
tions of Anselm are editorial anachronisms.) Since (4a) talks
about words, and the transition from talk of words to talk of
things is plainly not effected by (6), that transition can only be
discovered in (5). As it stands, (5) is inadequate; together with
(4a) it yields at best:
(8) (The phrase) 'something than which nothing greater can
be imagined' is in the Fool's understanding.
And (8) will not help Anselm to his conclusion (though he
appears to equivocate on it at [3] 134.28). Rather than (5)
Anselm wants:
(5a) If anyone understands a word or phrase for X, then X is
in his understanding
(where the type of word or phrase must, of course, be fairly
strictly delimited). I shall assume that by (5) Anselm meant
(5a).
This reading distinguishes being understood from being in
the understanding, but it does not yet give a clear sense to 'esse
in intellectu'. Anselm's phrase foreshadows Aquinas's 'esse
intentionale'. Roughly, a thing has 'intentional being' if it is the
object of some mental attitude - if it is thought of, known,
desired, sought, or whatnot (see Anscombe and Geach, pp.
95-7). This suggests construing 'X is iny's understanding' as )I
has some positive mental attitude to X' (cf. McGill, p. 82, n. 167
10
- I say 'positive mental attitude' in order to exclude such mental
attitudes as being entirely ignorant of, being forgetful of, etc.).
This suggestion has the advantage of making (Sa) true, but its
converse false: for anyone who understands some word for X,
has some mental attitude to X (e.g. that of being able to think of
X: cf. Anselm [1] 25.12-15); but it is possible to have a mental
attitude towards X without knowing any word for X (dogs
desire bones).
(iii) 'Cogitare', for which I prefer 'imagine' to 'conceive' or
'think (of)', is sometimes used by Anselm of mental operations
in general (e.g. [1] 97.3; [2] 84.8-11); but we are concerned
with its specifically cognitive sense. In this sense it can be
followed either by a that- clause or by a noun phrase.
'Cogitare that P' is ambiguous ([13] 134.9-10; cf. Bonaventure,
in Daniels, pp. 38, 49). In one sense it means 'believe that P'
(e.g. [5] 180.7-18); but this is irrelevant for us (cf. [3] 134.7-
19). Anselm glosses the other sort of cogitation as 'saying in
one's heart (or mind)' (e.g. [1] 48.19, 50.14, 72.8-13; [2]
103.15); this sort of saying is not a judgement or 'mental
assertion' but rather a mental recitation of the sentence 'P'.
Cogitation in this sense is thus a matter of entertaining the
thought that P, of (in one sense of the words) supposing or
imagining that P (cf. esp. [3] 131.19, 23, 25: N.B. 'fingere' at
134.10; 'subintelligere' at 131.21, 29).
Cogitating a thing likewise involves a mental recitation.
Anselm explains this in a number of places in the Monologion
(esp. 24.24-25.27, 52.8-28, 72.14-18). I do not think his ac-
count is entirely consistent, but its central part appears to be
this: to cogitate a thing is to produce a 'locution' of it in one of
three ways: (a) by saying (one of) its name(s) aloud; (b) by
saying (one of) its name(s) sotto voce or mentally; and (c) by
imagining its sensible figure or thinking of its essence. All these
'locutions' use words (verba): locutions of type (c) use words
in that universal mental language which Anselm, following
Aristotle ([1] 1, 16a 6), believed to be common to all rational
men and a necessary condition for the significance of their
various spoken languages (cf. [1] 25.12-15). The first, low-
grade, locution is probably what Anselm means when he talks
of cogitating words (e.g. [9] 84.20-1); and this is the only way
in which the Fool is allowed to cogitate God ([1] 103.18).
Anselm is primarily interested in full-blooded cogitation of
11
type (c): that fact, and the desirability of finding a single word
to cover both major uses of 'cogitare', explains my preference
for 'imagine' as an English version. Of course, as cogitating that
P does not entail belief that P, so cogitating x does not entail
believing x to exist ([I] 26.13-14; cf. 'praecogitat', [1] 101.11).
(iv) There are two initial difficulties with premiss (7). First,
the notion of 'greatness' is far from pellucid; I postpone dis-
cussion of this to a later chapter (cf. below, pp. 81-3).
Secondly, (7) allows expansion in either of two ways:
(7a) If X is in someone's understanding and does not exist in
reality, and r exists in reality, then Tis greater than X.
(7b) If X and rare exactly alike except that X is in someone's
understanding and does not exist in reality, and r exists
in reality, then r is greater than X.
(Perhaps we should add the further conjunct 'and r is in
someone's understanding' to the antecedents of (7a) and (7b);
but that is an unimportant complication.) (7a) seems to have
been Gaunilo's interpretation of (7) (cf. 127.26); and Anselm
does not correct him. But (7b) has been the traditional reading
of Anselm's premiss, and it is doubtless preferable. In tracing
the reductio, however, I shall make use of (7a); this has the
advantage of simplicity, and it does not, I think, involve any
falsification of Anselm's reasoning.

Let us now look at the course the reductio takes. Its four premisses
have turned out to be:
(PI) The Fool understands (the phrase) 'something than
which a greater cannot be imagined'.
(P2) If anyone understands a word or phrase for X, then X is
in his understanding.
(P3) If X is in someone's understanding, then he can imagine
that X exists in reality.
(P4) If X is in someone's understanding and does not exist in
reality, then if anything exists in reality, it is greater
than X.
Assume the negation of the conclusion which the reductio is
designed to prove:
(NC) Something than which a greater cannot be imagined
does not exist in reality.
12
From (PI) and (P2) there follows (by universal instantiation
and modus ponens):
(i) Something than which a greater cannot be imagined is in
the Fool's understanding.
Similarly, (i) and (P3) give:
(ii) The Fool can imagine that something than which a
greater cannot be imagined exists in reality.
Then (i), (ii), (P4) and (NC) yield:
(iii) The Fool can imagine something greater than that than
which a greater cannot be imagined.
But this is absurd; hence (NC) is false, and:
(C) Something than which a greater cannot be imagined
exists in reality
is true. (C) is, of course, a version of (2), the second premiss of
the Ontological Argument.
There is more than one difficulty here. Let us start with the
first inference, that of (i) from (Pl) and (P2). At first sight this
looks invalid: the terms substituted for the variable 'x' in
formulae of the form 'x is F' must be singular terms which
purport to refer to some object; but 'something than which a
greater cannot be imagined', which is substituted for 'x' in the
course of this inference, is not a singular term. (Suppose substi-
tutions of this sort were allowed: then no proposition of the form
'Everything is F' would be true, for 'xis F' would always turn
out false for at least one substitution for 'x', namely 'something
which is not F'.) Anselm has perhaps a little room for manceuvre
here; but eventually he will be driven to replace 'something than
which .. .' in (Pl)- and consequentially in (NC), (i), (ii), (iii)
and (C)- by 'the thing than which .. .'; as we have seen (above,
p. 5), this replacement can already be found in Anselm's text.
With this replacement, the first two steps in the argument are
legitimate: what of step three, the derivation of (iii)? If we
abbreviate 'the thing than which a greater cannot be imagined'
to 'oc', (i) becomes:
(i*) oc is in the Fool's understanding
and (ii) becomes:
13
 (ii*) The Fool can imagine that a. exists in reality.
Similarly, (NO) will reappear as:
(NO*) a. does not exist in reality.
Now from (P4) there follows (by universal instantiation):
(iv) If a. is in someone's understanding and a. does not exist
in reality, then if anything exists in reality it is greater
than a..
It follows trivially from (i*) that:
(v) a. is in someone's understanding.
The conjunction of (v) and (NO*) is identical with the ante-
cedent of (iv); hence we can deduce:
(vi) If anything exists in reality, it is greater than a..
At this point the path of Anselm's thought is obscured; we
must plainly do something with (ii*) - but what? I can only
suggest the following reasoning: first, we need a further premiss
to enable us to deal with imaginations:
(PS) If if P then Q, then anyone who can imagine that P
can imagine that Q.
Next, infer from (vi), by universal instantiation:
(vii) If a. exists in reality, then a. is greater than a..
This, together with (PS), yields:
(viii) Anyone who can imagine that a. exists in reality can
imagine that a. is greater than a..
Then from (ii*) and (viii) there follows:
(ix) The Fool can imagine that a. is greater than a..
If this is taken to entail:
(x) The Fool can imagine something greater than a.
we can conclude to:
(xi) Something greater than a. can be imagined.
Given the meaning of'a.', (xi) can be read as an instance of the
formula 'The not-F is F' ('The thing than which a greater
14
cannot be imagined is such that something greater than it can
be imagined') ; and Anselm clearly thinks that as such it is
absurd. Hence he infers the negation of (NC*), namely:
(xii) ex exists in reality.
And this, though it is not identical with (C), surely entails (C).
This is the best account I can give of the reductio of Proslogion
u; I have sketched a more formal version of it in Appendix B
below. I shall not raise any further objections against it at this
point.
In his Reply to Gaunilo Anselm offers some different versions of
his reductio. First, in response to Gaunilo's objection that the
Fool does not have ex in his understanding (125.14-20), Anselm
presents two arguments, in reductio form, for the conclusion that
if ex can be imagined, ex exists ([3] 131.1-5, 6-17). These argu-
ments will do the same work as Anselm's original reductio if they
are complemented by some premiss about the imaginability of
God answering to (PI). At 134.31-135.7 there is what I take to
be a slightly modified version of the second of these new argu-
ments. Secondly, at the end of the Reply (138.15-27), a version
of the reductio of Proslogion u is adapted to a new conclusion. I
shall say a little about this argument later in the chapter; the
other two arguments do not, as far as I can see, introduce
important novelties, and I leave them for the curious reader to
investigate.

Descartes had probably not read the Proslogion when he came

to formulate his own Ontological Argument, though he will
surely have known Aquinas's criticisms of Anselm's argument;
it is noteworthy that, when Caterus put him to the test, he
declared himself in agreement with Aquinas against Anselm -
and maintained that his own argument was quite distinct from
that criticised in the Summae ([3] u 19).
Descartes set out and discussed his argument in more than
one place (cf. esp. [1] I 103-4; [3] u 18-22, 45-7, 57, 228-9;
[4] I 224-5; [5] I 444-5); but the chief source, and the one I
shall follow, is the fifth Meditation ([2] I 180-3).
In Meditation III the idea of God as a being possessing all
perfections formed the basis of Descartes' second argument for
15
theism ([2] I 168; cf. [1] I 102). In Meditation v Descartes says
that' ..• when I attend more diligently, it becomes plain that
existence cannot ... be separated from the essence of God' (I
181). This reads more like a report of an intuition than an
argument (cf. [3] IT 19; [5] I 444); and the Appendix to the
second set of Replies claims that God's existence is 'self-evident'
and can be known 'without any train of reasoning' ([3] II 55).
However, 'there are certain truths self-evident to some that
can be understood by others only through a train of reasoning'
(IT 55) ; and Descartes proceeds to sketch out such a train: 'there
is a repugnancy in imagining God (that is, a being supremely
perfect) to whom existence is lacking (that is to say, to whom
some perfection is lacking) ••• ' ([2] I 181). A few paragraphs
later, the sketch is coloured in:
. . . whenever it pleases me to imagine a first and supreme
being, and as it were to bring down an idea of him from my
mind's treasury, it is necessary that I should attribute to him
all perfections, even though I neither then enumerate them
all nor attend to each one: and this necessity is plainly
sufficient that afterwards, when I notice that existence is a
perfection, I rightly conclude that a first and supreme being
really exists.... (I 182)
The argument can fairly be represented like this:
(1) Necessarily, a God has all perfections.
(2) Existence is a perfection.
Therefore: (3) God exists.
Descartes did little to elucidate or defend (2), the premiss
around which subsequent discussion has centred; he gave only a
brief and somewhat brusque reply to Gassendi's criticism of it
([3] II 228; cf. Gassendi, p. 156).
He was more concerned with ( 1). He stresses that ( 1) is a
conceptual truth, and indeed sometimes replaces it by the state-
ment that (1) is a conceptual truth (cf. Axiom x in [3] II 57).
Once (admittedly in connection with the third Meditation) he
offers a remarkably Anselmian account of the matter:
.•• if we take the word idea in the way I expressly said I took
it, .•. we shall be unable to deny that we have some idea of
God, except by saying that we do not understand the words -
16
 that thing which is the most perfect that we can conceive; for that
is what all men call God. And to go so far as to assert that
one does not understand the meaning of words which are
commonest in the mouths of men is to have recourse to
strange extremities in order to find objections. ([3] II 129)
(Note that Descartes here moves from 'having all perfections' to
'being the most perfect thing we can conceive' : the move in the
opposite direction is the one for which Leibniz required justifi-
cation (see below, p. 67).)
Descartes' argument appears to be of the form:
(A) a has every X.
(B) b is an X.
Therefore: (C) a has b
-for Descartes' conclusion, (3), is merely a genteel version of
the deduction from (1) and (2) which might be expressed with
greater formality and less elegance by the sentence 'A God has
existence'. This argument-pattern seems a valid one.
As an argument this is far simpler and easier to expound than
Anselm's. There are, it is true, certain further subtleties in
Descartes' account which I have not attempted to bring out
(see Kenny [4] pp. 146-71; [5]); and there is also a crucial
indeterminacy in the first premiss of the argument which I shall
look at later; but what has been said amounts, I think, to a fair
presentation of Descartes' Ontological Argument.
Descartes' argument is sometimes expressed, rather casually,
by the following propositions:
(4) A God is perfect.
(5) Everything perfect exists.
Therefore: (6) A God exists.
This argument does not fit the pattern just set out, and it is not
to be found in Descartes' text. But if it is allowed that arguments
of this type are ontological, then there is an Ontological
Argument to be found some 1500 years before Anselm. Accord-
ing to Sextus Empiricus (IX 133), 'Zeno of Cition', the founder
of the Stoic school of philosophy, 'argued in this way ... : "A
man can properly honour the gods; a man cannot properly
honour what does not exist: therefore there exist gods"'. This
might fairly be set out as follows:
17
 (7) A God is worthy ofhonour.
(8) Non-existent things are not worthy of honour.
Therefore: (9) A God exists.
Zeno's philosophical activity probably occupied the first forty
years ofthe third century B.c.; there have been attempts to find
an Ontological Argument a century earlier, in Plato's writings
(cf. Hartshorne [2] pp. 139-49), but to my mind these attempts
have failed.
The general form of the pseudo-Cartesian argument is:
(A*) A God is F.
(B*) Everything F exists.
Therefore: (C*) A God exists.
(Zeno uses the contrapositive of (B*), 'Nothing that exists is not
F'.) The simplest argument of this form is reached by substi-
tuting 'existent' for 'F', and so making the second premiss
entirely trivial. It seems to me that some of the things Aquinas
says about the essence of God bring him perilously close to this
'argument' (cf. Kenny [6] pp. 82-95).
Zeno's Ontological Argument is quite distinct from that in
the Proslogion; but there is a passage in the Monologion where
Anselm argues in a very Zenonian manner for the conclusion
that being alive is part of the nature or essence of a God (29.3-30).
However, he does not deduce from this that existing is part of the
nature of a God; or that a God exists.

The distinctive feature of Malcolm's and Hartshorne's Onto-

logical Arguments is that they contain the 'modal' notions of
necessity and possibility. The Modal Argument is a Protean
beast - Hartshorne alone claims to have provided ten modal
proofs for the existence of God ([1] pp. 73-84) -and it is for
that reason elusive and hard to anatomise. I shall set out four
Modal Arguments, in the hope that what I shall say about them
~11 apply to anything else that can plausibly be called a Modal
Argument.
(i) The simplest way of constructing a Modal Argument is
to replace each occurrence of the verb 'exist' in an ordinary
18
version of the argument by an occurrence of the phrase 'neces-
sarily exist'. Thus Anselm's argument yields the following
inference:
( 1) God is something than which a greater cannot be
imagined.
(2) Something than which a greater cannot be imagined
necessarily exists.
Therefore: (3) God necessarily exists.
If (2) is to be deduced by a reductio, then (P3) and (P4) of the
original reductio (above, p. 12) will have to be suitably modalised.
(ii) Similar operation on Descartes' argument gives:
(4) Necessarily, a God has all perfections.
(5) Necessary existence is a perfection.
Therefore: (6) God necessarily exists.
(iii) My third Modal Argument derives from Norman
Malcolm's controversial article on 'Anselm's Ontological Argu-
ments'. I shall not present Malcolm's own argument, since I
think that Alvin Plantinga [1] has proved, clearly and con-
clusively, that it is fallacious; instead I shall concoct a different
argument from Malcolm's text. Malcolm argues that a perfect
being cannot just 'happen' to come into, or go out of, existence;
if he could, Malcolm says, 'he would have mere duration and
not eternity. It would make sense to ask "How long has he
existed?", "Will he still exist next week?", "He was in existence
yesterday, but how about today?", and so on. It seems absurd
to make God the subject of such questions' (p. 48; cf. Anselm
[1] 37.16-39.13; [2] 115.7-15). This invites the following
argument:
(7) God is a perfect being.
(8) Every perfect being is eternal.
(9) Everything that is eternal necessarily exists always.
Therefore: ( 10) God necessarily exists always.
Malcolm uses (7) in his official argument; he argues for (8) in
the passage from which I have quoted; and (9) is just a defini-
tion of 'eternal' - it is not a definition that Malcolm would
accept, but the rival notion of a 'timeless' eternity is, I think,
incoherent (cf. M. Kneale).
19
 (iv) The fourth, and to my mind the most interesting, of the
Modal Arguments comes from Hartshorne; he has offered more
than one exposition of it, the fullest being in his essay on 'The
Logic of Perfection' ( [1] esp. pp. 51-3; for a detailed survey of
Hartshorne's work, see Pailin). The kernel of the argument
turns on what Hartshorne calls 'Anselm's Principle':
( 11) If there is a God, then necessarily there is a God.
From this Hartshorne infers:
(12) Either necessarily there is a God or necessarily there is
not a God.
The inference is by way of two principles:
(MT) If (if P then Q) then (if necessarily not-P then
necessarily not-Q).
(BP) If not necessarily not-P, then necessarily not neces-
sarily not-P.
( 12) does follow by ordinary propositional logic from ( 11),
(MT) and (BP); (BP) - 'Becker's Principle' - is surprising but
defensible by persuasive arguments (cf. Kneale and Kneale,
pp. 564-6) ; and (MT) is true provided that 'if P then Q: is
construed as 'P entails q.
To this point, Hartshorne thinks, the argument has shown the
untenability of 'factual atheism' - the view that, as a matter if
fact, there are no gods; we must choose between 'logical
atheism' - the view that there cannot be any gods - and a priori
theism (cf. [2] p. 96; see also Malcolm, p. 49; Charlesworth,
p. 57). (12) is equivalent to:
(13) If it is possible that there is a God, then it is necessary
that there is a God.
Leibniz drew a similar, but weaker, conclusion from Anselm's
argument: that 'assuming that God is possible, he exists' (see
Plantinga [2] p. 55). Hartshorne follows Leibniz in holding that
it is possible that there is a God; and he therefore concludes that
necessarily a God exists, and hence that a God exists. I think
that Hartshorne and Leibniz are too quick here; but I shall
leave that contentious point for brief remark in a later chapter
(pp. 83-5).
A considerable difficulty in Hartshorne's argument is its
20
beginning: why should we accept ( 11) ? I think that Hartshorne
means to offer the following, Cartesian, argument:
( 14) Anything that is a God is perfect.
(15) Anything that exists contingently is imperfect.
Therefore: ( 16) Anything that is a God exists necessarily.
Let us grant that this is a sound argument: does it support ( 11) ?
It is true that (11) and (16) sound rather similar; but I am
unable to see that (16) entails (11). (16) is apparently of the
form:
(A) If anything is F it is G
whereas ( 11) has the form:
(B) If something is F, then necessarily something is F.
I cannot deduce (B) from (A).
Hartshorne might have done better to abandon non-contin-
gency for another of God's characteristics, immutability. To say
that God is immutable is to say that whatever is true of him is
necessarily true of him; in short:
(17) For any x, if xis a God, then for any characteristic F,
if x is F then necessarily x is F.
This gives, as a special case:
(18) For any x, if xis a God, then if xis a God then neces-
sarily xis a God.
From which it follows that:
(19) For any x, if xis a God, then necessarily xis a God.
And from this (11) does follow.
The value of this argument depends on the coherence of the
notion of immutability which it uses; and that is a consideration
not immediately connected with the Ontological Argument.

I return now to the first two Modal Arguments, and ask two
questions, one logical and one historical.
First, what difference does modality make to Anselm and
Descartes? As far as I can see, Anselm will only benefit if the
modal version of at least one of (P3) and (P4) is superior to the
plain version. Modalised (P3) appears to entail (P3) plain; thus
21
Anselm modalised is superior to Anselm plain only if (P4)
modalised is true while (P4) plain is false. Similarly in the case
of Descartes: his argument can only benefit from modality if
the modalised form of its second premiss is true while the plain
form is false.
Could modalisation weaken the plain arguments? It might,
I suppose, be thought to do so by introducing the controversial
notion of necessary existence. But it is not clear that the argu-
ments, even in their plain form, are uiitainted by this notion.
The Ontological Argument is traditionally taken to be an a
priori argument; that is to say, it is deemed to depend only on
premisses that are a priori truths. What is a priori is necessary;
and if the premisses of a valid argument are necessary, then its
conclusion is necessary too. Hence if the Ontological Argument
is a priori, its conclusion, that a God exists, is necessary; and
whether modalised or plain it will not escape the snares of
necessary existence.
Descartes' argument is clearly a priori; and in effect he says so
when he claims to base it on a 'clear and distinct idea' of God
(cf. esp. [3] II 57). It is tempting to find a crude aspiration to
a priori status in Anselm's promise to produce 'one principle
which needs nothing else but itself alone to prove itself' ([2]
93.6-7: 'principle' translates 'argumentum'- cf. [3] 135.18-20,
24). But at least one premiss of Anselm's reductio, namely (P1), is
plainly not a priori.
My second, historical, question concerns the claim made by
both Malcolm and Hartshorne that a Modal Argument is to be
found in Anselm and in Descartes.
Is there a Modal Argument in Anselm? Hartshorne is parti-
cularly annoyed with commentators who concentrate on section
II of the Proslogion, 'a blundering preamble or unlucky false
start', and ignore section III which contains the Modal Argu-
ment ([2] pp. 3-14; cf. Malcolm, p. 45; Charlesworth, pp.
73-7). Section II is headed 'That God truly is'. Section III has a
quite separate heading, 'That it is not possible to imagine that
he is not'; and section IV is then obliged to explain 'How the fool
has said in his heart what cannot be imagined' (cf. the similar
problem in [7] 241.31-242.2). In other words, section II means
to argue that God exists; and sections III and IV that atheism is
not only false but incoherent. (See, in more detail and to a
slightly different end, Henry [3].)
22
 A Modal Argument can be extracted from section III by the
use ofHume's 'establish'd maxim of metaphysics' ([1] Iii 2; cf.
Descartes [3] II 45) that logical impossibility and unimagin-
ability are one and the same; for then the section heading will
be equivalent to 'that it is logically impossible that he is not'.
This maxim has often been ascribed to Anselm (e.g. Hartshorne
[2] p. 167; Malcolm, p. 46; cf. Aquinas [1] I x; Charlesworth,
pp. 62, 73, etc.; Plantinga [3] p. 29). But the maxim is merely a
confused piece of psychologism, and there is excellent evidence
that Anselm did not hold to it. It is true that some passages
tempt us to read the maxim into them (e.g. [1] 15.30, 33.13,
51. 7) ; but, first, there are passages in which 'posse' and 'posse
cogitari' are used in the same context but plainly not with the
same sense (e.g. [I] 21.7-13; [3] 134.29-135.7- cf. Gaunilo,
129.10-19); secondly, Anselm thinks that God is unimaginable,
but not, of course, that he is logically impossible ([2] 112.12-17;
Matthews); and thirdly, he has an elaborate discussion of the
logical modalities which is entirely innocent of psychologism (cf.
below, pp. 25-6).
There is no Modal Argument in Proslogion III. Nor, I may add,
do sections II and III present complementary arguments to the
same conclusion (Aquinas [1] I x 2; Charlesworth, p. 73); nor
yet one continuous argument to the end that God's non-
existence is unimaginable. These and other interpretations of
section III (see McGill, pp. 39-50) founder at once on the
evidence of Anselm's text.
In his Reply to Gaunilo Anselm is careful to separate the con-.
cern of Proslogion II (repeated at 132.10-133.2) from that of
section III (set out in revised form at 133.10-20). There are,
however, at least six passages in the Reply in which Anselm
apparently argues, or at least asserts, that God exists neces-
sarily, or cannot not exist.
In themselves these passages are of uncertain value, since
Anselm does not distinguish clearly between 'necessitas conse-
quentiae' and 'necessitas consequentis': when we say 'Such and such
is the case, so God must exist' the word 'must' may either signal
that the conclusion follows from the premisses (necessitas conse-
quentiae) or else indicate that the conclusion is the modal propo-
sition 'necessarily God exists' (necessitas consequentis). In four of
the six passages (131.1-5, 6; 132.15; 135.31) it is reasonable to
take Anselm's 'necessarily' to mark necessitas consequentiae; but in
23
two the other interpretation is required by the text (134.31-
135.7, 138.15-27). I shall quote from the second of these:
When, therefore, that than which a greater cannot be
imagined is imagined, if what may not exist is imagined,
something than which a greater cannot be imagined is not
being imagined. But it is not possible for the same thing at
the same time to be imagined and not imagined. Whence he
who imagines that than which a greater cannot be imagined
does not imagine what can but what cannot not exist. Where-
fore it is necessary that what he imagines exists, because
whatever may not exist is not what he imagines.
Can it be denied that this passage presents a modal version of
the Ontological Argument? At least it should not be affirmed
that it does without a little more ado.
Anselm puzzled over the twin notions of necessity and possi-
bility (see esp. [11]; cf. Henry [1]; [2] pp. 134-80; [3]), and in
particular over their occurrence in statements about God (see
[9] bk u, chaps 5, 10, 16, 17, [10] pti, chaps i-iii). He takes it to
be the case that 'all necessity is either compulsion (coactio) or
prevention (prohibitio)' ([9] 123.20; [10] 246.27). Clearly, God
cannot be compelled or prevented; so that 'in God there is no
necessity or impossibility' ([9] 122.23; cf. [11] 341.2). But on the
other hand we do ascribe certain necessities to God - for
example, the necessity of dying on the cross (122.15). Anselm
addressed himself to the reconciliation of these conflicting
judgements.
He tried two, or perhaps three, solutions to his problem.
(i) He distinguished a compelling and a non-compelling neces-
sity the latter of which can without complication qualify God
([9] 125.1-31; [10] 248.5-250.11). This reads at first like a
distinction between causal and logical necessity; but it turns
out, rather disappointingly, to reflect the difference between
'Necessarily P', which does 'compel' P, and 'Necessarily if P
then P', which does not. (ii) He suggested that 'God is neces-
sarily F' really means 'God's F-ness is due to himself (a se)' ([9]
100.20-28, 108.3-8, 121.13-15; cf. [7] 233.6-18). (iii) He also
suggested that 'God is necessarily F' means 'Nothing has the
power to bring it about that God is not F' ([9] 123.11-124.2;
[10] 247.6-11; cf. [11] 342.1-9). (I am not sure if he means
to distinguish (ii) from (iii); in at least one place his second
24
suggestion seems to collapse into his third (cf. [9] 124.7-9).) In
cases (ii) and (iii) Anselm says that the term 'necessity' is being
used 'improperly' (e.g. [9] 100.25, 108.5, 122.25, 124.17). The
notion of propriety appears frequently in Anselm's writings (cf.
[1] 41.1-18, 67.24-68.9; [2] 105.9-106.2; [5] 188.9-24; [6]
210.11-21; [7] 234.6-235.12, 253.18-254.9; [9] 123.15-19,
128.27, 129.8; and esp. [11] passim); it forms part of a fairly
sophisticated theory of language which has been admirably
elucidated by Professor Henry ([2] esp. pp. 12-24).
Since the Proslogion favours the third way of treating divine
necessity (cf. 105.9-106.2), it is reasonable to interpret God's
necessary existence in the Reply by means of that suggestion:
'That than which a greater cannot be imagined necessarily
exists' thus means 'Nothing has the power to bring it about that
that than which a greater cannot be imagined does not exist'.
Given this interpretation, 'God necessarily exists' does not
entail 'God exists' (and so the use of'necessarily' is 'improper');
and the argument of the Reply is not strictly a version of the
Ontological Argument, since it does not conclude to the
existence of God.

Does Descartes present a Modal Argument? At first sight the

answer seems clear: in his Reply to Caterus, Descartes says that
'we must distinguish between possible and necessary existence',
and realise that 'necessary existence ... alone is here in question'
([3] II 20); and the same point recurs elsewhere (e.g. [3] II 55,
57, 228; [4] I 224-5; [5] I 445).
There are reasons for mistrusting the impression these
passages produce. First, Descartes is generally muddled by
modalities. Secondly, even where he expressly distinguishes
possible from necessary existence, he uses the terms 'necessary
existence', 'actual existence' and 'existence' indiscriminately
(e.g. [3] II 20; [5] I 445; cf. [2] I 182 and 183, n. 1, where the
Latin reads 'existence' and the French 'necessary existence').
Thirdly, the plain and the modalised Ontological Arguments
are distinguished by the contrast between existence and necessary
existence; but Descartes contrasts possible existence and necessary
existence. This supplies the clue to Descartes' meaning: a thing
has possible existence if it is logically possible that something
with its defining attributes should exist; a thing has necessary
existence if it is logically necessary that anything with its
25
defining attributes should exist. Thus when Descartes says that
his argument treats of necessary existence he means only that
its conclusion, that a thing with God's defining attributes exists,
is necessarily true.
That this is what Descartes means is confirmed by two
passages: in the Reply to Caterus, he explains his view by saying
'we understand that actual existence is necessarily and at all
times linked to God's other attributes' (II 20); and in the
Principles he glosses 'necessary existence is included in the con-
cept of .. .' as 'existence is necessarily included in the concept
of .. .' (I 225). ·
Given this interpretation of necessary existence, Descartes
does not seem to be setting up a new modalised version of his
original argument: rather he is defending that argument by
claiming that its steps express necessary truths. The distinction
is a nice one and perhaps not very important; but if it is proper
to draw it here, no Modal Argument is to be found in Descartes.
I conclude that, in its full-blooded form, the Modal Onto-
logical Argument is a creature of this century.

IV

Anselm's and Descartes' contemporaries were quick to counter

their arguments by concocting spoof proofs which, they claimed,
both mirrored exactly the logical structure of the Ontological
Arguments and also had patently false conclusions. Caterus
produced, rather feebly, an existent lion ([3] II 7-8); Gassendi,
a perfect Pegasus ([3] II 157) ;John Pecham, an Everest at Paris
(Daniels, p. 44) ; Gaunilo, a Lost Island. The more recent
'ontological disproof of the devil' is no doubt to be read in the
same manner (see Grant).
I shall exhibit the earliest and best of these alleged counter-
proofs, Gaunilo's argument for his Lost Island.

Some say that somewhere in the ocean is an island which from

the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of finding what does
not exist some call Lost Island; and they tell that it is blessed
with an inestimable wealth of riches and delights, far beyond
what is said of the Blessed Islands, and, having no owner or
inhabitant, is in every way superior in abundance of goods to
26
 all other lands which men inhabit. Suppose that someone
tells me this is so, and that I readily understand what is said,
since there is no difficulty in it. But if he should then add, as
though it followed: You can no longer doubt that that island
which is superior to all lands truly exists somewhere in reality
since you do not doubt that it is in your understanding; and
because it is superior to be not in the understanding alone
but in reality too, therefore it is necessary that it exists so,
because if it did not, whatever other land exists in reality will
be superior to it, and thus that which you have understood to
be superior will not be superior- if, I say, he wanted to prove
to me by these means that it should no longer be doubted that
that island truly existed, I should either take him to be
joking or else I do not know whom I ought to think the
greater fool- myself ifl agreed with him, or him if he thought
he could with any certainty establish the existence of that
island unless he had first shown me that its very superiority
was in my understanding as something truly and indubitably
existing and not simply as something false or uncertain.
(128.14-32)
Gaunilo's island will parallel both Anselm and Descartes.
First, the Anselmian version:
( l) Lost Island is an island to which a superior cannot be
imagined.
(2) An island to which a superior cannot be imagined exists.
Therefore: (3) Lost Island exists.
Premiss ( 1) is taken as true by definition; and (2) is presumably
established by means of a reductio exactly similar to Anselm's.
Secondly, the Cartesian version:
(4) Lost Island has all perfections.
(5) Existence is a perfection.
Therefore: (6) Lost Island exists.
Here (4) is true by definition; and (5) is identical with one of
Descartes' own premisses.
Anyone who maintains the soundness of the Ontological
Argument, in one of its classical forms, must show either that
Gaunilo's island is not a fair parallel to God - or else that,
despite Mercator, Lost Island is somewhere to be found.
Anselm's reply goes as follows:
27
 I assert with confidence that if anyone will find for me any-
thing existing either in reality or in imagination alone, except
for that than which a greater cannot be imagined, to which
the structure of my reasoning is legitimately fitted, I shall find
and give him Lost Island which need not be lost any more.
([3] 133.6-9)
Anselm in effect asks Gaunilo to do exactly what Gaunilo
claims to have done- to provide an adequate parallel to God.
He makes no attempt to show why Gaunilo's island is not so
parallel.
St Bonaventure evidently felt that Anselm's reply was insuffi-
cient. He asserted 'when I talk of an island than which no better
can be imagined, there is a repugnancy between the subject and
the predicate; for island means a defective being (ens defectivum)'
(Daniels, pp. 40, 62; cf. Descartes' remarks on a perfect cor-
poreal being, [3] II 37). Bonaventure's reply has been read into
Anselm on the basis of a sentence in the Monologion (46.2; cf.
McGill, p. 23, n. 12). But the attribution is implausible; and in
any case there is nothing to be said for Bonaventure's remarks.
Descartes' reply to Caterus is as unsatisfactory as Anselm's to
Gaunilo. He merely states that he can imagine a lion that does
not exist, whereas he cannot imagine a non-existent God. This
entirely misses Caterus's point.

28
2 Necessary Existence

In 1948J. N. Findlay advanced an a priori argument for atheism,

the skeleton of which is this:

( 1) A thing is a God if and only if it is an adequate object of

religious attitudes.
(2) If a thing is an adequate object ofreligious attitudes then
it necessarily exists.
(3) It is not possible that anything necessarily exists.
Therefore: (4) It is not possible that anything is a God.

The argument is valid. Findlay takes the first premiss to be true

by definition (cf. Zeno, above, p. 18; Pike, pp. 149-60 and
references cited there); he argues at length for (2); and he
thinks that 'all who share a contemporary outlook' will take (3)
for true (cf. Smart, p. 39; Flew [3] p. 81). I shall sometimes
refer to (3), for reasons which will soon become apparent, as
Hume's thesis.
Findlay thought that the success of his argument entailed the
failure of the Ontological Argument: 'It was indeed an ill day
for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day
he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an
adequate religious object, but also something that entails its
necessary non-existence' ([1] p. 55; he later recanted - cf. [2]
pp. 8-9). If I were defending theism against Findlay's argument,
I think I should concentrate my fire on his premiss (2) (cf.
Hick [1] pp. 343-6); but as far as the Ontological Argument
goes, (3) - Hume's thesis - is the crucial proposition. Findlay
plainly has a modal version of the Ontological Argument in
mind; but ifHume's thesis is true, then any a priori argument for
the existence of God must be unsound (cf. above, p. 22).
Or is this the case? Some philosophers have attempted to
escape the conclusion, and to maintain at once both Hume's
thesis and theism and the view - deducible from ( l) and (2) -
29
that Gods necessarily exist. Their attempts are heralded by a
distingua.
The first distinction appealed to is a traditional one: necessity
(and modality in general) may be either de dicta - said of a
proposition, as 'Necessarily, the man sitting is sitting'- or de re-
attached to a predicate, as 'The man sitting is necessarily
sitting'. Different readings of modality may, as my stock ex-
ample was designed to show, result in propositions with dif-
ferent truth-values.
Now Hume's thesis, it is argued, holds only if its 'necessarily'
is taken for de dicta necessity. But the thesis that Gods necessarily
exist asserts de re necessity. Thus Hume's thesis and the thesis of
divine necessity are about quite different things; and so they can
both be consistently maintained by a theist. (See, for example,
Rainer, p. 68; Brown, p. 82, n. 28.)
This attempt founders from the start; for the distinction
between de dicta and de re modality is at best obscure and at
worst a confusion. Rather than chase this tempting goose, I
refer the reader to the charitable and ingenious account of the
distinction given by Plantinga. On this account de re modality
is reduced to de dicta modality (Plantinga [4]); and in that case
the distinction can only postpone, and cannot prevent, a clash
between Hume's thesis and the doctrine of divine necessity.
Secondly, a distinction has been drawn between logical
necessity and 'empirical' or 'factual' necessity. Logical necessity
is familiar enough: a proposition is logically necessary if and
only if its negation entails a contradiction. 'Factual' necessity is
a more curious notion; it appears to have two main ingredients:
a 'factually' necessary being is (a) eternal, and (b) causally
independent of all other beings (it has 'aseitas') (e.g. Hick [1];
Kenny [1], [2]). Hume's thesis, it is claimed, applies to logical
necessity; but divine necessity is factual.
A good case has, I think, been made for supposing that the
third of Aquinas's 'five ways' relies on factual rather than
logical necessity (Brown; Kenny [6] pp. 47-69). And factual
necessity has also been injected into the Ontological Argument
(e.g. Hartshorne [2] pp. 33, 195, 225; cf. Malcolm, p. 49) ;
Anselm himself, as we have seen, at least toyed with the notion
(above, p. 24).
I cannot help thinking that 'factual' necessity is a perverse
Humpty-Dumptyism: it is a violation of English usage to take
30
'necessary' to mean 'independent and eternal'. However that
may be, factual necessity is no help to the Ontological Argument.
First, if the argument is a priori its conclusion is a priori and there-
fore necessary; but the necessity of a priori truths is ordinary
logical necessity, and not 'factual' necessity.
Secondly, it is a simple truth about logical necessity that
'Necessarily P' entails 'P', so that 'God necessarily exists' entails
'God exists' (cf. above, p. 20). But if divine necessity is taken
factually, it is by no means clear that this entailment holds: if it
took an Ontological Argument to get from divine perfection to
theism, then surely it will take another such argument to get
from divine necessity - i.e. independence and eternity - to
theism. In other words, if the Ontological Argument concludes
to the factual necessity of God, it will not have advanced us one
step along the path to theism.
Thus neither the distinction between de dicto and de re
modality nor the distinction between logical and factual neces-
sity allows the theist both to accept Hume's thesis and to main-
tain divine necessity: if Hume is right, a priori theism is false.

Why should we believe Hume's thesis? What reasons are there

in favour of the dogma that no existential propositions are
necessarily true? First, it is worth saying exactly what pro-
positions are to count as existential. Philosophers have, I think,
been unwarrantably generous in their distribution of the
adjective 'existential' (cf. Warnock, pp. 86-91). I propose to
call a proposition existential if and only if it can be expressed
either (i) by a sentence of the form 'a exists' (where 'a' is a
referring expression), or (ii) by a sentence either of the form
'( +) F(s) exist(s)' or of the form 'There exist(s) ( +) F(s)',
where 'F' is a general term and ' + ' is an indefinite article or a
definite or indefinite numerical expression (e.g. 'some', 'a few',
'25'); parentheses indicate optional elements. Following Quine,
I shall refer to existentials of type (i) as particular and existentials
of type (ii) as general. This delimitation of existential proposi-
tions is much narrower than usual. In the next chapter I shall
discuss the relation between my existential propositions and
some of the propositions other philosophers have called
existential. For the moment, my account has the advantage of
making Hume's thesis less general and hence easier to justifY.
Findlay says that 'necessity in propositions merely reflects our
31
use ofwords, the arbitrary conventions of our language' ((1] p.
54) ; since it is plain that what exists is not a matter of arbitrary
convention, it follows that no existential propositions are
necessary (cf. Smart, pp. 38-9). This flimsy argument has been
criticised in detail more than once (e.g. Kenny [3]); it is
enough here to remark that if the premiss of the argument were
true, then it would follow that all the truths of logic and
mathematics were matters of arbitrary convention. Anyone
who can swallow this will have no cause to strain at arbitrary
existential propositions; and if the spirit of arbitrariness is so
adulterated that arbitrary mathematical propositions are
palatable, then it will be weak enough to render existential
caprice palatable too.
A far more substantial argument is offered by Hume in
section IX of his Dialogues on .Natural Religion- the brief section
in which he magisterially disposes of all a priori arguments for
the existence of God (or of anything else). The relevant piece of
text is this (italics and numbering are mine):
I shall begin with observing, that there is an evident absurdity
in pretending to demonstrate a matter of fact [i.e. an ex-
istential proposition: cf. (2] xn 132], or to prove it by any
arguments a priori. (i) Nothing is demonstrable, unless the
contrary implies a contradiction. (ii) Nothing, that is dis-
tinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. (iii) Whatever
we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent.
(iv) There is no Being, therefore, whose non-existence implies
a contradiction. (v) Consequently there is no Being, whose
existence is demonstrable. I propose this argument as entirely
decisive, and am willing to rest the whole controversy upon it.
This argument is valid, provided we construe 'can conceive'
in (iii) as 'can distinctly conceive', and 'Being' in (iv) and (v)
as 'thing we conceive as existent'; we must also read 'conceive x
as existent' as 'conceive that x exists'.
For suppose we conceive that a exists; then, by (iii), it is
distinctly conceivable that a does not exist; hence, by (ii), that a
does not exist does not imply a contradiction. This is Hume's
(iv). Finally, by (i), that a exists is not demonstrable. Thus if a
is a Being, that a exists is not demonstrable; and that is Hume's
(v).
But may there not be necessary, though undemonstrable,
32
matters of fact? In particular, can it not still be urged that 'if we
knew his [sc. God's] whole essence or nature, we should perceive
it to be as impossible for him not to exist as for twice two not to
be four'. Hume replies:
But it is evident, that this can never happen, while our
faculties remain the same as at present. It will still be possible
for us, at any time, to conceive the non-existence of what we
formerly conceived to exist; nor can the mind ever lie under a
necessity of supposing any object to remain always in being;
in the same manner as we lie under a necessity of always
conceiving twice two to be four. The words, therefore,
necessary existence, have no meaning; or, which is the same
thing, none that is consistent.
This appears to reassert (iii) of the previous paragraph, rather
than to argue anew. But I think Hume means us simply to
repeat his previous argument, substituting 'necessary' for
'demonstrable'.
As Hume indicates, the crux of his argument is premiss (iii).
How are we to take conceivability? In empiricist writings con-
ceivability and logical possibility are regularly conflated (cf.
above, p. 23) ; with this interpretation premiss (iii) amounts to
the assertion that if it is possible that a exists, then it is possible
that a does not exist. But this is far too strong a premiss for the
argument; for it yields Hume's conclusion by itself without the
aid of (i) and (ii): for suppose a necessarily exists; then it is
possible that a exists, and so, by (iii), possible that a does not
exist. Hence it is not necessary that a exists. Thus if a necessarily
exists, a does not necessarily exist: therefore, a does not neces-
sarily exist.
The text of the Dialogues in any case suggests a strictly
psychological interpretation of conceivability. Although Hume
gives no satisfactory account of what he means by 'conceive',
what little he does say is enough for our purposes: his analysis of
belief ([1] 1 iii 7; [2] v 39--40) shows that 'P is believed' entails
'P is conceived' and hence 'P is conceivable'. But it is certainly
possible to believe propositions which are logically impossible
(everyone who makes a genuine mistake in mathematics or logic
does so) ; and so it is possible to conceive propositions which are
logically impossible: hence premiss (ii) ofHume's argument, on
this interpretation, is false.
33
 Hume would have replied to this as follows:
Every proposition, which is not true, is there [sc. in the
sciences] confused and unintelligible. That the cube root of64
is equal to the half of 10, is a false proposition, and can never
be distinctly conceived. ([2] XII 132)
But I cannot see that this helps: either confusion, unintelligibility
and conception admit a logical interpretation, in which case
what Hume says about the sciences will be true in at least some
cases but premiss (iii) of his argument will again be too strong;
or else (what is far more plausible) confusion, unintelligibility
and conception are taken in a psychological way, in which case
what Hume says about the sciences, and in particular premiss
(ii) of his argument, will again be false.
I conclude that Hume's argument does not establish his thesis
that necessary existence is impossible. Hume's successors have
not to my knowledge produced any better argument; and it is
more fruitful to consider the question from the opposite side,
asking what can be alleged against Hume's thesis.

Here Kant's lucid criticism of the proponents of necessary being

is apposite: he complained that these men never gave any clear
examples of what they meant, but contented themselves with
what are plainly cases of 'hypothetical' necessity (pp. 501-2).
And of course a clear example would clinch the issue.
In his book Speech Acts Searle claims to prove that 'on at least
one interpretation, universals exist, and the proposition that any
given universal exists is (or can be stated as) a tautology'- and
hence is a necessary truth (p. 113). His argument is this: 'the
statement that a given universal exists is derivable from the
assertion that the corresponding general term is meaningful.
Any meaningful general term can generate tautologies, e.g.
"either something or nothing is bald", and from such tautologies
the existence of the corresponding universal can be derived'
(p. 104).
In the particular case Searle's argument will, it seems, run
like this: Suppose:
(5) 'Bald' is meaningful.

Hence:
34
 (6) Either something is bald or it is not the case that some-
thing is bald.
Hence:
(7) Baldness exists.
The conclusion, (7), is a tautology, since it is derived from
tautologies and 'from tautologies only tautologies follow' (p.
106). Searle finds (7) acceptable because he thinks it asserts no
more than that 'bald' is meaningful. The argument has clear, if
somewhat general, affinities to the Ontological Argument: it
claims to prove an existential truth from a fact about meaning.
There are several things wrong with this argument. First,
premiss (5) is not a tautology but a contingent truth; indeed, no
proposition of the same form as (5) is a tautology, since every
such proposition entails the existence of a language and of
language-users - and such facts are certainly contingent. Hence
if (7) depends upon or is equivalent to (5), it is not a tautology.
Secondly, (6) is a tautology, being a special case of the Law
of Excluded Middle. As such it is entailed by any proposition,
and so in particular by premiss (5). But I can see no way in
which (6) is especially tied to (5), and no way in which (5) may
be said to 'generate' (6). Of course, if (5) were false, then (6)
could not be expressed in the language in which Searle and I
have expressed it; and if no synonym of 'bald' were available,
(6) could not be expressed at all. But for all that (6) would
remain true.
Thirdly, (7) seems in no way to follow from (6). Searle's
claim that it does is, I think, founded on his deflationary inter-
pretation of (7) ; for if, as Searle thinks, (7) says no more than
(5), then it is perhaps easy enough to suppose that it follows
from (6). There are two separate objections to this: (a) The
deflation does not justify the inference: (5) is a contingent truth,
and so does not follow from (6) which is a tautology; in general,
it is clear that no truth about the contents of English, or of any
other language, will follow from any tautology. (5) does, it is
true, follow from the fact that (6) is expressed by means of the
English sentence 'Either something is bald or it is not the case
that something is bald'; but that fact is not identical with, and is
not entailed by, the fact expressed by (6): (6) would be true
had Chaucer never spoken.
35
 (b) The deflationary interpretation is illegitimate. Searle
remarks, correctly enough, that the sentence 'Baldness exists',
were it ever used in ordinary English, would probably be taken
as a pompous synonym for 'Someone is bald'; but he alleges
that this 'ordinary' use is different from the technical philo-
sophical use made of the sentence in the dispute about universals.
Doubtless this is true. But, first, it is certain that no proponent
and no antagonist of universals has ever meant '"F" is meaning-
ful' by 'F-ness exists'; and secondly, this is a wholly improper
meaning to attach to the sentence, one which can do nothing
but breed confusion. This last point is simple but important.
The opponent of Hume's thesis, relying on Searle's argument,
proceeds thus: proposition (7) is proved to be a necessary truth;
proposition (7) is patently an existential proposition; therefore
there are necessary existential propositions. The answer is that,
at least as Searle glosses it, (7) is not an existential proposition:
it is expressed by means of a sentence containing the verb to
exist, but the sentence uses that verb in a strange and idiosyn-
cratic fashion. Some philosophers will dislike this answer since it
involves an appeal to ordinary usage; but such an appeal is in
order: were it not, I could find a necessary existential proposi-
tion merely by stipulating that (7) be construed as (6) ; and that
is absurd.
Searle's argument for the necessary existence of universals is
instructive, but only by its faults; it does not subvert Hume's
thesis. I might add that this criticism of Searle's argument does
not impugn his general position with regard to the traditional
problem of universals; that position seems to me to be eminently
sane.

Let us now look at some more promising claimants to necessary

existence. First, consider such mathematical theorems as these:
there exist two real solutions to every quadratic equation; there
exists a prime between 12 and 15; there exists a number
identical with every power of itself. These propositions are
undeniably existential: they satisfy the criteria suggested for
existential propositions on p. 31 ; they are, I am told, not
uncommon in the mouths of mathematicians; and they do not
appear to use 'exist' in the outlandish way of Searle's argument.
The propositions are also uncontroversially necessary: it is
universally accepted, and presumably true, that all mathe-
36
matical truths are necessary, and these propositions are certainly
mathematical truths.
Thus these propositions constitute counterexamples to Hume's
thesis; and that thesis is refuted.
Some philosophers have dissented from this conclusion. Flew,
for example, argues like this:
••. the so-called 'existence-theorems' of mathematics have
recently been summoned in aid of an egregious attempt to
revive this argument [i.e. the Ontological Argument]. In fact,
of course, they bear if anywhere in the opposite direction;
since, as parts of pure mathematics, they are not proofs of the
actual existence of anything, but only and properly of the
freedom from contradiction of concepts. ([3] p. 79)
It may be that Flew is denying that mathematicians use the
word 'exist' correctly when they put it into their theorems; but it
is, I think, better to suppose him to be claiming that 'exist' is
ambiguous: it has one sense in mathematical contexts (and in
that sense there are necessary existential propositions), it has
another sense outside mathematics (and in that sense there are
no necessary existential propositions). In effect, then, Flew
offers us a modification of Hume's thesis: no non-mathematical
existential propositions are necessarily true. The proposition
that God exists is presumably non-mathematical.
A second discipline often supposed to breed necessary
existential propositions is formal logic: in standard predicate
logic it is in general possible to derive an existentially quantified
theorem from any universal theorem (e.g. Lemmon, p. 112);
and there are also existentially quantified theorems whose
universal analogues are not theorems (e.g. (ax) ( (3:y) Fy-+Fx):
Lemmon, p. 159). Such theorems as these are supposed to
express existential propositions, since the existential quantifier
is to be read as 'There exists .. .'; and, being theorems oflogic,
they are clearly necessary truths. Hence, again, Hume's thesis
is false.
A philosopher of Flew's bent will find logic as unconvincing
as mathematics. Either, he will say, the logical sense of'exist' is a
special, and theologically irrelevant, sense (whether or not it is
identical with the mathematical sense); or else 'existentially
quantified' formulae of the predicate calculus are not properly
translated into existential sentences (see below, pp. 55ff.).
37
 Flew's retort carries the argument into murky waters, and in
order to try the truth of what he says we shall have to look more
closely at the notion of existence. That is best left to the next
chapter. Of course, even if the ambiguity which Flew relies upon
is established, Flew's claim itself remains unsupported; if 'exist'
is ambiguous between logico-mathematical contexts and other
contexts, then a presupposition of the modified version of
Hume's thesis is true - but nothing at all follows for the truth of
the modified thesis itself.

At this stage, then, the verdict on the Ontological Argument

is non liquet. The argument requires that there be existential
propositions which are logically necessary; and there are clear
cases oflogically necessary existential truths. It may be that the
argument requires necessary existentials in a sense of 'exist' for
which no uncontroversial examples of necessary existentials are
to hand; but this contention is still to be made out, and even if
made out does not in itself tell against the argument.
3 Existence and Predication

Very many philosophers have thought that the Ontological

Argument collapses because 'Existence is not a Predicate' (e.g.
Ayer, Broad, Wisdom, in Plantinga [3] p. 38). The most
celebrated supporter of this view is Kant (pp. 504--7), but it is
found briefly stated in Gassendi's criticism of Descartes' argu-
ment (11 186); and the slogan, 'Existence is not a Predicate', has
a venerable history in its own right (cf. Rescher [3] pp. 79-80).

Though the slogan is popular, it is obscure; what force it has

against the Ontological Argument cannot be assessed until its
sense has been explained. A first step towards explanation is to
rewrite the slogan in less concise and more concrete form, thus:
finite parts of the verb to exist do not function as predicate-
expressions in subject-predicate sentences.
Is this true? It is tempting to answer bluntly that elementary
grammar proves it false: the verb to exist in, say, 'Pegasus exists'
or 'Centaurs exist' is a predicate. But this will not do, for two
reasons: first, the grammarians themselves have no agreed
canons for the division of sentences into subject and predicate
(see Lyons, pp. 334-44; Kennick, pp. 161-6), so that it is not
clear how grammar pronounces on existential sentences. And
secondly, philosophers who support the slogan have not
intended to contradict the grammar books: distinguishing
between grammatical form and logical form, they maintain that
existence is not a logical predicate, whatever grammatical role the
verb to exist may fulfil; let 'Pegasus exists' be in subject-predicate
form grammatically -logically it has a quite different structure
(cf. W. C. Kneale, p. 154; Moore [2] p. 115; Thomson,
p. 104).
The term 'logical predicate' is in one respect at least
39
infelicitous: Kant explicitly maintains that existence is what he
calls a 'logical' predicate - he means to deny only that it is a
'real' predicate (p. 504). Nevertheless, the term is with us; and
if we are to deal with the slogan that existence is not a logical
predicate, we must clearly begin by trying to understand the
notion of logical predication.
Modern discussion of logical predication takes its start from
Frege's celebrated paper 'Function and Concept'. Frege tried to
explain the notion of a concept by first elucidating and then
extending the mathematical notion of a function; a Fregean
concept is, roughly speaking, what a logical predicate stands for.
Frege did not think he had given a difinition of 'concept' or
'predicate'; indeed, he claimed that all it is possible to do is 'to
lead the reader or hearer by means of hints to understand the
words as is intended' ([3] p. 43). Unfortunately, his hints end
metaphorically with the statement that concepts and concept-
words, and in general functions and expressions for functions,
are 'incomplete' or 'unsaturated' (e.g. [2] pp. 24, 31); and these
metaphors demand explication.
Frege's followers, in the hope of satisfying this demand, have
concentrated their attention on the tasks performed by the
different logical elements of a subject-predicate proposition;
since it is usually supposed that predicates are functionally
dependent on subjects (but see Frege [2] p. 32), elucidation has
tended to begin with the notion of logical subject.
Although there is controversy, there is also a certain general
congruency of opinion about the characteristic function of a
subject: the subject of a subject-predicate proposition is said to
stand for or refer to or single out or identify that which the propo-
sition is about. The most helpful account of this function seems
to me to be Strawson's: he glosses 'identifying an object' as
'bringing it about that the hearer (or, generally, the audience)
knows which or what object is in question' ([2] p. 74); and he
expands this as follows:

... in any communication situation a hearer (an audience) is

antecedently equipped with a certain amount of knowledge,
with certain presumptions, with a certain range of possible
current perception. There are within the scope of his
knowledge or present perception objects which he is able in
one way or another to distinguish for himself. The identificatory
40
 task of one of the terms, in predications of the kind we are now
concerned with, is to bring it about that the hearer knows
which object it is, of all the objects within the hearer's scope of
knowledge or presumption, that the other term is being applied
to. ([2] pp. 74-5)
Elsewhere, Strawson argues that identification of this sort
depends on items of factual knowledge in the possession of the
speaker and of the hearer (not necessarily the same items); and
that since subjects do, but predicates do not, 'present' whole
empirical facts in this way, we may if we like call predicates
'incomplete' or 'unsaturated' by contrast with subjects ([1] pp.
186-94).
This account ofthe notion of a logical subject is, as Strawson
insists (cf. [2] p. 75, n. 1), only partial; there are doubtless many
minor additions needed, and there are at least two major
deficiencies in it as it stands: first, it applies only to certain
paradigm cases of subject-predicate utterances (roughly, those
in which a speaker uses a simple subject-predicate sentence to
convey a piece of information to a hearer); and secondly, it
appears to presuppose some more profound account of the
nature of predication in categorial terms (for without such an
account we shall not be able to explain why we single out as
identificatory just those parts of a proposition that we do single
out: cf. Strawson [1] pp. 167-73; [2] pp. 80-8). I cannot
debate, or even expound, these difficult issues here; but I hope
that there is enough material now to hand to enable us to make
out the sense of, and grasp the impulse towards, the slogan that
existence is not a predicate.
Take the sentence 'Theaetetus exists'; suppose that it is in
subject-predicate form (as, say, 'Theaetetus flies' is), and that
'exists' is its logical predicate. Then in the proposition the term
'exists' is (in Strawson's phrase) 'applied to' Theaetetus. Now it
is in general true that if a predicate Pis applied to a, a must
exist: for otherwise there would be nothing for P to be applied
to. But then the proposition that Theaetetus exists cannot be
false: for if it is in subject-predicate form, what its subject stands
for, Theaetetus, exists- and hence it is true. Its form guarantees
its truth. Contrariwise, if the sentence 'Theaetetus does not
exist' is in subject-predicate form, it cannot be true: for its form
guarantees the existence of what its subject stands for, and hence
41
its falsity. These conclusions hold generally of all existential
propositions and their negations. As it is plainly true that there
are some false existential propositions and some true negative
existential propositions, it cannot be the case that existential
propositions are in subject-predicate form.
The same conclusion can be reached slightly less directly. If
in our propositions existence is a predicate, then 'Theaetetus' is
a subject-term and so identifies an object. Now to be identified,
an object must exist. Hence it cannot be false that Theaetetus
exists and it cannot be true that Theaetetus does not exist, since
the truth of the former and the falsity of the latter proposition
are guaranteed by purely formal considerations.
A short way of reaching the same conclusion turns on the
innocuous observation that if the proposition that Theaetetus
exists is in subject-predicate form then it must be about
Theaetetus. With the help of the principle that if a proposition
is about some object then that object exists, it is easy to derive
the same absurdities over again.
It is worth stressing the remarkable popularity which these
arguments, in one form or another, have enjoyed (cf. e.g.
Russell [2] p. 250; Broad, in Plantinga [3] p. 38; R yle [ 1] p. 17;
[2] pp. 22-7; Moore [1] p. 104; Strawson [1] p. 227; [4] p. 7;
Kenny [3] p. 138; Geach [ 1] p. 54; Pears, p. 97; Searle, p. 165).
Nevertheless, they appear to me to be entirely lacking in
cogency. For they rely on father Parmenides' ancient dogma
that whatever can be spoken of exists- more precisely, they rely
on one of the following specifications of that dogma:
( 1) If a predicate is applied to a, then a exists.
(2) If a is identified, then a exists.
(3) If a is referred to, then a exists.
(4) If a proposition is about a, then a exists.
And none of these propositions is true.
(i) It is possible to apply predicates to, identify, refer to and
talk about persons and things that no longer exist; historians
indulge in this professionally, and all of us do it constantly in
ordinary conversation. Every time a philosopher talks about his
predecessors or refers to Socrates he falsifies each of ( 1) to (4).
It is sometimes said in anticipation of this sort of objection that
'exists' in the consequent of (1)-(4) must be taken 'tenselessly',
i.e. to stand for 'has existed, does exist or will exist' (e.g. Searle,
42
p. 77 n.). If'exists' is taken in this odd way, the arguments will
have to be reformulated; and consequently they will no longer
be able to conclude that ordinary, tensed, existential proposi-
tions are not in subject-predicate form.
(ii) Secondly, there are characters in fiction who do not exist:
in the Prefatory Note to his novel Lower than Vermin, Domford
Yates wrote: 'It is true that none of my characters exists, and
that nine out of ten of them never did exist.' Literary critics
professionally, and all of us occasionally, talk about Hamlet and
hobbits, Lear and Lilliputians; and in doing so we regularly
make identifYing references. Talking in this vein does not com-
mit us to the existence of fictional creatures; when Ernestjones
argued that Hamlet had an Oedipus complex, his error did not
lie in supposing that Hamlet existed (though it may have
derived from treating him as a live patient). It is no use
retorting that fictional characters do exist - in fiction (Searle,
p. 78; cf. Alston). For either 'existence-in-fiction' is a species of
existence, in which case fictional characters do not have it since
they do not exist; or else it is not a special mode of existence, in
which case it does nothing to save propositions ( 1)-( 4).
(iii) Thirdly, there is a wide variety of things whose onto-
logical status is philosophically controversial - I mean such
things as numbers, propositions, properties, states. But we do
ordinarily apply predicates to numbers, talk about what people
have said, refer to the properties of an object, and identifY states
of affairs. It is silly to think that in doing these things we are
committing ourselves to the existence of anything, or answering
any philosophical problems. (It is another question whether
there is much significance in these problems of ontology.)
Objections to (1)-(4) have sometimes been met by a plea of
ambiguity. It is admitted that there is a rather scandalous sense
of, say, 'is about' such that 'X is about Y' does not entail 'Y
exists'; but in the proper sense of the phrase, it is claimed, the
entailment does hold (cf. Kenny [3] p. 128). 'About' is certainly
slippery, and possibly ambiguous; but I can think of no reason
(other than the desire to escape the objections to ( 1)-( 4)) for
thinking that it suffers from this peculiar ambiguity. And it is, if
anything, even less plausible to claim a parallel ambiguity for
'apply', 'refer', and 'identifY'.
The counterexamples to (1)-(4) show that 'refer to', 'be
about' and the like are 'existentially intensional' relations: a
43
relation R is existentially intensional if and only if from 'aRb' it
does not follow that there exists something to which a stands in
relation R. 'Imagine' and 'think of' are familiar examples of
relations of this sort (cf. above, p. 12); and it seems reasonable
and unsurprising that 'talk about', 'refer to' and the rest should
fall into the same class as these. (See also Hodges.)

At this point a subtler approach to the conclusion that exist-

ence is not a predicate offers itself. Let us replace crude talk
of referring by overtly intensional talk of purporting to refer:
surely the utterer of a typical subject-predicate proposition
purports to refer to the subject of that proposition; but the
utterer of an existential proposition does not, typically, purport
to refer to anything.
Cartwright suggests this argument in his paper on 'Negative
Existentials', but he thinks that its second premiss is false. In
such judgements as:
(5) Dragons do not exist
and:
(6) Faffner did not (really) exist
one does, he claims, purport to refer to dragons and to Faffner;
and I suppose that this is correct. Cartwright thinks, however,
that there are also negative existentials which do not carry
purported reference; and that these, at least, are not in subject-
predicate form. His examples are:
(7) Carnivorous cows do not exist
and:
(8) The man who can beat Tal does not exist.
Now it is true that in uttering (8) one would not, normally at
least, purport to refer to the man who can beat Tal. But that is
not because (8) is a negative existential: exactly the same is true
of, say:
(9) The man who can beat Tal will become world champion.
In (8), as in (9), the definite description, 'The man who can
beat Tal', does not function as a singular term; rather, it means
something like 'whoever can beat Tal'. Often in English a
phrase of the form 'The cp' is used idiomatically for 'Whatever is
44
cfo'; and sentences of the form 'The rp is F' express general, and
not singular, judgements.
The case of (7) is rather obscure: whether and what one
purports to refer to depends on the context of an utterance as
well as upon the sentence uttered, and it is hard to think of any
'typical' context for an utterance of (7). (5), according to
Cartwright, is normally used to attribute a 'status' to dragons -
to indicate that they are not real but legendary or mythical or
imaginary or something of that sort. He claims that (7) cannot
be used in this way; but, on the contrary, that seems to be the
only likely use for it. Perhaps Cartwright thinks that (7) is
merely a synonym for:
(10) No cows are carnivorous.
This is at best a queer way to construe (7); if it is a proper way,
that only shows that (7) is an atypical existential.
The conclusion of this cursory treatment oflogical predication
is this: there is so far no good reason to suppose that existential
propositions are not in subject-predicate form; and the type of
argument traditionally used to show that they are not is based
on a hallowed and hoary error. Of course, even if this type of
argument were acceptable, it would remain to be shown that its
conclusion conflicted with the Ontological Argument.

II

There are other, perhaps more fruitful, ways of considering the

logical status of existential propositions. One of these can be
characterised by the slogan 'Everything exists'.
The view is plainly put by Quine: 'To say that something does
not exist, or that there is something which is not, is clearly a
contradiction in terms; hence "(x) (x exists)" [i.e. "Everything
exists"] must be true' ([2] p. 150). Elsewhere, Quine wonders at
the simplicity of 'the ontological problem': 'It can be put in
three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: "What is there?" It can be
answered, moreover, in a word- "Everything"- and everyone
will accept this answer as true' ([1] p. 1).
From Quine's thesis together with the assumption that every-
thing has some predicate true of it, it follows that, for any
predicate F, a thing is F if and only if it both is F and exists. If
45
'x both is F and exists' is abbreviated to 'xis an existent F', this
conclusion can be stated as:
(1) For any property F and any object x: xis F if and only
if xis an existent F.
Proposition (1) has a long history. It represents, I think, the
substance of Kant's claim that being is not a real predicate.
Kant's claim derives from Hume, who asserts a strong version
of (1):
The idea of existence . . . is the very same with the idea of
what we conceive to be existent. To reflect on any thing
simply, and to reflect on it as existent, are nothing different
from each other. That idea, when conjoin'd with the idea of
any object, makes no addition to it. ([1] Iii 6)
Hume implies that the sense of any predicate 'F' is the same as
that of 'existent F' or 'F that exists'. In other words, he holds
that (1) is true because 'xis an F' means the same as 'xis an
existent F'.
It is a nice question whether this view of Hume's can be
reconciled with his rejection of necessary existence (above, pp.
32-4); I amincliried to think it can: but see Shaffer, pp. 235-7.
Proposition (1) is tenable in a weaker version, which can be
traced back to Aristotle. His clearest enunciation of the view is
in Book Gamma of the Metaphysics: ' ••• being and unity are the
same and one nature inasmuch as they follow one another ... ,
but not as things revealed by one account ... ; for one man and
existent man and man are the same, and the verbal doubling -
"One man is" and "One existent man is" - does not reveal
anything different' (r 2, 1003b 23-9). Aristotle is chiefly con-
cerned here to establish the connection between existence and
unity; but it is evident that he wishes to maintain of 'xis an F',
'x is an existent F' and 'xis one F' both (a) that they all entail
each other, and (b) that they do not mean the same. Thesis (1)
is contained in (a), while a denial of Hume's meaning-claim is
contained in (b).
Aristotle anachronistically helps us to see how the view that
everything exists can be regarded as inimical to the Ontological
Argument. He argues (e.g. [2] B 6, 92b 13-14) that since
existence is common to everything, it cannot constitute the
essence, or be a defining characteristic of anything. Schopen-
46
hauer marvelled how 'the prophetic wisdom of Aristotle' was
able 'to detect this piece of scholastic jugglery [he means the
Ontological Argument] through the shades of coming darkness',
and by this short argument managed to 'bar the road to it'
before ever it had been excogitated (cf. Plantinga [2] p. 67).
It seems to me that Aristotle's point is strong against some of
the things Aquinas had to say about the essence of God, but I
cannot see that it has any force against Anselm or Descartes.
Neither of them holds that existence constitutes the essence or
definition of God; they hold only that his existence can be
deducedfrom his essence. If Aristotle is right, then the incorpora-
tion of existence in a definition will be otiose- in Hume's phrase
it will 'add nothing'; but it will not make the definition
inadequate as long as there are other elements incorporated in
it too.
Kant meant to attack the Argument by means of ( 1) but at a
different point: if being F and being an existent Fare equivalent,
then it cannot be greater, or better, or more perfect, to exist
than not to exist: if existence makes no difference to a thing, then
it does not make a thing greater or better. This assault strikes at
one of the premisses of Anselm's reductio (proposition (7) on p. 8
above) ; and it contradicts the second premiss of Descartes'
argument {proposition (2) on p. 16 above).
In this way the Kantian proposition (1) is in direct conflict
with the Ontological Argument. But ( 1) cuts both ways: for if
it is true, it follows that the thing than which a greater cannot be
imagined exists (so that Anselm can dispense altogether with his
reductio), and equally that everything perfect exists (so that
Descartes can tum to the argument set out on p. 17 above). In
short, (1) cannot dispose of the Ontological Argument, even if
it disposes of certain versions of the argument.

Has (1) any value? Is it true?

Tlie arguments that have been advanced in favour of (1) are
far from cogent. Hume starts from the psychological assumption
that we cannot conceive of anything except as existing: but
there is no reason to believe this curious and obscure allegation;
and even if it were true, it would only sustain (1) by the
addition of a false psychologising account of logical possibility
(cf. above, pp. 23, 33). Kant does little better. He first offers an
example: '. . . the real contains no more than the merely
47
possible. A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin
more than a hundred possible thalers' (p. 505). But this
example is certainly inadequate (since no one claims that
existence adds anything in this way: should I hope for £11 when
I cash a £10 cheque?), and apparently self-refuting (since Kant
allows that his 'financial position is ... affected very differently
by a hundred real thalers than it is by the mere concept of
them (that is, of their possibility)'). Kant adds an argument, in
the form of a reductio; but I agree with those critics who find this
argument fallacious (e.g. Shaffer, p. 229). Quine, in a celebrated
piece of rhodomontade, argues that non-existents are not to be
countenanced since they cannot be identified and individuated
([1] p. 4). But his premiss is false, as any child who can tell Pooh
from Piglet knows.
Quine's thesis, that everything exists, is, I think, vulnerable to
the first two objections to propositions (1)-(4) ofp. 42 above:
Socrates does not exist, and Hamlet never has existed; therefore
it is not true that everything exists.
This blunt rebuttal needs a little sophistication if it is to
dispose of proposition ( 1). In the first case, that of historical
figures, it is not enough to instance the fact that Socrates is a
philosopher: if Socrates is a philosopher and Socrates does
not exist, then ( 1) is false; but the defendant of ( 1) will
presumably maintain that Socrates was a philosopher, but
only while he existed- he does not exist now, but then he is
not a philosopher now. This line of reasoning may be plausible
in some cases; but there are many others to which it cannot
be applied: consider, for example, 'Socrates is a celebrated
philosopher', 'Socrates is a model for all aspiring philos-
ophers'.
The case of fictions is much more complex. It is very tempting
to advance an argument like this:
(2) Mr Slope was a devious chaplain.
(3) Mr Slope never existed.
Therefore: (4) Some devious chaplains never existed.
The conclusion, (4), does seem to follow from the two pre-
misses - the argument pattern is 'a is F; a is not G: so some
F is not G' - and it is surely incompatible with ( 1).
This is a sound argument against ( 1) only if (2) and (3)
are true. (3) is undeniable; but (2), and propositions like it,
48
are by no means undeniably true. Some philosophers have held
that propositions like (2) are either false (e.g. Ryle [2]) or else
neither true nor false (e.g. Frege [4] pp. 62-3). I think that
Frege's argument for this view is bad, but that the view is true
in a limited way: if we suppose (2) to occur inside the novel
Barchester Towers, then it is at least curious to attempt to assign
it a truth-value. In general, in the case of many, though
certainly not all, propositions about fictional characters inside
works of fiction, it is mistaken to look for a truth-value: for what
could conceivably count for or against the truth of such
propositions?
But suppose that (2) occurs in talk about Barchester Towers -
in amateur or professional literary criticism. Surely it is wrong
to deny it a truth-value then? (2) seems to be true if and only
if there is some set of propositions in Barchester Towers which
entails (2) and no set which entails its negation.
If (2) is true in one context and not true in another, then it
must have a variable reference and perhaps also a variable
sense. How are we to understand (2) when it has a truth-
value? Leonard Linsky suggests that 'in speaking about movies,
plays, novels, dreams, legends, superstition, make-believe, etc.,
our words may be thought of as occurring within the scope
of special "operators"' (p. 126). Thus (2) should be read
as:
(5) In the novel, Mr Slope is a devious chaplain.
Linsky does not say why we must read (2) as (5), but it is easy
to supply an argument. There are doubtless propositions m
Barchester Towers which entail:
(6) Mr Slope lived in the nineteenth century.
Since to be alive is what it is to exist for living creatures, (6) and
(3) as they stand are in contradiction to one another. Since (3)
is true, (6) can only be maintained if it is construed in some
such way as:
(7) In the novel, Mr Slope lived in the nineteenth century.
The reasons for thinking (6) true and the reasons for thinking
(2) true are precisely analogous: hence if (6) is to be read as
(7), (2) should be read as (5).
49
 The sting in this argument is to come: since (5) and (3) do
not entail (4), and (2) is true only if it is read as (5), the
argument from (2) and (3) to (4) is not sound. (1) cannot be
refuted in this way.
Not all propositions about fictional characters are thus
emasculated by Linsky's operators. Consider, for example: 'Mr
Slope is the villain of Barchester Towers', 'Mr Slope was one of
Trollope's most felicitous creations', 'Mr Slope was modelled on
a well-known bishop's chaplain', 'Mr Slope is emulated by a
host of college chaplains'. Propositions of this sort can truthfully
be made; they are not lines from Barchester Towers, and they
cannot be truthfully prefixed by 'In the novel ... '. They can,
therefore, perform the function that (2) cannot: together with
(3) they provide a sound argument for propositions analogous
to (4).
There is very much more to be said about fictions than I have
said here; and I fancy that a rational literary criticism waits on
such discussion. These brief remarks must suffice to indicate
that the Kantian thesis, (1), is false.
The view that there are things which do not exist has had
numerous respectable supporters (cf. Rescher [3]; Prior, chap.
viii) ; perhaps the best known of them is the nineteenth-century
German philosopher Alexius Meinong. In a notorious sentence
Meinong concluded: 'Those who like paradoxical modes of
expression could very well say: "There are objects of which it
is true that there are no such objects"' (p. 83). For many
years more fastidious ontologists shunned Meinong's well-
populated world; recent advances in modal logic, however,
appear to be restoring Meinong to progressive company, in-
asmuch as the interpretation of modality relies heavily on
the notion of identifiable non-existent individuals (cf. e.g.
Hintikka [3]).
The view that 'Everything exists' is not true; therefore it
cannot defeat the Ontological Argument.

III

It is tempting to characterise the second way of approaching the

logical status of existential propositions by the contrary slogan:
'Nothing exists'.
The philosophers I am thinking of might be called logical
50
nihilists; their defining mark is the claim that no sentence of the
form 'a exists' (where 'a' is a singular term) can express a true
proposition- not because it must express a false proposition, but
because it is not well-formed. On this view, it may be true that
horses exist; but it is just bad grammar to say 'Arkle exists' or
'Pegasus does not exist'.
Rejection of the sentence-form 'a exists' carries with it
rejection of the open sentence 'x exists', and any formula con-
taining it. Logicians regard sentences of the form 'Some horses
neigh' and 'All horses neigh' as encapsulating the open sentence
'x neighs': thus 'For some x, xis a horse and x neighs', and 'For
any x, if xis a horse, then x neighs'. What, then, are we to say of
such sentences as 'Some horses exist' and 'All horses exist'?
Clearly, either that they are ill-formed, on the grounds that they
encapsulate the open sentence 'x exists'; or else that they are
well-formed but do not encapsulate the open sentence 'x exists'.
Curiously, supporters of the second slogan have offered both
these views, the first for universal propositions and the second
for particular propositions.
There is a clear exposition of logical nihilism in Frege's
Foundations of Arithmetic: Frege argues that

the content of a statement of number is an assertion about a

concept. This is perhaps clearest with the number 0. If I say
'Venus has 0 moons', there simply does not exist any moon or
agglomeration of moons for anything to be asserted of; but
what happens is that a property is assigned to the concept
'moon of Venus', namely that of including nothing under it.
If I say 'the Kaiser's carriage is drawn by four horses', then I
assign the number four to the concept 'horse that draws the
Kaiser's carriage'. (p. 59e; cf. [3] pp. 48-50)

Number, then, is a property of concepts and not of objects; it is,

as Frege sometimes puts it, a 'second-order' or 'second-level'
property. Now 'in this respect existence is analogous to number.
Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the
number nought.' And thus existence, too, is 'a property of
concepts' rather than of objects (p. 65e). The proposition that
horses exist is a perfectly respectable subject-predicate propo-
sition; but it does not predicate existence, or anything else, of
horses. It says nothing of Bucephalus, Barbary, White Surrey
51
and the rest; it is about the concept 'horse' and it says of the
concept that it is instantiated - that it does not 'include nothing
under it'.
Almost exactly the same view was held by Russell; it is stated
with his customary elegance and lucidity of expression in the
lectures on logical atomism ([2] pp. 228-59).
If existence is a second-order predicate, what happens when we
try to treat it as a .first-order predicate, and say such things as
'Arkle exists', 'Pegasus does not exist'? Frege is uncompromis-
ing: 'I do not want to say it is false to assert about an object
what is here asserted about a concept; I want to say it is
impossible, senseless, to do so. The sentence 'There is Julius
Caesar' is neither true nor false but senseless' ([3] p. 50) - as
senseless, presumably, as the sentence 'Julius Caesar is 42 '.
Russell, doubtless guided by his robust sense of reality, said
bluntly that propositions of this sort are 'perfectly significant,
... perfectly sober, true, decent propositions' ([2] p. 248); how-
ever, he concluded from this, not that his analysis of existence
was false, but that the apparently singular terms occurring in
these apparently first-order existential propositions are not really
singular terms at all. Rather, 'Arkle', 'Pegasus' and the rest are
disguised definite descriptions; and thus in general 'a exists' is
replaceable by some sentence of the form 'The F exists'. By
Russell's Theory of Descriptions sentences of this sort are
analysed into general existentials of the form 'There exists just
one F', which, in Fregeanjargon, asserts of the conceptF that it is
instantiated precisely once.
(Notice that the Theory of Descriptions and the second-order
analysis of existence are logically independent. Taken by itself the
Theory would license the analysis of 'The F exists' into 'There
is one and only one F and it exists', which is nonsense according
to the second-order account of existence. Russell himself seems
to have accepted this analysis at one time (cf. [l] p. 54).)
Although Frege and Russell both tailored their analysis to the
needs of formal logic, it should not be inferred that the analysis
has no application outside its formal habitat. Homely trans-
positions of the analysis can be found in Gilbert Ryle's paper on
'Systematically Misleading Expressions' and in G. E. Moore's
'Is Existence a Predicate?'. Moore tends to follow Frege
inasmuch as he finds the sentence 'This exists' - and, by
implication, all sentences of the form 'a exists' - 'absolutely
52
meaningless'; Ryle is more Russellian in thinking that such
sentences 'are not false, nor are they senseless' - rather their
syntax is 'in a demonstrable way improper to the states of affairs
which they record' ([1] p. 16), and this makes them 'systematic-
ally misleading'.
Both Frege and Russell explicitly connect their analysis of
existence with the Ontological Argument. Frege says that
'because existence is a property of concepts, the Ontological
Argument for the existence of God breaks down' ([1] p. 65e);
Russell thinks that 'it may be said quite decisively that, as a
result of analysis of the concept of 'existence', modern logic has
proved this argument invalid' ([3] p. 814; cf. [1] p. 54).
How can these skeletal claims be fleshed out? First, any
version of the argument which concludes that God exists, taking
'God' as a singular term, will (at least on Frege's view) be
unsound; for its conclusion will be senseless. Secondly, any
version employing the function 'x exists' will not be sound. This
does not affect the body of Anselm's argument (above, p. 5), but
it appears to touch premiss (7) of his reductio (p. 8); it does not
impinge on Descartes' argument (p. 16), though it does conflict
with the pseudo-Cartesian schema (p. 18); it hits Malcolm's
premiss (9) (p. 19), but it misses the core at least ofHartshorne's
argument (p. 20). Of course, it may be possible to reconstruct an
Ontological Argument on the basis of second-order existence;
indeed, Frege himselfappears sanguine on the matter ( [ 1] p. 65e).

Is the Frege-Russell analysis correct?

It is plain, I think, that Frege and Moore are wrong in
denying sense to sentencesofthe form 'a exists'. As Russell saw,
these are ordinary, and therefore decent, sentences. And in fact,
despite the passages I referred to, Frege does not mean to deny
this; for he admits more than once that it does make sense to
predicate existence of objects (see esp. the fascinating dialogue
[6]). To remain consistent, Frege must also claim that 'existence'
is ambiguous, and that his second-order analysis applies only to
one sense of the term; this sense he marks as 'Esgibtexistenz',
characterising the sentences he means to analyse as 'those which
in German are expressed by means of "es gibt"' ([7] p. 274).
All, then, that Frege denies is that 'There is a' has sense; he does
not after all deny that 'a exists' has sense. Moore too comes to
allow that 'This exists' is not senseless; and he too is forced to
53
postulate an ambiguity in the word 'exist' ([2] pp. 123-5; cf.
above, pp. 37-8).
It seems to me that Frege's and Moore's admission lets the
Ontological Argument off the hook: the argument is not framed
in terms of 'Esgibtexistenz', so that Frege's analysis, on his own
showing, does not apply to it. If we are to take any tricks against
the argument, we must follow Russell's lead.
To do so, we must maintain (i) that a Russellian paraphrase
of 'a exists' is possible, in the sense that (a) it allows us to say
everything we legitimately wish to say in our normal idiom, and
(b) it does not force us to say things we do not want to say; and
also (ii) that a paraphrase is necessary in the sense that if it is not
adopted we shall fall into error, absurdity or contradiction.
(ii) The most canvassed argument for the necessity of a
Russellian paraphrase is one I have already discussed (above,
pp. 41-4) : if existential propositions are taken at their face
value as subject-predicate in form, then paradox follows;
Russellian paraphrase is a sufficient and an elegant way of
avoiding the paradox. I need not rehearse the deficiencies of
this argument again.
A second argument is Moore's: if a sentence 'a is F' is well-
formed, then so are a number of sentences syntactically related
to it in certain simple ways; in particular the universal affirma-
tive, 'Everything is F', and the particular negative, 'Something
is not F', are well-formed. But 'Everything exists' and 'Some-
thing does not exist' are not well-formed; hence 'a exists' is not
well-formed. Moore himself considers the sentences 'All tame
tigers exist' and 'Some tame tigers do not exist'; and he finds
the first a 'puzzling expression' and the second 'utterly meaning-
less'. But he proceeds immediately to give a perfectly clear
meaning to the second sentence, namely 'Some tame tigers are
imaginary' (suppose this said to a small boy whose uncle has
been telling him about his exploits in India). The first sentence
may be puzzling: but the problem is merely one of imagining
circumstances in which it might reasonably be uttered, and the
ingenious reader will find this only a momentary puzzle. In any
case, as I have remarked, Moore effectively withdraws his
argument by admitting that it does not apply to all uses of
'exist'.
(i) (a) The analysis rules as ill-formed such sentences as:
'Some of the creatures in Ovid's Metamorphoses do not exist';
54
'Very many of the heroes revered by the Greeks never existed';
'Only a few copies of the Shakespeare first folio exist'. But these
sentences, and countless others like them, are grammatically
impeccable. (See also Strawson [4] pp. 12-15.)
(b) Russell does not paraphrase all sentences of the form 'a
exists'; if 'a' is a 'logically proper name', then 'a exists' is
no longer amenable to paraphrase - it is simply senseless ([2]
p. 252). Now Russell's doctrine of 'logically proper names' is
notoriously difficult; some at least of the things he says about
them indicate that he would have to regard any sentence of the
form 'This exists' as senseless. But Moore, I think, showed that
such sentences are not senseless: he pointed to the intelligibility
of'This might not have existed', and argued that such a complex
sentence could not have sense if its component, 'This exists',
were senseless. Moore might also have referred to simple tensed
sentences: a man may point with pride to his house and say
'This existed 250 years before my birth and will exist 250 years
after my death'. If Russell is committed to denying sense
to 'This exists', then that is a further argument against his
analysis.
I conclude the discussion of the slogan 'Nothing exists' in the
same vein as I concluded the discussion of the first slogan: it
is not true; and so it has no force against the Ontological
Argument.

IV

At this point a device which has been hovering in the back-

ground for some while must be brought into the open; I mean
the device of'existential quantification'. The quantifier seems at
once to provide us with a formal analysis of existence, to explain
why the curious slogans we have just considered have been so
popular, and to give a fresh interpretation of our original
slogan (for 'when logicians say that 'exists', or existence, is not a
logical predicate, what they mean is that it is not treated as one
in first-order predicate logic' (Thomson, p. 104) ) .
Sentences of the form 'Everything is F' are rendered in the
notation of predicate logic by some such formula as '(yx) Fx';
the prefix '(y)', which, roughly speaking, does the work of the
word 'Everything' in the English sentence, is known as a
universal quantifier. This quantifier is evidently not a logical
55
predicate; and the symbolic notation underlines the logical
difference between predicates and quantifiers by a typographical
difference.
Predicate logic uses a second quantifier, often written ' (3:) ',
parallel to and interdefinable with the universal quantifier.
Plainly '(3:)' is not a predicate expression. '(3:)' is known as the
existential quantifier; and it is regularly translated by means of
the verb to exist. Thus 'existence', as Quine has it, 'is what
existential quantification expresses' ([5] p. 5); and since the
quantifier is not predicative, existence, in a moderately per-
spicuous sense, is not a predicate.
Standard predicate logics contain a Rule of Existential
Generalisation which allows the inference of '(3:x) Fx' from a
formula of the form 'Fa', where 'a' is a singular term (e.g.
Lemmon, p. 145). It seems that this inference will only be
successful if the object designated by the term 'a' exists: for if it
does not, then the fact that it is F will not guarantee that there
exists an F. This argument applies generally to any singular
term; and it leads to the conclusion that any object designated
by a singular term must exist- or, in Quine's formula (above,
p. 45), (x) (x exists). This is why Quine thinks that his formula is
a trivial truth (cf. [1] p. 1). (As I have stated it, this argument
has a curious feature: it appears to use the term 'exist' in a
manner not amenable to quantificational translation. I shall not
try to solve this little puzzle.)
How might this formal machinery affect the Ontological
Argument? I do not think that the opponents of the Argument
are given any new forces to deploy against it; but they may,
perhaps, be able to marshal their existing forces with greater
precision and coherence. Thus the argument discussed in the
first section of this chapter can be seen to turn on the nature of
existential generalisation: singular terms cannot be without
denotation, for then the Rule of Existential Generalisation
would fail. Again, the Kantian attack might be grounded on
the fact that all singular terms are of equal status from an
ontological point of view: the Rule of Generalisation holds
impartially for all. Finally, predicate logic gives a simple
expression to the Frege-Russell view that 'Nothing exists':
formulae such as '(3:)a' are not well-formed.
Some logicians have concluded from this that the Ontological
Argument is beyond the power of standard predicate logic; and
56
they have proposed modifications to ordinary logic (in parti-
cular,qualificationsofthe RuleofExistential Generalisation) by
means of which the Ontological Argument may be brought
within the scope of formal logic (cf. e.g. Hintikka [2]). Such
'free' logics are doubtless of formal interest; but advocacy of
them appears to be an excessive reaction to the alleged de-
ficiencies of standard logic, at least so far as the interests of the
Ontological Argument are concerned. It is worth looking more
closely at the argument about the existential quantifier that was
purveyed a page or so ago; and especially at the thesis that
'existence is what the existential quantifier expresses'.

Quine argues thus: 'there are things of kind F if and only if

(ax) Fx. This is as unhelpful as it is undebatable, since it is how
one explains the symbolic notation of quantification to begin
with' ([5] p. 5). This is not true: Frege glossed '(ax) Fx' as 'Not
everything is not F' (i.e. '• (yx)' Fx'); Russell often used the
formula' "Fx" in some cases'; and Quine himself offers 'some-
thing is F' and 'There is something F' as well as the overtly exist-
ential 'Some Fs exist'. These explanations are not equivalent.
Let us disregard these vagaries and stipulate that '(ax) Fx' be
read existentially. Quine's thesis is then undebatable: but the
stipulation is not, since the quantifier is not an isolated symbol
but part of a systematic formalisation of deductive reasoning. It
seems to me that the existential stipulation does violence to the
nature of quantification, and should be rejected. I shall support
this contention by two very brief arguments drawn from con-
troversial areas of philosophical logic.
(i) There is a class of relations characterised by the fact that
'aRb' does not entail 'There exists an x such that aRx': e.g. 'look
for', 'hunt', 'want', 'need', 'fear', 'worship', 'admire', 'believe
in' (cf. above, p. 44). Thus:
( 1) Socrates vowed a cock to Asclepius
does not entail:
(2) There exists someone to whom Socrates vowed a cock.
But it surely does entail:
(3) Socrates vowed a cock to someone
and it does so in virtue of the same rule by which it entails:
(4) Someone vowed a cock to Asclepius.
57
Now if the quantifier is read existentially, the inference from
(1) to:
(5) (rax) (Socrates vowed a cock to x)
represents the fallacious move from ( 1} to (2); so it cannot also
represent the valid move from (1) to (3). But in that case the
logical apparatus of quantification is not equipped to express
this valid move at all; and neither, therefore, can it express the
valid move from ( 1) to (4). Yet this is precisely the sort of
move that quantificationallogic was designed to formalise.
(ii) My second argument returns to those items of disputed
ontological standing, to which I have referred before (above,
p. 43). Consider the inference from:
(6) The policeman said that the prisoner had confessed
to:
(7) The policeman said something.
It is plain that this is a valid move; and it is plain, too, that (7)
does not involve any commitment to the existence of proposi•
tions or of any other thin, metaphysical, items. Thus with
Quinean quantification, the inference cannot be represented as
an instance of the move from 'a said that P' to '(rax) (a said x)'.
But there appears no other way of representing it. For the same
reason, Quine cannot express such truths as that every pro-
position is entailed by some proposition, or that no proposition
and its negation are true together.
Similar arguments are readily constructed in the case of other
items of dubious ontological status.
The existential quantifier should not be stipulatively tied to
existence; for if it is, predicate logic will not formalise the sort of
argument it is designed for.
Just as the universal quantifier is made familiar by means of
the words 'all', 'any', 'every', etc.; so the 'existential' quantifier
- 'particular quantifier' would be a better name- is best glossed
by means of 'some', 'a', etc. These glosses are formalised in the
'substitutional' account of quantification which was developed
by the Polish logician Lesniewski (cf. e.g. Lejewski, Marcus).
On this account, universal quantification is explained as follows:
'(yx) Fx' is true if and only if every substitution-instance of 'Fx'
is true. The particular quantifier is introduced in similar
fashion: '(rax) Fx' is true if and only if at least one substitution-
instance of'Fx' is true. cp is a substitution-instance of'Fx' if and
58
only if it results from replacing each occurrence of the variable
'x' in 'Fx' by a constant of an appropriate type. Thus if 'F' is
'is wise', a substitution-instance of 'Fx' will be 'Socrates is wise'
and the truth of this proposition will be a sufficient condition for
the truth of '(ax)Fx'. If 'F' is 'The policeman says', then a
substitution-instance of 'Fx' will be 'The policeman says that
the prisoner confessed'; and the truth of this will be enough for
the truth of'(ax) Fx' (here we would tend to use a different style
ofvariable and write, e.g., '(3:P)aS:P').
Substitutional quantification does not fall foul of the objec-
tions raised against Quinean quantification. It is adequate for
the move from (1) to (3), and indicates the parallel between
this move and that from (1) to (4). It can formalise the
inference of (7) from (6); and it can express the truths which
Quine cannot.
On the substitutional view there is no general connection
between existence and quantification. It is often said that
substitutional quantification replaces an ontology of individuals
by an ontology of names; instead of reading '(ax) Fx' as 'there
exists an object such that .• .' we must read it as 'there exists a
name such that .. .'. This is a mistake; there is no reason to saddle
substitutional quantification with the doctrine that the values
of quantifiable variables are expressions. It is true that if there
is a subject-predicate proposition 'Fa', then there must be a
subject-term, namely 'a': but this is a trifling point which says
nothing about existence; and in any case it is not asserted by the
assertion of ' ('3:x) F x'.
If we want to know how to represent existence in quantifi-
cationallogic, we must first decide how the verb to exist functions
in the contexts we want to formalise; the structure of predicate
logic cannot in itself answer our question: it may provide a
useful notation in which to pose our philosophical problems, but
it cannot by itself solve them. And this is, after all, no more than
a truism: a question is not answered by asking it in a new
symbolism.

It is time to return to a topic that has already been touched

upon more than once: the alleged ambiguity of'exist'. There are
two quite distinct allegations to investigate.
59
 First, 'exist' has often been accused of what I may call
Aristotelian ambiguity: Aristotle frequently states that 'being is
said in many ways' (e.g. [3] r 2, 1003 a33), and in particular
that it is said in as many ways as there are 'categories' of things
(e.g. [3] A 7, 1017 a22-4). He is usually taken to have meant
something expressible more formally as follows: the meaning of
the term 'exist' in sentences of the forms 'a exists' and 'Fs exist'
varies according to what sort of thing a is and Fs are (cf.
Malcolm, p. 53). Flew's view about mathematical existence
(above, p. 37) is a particular case of this general theory: 'exist'
in 'There exist numbers of a kind K' is different in sense from
'exist' in, say, 'There exist horses of a kind K'.
There are two reasons why this theory is difficult to criticise.
First, it contains a radical indeterminacy: it is not clear how the
boundaries of sorts or categories are to be drawn; so that the
alleged range of senses of 'exist' is unspecified. Secondly, it is
rarely said what senses are to be assigned to 'exist' in those sorts
which are in some way determined. Aristotle's gallant attempt
to explicate various such senses fell into inextricable snares (cf.
Owen); Flew's implication that in mathematical contexts
'exist' means 'is consistent' ([3] p. 79) is unsupported by any
argument.
The Aristotelian theory has no general plausibility. It is
clearly not true of all terms that application to different subjects
breeds different sense: the wise man finds things of many
different sorts interesting or boring, desirable or repulsive
(thereby showing the poverty of crude utilitarianism); but that
does not show that 'interesting', 'boring', 'desirable' and
'repulsive' are ambiguous terms. There are many examples of
this sort quite apart from the traditional 'transcendentals' such
as 'one' and 'good': we require a special argument for saying of
'exist' what we have no inclination to say in these cases. It is no
good appealing to 'the variously different ways in which [these
different existential propositions] are proved or supported' (Mal-
colm, p. 53) : almost any ascription of a characteristic to a thing
can be supported in a variety of ways; and this does not tell
for the ambiguity of the predicate used in the ascription.

Other philosophers have found another ambiguity in exis-

tential propositions; I call this Fregean ambiguity, since it con-
sists in distinguishing, after Frege, between Esgibtexistenz and
60
 Wirklichkeit (above, p. 53; cf. e.g. Geach [1] pp. 54-9; Kenny
[6] pp. 82-95).
It is certainly true that 'There is' and 'exists' cannot be inter-
changed at will. The case is rather complex, in view of the
grammatical heterogeneity of 'there is' and 'exists'; but it is
easy to show that sentences of the forms 'There is/are .. .' and
' ... exist(s)' cannot always be found synonymous partners of
the opposite form. That 'exist' does not always have a 'there is'
partner is proved by sentences such as 'The agents he named
under torture were found later not to exist' (cf. above, p. 55),
which cannot be reformulated without 'exist' and with 'there is'.
In the other direction, consider, say, 'There are times when I
feel like screaming', or 'There is a solecism in every speech he
makes'. There is no reasonable version of these sentences that
eliminates 'There is' in favour of 'exist'. Examples of these sorts
can be multiplied at leisure; it is unilluminating, but perhaps
permissible, to deduce from them that 'there is' and 'exist' do not
always mean the same. (It is worth trying to construct examples
which similarly differentiate 'some' both from 'there is' and
from 'exists': the Procrustean bed of some versions of quantifi-
cation theory leads to severe mutilation.)
There is, however, no reason to interpret these facts as
implying an ambiguity in 'exist' or as proving that there are at
least two kinds of existence claim. For there is, in general, no
reason to call 'there is' sentences existential: they do not contain
the word 'exist', and they are not in general synonymous with
sentences that do. Of course, if philosophers first decide to call
both 'exist' and 'there is' sentences existential and then notice
differences between them, they may express their conclusion by
saying they have found two sorts of existence; but that is rather
like first calling both cats and dogs cats, and then claiming
to discover an interesting difference between varieties of cat.
I do not mean to deny that 'exist' sentences are sometimes
synonymous with 'there is' sentences (and hence, sometimes,
with 'some' sentences, since 'There are F Gs' is regularly
synonymous with, and presumably a grammatical transform of,
'Some Fs are G'). Certainly, 'There exists .. .' often amounts to
no more than 'There is .• .' - in mathematical contexts perhaps
always. And sometimes 'exist' appears as a rhetorical bubble
which a philosophical pin may appropriately deflate to an 'is'.
It is true, too, that the abstract noun 'existence' has close
61
connections with 'there is' : 'the existence of Fs' is one regular
way of forming a nominalisation of 'There are Fs'. But these
facts do not warrant a conflation of existential propositions and
'there is' propositions.
The dispute now may well seem merely terminological: we
agree that there is a distinction but disagree over whether to
bestow the title 'existential' on only one, or on both, of the items
distinguished. There is something in this diagnosis; but I think
that some philosophers have supposed that the distinction
between existential and 'there is' propositions is coextensive
with the distinction between singular and general existential
propositions (cf. above, p. 31), and with them my disagreement
is substantial: for it is not the case that every general existential
proposition is synonymous with some 'there is' proposition. This
is clear from some of the examples I have already advanced
(above, pp. 55, 61); and it can be seen from the absurdity of
imagining that 'exist' is equivocal in such pairs ofsentenct;s as:
( 1) Dodos no longer exist/Some species of birds no longer
exist.
(2) Achilles really existed/Some characters in Greek myth-
ology really existed.
(3) King Arthur never existed/At least one of the British
worthies never existed.
Frege's distinction, whatever its value, does not help us over
the Ontological Argument. It is, of course, the Wirklichkeit of
Gods, and not their Esgibtexistenz, that the theist and atheist
dispute over and that the argument claims to settle (cf. Anselm
[I] 42.18; contrast Geach [1] p. 59- but see [2] p. 74).

VI

There is a temptation to think that the intractable term 'exist' is

'primitive' and undefinable (cf. Quine [5] p. 5). Those logicians
who have offered definitions do not appear to have been
successful. The popular account in terms of self-identity:
(Dl) a exists =dfa =a
has as a consequence the unacceptable view that everything
exists. The apparently weaker version of (D 1) :
62
 (D2) a exists =df(rax)x =a

- existence is identity with something - proves on reflection to

havethesameconsequence; for '(rax)x =a' is logically equivalent
to 'a =a'.
Quine commends (D2) on the specious ground that it makes
'a is' short for 'a is something' just as 'a eats' is short for 'a eats
something' ([5] p. 7). A more natural readingof'ais something'
than Quine's is '(3:F) Fa'; and this suggests a third definition:

(D3) a exists =df(raF) Fa.

There are several immediate difficulties with (D3), and it has

been modified in various ways (cf. e.g. Rescher [1]). But there
are two fundamental objections to (D3) which no amount of
modification can counter: first, (D3) must lead to the false view
that anything we talk about exists (cf. above, pp. 42-4);
secondly, even if '(3:F) Fa' stated necessary and sufficient con-
ditions for 'a exists', there seems no reason to suppose it to give
the sense of 'a exists' - '. • • exist' just does not mean ' ••• has
something true of it'.
We may do better to recall Locke's remark that 'where and
when are questions belonging to all finite existences': perhaps to
exist, in the primary sense, is to be, not something, but some-
where (and hence somewhen). This view has at least the merit of
having the linguists on its side: according to Lyons, 'from the
point of view of their semantic analysis, existential sentences
might be described as implicitly locative' (p. 390). 'Exist' is thus
analysed into a 'copula', 'be', plus an indefinite locative:
'Dodos once existed' means 'Dodos once were somewhere';
'Pegasus never existed' means 'Pegasus was never anywhere'.
(The copula here is tensed and carries the temporal reference of
the sentence: Lyons assigns this task to an explicit temporal
adverb and leaves the copula as a 'dummy' element in the
sentence with only ·a superficial function (cf. pp. 322-3). He
appears to suggest that the temporal adverb thus elicited forms,
together with the locative, the sense of'exist'; but that will only
be so if we are ready to assume that a temporal adverb forms
part of the sense of every verb.)
This view of the nature of existence has a respectable lineage;
it can be found, in a crude form, in the early Greek cosmogonists
63
{cf. Kahn). There appear to be two main supports for the view.
First, in very many languages, both Indo-European and non-
Indo-European, the phrases used to express existential proposi-
tions are locative in character. In some cases the locative
content is vestigial (as, just, in the English 'exist'- 'stand out');
but in many languages there is some single phrase which is most
naturally put into English now by means of 'exist', now by an
explicitly locative construction. It is worth mentioning specific-
ally the frequency of existential verbs cognate with the English
verb to .find; for this verb has recently been used in explication of
existential quantification (cf. Hintikka [1]).
Secondly, there are striking similarities in construction
between the verb 'exist' on the one hand, and such verbs as
'occur', 'happen', 'take place', 'come about' on the other. (The
philosopher who finds difficulties with 'Hector never existed'
will find precisely parallel puzzles with 'The Trojan War will
not take place'.) It has been conjectured that a single 'lexeme'
underlies all these verbs, and that 'manifestation' of the lexeme
in any particular case is determined by the category to which
the subject-term belongs: if the subject-term is, say, the name of
a person, then the lexeme appears as 'exist' (or perhaps as 'live');
if it is the name of a battle, the lexeme may appear as 'take
place' (or perhaps as 'be fought'). Since an analysis of'happen',
'take place', etc., into a 'copula' plus locative and temporal
adverbs is highly plausible, a similar analysis of 'exist' com-
mends itself. -
Perhaps these two points can be reinforced by a third. It is
often helpful when trying to ascertain the sense of a term to
consider the terms it is typically contrasted with. Now existents
are regularly contrasted with, first, figments of the imagination,
characters of fiction, fable and art, creatures of dreams and
delusions, the contingent and the possible. The items in this
motley collection appear to have one feature in common: they
all lack spatial position. In this contrast, existents are placed
against what never existed; we also, secondly, contrast what
exists now, or existed at some past time, with what now is, or
then was, past or still to come. And what such things have in
common is a lack of spatial position at the time, present or past,
of which we are thinking.
Thus the primary sense of 'to exist' may perhaps be 'to be
somewhere'; and it is this sense which unifies and grounds the
64
criticisms of the different philosophical theses about existence
which I have rehearsed in this chapter.
Primary senses regularly breed secondary senses; and it is
plain that 'exist' is not always used to mean 'be somewhere'
even if that constitutes its central sense. The possibilities for
extending the sense are already present in the locative adverb:
'somewhere' is not always used literally of spatial position, and
the linguists' term 'locative' does not refer solely to spatial
location. It would be a valuable and difficult task to chart these
areas of figurative space.

VII

In this chapter I have tried to give some account of what has

been, historically, the most prominent type of objection to the
Ontological Argument - the objection that the argument rests
on a false notion of existence. The objection broke down into
a number of separable points; and I examined, cursorily, the
views that existence is not a logical predicate; that existence
cannot be a differentia since all things exist; that individuals
cannot be properly said to exist; and that the notation of
quantificational logic contains the correct expression of the
logical status of existential propositions.
Each of these views is interesting in itself and valuable in the
issues it raises; but none appeared to be both true and fatal
to the Ontological Argument. Moreover, investigation of the
verb to exist suggests a primary sense, identical with or closely
related to the sense uppermost in theistic disputes, in which
existence does appear to be a logical predicate and to which the
contrary views canvassed in the earlier sections of the chapter
plainly do not apply.
The argument of this chapter has incidentally provided
answers of a sort to the two questions left at the end of the
previous chapter (p. 38). First, if the 'existential quantifier' is
not properly taken as the formal analogue of'There exist(s) .• .',
then the fact that there are existentially quantified theorems of
predicate logic does not tell against Hume's thesis. Secondly, if,
as I suggested, 'There exist(s) .. .' means, in mathematical
contexts, no more than 'There isfare .• .', then Hume's thesis
can be modified to escape the mathematical counterexamples:
65
no existential propositions which are not equivalent to 'There
isfare ... 'propositions are logically necessary. This modification
follows Flew in spirit though not in substance; nothing, of
course, that I have said warrants belief in it.
Thus I conclude this chapter as I concluded the last: the
verdict on the Ontological Argument is still non liquet.

66
4 'God'

In this chapter I am going to turn to the first premiss of the

Ontological Argument, the premiss which gives it its distinctive
characteristic of being 'taken from a definition' (cf. above, p.
8). Since Kant's attack on the argument, this premiss has been
largely ignored; but traditionally it was a regular object of
assault.
Thus Gaunilo claimed that Anselm's formula was not
intelligible to him (126.29-127.24); and Aquinas, though he
professed to understand the formula, was not persuaded that it
gave a definition of the term 'God' ([1] 1 xi; [2] Iae, q.2, a.l,
ad 2). Descartes was himself concerned to show that the idea of
God on which he based his argument was not 'fictitious' ([2] I
182); and the authors of the Second Objections asked him to make
sure that his definition did not contain any hidden contra-
dictions ([3] n 28; cf. 45-7). This question is usually associated
with Leibniz, who said that the Ontological Argument 'is not a
paralogism, but it is an imperfect demonstration which assumes
something which must still be proved in order to make it
mathematically evident; that is, it is tacitly assumed that this
idea of an all-great or all-perfect being is possible, and implies
no contradiction' (cf. Plantinga [2] p. 55). (Leibniz went on to
argue that the idea was possible, and thus thought he had
perfected the argument.)
Difficulties of two sorts occur over the term 'God'. First, there
are semantic questions. Long ago, William of Ware remarked
that 'the term god does not spontaneously reveal what it means;
rather, that is learned by long investigation and great labour'
(Daniels, p. 100) : the investigation comes up against the most
severe obstacles. Secondly, there are quasi-syntactic questions.
These are in a general way of much less moment; but they bear
directly upon the Ontological Argument, and it is they I shall
concentrate upon.

67
 I

Much work on the Ontological Argument is very careless in its

use of the notion of naming. The prime example of this is
supplied by Barth, who treats Anselm's formula 'something
than which •.. ' as a (proper) name of God {pp. 73-89); many
writers use 'God' indiscriminately as parallel to 'John' or
'Jones' and also as parallel to 'man' or 'animal'. Where this
confusion is lacking, there is disagreement: Aquinas apparently
took 'God' for a common noun, and his view has been revived
and defended by Geach ([1] p. 57; cf. Anscombe and Geach,
p. 109). Others have maintained that, on the contrary, 'God' is
a proper name (e.g. Ziff) ; or that it is neither proper nor
common but something betwixt and between - a title, perhaps,
like 'Caesar' or 'Duke' (cf. Pike, pp. 28-33).
In itself, this dispute is footling: 'we must not let ourselves be
deceived because language often uses the same word now as a
proper name, now as a concept-word' (Frege [3] p. 50) - 'God',
as the Oxford Dictionary recognises, is a word regularly used in
both these ways. We say both 'God heard his prayer' (cf.
'Othello heard her plea') and 'The Lord is a jealous God' (cf.
'Othello was a jealous husband').
The notion of being a proper name is secondary to the notion
of being used as a proper name: roughly, n is a proper name if
and only if the normal use of n is as a proper name. A term is
used, on a given occasion, as a proper name only if (but not if)
it is on that occasion used as a vehicle of reference. Thus I use
'God' as a proper name in an utterance U only if (and in this
case if) I purport to refer to something in using 'God' in U.
Hence the question whether, in a given utterance, 'God' is used as
a proper name {unlike the question whether 'God' in general is
a proper name), is an important one: for on its answer depends
the logical construction of the utterance.
The point of these remarks will, I hope, become clearer when
they are applied to the Ontological Argument; but before
doing that I must mention another controversy over proper
names which seems at first sight to touch more directly on the
argument.
I mean the controversy over the semantic status of names (for
Anselm's view, see [8] 29.4-15). Many philosophers have
believed that proper names have no meaning. If that is true,
68
then presumably they cannot be defined. If, then, 'God' is used as
a proper name in some proposition, we cannot legitimately ask
for a definition of the term as it stands there; and consequently
the Ontological Argument cannot rest upon any such propo-
sition.
It does seem to be true that if 'n' is used as a proper name,
then the question 'What does 'n' mean?' is improper. If I say
'Jacklin was nearly stymied' you may appropriately ask 'What
does "stymied" mean?'; but if you ask me 'What does ''Jacklin"
mean?' you show that you have not grasped the syntax of my
sentence. (If we ask 'What does 'n' mean?', we are requesting an
etymology.) However, you can perfectly well ask 'Who is
Jacklin?' or 'Whom do you mean by Jacklin?' Moreover, it
seems to be a condition of the intelligible utterance of a sentence
of the form 'n is F' that the utterer is able to answer the question
'Who/What do you mean by n ?' (cf. e.g. Strawson [3] p.
181). There appear to be three ways in which the utterer may
reply: (i) he may provide a further proper name, 'm' ('I mean
Tony'); (ii) he may produce a demonstrative - indulging in
what the linguists call deixis ('I mean him' - pointing); or (iii)
he may give a definite description of the form 'the G' ('I mean
the winner of the 1970 U.S. Open' - of course, any two, or all
three, of these ways may be taken together (c£ Searle, p. 92).
No one is tempted to suppose that in giving an answer of type (i)
or (ii) the utterer is giving a .rynonym of his original utterance;
similarly, we should resist the temptation, to which some
philosophers have succumbed, of supposing that 'The winner
of the 1970 U.S. Open was stymied' - or at least some such
sentence- is synonymous with 'Jacklin was stymied'.
If 'God' is used in 'God is F' as a proper name, then there
will be no sense in asking for a definition of 'God' and expecting
the replacement of 'God is F' by some synonymous sentence.
But there will be sense in asking who or what is meant by God;
and it is plainly reasonable to expect a reply of type (iii), a
definite description, since alternative proper names will not be
satisfactory and deixis is impossible. The legitimacy of a
manreuvre such as this is enough to protect those versions of the
Ontological Argument which use 'God' as a proper name from
the blunt objection that proper names cannot be defined: they
cannot - but they are liable to a treatment which IS close
enough to definition for the argument to proceed.
69
 II

Anselm, I think, regularly uses 'God' as a proper name; and I

have taken it as such in setting out the logical schemata under-
lying his argument (above, p. 5). 'God' does at least sometimes
appear as a general term (e.g. [2] 101.6; cf. Gaunilo, 125.3); and
Anselm certainly makes no explicit attempt to differentiate
between these uses - he is fairly confused over the related
difference between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication
(cf. [3] 139.4-6). Moreover, Anselm was a logical monotheist;
he thought it a necessary truth that there is at most one God (cf.
[8] 22.22-23.5; [1] 45.18, 66.9). From such a point ofview the
distinction would be harder to see; and if it were seen, it would
doubtless appear unimportant.
Descartes' case is less clear; and in my presentation of his
argument (above, p. 17) I tried to leave the status of the term
'God' indeterminate. 'Deus' sometimes appears as a general
term in Meditation v: Descartes uses the phrase 'null us Deus', he
allows 'Dei' in the plural, and in the arguments with which the
Ontological Argument is regularly compared the patently
general terms 'triangle', 'sphere', 'mountain' and 'horse' are set
against the term 'God'. On the other hand, 'Deus' is to my
mind most readily taken as a singular term in the majority of its
occurrences in the fifth Meditation: Descartes regularly uses the
anaphoric pronoun 'he' in connection with God; and he does
not object when Gassendi constructs parallels to the Ontological
Argument around the patently singular terms 'Plato' and
'Pegasus'.
What has here been said of Descartes' argument applies
equally to what I called the pseudo-Cartesian argument (above,
p. 18). It will make for clarity of exposition if we investigate the
vicissitudes of this argument under the variable logical status of
'God'. The results of this investigation will be open to easy
generalisation.

III

The form of the pseudo-Cartesian argument is this:

(A*) (A) God is F.
(B*) Everything F exists.
Therefore: (C*) (A) God exists.
70
 Suppose, first, that 'God' in (A*) is to be taken as a general
term. Then we can read it as:
(Al) Every God is F.
There are three possible readings of (C*). In two, namely:
(Cl) Every God exists
and:
(C2) Some God exists
'God' appears as a general term; in the third:
(C3) God exists
'God' is used as a proper name. It may be that one or other of
these three readings seems the most natural; in the case of
Descartes, there is something to be said for (Cl), since it ex-
presses his claim that existence is essential to God in precisely
the way we should normally express the parallel claim that
trilaterality is essential to a triangle. However that may be,
there is no harm in contemplating all three alternative con-
clusions.
If we take (Cl), the pseudo-Cartesian argument instantiates
the pattern:
Every A is B
Every B is C
Every A is C.
And this is the Aristotelian syllogism in Barbara, the traditional
paradigm of valid reasoning.
But though the argument is valid, it is uninteresting: for (Cl)
is perfectly compatible with atheism. For present purposes we
can formulate the atheist's opinion as:
(1) No Gods exist.
In predicate calculus this comes out as:
(2) (yx) (Gx-+•E!x).
Similar symbolisation turns (Cl) into
(3) (yx) (Gx-+Eix).
71
But (2) and (3) are mutually compatible since, in general,
propositions of the form '(yx) (Ax-+Bx)' are compatible with
corresponding propositions of the form '(yx) (Ax-+•Bx)':
together, they entail '• (3:x) Ax'. In a community of law-
abiding men 'All trespassers will be prosecuted' and 'No
trespassers will be prosecuted' are alike true: for no one will
trespass.
Thus (Cl) gives pseudo-Descartes a valid argument to an
irrelevant conclusion; he commits, on this view, the error of
ignoratio elenchi. Perhaps this accusation lies behind some of
Caterus' observations on Descartes' argument (cf. 11 6-8).
Let us turn to (C2). This escapes our objection to (Cl), since
it is plainly incompatible with atheism. However, (Al), (B*)
and (C2) do not constitute a valid argument. Let me try to be
as precise as possible about this.
An argument with n premisses is valid if it instantiates a
valid inference pattern 'AuA2 , ••• ,A,.I-B'; and an inference
pattern is valid if it is not possible to find n propositions of the
form A 1 ,A2 , ••• ,A,. which are all true and at the same time a
corresponding proposition of the form B which is false. An
argument is not valid if none of the inference patterns which it
instantiates is valid.
It is thus very much harder to establish the invalidity of an
argument than is usually supposed: to prove an argument valid,
we have only to find a single valid pattern which it fits; to prove
an argument invalid, we have to show that all the patterns which
it fits are invalid. The difficulty of the task is commonly glossed
over by talking about 'the' form of an argument, 'the' inference
pattern which it instantiates; clearly, if an argument instantiates
one and only one argument pattern, then the question of its
validity is settled simply by determining the status of that single
pattern. However, every argument instantiates more than one
inference pattern; and there is, as far as I know, no way of
determining in advance how many patterns an argument may
instantiate. Moreover, every argument instantiates at least one
invalid pattern; for every n-premissed argument follows the
pattern 'PI>P2 , ••• ,P,.I-Q, and that is plainly not valid.
In order to show that the argument from (Al) and (B*) to
(C2) is invalid, I shall prove that the pattern which seems most
natural to it is invalid; and challenge any defender of the
argument to produce a valid pattern which it fits.
72
 The pattern most natural to the argument seems to me to be
this:
Every A is B
Every B is C
Some A is C.
This is invalid: to pursue my earlier example, it is true in
Utopia both that every trespasser will be prosecuted and that
everyone prosecuted will be convicted, and yet it is false that
some trespassers will be convicted - since no one will have the
effrontery to trespass.

At this point, someone may object as follows: 'The pattern you

have just set out is valid - it is the subaltern-mood Barhari of
traditional syllogistic. Moreover, in virtue of the first Law of
Subalternation (from "All A is B" infer "Some A is B"), (C2)
follows from (C 1), and so the first pseudo-Cartesian argument
is not an example of ignoratio elenchi: indeed, it is only trivially
distinct from the second.'
The objection turns on the validity of the Laws ofSubalterna-
tion; and the acceptability of these laws has been one of the
main points of dispute between the proponents of the old and
the new logic - of classical syllogistic and modern predicate
logic.
It is well to get two questions perfectly distinct: (a) What
relations hold inside the rival formal calculi between their
universal and particular formulae? and (h) What relations hold
informally between propositions of the form 'Allfeveryfeachf
any ..• X(s) is/are •. .' and corresponding propositions of the
form 'Some X(s) is/are .• .'?
(a') Three facts are clear and central: (i) The rules of
classical syllogistic are such that a formula of the form AaB -
usually known as a universal affirmative and read as 'All A is
B' - yields the corresponding formula of the form AiB - usually
known as a particular affirmative and read as 'Some A is B'.
(ii) In standard predicate logic a formula of the form '(yx) Fx'-
a universally quantified formula, read 'Everything is F' - yields
the corresponding formula of the form '(3:x) Fx' - an 'exist-
entially' quantified, or particular, formula read as 'Something is
F' (see pp. 55-7 above). In particular, the universal quantifi-
cation '(yx) (Ax-+Bx)', which is the usual reformulation inside
73
predicate logic of the 'AaB' of syllogistic, yields '(3:x) (Ax-+Bx)'.
(iii) In standard predicate logic '(yx) (Ax-+Bx)' does not yield
'(3:x) (Ax & Bx)', the normal rendering of'Some A is B'.
(b') The dispute over existential import turns on the question
which of the formulae 'AaB' and '(yx) (Ax-+Bx)' more ade-
quately represents English sentences of the form 'Allfeveryfany/
each A(s) is/are B'. To decide this question we must settle
whether 'All/every/any/each A(s) is/are B' does or does not
entail 'Some A(s) is/are B'.
There are, as we might expect, many unclear cases to be
found; but there are also both cases in which the entailment
clearly does hold, and cases in which it clearly does not. Let me
illustrate these in turn:
(A) (i) 'All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing';
(ii) 'Every man will do his duty';
(iii) 'The garage is open at any time of the day or night';
(iv) 'Each set lasted more than ten games';
(B) (i) 'All trespassers will be prosecuted';
(ii) 'Every cigarette you smoke will take a year from your
life';
(iii) 'Any effective defence against nuclear attack will cost
more than the country can afford';
(iv) 'Each time you park here you will be fined £2'.
No general rules emerge immediately, though it is clear both
that the tense of the verb helps to determine the entailment, and
also that the different quantifier terms have different tendencies
-thus 'every' and 'each' have a strong tendency to existential
entailment, whereas 'any' has the opposite tendency. (It is
instructive, too, to compare the behaviour of these terms in non-
indicative contexts.) There is still much work to be done here
(see Vendler); but I hope that these few remarks are enough to
show that there is no correct general answer to the question of
existential import- and hence that the Laws of Subalternation,
and Barbari, are not without qualification reliable.
It may of course be that the particular use of Barbari which
pseudo-Descartes needs is defensible even though Barbari itself is
not. So let us assume that it is; and see how far the argument
will get.
We are reading (Al) in syllogistic fashion as an exemplifica-
tion of the formula 'AaB'. (Al) is held to follow from the
74
definition of'God': how can this happen? In general, 'following
from a definition' is to be explained in this way. Suppose we
have a definition of a predicate term 'F':
(D) Fa =dfGa and Ha
and we want to prove from this that every F is G.
Now it is an elementary law of predicate calculus that:
(4) (vx) (Fx-+Fx)
-i.e. anything F is F. Since, by (D), being F and being both G and
Hare the same thing, we can safely substitute 'is both G and H'
for any occurrence of 'is F'. And in particular, we can substitute
for the second occurrence of 'F' in (4) and so come to:
(5) (yx) (Fx-+ (Gx & Hx) ).
This plainly entails what we wanted to prove, namely:
(6) (yx) (Fx-+Gx).
Thus in our case, starting from a definition of 'God' of the form:
(DG) a is a God =dfa is F & a is G 1 &, ... ,&a is G,.
we can prove:
(7) (yx) (xis a God-+x is F).
Now this is certainly a representation of 'Every God is F', (Al);
but it is not the representation we are after, since it is not of the
form 'AaB'. Nor does it entail anything of that form.
Can this proof of (7) be emended so as to produce the desired
result? (4), at least, will have to be changed, and the only
plausible candidate for its role is its syllogistic analogue:
(8) FaF.
(4) is an elementary truth: is (8)?
By the Law of Subalternation (8) entails:
(9) FiF
- some Fs are F; and this presumably gives:
(10) Something is F.
But (10) is plainly not universally true; it is false if we read 'F'
as 'a prime number between 7 and 11'. Rejection of (10) entails
rejection of (9), and hence of (8).
This argument does not, of course, show that (Al) is false
75
when read as 'AaB'. It does not even prove that (AI), read as
'AaB', cannot be proved on the basis of (DG) ; but I believe that
it cannot, and I think I have shown that the obvious way of
attempting the proof fails.
I conclude that existential import will not save the pseudo-
Cartesian argument in either of its first two forms. We are left
with the version which concludes to (C3).

The natural pattern for (C3) is:

Every A is B
Every B is C
a is C.
The invalidity of this pattern is patent, but there is an appar-
ently respectable way of emending it: let us add a third premiss
to the argument:
(11) God is a God
where 'God' in its first occurrence is used as a proper name. The
natural pattern for the argument will now be:
a is A
Every A is B
Every B is C
a is C
and this is valid.
In effect this move marks the abandonment of our first
supposition (above, p. 71), that the pseudo-Cartesian argument
uses 'God' as a general term. Ifwe now explicitly take 'God' as a
proper name, we shall construe (A*) as:
(A2) God is F
and the natural pattern for the argument comes to be:
a is A
Every A is B
a is B.
This pattern, too, is valid. Since any difficulties with this
argument will tell equally against the augmented, three-premiss,
argument, the rest of the discussion will be conducted around
the move from (A2) and (B*) to (C3).
76
 How is (A2) to be justified? Since 'God' is now being used as
a proper name, we cannot simply appeal to a definition; but we
can use the manreuvre described earlier in this chapter. We
can, that is, ask the asserters of (A2) what they mean by (the
proper name) 'God'. And, just as 'God' meant 'being that is F
and G1 and ... and G.,', so (pseudo-Descartes may reply) by
'God' he means the being that is F and G 1 and •.. and G.,. (The
Oxford English Dictionary defines 'God' under the title 'as an
appellative' as 'a sole divine creator and ruler of the universe';
and then, under the heading 'as a proper name', it explains that
God is 'the creator and ruler of the universe' - the definite
article makes 'sole' superfluous, and 'divine' is in any case
otiose.)
Let us make this manreuvre perfectly explicit: we are allow-
ing the quasi-definition:
(D*) God is the being who is F and G 1 and ••• and Gn.
If we assume a further premiss:
(12) The being who is F and G 1 and ••• and Gn is F
we can then form an argument after the pattern:
a is the C
The Cis A;
Every A is B
a is B.
And this pattern, like the previous one, is valid.
Then is (12) true? If it is true, then so too is:
(13) The F is F
and since (13) is simpler than (12) I shall take it as the object of
examination.
I think many people would take ( 13) for a trivial truth; and
on one interpretation that is what it is. In one fairly common
use, 'The F is G' means the same as 'Whatever is F is G' : ifl say
'The side that wins the toss will win the match' I mean 'Which-
ever side wins the toss will win the match'. The definite article
'the' functions rather like a universal quantifier on these
occasions; under this interpretation (13) is synonymous with the
universally quantified proposition (4), and so is a tautology (cf.
above, p. 44).
77
 But this interpretation of (13) is not the one needed for our
argument. The function of (13) -or rather, of (12) -is to link
the first and third premisses of the argument; and since the
definite article in the .first premiss is not amenable to the 'what-
ever' analysis, (13) may not be analysed in this way either.
If, then, 'The F' in (13) is taken as a genuine singular term,
and not as a disguised general expression, is (13) true?
There is a temptation to argue like this: that the F is F is
certainly analytic; and analytic propositions are necessarily true:
so it is necessarily true that the F is F. Now the first premiss
of this argument is true if we construe analyticity in a fairly
primitive, Kantian fashion: if an analytic judgement is one in
which the predicate concept is 'contained in' the subject concept
(Kant, pp. 48-51), then 'The F is F' will surely be analytic since
it is hard to conceive of any sense of 'contain' in which 'F' is not
contained in 'the F'. But that does not see the argument
through; for on this interpretation of analyticity its second
premiss is false: it is not the case that all analytic propositions
are necessary truths. Suppose I go to the zoo and am asked to
point out a carnivore; I might say, with a gesture, 'That
animal over there eating meat is a carnivore'. What I say is, by
the same token as before, analytic; but plainly it is not a
necessary truth, for there might have been no lion in the zoo.
(Philosophers have exercised themselves over the synthetic a
priori; but they do not seem to have worried about that much
less elusive beast, the analytic a posteriori.)
What is the status of 'The F is F'? Logicians are united on
one vital point: they all allow that 'The F is F' is not always
true. (They quarrel about whether when 'The F is F' is not true
it is false or meaningless or improper or whatnot.) '.lo see how 'The
F is F' can fail to be true, consider:
( 14) The integer between 5 and 6 is between 5 and 6

and
(15) The integer between 5 and 8 is between 5 and 8.
Of these ( 14) is not true, because there is no integer between 5
and 6; and ( 15) is not true because there is no one integer
between 5 and 8. In both cases the definite description 'The
integer between • • .' is incapable of identifying a subject of
78
discourse, and this incapacity deprives the sentence of truth.
This argument is a particular application of certain very general
rules governing the identifying use of definite descriptions:
roughly speaking, a definite description 'the F' can be used
identifying only if there is just one F. It is not necessary that an F
exist, since I can refer to the hero of Hamlet (see above, p. 43);
and it is not necessary that there is only one F 'in the universe'
(I put out the cat even though the feline world is pluralistic.)
Rather, ifl am to use 'the F' identifyingly on some given occa-
sion, then (in the normal case at least) there must be one and
only one F among the things I can reasonably be supposed to be
talking about-my'universeof discourse' must contain just one F.
It follows from this that pseudo-Descartes cannot rely on (13)
-nor, therefore, on ( 12) - as a truth oflogic. Can he defend ( 12)
in any other way? Only, I think, by incorporating into his
argument the explicit provision that there is just one F. The
mere assertion of such a proposition will not do; pseudo-
Descartes must prove that there is, say, one and only one creator
and ruler of the world. But there are two difficulties here. First,
such a proposition will be at best a contingent truth, so that the
Ontological Argument will lose its a priori character. Secondly,
any proof of such a proposition will be ipso facto a proof of
theism: if pseudo-Descartes' argument is salvaged in this way,
preservation will be achieved at the cost of superfluity; for in
establishing one premiss of the argument, the conclusion of the
argument will have been established. Kant thought that the
Cosmological Argument needed the Ontological Argument as a
long-stop (p. 510): ifl am right, the Ontological Argument, at
least in one version, itself stands in need of the Cosmological
Argument or something similar.
I have tried to give pseudo-Descartes as much rope as a
rational generosity allows; and he has, in the end, hanged
himself. His argument is not invalid (that is, its conclusion does
follow from its premisses); and I do not claim to have shown its
premisses to contain falsity. Nevertheless, the argument is not a
proof; for it does not, and I think cannot, provide an inde-
pendent deduction of theism.
What I have said of pseudo-Descartes applies at once to the
genuine Cartesian argument (above, p. 17) and to its modal
version (p. 19) ; it applies equally to Malcolm's argument (p.19).
Anselm's original argument is tougher. Both possible forms of
79
his argument (p. 5) rely on a 'quasi-definition' of 'God': God is
that than which nothing greater is imaginable. Let us abbreviate
this to 'God is the A' (cf. below, p. 88). Since 'God' is to be
used in the argument as a singular term, 'the A' must be fit to
play that part; hence it is a presupposition of the first premiss of
Anselm's argument that there is just one A. The elegance of
Anselm's version of the argument resides in this, that this pre-
supposition appears to be both a priori and demonstrated: for
the reductio which supports the second premiss of the argument
is designed to show that there exists an A, and is readily adapted
to show that there is at most one A.
The reductio cannot, however, perform this feat; for the
definite description 'the A' is used in it identifyingly, so that it
presupposes that there is just one A. A glance at the formal
account of the reductio in Appendix B below is perhaps the best
way of seeing that this is so: at steps (8), (11), (13) and (16) 'the
A' (abbreviated to 'a.') appears as an identifying singular term.
Since the reductio thus assumes that there is just one A, it
cannot prove that there is just one A.
Can the reductio be emended to escape this objection? Only,
I think, if the phrase 'the A' could be replaced throughout
by the phrase 'an A'; that is to say, if the version of Anselm's
formula beginning 'id quo .. .' could be replaced uniformly by
the version beginning 'aliquid quo .. .'. And it has already been
shown that this cannot be done (above, p. 13).
It may, I imagine, be suggested that the reductio should not in
any case be used in this way: after all, it attempts to show that
the A exists, and not that there is just one A. I am sympathetic
to this suggestion; but if it is correct, then Anselm does nothing
to show that there is just one A.
Thus I conclude that Anselm's version of the Ontological
Argument is not probative. It is, I think, a valid argument; and
I have not shown that its premisses contain falsity. But there is
no reason to accept it as a proof of theism, since there is no
reason to believe a presupposition of its first premiss, namely the
proposition that there is just one thing than which nothing
greater can be imagined.

All the versions of the Ontological Argument that I have con-

sidered in this book have now been found wanting. (Harts-
home's version, which is not directly affected by the matter of
80
this chapter, fell at an earlier fence: above, p. 21.) It is, I think,
worth underlining the fact that their failure is perfectly inde-
pendent both of any misgivings we might feel about the notion
of necessary existence (Chapter 2), and also of the various
dogmas huddling under the slogan 'Existence is not a Predicate'
(Chapter 3). Whatever the truth about these controverted
matters, the Ontological Argument fails to achieve its aim: it
fails because it cannot withstand a close scrutiny of the logical
role played by the term 'God' in its premisses and its con-
clusion.
IV

Residual doubts, at least, will remain: for is it not possible that

some quasi-definition of 'God' be found which allows the
Ontological Argument, in Anselm's version, to count as a proof
of theism? Can we rule out the possibility of finding some
property F such that (i) God is the F, by quasi-definition, and
(ii) there is necessarily just one F? Nothing that I have said so
far succeeds in ruling out this possibility; but I am inclined to
think that it can be ruled out, since I doubt whether condition
(i) can be fulfilled in any theistically satisfYing manner. To
sketch my reasons for inclining to this view requires a con-
sideration of the semantic status of the term 'God'; I shall lead
up to this by keeping an earlier promise to say a little about
greatness (above, p. 12).
Anselm's argument turns on the notion of greatness; it uses
this notion in a strangely abstract fashion. We do, of course,
sometimes produce sentences of the bald form 'a is great', and
these are not always vulgarisms: but they are only permissible if
a substantive can be supplied to support the adjective 'great'. 'a
is great' is elliptical for 'a is a great rp'; 'great', that is to say, is
an attributive adjective (cf. Quine [3] p. 103). The criteria for
a's greatness will vary according to the value of'rp': Caesar was
a great general in virtue of his victories, a great writer in virtue
of his prose style. There is no reason to think that the word
'great' has a different sense in 'Caesar was a great general' and
'Caesar was a great writer', nor to suppose that, say, winning
many victories is a logically sufficient condition of greatness; but
it does seem reasonable to believe that an assertion of greatness
depends for its intelligibility on the possibility of supplying some
relevant set of criteria.
81
 It is not difficult to think of suitable fillings for 'cf/ in 'God is a
great cf/. 'Being' will not do; but 'ruler', say, or 'creator' will (cf.
above, p. 77). And there are doubtless reasonable criteria for
greatness in these two cases. Anselm's argument is readily
accommodated to this modification: instead of 'is greater than'
in premiss (1) and in (PI) and (P4) (above, pp. 4, 12), read
'is a greater ruler than'. The logical structure of the argument
remains the same.
Anselm himself did not adopt this line of thought. He was
inclined to offer a different gloss for 'great', namely 'good': 'I
mean great not spatially, as is some body, but that the greater
it is, the better or more worthy, as is wisdom' ([1] 15.19-20). He
glosses 'greater than' as 'better than' in his Reply to Gaunilo
(137.13-18), and occasionally writes 'melius' for 'maius' in his
formula ([2] 103.5, 111.9, 114.21; cf. 'benignius' at [9] 70.12);
he does not object to Gauni1o's 'praestantior' (e.g. 128.22-30)
which, in other contexts, he explains indifferently by 'maior'
(e.g. [1] 49.10) and by 'melior' (e.g. [1] 17.2). In construing
greatness as moral goodness Anselm was following Augustine
(cf. [2] VI 8) ; and he was followed by many later thinkers (cf.
Daniels, pp. 69, 80, 82; Charlesworth, pp. 3, n. 1; 4, n. 1; 60,
n. 2).
A completely different explanation of greatness is commonly
read into Anselm. It rests on the Neoplatonic notion of 'degrees
of being' : a is greater than b, on this reading, if a has more being
than b- if a occupies a higher ontological position than b. There
are, it is true, traces of this Neoplatonic view in Anselm's
writings (e.g. [1] 45.25-46.31, 49.11-50.13) and his claim that
God 'truly is' ([2] 93.7, 101.2, 103.1, etc.) has been thought to
require a Neoplatonic reading (cf. Charlesworth, pp. 60-3).
But the view is not prominent in Anselm; where it does occur
it is apparently distinguished from a doctrine of greatness
(cf. [1] 20.15-19; [2] 103.7-9); and in any case there is no
sense in it.
If we attend to the current sense of the word, we shall be
inclined to regard perfection as flawlessness, or utter goodness;
and so to bring Descartes' argument close to Anselm's. But the
word 'perfect' is also a technical term of theology; as such it
seems to have two distinct senses, only one of which corresponds
at all nearly to its ordinary sense.
Leibniz explains perfection like this: 'I call every simple
82
quality which is positive and absolute, or expresses whatever it
expresses without any limits, a perfection' (cf. Plantinga [2] p.
55); and a perfect being is a being who possesses every such
perfection. This is the notion of perfection behind Descartes'
argument; but it is unsatisfactory, since there is no clear way of
distinguishing 'positive' from 'negative' qualities.
The second notion of perfection is this: a property F is a
perfection if and only if a thing that has F is (pro tanto) better
than a thing which lacks F. Again, a perfect being is a being
who possesses every perfection. There are traces of this notion in
Anselm (e.g. [1] 29.29-31; cf. [1] chap. xv; [2] chap. v), but it
does not appear in his Ontological Argument. There are serious
difficulties here, too; but I shall not attempt to sketch them since
they have recently been the object of a lucid and thorough dis-
cussion (cf. Pike, pp. 135-42).
The aim of this skimpy survey of greatness and perfection has
been, first, to indicate that these notions are not to be used as
lightly as they are used by the authors of the Ontological Argu-
ment; and secondly, to hint that, none the less, it does not seem
impossibly difficult to give good sense at least to greatness. In a
way this does not matter: for the Ontological Argument (as
Zeno's version shows) does not require a notion of greatness, or
of perfection. Greatness or perfection can be replaced by any
property which both is a defining property of Gods and also
entails existence - the property of being creator and conserver of all
things will do. The argument can be stated in these terms; what-
ever such terms are chosen, the logical structure of the argument
will be unaffected, and any heterodox version of the argument
will fall to just those shots which destroy the orthodox versions.

There is a considerable difficulty which I have so far consistently

glossed over: I have talked of 'defining properties' of God,
assuming (with the authors of the Ontological Argument) that
such could be readily identified and agreed upon. This assump-
tion is underlain by an,other, that the term 'God' can be given a
coherent and consistent definition. It is by no means clear that
this is the case.
There have been innumerable attempts at definition (cf. esp.
Kaufman, §50); most of those I am acquainted with share two
remarkable features. First, they are exceedingly long: they tend
to include characteristics which might well be expected to
83
appear as non-defining (if also non-contingent) properties of
Gods. Thus when Newman asks himself 'What do I mean by
"God" ?', he answers with a lengthy theological essay: definition
turns into description, and description into eulogy. Secondly
the definitions are extraordinarily parochial; Christian defini-
tions are tempered to a Christian God, and fit very few others.
Thus monotheists regularly write uniqueness into their accounts
of divinity.
A reasonable conclusion is that many theists do not know
what they believe in. This may be merely mortal failing; but I
suspect it is symptomatic of a deeper difficulty.
The term 'God' is a 'sortal' term; it makes sense to talk of the
same God or another God, and to ask How many Gods (e.g. there
were in the Roman pantheon). The term 'God' claims to
provide a principle for individuating, re-identifying and count-
ing the objects to which it applies. Contrast such terms as 'gold'
(roughly 'mass' nouns) or 'green' (a 'characterising' term), of
which such things are not true (see Strawson [I] pp. 168-72).
Clearly, the dejiniens of any sortal term must itself contain sortal
apparatus, or it will not be equivalent in sense to the definiendum.
(It is useless to rely on such pseudo-sortals as 'thing' or 'being':
Locke commits this error when he attempts to analyse sub-
stances into characterising attributes plus a 'something we know
not what'.)
Under what generic sortal is it plausible to put God? In the
religious atmosphere that inspires the Ontological Argument
there is only one reasonable suggestion, namely 'person'. Now
the notion of a person is hotly controversial; but it is, I think,
becoming clear that persons are essentially corporeal: the
principle of identification which the sortal term 'person'
supplies relies ultimately on bodily continuity (see, most
recently, Penelhum).lfthis is so, then if Gods are persons, then
Gods are corporeal. Allow this, and it is reasonable to assert as
an empirical truth that no Gods exist. If the conclusion is not
allowed (on the dubious ground that Gods are, by definition,
incorporeal), then it follows that any God is both corporeal and
incorporeal; so that it is a necessary truth that there are no
Gods.
It is pointless to claim that Gods fall under the sortal 'spirit'
(or 'mind') rather than under 'person'. For spirits or minds are
intended to be bodiless persons; and any argument that persons
84
are essentially corporeal is ipso facto an argument for the in-
coherence of the concept of a substantial spirit or mind.
It is idle to claim that Gods, being incomprehensible, may fall
under sortals too great or too profound for us to discern. For the
argument concerns the credentials of the term 'God'; questions
of the 'comprehensibility' of objects falling under a concept
(whatever exactly they may amount to) are logically posterior
to the establishment of the concept's coherence. (Anselm is
refreshingly sound on this: see [I] chaps lxiv-lxv- cf. [2] chap.
xiv: contrast Aquinas, whose rejection of Anselm's argument
rests in part on the assertion that we cannot know what God is:
[1] 1 xi; [2] Iae, q.2, a.1, resp.)
These last paragraphs will not, I hope, convince as they
stand; they do not contain an argument but only a preliminary
cartoon for an argument. To paint in the argument fully would
evidently be a considerable task; coherently limned, it would
present what seems to me the fundamental objection to most
Western varieties of theism - and hence, in a sense, the funda-
mental objection to Anselm's argument.

v
This book has been concerned with a piece of natural theology-
with an attempt to prove rationally the existence of God. Many
people may think it for that reason a silly exercise; they may
agree with Kierkegaard that 'whoever ..• attempts to demon-
strate the existence of God . . • [is] an excellent subject for a
comedy of the higher lunacy'; and they may infer that a critical
examination of such attempts is as profound and valuable an
occupation as a sage and scholarly dissertation on The Goon
Show (see, e.g., Cahn; Rhees, chap. ii; cf. Malcolm, p. 61). This
view is mistaken and pernicious. It is mistaken because the
proposition that God exists is necessarily central to any form of
theism and hence to any religion; and that proposition is as
open as any other to reasoned argument, and more in need than
most others of conceptual clarification. It is pernicious because
it encourages the view that, at least in important matters,
reason and argument need not, and perhaps even should not,
have the last word. It may indeed be true, as Hume thought,
that 'the argument a priori [for the existence of God] has seldom
85
been found very convincing, except to people of a metaphysical
head' ([3] chap. ix). It may even be the case that argument of
any variety on a religious topic rarely convinces or converts.
But if this is true, it is a dismal truth, and one which the
philosophy of religion should strive to eradicate and destroy.

86
APPENDIX A

Chronology of Anselm's Life

(See Eadmer; Southern; Charlesworth, pp. 8-21.)

1033 Born at Aosta in Burgundy

c.1053 His mother dies; 'the ship ofhis heart, having lost
its anchor, drifted among the waves of the world'
1056 Quarrels with his father; leaves home and wan-
ders through Burgundy and France
1060 Enters the Benedictine monastery of Bee in
Normandy
1063 Succeeds Lanfranc as Prior of Bee
1076 Monologion
1077-8 Proslogion
1078 Succeeds Herluin as Abbot of Bee
1080-5 de Grammatico, de Veritate, de Libertate Arbitrii
1085-90 de Casu Diaboli
1092-4 Epistola de Incamatione Verbi
1093 Reluctantly enthroned as Archbishop of Canter-
bury
1094--8 Cur Deus Homo
1097 Exiled by William II; journeys to Rome, and
stays at Lyons
1099-1100 de Conceptu Virginali
1100 Death of William II; Anselm recalled by Henry I
1102 de Processione Spiritus Sancti
1103 Exiled by Henry I; at Lyons
1106 Returns to England
1106-7 Epistola de Sacrijicio Azymi et Fermentati; de Sacra-
mentis Ecclesiae
1107-8 de Concordia
?1108 de Potestate
1109 Dies, 21 April
?1163 Canonised

87
APPENDIX B

Anselm's Reductio

It may be helpful to set out more rigorously the interpretation

of Anselm's reductio which is explained informally on pp. 12-15
above. In the main the formalisation follows Lemmon; but
there are several points needing explanation:
(i) Abbreviations:
'b' for 'The Fool'
'xUy' for 'x understands "y"'
'xMy' for 'y is in x's understanding'
'xi: P' for 'x can imagine that P'
'Ex' for 'x exists in reality'
'xGy' for 'x is greater than y'
'xi : Fy' for 'x can imagine something F'.
(ii) Rules:
Rlmag: From 'al: Fb' deduce 'al: Fx'. (If someone can imagine
that b is F, he can imagine something F.)
RAAAns: If B is absurd and is deduced from A1 , A2, ••• , A..,
infer 1 Ai (for any i, 1 ~ i ~ n) on assumptions
A 1 , ••• , Ai -I> Ai +l• ••• , A... (Reductio ad absurdum
Anselmianum: cf. above, p. 15.)
(iii) Definitions:
(Dl) Aa =df(3:y)yl:zGa.
(D2) ex =df(1x)--, Ax.
In theproofthatfollow s, (1)-(5) answer to (Pl)-(P5) and (6)
answers to (NC*) ; the order of reasoning is approximately that
taken by my informal account.
1 (1) bUcx A
2 (2) (VX) (yy) (xUy-+xMy) A
3 (3) (VX) (yy) (xMy-+xl: Ey) A
4 (4) (yy) (((3:x)xMy & •Ey)-+(yz) (Ez-+
zGy)) A
88
 5 (5) (yP) (yQ) ((P~Q)~(yx) (xi:P~xi:Q))
A
6 (6) -.Eat A
2 (7) (yy) (bUy-+-bMy) 2 UE
2 (8) bUat~bMat 7 UE
1, 2 (9) bMat 1, 8 MPP
3 (10) (yy) (bMy~bi:Ey) 3 UE
3 (11) bMat~bi:Eat 10 UE
1, 2, 3 (12) bi:Eat 9, 11 MPP
4 (13) ((3:x)xMat & 1 Eat)~(yz) (Ez~zGat) 4 UE
1, 2 (14) (3:x)xMat 9 EI
1, 2, 6 (15) (3:x)xMat & ...,Eat 6, 14 & I
1, 2, 4, 6 (16) (yz) (Ez~zGat) 13, 15 MPP
1, 2, 4, 6 (17) Eat~atGat 16 UE
5 (18) (yQ) ((Eat~Q)~(yx) (xi:Eat~xi:Q))
5UE
5 (19) (Eat~atGat)~(yx) (xi:Eat~xl:atGat) 18 UE
1, 2, 4, 5, 6 (20) (yx) (xi:Eat~xl:atGat) 17, 19 MPP
1, 2, 4, 5, 6 (21) bi:Eat~bl:atGat 20 UE
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (22) bl: atGat 12, 21 MPP
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (23) bl: zGat 22 Rlmag
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (24) (3:y) (yl:zGat) 23 EI
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (25) Aat 24 Dl
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (26) [('x) •Ax]A[('x) -.Ax] 25 D2
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (27) ..., ..., Eat 6, 26 RAAAns
I, 2, 3, 4, 5 (28) Eat 27 DN

The reader may care to set this beside the formalisation in

Adams, pp. 31-2. Adams' acute and rigorous analysis of
Anselm's arguments appeared after my manuscript had gone
to press.

89
References

There is a large but by no means exhaustive bibliography on

the Ontological Argument in Hick and McGill; new work can
be discovered through such publications as The Philosopher's
Index. The list given here contains only those books and articles
which are referred to in the text.
Abbreviations:
An Ana!Jsis
APQ American Philosophical Quarter!J
BJPS British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
I Inquiry
JP Journal of Philosophy
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
M Mind
PAS(S) Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (supplementary
volume)
PR Philosophical Review
RM Review of Metaphysics
Where a publication is assigned more than one place of ap-
pearance (indicated by the sign' ='),page references in the text
are to the asterisked source.

(a) Anselm and Descartes

Anselm: [1] Monologion
[2] Proslogion
[3] Responsio ad Gaunilonem
[4] de Grammatico
[5] de Veritate
[6] de Libertate Arbitrii
[7] de Casu Diaboli
[8] Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi
[9] Cur Deus Homo
91
 [10] de Concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae
Dei cum libero arbitrio
[11] de Potestate
The standard edition is Sancti Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. F. S.
Schmitt, in five volumes (a two-volume reprint has recently
appeared: Stuttgart: Frommann, 1968). [1]-[7] are contained
in vol. I (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1946); [8]-[10] in vol. II (Rome:
n.p., 1940). My references to these works are generally by page
and line number of Schmitt's text. [11] was discovered and
edited by Schmitt in 1936; it is re-edited by R. W. Southern
and F. S. Schmitt in Memorials of St Anselm (London: Oxford
U .P., for the British Academy, 1969) - vol. I of Auctores Britannici
Medii Aevi - and I cite it by page and line of this edition.
Translations in the text are my own. St Anselm: Basic
Writings, trans. S. N. Deane, 2nd ed. (La Salle, Ill.: Open
Court, 1962) contains English versions of [1], [2], [3] and [9],
and also of Gaunilo; Deane's versions of [2] (chaps ii-iv), [3],
and Gaunilo are reprinted in Plantinga [2]. Hick and McGill
contains translations by A. C. McGill of [2] (chaps ii-iv), [3],
and Gaunilo; Schmitt's text of [2], [3], and Gaunilo is reprinted
opposite a new translation in Charlesworth.
Descartes: [1] Discourse on the Method (1637)
[2] Meditations (1641)
[3] Replies to Objections (1641; enlarged 1642)
[4] Principles of Philosophy ( 1644)
[5] Notes against a Programme (1647)
The classic edition of Descartes' works is by C. Adam and
P. Tannery, in 13 volumes (Paris: Cerf, 1897-1913). The
standard English translation is by E. S. Haldane and G. R. T.
Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1911); it is in two vol-
umes: vol. I includes [1], [2], [4] and [5]; vol. II is taken up
by [3]. My quotations follow Haldane and Ross in the main;
references are to volume and page of their translation.

(b) General
Adams, R. M., 'The Logical Structure of Anselm's Argu-
ments', PR, LXXX (1971) 28-54.
Alston, W. P., 'The Ontological Argument Revisited', PR,
LXIX (1960) 452-74 =Plantinga [2].
92
Ambrose, A., and Lazerowitz, M. (eds), G. E. Moore: Essays in
Retrospect (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970).
Anscombe, G. E. M., and Geach, P. T., Three Philosophers
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1961).
Aquinas: [1] Summa contra Gentiles, editio Leonina (Rome: n.p.,
1934).
[2] Summa Theologiae, editio Leonina (Rome: Marietti,
1948).
Aristotle: [1] de Interpretatione, ed. L. Minio-Paluello (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1949).
[2] Ana!Jtica, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1964).
[3] Metaphysics, ed. W. Jaeger (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1957).
Augustine: [1] de Doctrina Christiana, ed. J. Martin, Corpus
Christianorum, series Latina, XXXII (Turnhout: Brepols,
1962).
[2] de Trinitate, ed. W.J. Mountain, Corpus Christianorum,
series Latina, L (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968).
Bambrough, R. (ed.), New Essays on Plato and Aristotle (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965).
Barth, K., Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, trans. I. Robertson
(London: S.C.M. Press, 1960). German edition first pub-
lished in 1931.
Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio, ed. L. Bieler, Corpus Christian-
orum, series Latina, XCIV (Turnhout: Brepo1s, 1957).
Brown, P., 'St Thomas' Doctrine of Necessary Being', PR,
LXXIII (1964) 76--90.
Cahn, S. M., 'The Irrelevance to Religion of Philosophic
Proofs for the Existence of God', APQ, VI ( 1969) 170-2.
Cartwright, R. L., 'Negative Existentials',JP, LVII (1960) 629-
639 =*Caton.
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