ise 5: But we cannot imagine an island that is greater than a piland

Conclusion: Therefore, a piland exists.

Fundamentally, this approach to belief in God is incoherent as it cannot necessarily be applied to the existence of an island. Fundamentally, the qualities that make a great island are not the same ones which admit conceptual maximums. Like with numbers, regardless of how great an island is in a given respect, it is never impossible to envisage another island with even more superior qualities. For example, if an island is great because of the number of trees, it is always possible to imagine an island with at least one more trees, because the quantity of trees on an island does not possess a conceptual maximum. On the other hand, traits such as knowledge, power, and moral goodness, which comprise the concept of a maximally great being, do have intrinsic maximums. For example, to have perfect knowledge requires knowing all and only true propositions; it is a priori impossible to know more than this. In a similar way, perfect power means being able to do everything that it is possible to do; it is conceptually impossible for a being to be able to do more than this. Therefore, while Gaunilo’s counterargument fails at adequately refuting Anselm’s argument, it instead is valuable in that it demonstrates the crucial nature of God’s conceptual maximality.

Although Aquinas agreed with Anselm that God’s existence was self evident, it cannot be merely deduced from claims of God alone, using two different criticisms to demonstrate its flaws. Firstly, approaching Premise 1, “not everyone who hears this word ‘God’ understands it to signify something than which nothing greater can be thought, seeing that some have believed God to be a body”. Since people understand God in different ways, the ontological argument is only functional for those who choose to define God in a particular way. While this argument makes some sense, it only works as far as one defines God to be “a being, than which none greater can be conceived”, which i