A whistle blower is an individual who discretely reveals private or classified information about an organization, usually related to wrongdoing or misconduct. Whistle blowers generally state that such actions are motivated by a commitment to the public interest. Although the term was first used to refer to public servants who made known governmental mismanagement, waste, or corruption, it now covers the activity of any employee or officer of a public or private organization who alerts a wider group to setbacks to their interests as a result of waste, corruption, fraud, or profit seeking.
g that instantiates all the perfections and suppose X doesn’t exist (in reality). Since Premise 3 asserts that existence is a perfection, it follows that X lacks a perfection. But this contradicts the assumption that X is a being that instantiates all the perfections. Thus, according to this reasoning, it follows that X exists. While the syllogism of these premises may itself be compelling, the premises made are fundamentally debatable, or at least requiring clarification, and it is from these premises that problems arise from this formulation.
The first criticism to come about is Gaunilo’s criticism, which is fundamentally worried about the idea that Anselm’s argument moves in an unjustifiable manner from the existence of an idea to the existence of a thing that itself corresponds to the idea. As the objection is sometimes put, Anselm simply defines things into existence — and this simply cannot be done, as it raises the risk that things which simply don’t exist can be treated in the same way. To demonstrate this, Gaunilo formulated the following argument in a similar manner to that of Anselm:
Premise 1: It is a conceptual truth that a piland is an island than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible island that can be imagined).
Premise 2: A piland exists as an idea in the mind.
Premise 3: A piland that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is greater than a piland that exists only as an idea in the mind.
Premise 4: Thus, if a piland exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine an island that is greater than a piland (that is, a greatest possible island that does exist).
Premise 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
