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Slaney, J. 1990. A general logic. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68: 7488. Tennant, N. 1978. Natural Logic, 1st edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reprinted in paperback with corrections, 1991. Thompson, B. 1991. Why is conjunctive simplification invalid? Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 32: 24854. Tomassi, P. 1999. Logic. London: Routledge.
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On behalf of Gaunilo
BRIAN GARRETT

The 11th century Benedictine monk Gaunilo famously proposed a parody of Anselms Ontological Argument for Gods existence. In A Reply on Behalf of the Fool, Gaunilo recalls the legend of an island with all manner of priceless riches and delights in abundance (Gaunilo 1965: 163), more excellent than any other conceivable island. He continues: You cannot any more doubt that this island that is more excellent than all other islands truly exists somewhere in reality than you can doubt that it is in your mind; and since it is more excellent to exist not only in the mind alone but also in reality, therefore it must needs be that it exists. For if it did not exist, any other island existing in reality would be more excellent than it, and so this island, already conceived by you to be more excellent than others, will not be more excellent. (Gaunilo 1965: 16365) Clearly, reality does not contain the perfect island (i.e. the greatest conceivable island), or the perfect car, or the perfect crocodile, etc. Since arguments analogous to Anselms are unsound, Anselms argument must be unsound too. Alvin Plantinga claimed that Gaunilos parody fails because it is not analogous to Anselms argument in one crucial respect (Plantinga 1974: 901). Gods great-making qualities (e.g. omnipotence, omniscience and perfect goodness) are maximal. That is, they are qualities that cannot be possessed to a greater degree. But the great-making qualities of an island (e.g. abundance of coconuts, warm sea, sunshine and white sand) are non-maximal. They can always be possessed to a greater degree. But then there can be no such thing as the perfect island. Plantinga wrote: No matter how great an island is, no matter how many Nubian maidens and dancing girls adorn it, there could always be a greater one with
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twice as many, for example. The qualities that make for greatness in islands number of palm trees, amount and quality of coconuts, for example most of these qualities have no intrinsic maximum. (Plantinga 1974: 9091) Consequently, concluded Plantinga, the description the greatest conceivable island (like, e.g. the largest natural number) expresses no coherent concept, and thus Gaunilos parody fails. But are the great-making qualities of an island non-maximal? It is good for an island to have coconuts, but not too many. A warm sea can always be hotter, but not consistently with still being warm. There is an upper limit to warmth (similarly for sunnyness). Whiteness also seems to be maximal. It is implausible that for every white shade there is a whiter one. Properly understood, the great-making qualities of an island are maximal. We can make this explicit by defining the perfect island as the island of ideal size, possessing the ideal number of coconuts, ideally white sand, ideal sea and air temperature, etc.1 Since these qualities are intrinsically maximal, Plantingas riposte to Gaunilos parody collapses. Nor, incidentally, is there any force to the quite different rejoinder that Gaunilos parody fails since God is a necessary being whereas islands are contingent. An Anselmian argument for the necessity of Gods existence (Suppose that God existed contingently. Then we could conceive of a being greater than God one with all Gods traditional qualities who existed necessarily. But . . . ) can be parodied by Gaunilo to show that the perfect island exists of necessity. School of Philosophy Australian National University Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia brian.garrett@anu.edu.au References
Gaunilo, 1965. A Reply on behalf of the fool. In St Anselms Proslogion, eds. M. J. Charlesworth, 15667. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Plantinga, A. 1974. God, Freedom, and Evil. Grand Rapids, MI: W B Eerdmans Publishing Company.

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I am grateful to Al Ha jek for pointing out the need to insert the phrase of ideal size. Without the assumption that there is exactly one ideal size for an island, there would, for example, be no absolute ideal number of coconuts, just different numbers for differentsized islands.