gets a philosophical meaning. What is greater than God? Two gods! Surely this is true? But by definition, if two gods are greater than God, then God is not the greatest thing that can be conceived, which is a contradiction. Let me write it down: 1. God is the greatest thing that can be conceived.2. Two Gods are greater than God.3. 1 and 2 are in contradiction.If we agree that 2 is true, we must see that 1 false. But if God is not the greatest, than something else is the greatest, and the argument just continues infinitely. We must agree that 'X is the greatest thing that can be conceived' is a meaningless sentence, and Anselm's argument breaks down.Now we have seen how critics have responded to Anselm. Following here are examples of how Anselm may have responded to these critics, based on my readings of Anselm.I believe Anselm would argue that there is no such thing as synthetic statements; everything clearly has a truth-value. For if there were such statements that were not true and not false, then there would be no way to prove if God existed or not. Thus, God must exist using the original argument because everything must have a truth value. However, this is a typical example of circular thinking. Here, Anselm argues that God exists because God exists. This is clearly not a good counter-argument, and thus it appears Anselms argument does fail in this instance.I believe that Anselm would continue to argue that existence is an attribute. Something can exist in a physical nature, or it cannot. Things that are not physical in nature do not exist. Nothing I image is physical in nature. Because I can image something that is not real, it must not exist. I would argue against Anselm in this case again. Consider the example of a unicorn. Somewhere in our childhood, as Americans, we were taught what a unicorn would look like, and be like if it existed. However, I argue that the idea of the unicorn does exist. We know what it is,...
