At around 9/3/07 5:33 pm, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> Actually, this is exactly the famous "ontological proof" propounded
> by Anselm: that when "the fool sayeth in his heart that there is no
> god" he is being self-contradictory because the concept *god*
> (included in the statement "there is no god") includes *existence*
> as an attribute of that conceptual object.
>
W.V.O.Quine addresses this trap quite well in "On What There is".
Unfortunately I do not have my copy on hand and I would rather quote him
than summarise. More shortly...
--ravi
