BASA

48 J. Hopkins conceiving or imagining it) and (2) thinking (i.e., believing, judging, understanding, or knowing) it to exist. 47 Indeed, if one can under– stand something without understanding (judging) it to exist (à la Proslogion 2), then one can also think something without thinking it to exist-since understanding is a form of thinking, on Anselm's view as well as on ours. But here « thinking » is being used equivocally to mean that one can conceive something without judging it to exist. Yet, in the two arguments under discussion « thinking » is being used univocally to stand for « conceiving ». Anselm obviously regards « conceiving X » and « conceiving X to exist » as having different meanings. For were they synonymous the expression « conceiving x not to exist » would be, for every x, self-contradictory-a view foreign to Anselm. Yet, it seems that he did assume an extensional equivalence such that x can be thought if and only if x can be thought to exist. In Proslogion 2 this assumption allows him to infer « N can be thought to exist in reality » from « N is in the understanding ». 48 Now, although there is a semantical difference between « conceiving x » and « conceiving x to exist », still when Anselm switches from the one expression to the other in Reply 1, he is not leaning upon this semantical difference in order to make any epistemological or logical point. He is simply exhibiting two different arguments-each of which has a valid form irrespective of which expression is used. Moreover, the truth or falsity of the premises in which these phrases occur would remain unaffected by completely substituting the one expression for the other. So, then, in the process of exhibiting a second argument, Anselm indicates that, should we prefer, we can simplify « if N can be thought to exist » to « if N can be thought », for even the premise thus simplified will suffice for the logic of his argument. •• By truncating the sequence of these two arguments, Hick and McGill bury the noteworthiness of this shift, so that for them it is not an issue. They place the one argument at the top of p. 22 and the other at the bottom of p. 25. Anselm is allegedly responding to two different criticisms made by Gaunilo! 47 The ambiguity of « thinking » (conceiving vs. knowing) is partially indicated by Anselm in Reply .4. •• See William Mann, The Ontological Presuppositions of the Ontological Argument, in: Review of Metaphysics, 26 (December, 1972), 260-277.