BASA

60 P. A. Streveler « divine essence » or « The being than which no greater can be thought » would certainly have to be, this proposition implies the truth of certain other propositions, (or, as Occam would say, « this proposition has many exponents »). 14 One such 'exponent' is the statement of the real existence of the entity being described. Bence, what Occam is in effect saying is that « God is God » implies « God exists »! For Anselm, of course, this is rather embarrassing, since it accuses his argument of petitio principii in the second premise! This second point of Occam's has the no mean authority of a great twentieth century logician behind it. Bertrand Russell at ,., 14 of Principia Mathematica sets out to prove formally that any identity statement in which the identical terms are assumed to be definite descriptions, is equivalent to the statement that the individual definitely described exists. There is no need to reproduce Russell's proof here. The point simply is that for any definite descrip– tion to succeed in referring, the thing described must be assumed to exist. It would be rash to suppose that Occam has in any way anticipated Russell's theory of definite descriptions, 15 but Occam's remarks do seem to contain some very subtle insights somewhat similar to those of our twentie th century logician. Sorne further remarks of Occam's in his Summa Logicae, Pt. II, ch. 14 may clarify his meaning a bit. In this chapter Occam is discussing propositions which contain fictive expressions. 16 As examples of such fictive expressions he gives, 'Chimaera', 'trage– lapus', 'vacuum', and 'infinitus'. He remarks that we must not imagine that just as the terms 'homo', 'animal', 'album' etc. signify genuine beings, so too these fictive expressions signify impossible beings or non-beings, as if « there were one world made up of 14 Vide: Summa Logicae, Pt. II, q. 14 edited in: Franciscan Institute Publi– cations, Text series, No. 2, 1954, p. 258. 15 Indeed, it would be difficult to prove that Occam is here or anywhere really employing a definitely describing phrase, since these are most easily recognized by the use of the definite article: e.g. « The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo... », « The King of France... » etc. In Latin, however, there are no genuine articles as there are in English. Hence, it is difficult to ascertain here whether «Homo albus est homo albus » ought to be translated as « The white man is the white man», or simply as: «A white man is a white man». «Deus», however, or « Id quo maius cogitari non posset » clearly seems to be a definite description. 16 Summa Logicae, Pt. II, q. 14 edited in op. cit. « De propositionibus, in quibus ponuntur figmenta ».