Professor Stephen Davis and I have exchanged views in a series of papers published in this journal, concerned with Anselm's ontological argument and a widely discussed interpretation of it written by William Rowe. Sooner or later any sequence of essay, comment, reply, rejoinder, etc., must come to an end; and perhaps this one ought to be allowed to do so with Professor Davis's most recent piece (1984).
However, as I shall try to show, Davis makes mistakes whose exposure and exploration significantly advances an understanding of the ontological argument. And so I ask the indulgence of the readers of this journal for what I promise is a last and final word in its pages -from me, at least -concerning Anselm, Meinong, Rowe, and Davis.
That word will be relatively brief. None of the arguments Davis advances against me is I think successful. But I want only to respond to arguments of the last two pages of his essay. Davis says that he sees now that -contrary to earlier claims I made (1980:189) -I really share the Kantian view that existence is not a property, and that is why I hold -as I do -that (1) is false:
(1) If I can conceive of a (unique) being than whom no greater can be conceived, and that being (as a matter of fact) does not exist, then if I can conceive of a being than whom no greater can be conceived, where that being is conceived also as existent, then I will have conceived of a being greater than a being than whom no greater can be conceived. (Davis indicates that he believes that (1) is true -and apparently that he believes that is true because existence is a property, more specificaily a "great-making~'~property.) I do really want to insist that I regard existence as a property, or at least know no satisfactory reason for not so regarding it; and also that I think existence is "great-making", at least in the sense that were anything that exists to lack this property, it would not be as great as it is (however great it may happen to be), and when a thing has existence it has (thereby) a measure of greatness. The thing possesses thereby, I would be prepared to say, an excellence, a virtue, a power, or a perfection.
What leads Davis, erroneously, as I believe, to regard (1) as true, may possibly be seen by focusing on the phrase "conceive as existent". What is it to conceive something as existent? Davis appears to believe that it requires believing that the