This paper is a brief response to Peter Loptson's "Anselm and Rowe: A Reply to Davis. ''1 (That paper was a reply to my "Loptson on Anselm and Rowe, ''2 which was a reply to Loptson's "Anselm, Meinong, and the Ontological Argument. ''a) I will not speak to everything Loptson says in his latest paper; let me focus on three points that constitute the crucial differences between us and that are importantly related to the soundness of Anselm's argument (the OA). 4
First, Loptson doubts that the terms "Greatest Conceivable Being" (GCB) and "Greatest Possible Being" (GPB) are strictly equivalent terms -it is hard at least to see how it could be established that they are equivalent, he says. Now in "Loptson on Anselm and Rowe" I argued that the" terms GCB and TBTW (that being than which no greater can be conceived) are equivalent. But that argument applies equally well to the two terms GCB and GPB, so I have no objection to arguing against Loptson that these terms are also equivalent. The argument is this: If ability to conceive of oneself is a greatmaking property, then any GPB (or any TBTW) must be able to conceive of itself, i.e., must also be the GCB. The GCB, then, is necessarily a being that can conceive of itself, and the possibility Loptson raises that the greatest being is simply inconceivable (by itself or any other being) turns out not to be possible after all.
Loptson is unconvinced by all this, however, and raises three objections. The first, in my opinion, is quite irrelevant to the question at hand but the second and third are worth discussing. First, Loptson expresses strong doubt that there even couM be such a being as the GCB or the GPB. But how is this point so much as relevant to the claim that the concepts "GCB" and "GPB" are equivalent concepts? 5
Second, Loptson wonders why we should "suppose that greatness will be very readily comparable among individuals, or possible individuals of widely differing type?" (p. 67). Now in fact, the concept of greatness does constitute something of a gap in Anselm's argument -sadly, Anselm never tells us exactly what the term means. But working as it were backward, i.e. by asking what notion of greatness might be required to make the OA work, we can arrive at something useful. If we read greatness as, say, redheadedness or running speed or largeness the OA