Paradise Lost

The first response to Anselm’s Proslogion argument for God’s existence, Gaunilo’s On Behalf of the Fool, began a tradition of replying to Anselm with parody. I argue that Gaunilo’s original parody fails, show how to remedy its defects, and point out (what seems till now to have been overlooked) that Anselm actually responds to the parody. I show that his response applies too to the amended parody. I then discuss the revised parody, as a sample parody based on a best possible member of a physical kind. I contend that this too fails, because there cannot be best possible members of physical kinds. This response goes back at least to Plantinga, and in reply, parodists have jiggered physical kinds to permit (they claim) a best possible. I consider all possible ways to make this move, though not all possible instances of each way. I argue that they all fail.