On the Inherent Incoherence of Gaunilo's Island

Various attempts have been made to save Gaunilo's ‘ideal’ island by proposing different criteria for its maximal greatness or perfection. This paper addresses a recent proposal that ‘an ideal island is conceivable if it's defined as any island exhibiting an ideal ratio of great‐making island properties’ (Milo Crimi, ‘Ideally sized islands: Reply to Danielyan, Garrett and Plantinga’, Analysis 77 (2), 273‐278) and shows that it fails because the idea of an island – indeed, of anything that is finite, delineated and circumscribed as a necessary condition of its conception ‐ cannot accommodate maximal greatness or perfection; neither can a determined quantitative relation between finite relata constitute a criterion of maximal greatness or perfection.