By Schubert Ogden
Copleston states that in its widest signification, "being" simply means "that which includes no contradiction, that which is not intrinsically impossible." Thus, in this widest sense, "being" includes both that which has extramental being and that which has (only) intramental being.
In the narrower sense of extramental being, however, "being" means that which is opposed (in one way or another) to nothingness, or non-being. Thus, while God's way of being opposed to nothingness is radically different from any creature's-namely, necessarily rather than merely contingentlythe claim that they both "are" is univocal, not equivocal, if, by saying that either "is," one means, simply, that it is opposed to nothingness, prescinding entirely from the mode of its opposition.
But Copleston's distinction between "extramental being" and "(only) intramental being" won't do, because it implicitly denies the strict correlation of logical with ontological, or real, possibility. Even the possible is "extra mental," albeit as what is determinable and, as such, potential, rather tHan as what is determinate and, as such, actual
22 October 1996; rev. 25 March 2001