1. John is on a diet.
2. John loves pizza.
An underlying (or, as J.L. Mackie might say, "quasi-logical") assumption behind (1) is: To be on a diet means one cannot eat pizza. Or, if one does eat pizza, there are severe limitations; e.g., you may eat a pizza the size of a deck of cards.
So (1) and (2) are incompatible, to a degree. They are not strictly logically incompatible, but it feels that way to me. This is because I am emotionally unable to eat a piece of pizza the size of a deck of cards without eating the entire deck (= 52 slices of card-sized pizza).
For over two years I have eaten no pizza. Not literally, but I exaggerate to make a point. I've eaten a few slices. Last summer in Boston, e.g., I broke down and ate, flying solo, an entire coal-fired portabella - fig - goat cheese pizza. All by myself, in front of Linda and Josh. It was heaven...
Could God make a pizza that, the more one ate, the more weight one lost? It seems not. God cannot make square circles, married bachelors, stones so heavy he can't life, and burritos so hot he can't hold. God cannot make these, not because they are beyond his power, but because such things are non-logical possibilities. So is "diet pizza."
I just read the Detroit Free Press's article: "Buddy's square pizzas among best in the country." Says who? Says Food & Wine magazine. Who are they? Food experts, that's who. I surfed through the slide of the top 25 pizzas. I landed on Buddy's. I read: "Signature Item: The Super (with pepperoni, mushrooms, onion, green peppers and ham). This fabled pizzeria specializes in Detroit-style square pies—and even uses some of the same seasoned pans from when they opened more than 50 years ago." I feel proud of this.
It's noon in Southeast Michigan. This morning I had a bowl of Fiber One cereal. I am hungry. I am within driving distance of a Buddy's Pizza. I want a Buddy's Pizza. I want to drive to get a Buddy's Pizza. I want to walk into a Buddy's Pizza and smell the 50-year-old seasoned pans. I want to eat an entire Buddy's Pizza. For it is, as St. Anselm said, a greater thing to exist in reality than in the understanding alone. I am thinking of a Buddy's pizza. I want it to actually exist, to exist in reality, for "existence" is a great-making property. However...
1. John is on a diet.
