 Some of Boethius’ contemporaries rejected the thought-experiment involved in the sophisma because in an Aristotelian sempiternal world the presupposed state of affairs, Ø, cannot occur, as no natural species is ever uninstantiated. Others held that (1) is true because man can neither be nor be conceived of without animal being or being conceived of. Many held that the destruction of the individuals of a species would not imply the destruction of their essence, and so the essence of man would still be around to be the significate of “man”, an object of knowledge and the truth-maker of (1).