The Predicate of Existence

Abstract

Kant famously declared that existence is not a (real) predicate. This famous dictum has been seen as echoed in the doctrine of the founders of modern logic, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, that existence isn’t a first-order property possessed by individuals, but rather a second-order property expressed by the existential quantifier. Russell in 1905 combined this doctrine with his new theory of descriptions and declared the paradox of nonexistence to be resolved without resorting to his earlier distinction between existence and being. In recent years, however, logicians and philosophers like Saul Kripke, David Kaplan, and Nathan Salmon have argued that there is no defensible reason to deny that existence is a property of individuals. Kant’s dictum has also been re-evaluated, the result being that the paradox of nonexistence has not, after all, disappeared. Yet it’s not clear how exactly Kripke et al. propose to resolve the paradox.