The Riddle of Existence

The Riddle of Existence Author(s): J. L. Mackie and W. Bednarowski Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol.
50 (1976), pp. 247-265+267-289 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4106829 . Accessed: 07/05/2013 03:14
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THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE
J. L. Mackie and W. Bednarowski

I--J. L. Mackie
Kant, in criticising what he calls the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God, makes at least three points. The first is that 'If, in an identical proposition, I reject the predicate while retaining the subject, contradiction results . . . But if we reject subject and predicate alike, there is no contradiction . . .' A second is that '"Being" is obviously not a real predicate'. A third is that 'Whatever, therefore, and however much, our concept of an object may contain, we must go outside it, if we are to ascribe existence to the object'. The second of these comes into Kant's argument to rebut an objection to the first, that the concept of the ens realissimum is an exception to that first principle, that with this concept alone the rejection of its object is in itself contradictory. Kant is arguing in effect that this concept is somehow improper. His third point then re-states the first in a way that refers more plainly to this dismissal of the objection. The thesis that 'existence is not a predicate' has escaped from this context, and has often been affirmed, and less often criticised, simply as a logical thesis. I shall begin by so examining it, but having done this I shall turn back to consider what bearing my conclusions have upon the possibility of an ontological proof. Three reasons have been given for saying that existence is not a predicate, or more cautiously, that (as Kant puts it) it is only a logical predicate, not a real predicate, or (as others have put it) that it is only a grammatical predicate, not a logical predicate. The first reason, which was stressed by Hume as well as by Kant, is that existence is, as we might say, colourless. The addition of existence makes no difference to a concept: a hundred real thalers are just like a hundred possible or imagined thalers. Hume even says that 'The idea of existence . . . is the very same with the idea of what we conceive to be existent.' This is certainly too strong, since
L. MACKIE I-J. 248 we can take something which does exist and conceive or consider the possibility that it should not exist and should never have existed. Still, something true is hinted at by the suggestion that existence is colourless: the difference that existing makes is not at all like the difference made by the addition of or a change in an ordinary property. But this would certainly be no reason for denying that 'exists' is a predicate, and not a very clear reason for denying that it is a 'real' predicate. Secondly, it has been argued that 'exists' is not a real predicate-which now seems to mean one that can be straightforwardly predicated of individuals--on the ground that we can refer only to existents. Consequently if 'A' is any expression that is here used genuinely to refer, 'A exists' will be a kind of tautology: it will assert only what is already presupposed in the successful use of the expression 'A'. Similarly 'A does not exist' will be a kind of contradiction, denying something that is presupposed in its own use. Generally, all straightforward affirmative uses of 'exists' as a predicate will be referential tautologies, and all negative ones will be referential contradictions. David Pears, indeed, at one time offered, not as an argument for the thesis that existence is not a predicate but as a 'fairly close minimal formulation' of it, the fact that such referential tautologies and contradictions are produced when the subject-phrase of a singular statement referentially implies existence. Whereas for Kant the thesis that existence is not a predicate was linked with the claim that saying that such-and-such exists is never tautological, for Pears it becomes the claim that it is always tautological when the subject-phrase has this referential character. It might be argued that we can refer to non-existents. We can, at least on the surface, refer to King Arthur as well as to King Alfred, to Pegasus as well as to Eclipse, to Mithras as well as to Buddha. Consequently, of some item introduced by what looks like a singular referring expression we can say non-tautologously that it exists or non-contradictorily that it does not. Pears admits this, and so offers not the strong claim that wherever 'A' is a genuinely referring expression, 'A exists' is a tautology, but one weakened by several qualifica-
249 tions, that this results if 'A' referentially implies existence and unless the assertion and the implication are about different worlds (e.g., real and fictional), or different times, or different levels (e.g., physical objects and phenomena). It may be argued, however, that we cannot really refer to non-existents and that what superficially appears to be such reference is better analysed in another way. I shall come back to this question. What I want to argue now is that even if we could refer only to existents this would not show that 'exists' is not a real predicate which can be properly and truly predicated of singular subjects. It is true that simple statements of the form 'A exists' would then be uninteresting and conversationally pointless; but it is by now a well recognised error to infer from the fact that something is conversationally pointless that it is meaningless or ill-formed. Consider the perfectly sensible and probably true statement, 'President Ford does not know that David Pears exists'. The fact that in order to make this statement I have to refer to David Pears as well as to President Ford does not make the statement as a whole tautologous or contradictory or even conversationally pointless. What President Ford lacks is a genuine item of information. But in the noun-clause of this statement 'exists' is predicated of David Pears, and in a quite straightforwardway. This noun-clause, moreover, must mean exactly what 'David Pears exists' would mean as a simple sentence; one of the many things that President Ford does not know is just what I can assert by saying 'David Pears exists'. Since the complex sentence is well-formed and straightforwardlymeaningful, so must be the simple sentence 'David Pears exists'. Referential tautology, then, would appear to be only a superficial defect, and not in itself to yield any interpretation of the thesis that 'exists' is not a real predicate which would give that thesis any importance. However, this peculiarity can be pursued further. We have seen that 'David Pears exists' is well-formed and meaningful. But, it might be argued, this sentence would be tautological if its logical form were what it appears to be, with 'exists' predicated of a singular subject. So its true logical form must be something different. This brings us to a third reason for denying that existence is a predicate, which requires much
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fuller examination. This is that 'exist(s)' is not a predicate because it is a quantifier. This is the view which is most naturally expressed by saying that 'exists' is only a grammatical but not a logical predicate: its logical function, once brought properly to light, turns out to be that of what we know as the existential quantifier. Anything that is conveyed by the grammatical use of 'exist(s)' as a predicate can be stated more lucidly, it is alleged, by an existentially quantified formula. 'Atoms exist' is to be analysed as '( 3 x) (x is an atom)'; 'Yetis do not exist' as '"( 3 x) (x is a yeti)'. On this view, to say that 'exists' is not a logical predicate is to say that there is a logical language, adequate for the formulation of everything we want to say, and clear in respects in which ordinary language is obscure, in which 'exists' is not a predicate, but in which the work done by the grammatical predicate 'exist(s)' in ordinary language is done rather by the existential quantifier. It certainly appears that some assertions and denials of existence can be well expressed by the use of this quantifier. It is less obvious that all can be. Is the proposed logical language adequate for the formulation of everything that we want to say, or only for that of everything that (from some point of view) we ought to want to say? There is an obvious danger of circularity if we appeal to the dictum that existence is not a predicate in order to rule out as improper things of the sort that have been said in ontological proofs, and explain and defend that dictum on the ground that everything we can properly want to say about existence can be handled by the existential quantifier. But we had better leave these controversial examples aside, and first inquire whether the existential quantifier copes adequately with all our ordinary uses of 'exist(s)'. Prima facie it does not. It works well for 'Atoms exist' and 'Yetis do not exist', where what is said to exist or not to exist is introduced by a general term; but 'David Pears exists' or 'I exist' does not obviously or immediately translate into an existential quantification. At this stage it may seem plausible to suggest that the verb 'exist' has two senses or at least two different constructions. Predicated of a general term it serves as an ordinary language equivalent of the
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existential quantifier; but it can also be predicated of singular terms, and in this use it does some different job. Someone might resist this suggestion that 'exist(s)' has two senses by pointing out that the most obvious counterpart of the existential quantifier is not any use of 'exist(s)' but simply 'There is' or 'There are'. But nothing much can be made of this. 'Tame tigers exist' is an admissible equivalent of 'There are tame tigers'. What is important is that however this quantification is expressed, and perhaps modally varied, it calls for a general term to complete it. We say not 'There may be Old Nick' but 'There may be such a person as Old Nick', not 'There may be the devil' but 'There may be a devil', where 'such a person as Old Nick' and 'a devil' are general terms, whereas 'Old Nick' and 'the devil' would be singular referring terms. This feature of the 'there is' construction agrees well with Frege's view that statements of existence, like statements of number, are assertions about concepts: existence is, after all, a predicate but a second-order predicate. 'There are atoms' is equivalent to 'The concept atom is instantiated'. Yet there are apparent exceptions to the rule that 'there is' calls for a general term. 'Are there any good pubs in London? is the Mermaid.' 'There are women Prime -There Ministers; there is Mrs. Gandhi.' It may be replied that these are only apparent exceptions, since there is always some general term, some concept, in the neighbourhood: 'There is the Mermaid' may be construed as elliptical for 'There is at least one good pub in London, namely, the Mermaid'. Such a construal is less satisfactoryfor our second example, since it yields redundancy: 'There are women Prime Ministers; there is at least one woman Prime Minister, namely Mrs. Gandhi'. But what is true is that 'There is A', where 'A' is a singular referring term, is used only to specify an individual which instantiates a concept in a context where the main topic is whether this concept is instantiated. But whatever we make of statements of the form 'There is A', we must take account of such forms as 'David Pears exists', 'I exist', and 'This exists'-the last accompanied by some gesture such as pointing. Should we accept these not only as exemplifying a different grammatical construction
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but also as employing a sense of 'exist' distinct from the quantifier or second-order predicate one, or should we assimilate them to the latter? If we could so assimilate them we should finish up with a lucid logical language in which everything we might want to say about existence, except for the controversial materials of ontological proofs themselves, was adequately presented in terms of a quantifier only, existence as a predicate of individuals having been explained away. We might then reasonably dismiss all ontological proofs which make essential use of such a predicate as 'merely a play on grammatical form'. Where the subject 'A' in 'A exists' is a proper name, those who interpret proper names as condensed definite descriptions may seem to have available an easy method of assimilation. Thus Kneale suggests that 'Mr. Russell exists' may mean 'There is one and only one man who wrote An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, etc., and is called Mr. Russell'. I think that there are good reasons (given, for example, by Kripke) for being dissatisfied with this account of proper names, but that is too long a story to embark on now. I am also inclined to appeal directly to my linguistic intuitions, and say that no similar expansion seems to me to express what I mean by 'David Pears exists'. However, appeals to intuition are somewhat arbitrary. Rather more of an argument can be supplied. Even if we leave proper names aside and stick to descriptions, there seems to be a difference between 'The sheltered bay we found yesterday exists' and 'A unique sheltered bay that we found yesterday exists'. It is only the latter that goes neatly into the Fregean existentially quantified form. But the former makes good sense. It can be defended, as above, against the complaint about referential tautology by considering how it may be embedded in another sentence: 'Hardly anyone else knows that the sheltered bay we found yesterday exists'. And unlike 'A unique sheltered bay . . .' it seems obstinately to predicate existence of an individual item to which reference is made, not simply to say that a certain concept is instantiated. The difference can be brought out by contrasts between the order and scope of various operators. 'Hardly anyone else knows that a unique sheltered bay . . . exists' will be 'For most
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p, p does not know that (3 x) (Bx &c(y) (By - y = x))', whereas 'Hardly anyone else knows that the sheltered bay ... exists' will be '( 3 x) (Bx &c for most p, p (y) (By -- y = x) &c does not know that x exists)'. But when we have thus allowed for the difference in scope, we still need, in the latter formula, 'exists' as a predicate applied to the individual variable 'x'. Similarly, no report of the instantiation of a concept captures the force of 'I exist'. Again, 'This exists' seems to me to mean something simpler than Kneale's 'There is something to which my token "this" has the deictic relation'. 'This might not have existed' is not equivalent to 'There might not have been anything to which my token "this" had the deictic relation', since the latter possibility could have been realised even with this (whatever it is) in existence but elsewhere, and again the possibility of this's not having existed is compatible with my token's having the deictic relation to something else. 'This might not have existed' would have to mean rather 'There is something such that my token "this" has the deictic relation to it and it was possible that it should not exist', which again requires 'exist' as a predicate over and above the initial existential quantification. It will be objected, however, that the quantifier theory can supply this extra predicate: we can mechanically construct a concept the existential quantification of which will replace the predication of existence of an individual. Thus 'A exists' will become '( 3 x) (x = A)', 'I exist' will become 'There is something which is identical with me', and 'This (exists but) might not have existed' will become 'There is an x such that x is identical with this and such that it was possible that there would not be a y such that y = x', or perhaps 'There is an x such that my token "this" has the deictic relation to x and such that it was possible that there would not be a y such that y = x'. But this device is highly artificial. If I say that David Pears exists, I seem to be saying something about this concrete individual himself, not about the instantiation of the concept is identical with David Pears. It seems that someone could know or believe that David Pears exists without having any knowledge or beliefs about identity.
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Nor can this device cope happily with tensed existence statements. We can say that something exists now, or has existed, or will exist; but how are we to introduce tense into it is not possible for something to be identical with A at one time but not at another, and when something ceases to exist it is not because something ceases to be identical with it. So the tense distinctions must go into the quantifier '(3 x)': have abandoned the initially attractive programme of dealing with existence simply by means of the ordinary existential quantifier, the counterpart of the universal quantifier within the predicate calculus. The view that existence reduces completely to quantification leads naturally to Quine's thesis that the ontological commitments of a theory are shown exclusively by the range of its variables when it is expressed in quantificational form, and hence that no question of ontological commitment would arise for someone who dealt only with a finite universe of named objects. But this is surely a reductio ad absurdum of this view. In positing each named individual as a genuine constituent of the universe in its own right, not to be reduced or explained away, the holder of such a theory would be claiming that it exists. There is another argument, put forward by Strawson, which I have been tempted to use in support of the view that existence can be a predicate of individuals, not merely a quantifier. Strawson begins by explaining what is essentially the Fregean theory in a slightly different way. When one says 'All/Most/ Many/Some/A few/No/At least one tame tiger(s) growl(s)' one is 'indicating (roughly) how big a slice of the membership of a presupposed class one is prepared to affirm to possess a certain characteristic', whereas when one says 'Many/Some/A few/No/At least one tame tiger(s) exist(s)' one is 'indicating (roughly) how big one is prepared to affirm the membership of a non-presupposed class to be'. On this understanding it is clear why one should not be able to say 'All/Most tame tigers exist'; for 'all' and 'most' require a presupposed class on which to operate.
we must allow it to vary between 'There is now . .' and 'There was . . .' and 'There will be .. .'. And already we '(3 x) (x = . . . )'? It will not go into the identity relation:
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'Exist(s)' in connexion with any of the quantifying adjectives 'many', 'some', 'a few', 'no', 'at least one' does the job of indicating the size of a non-presupposed class. This includes something equivalent to the Fregean job of saying that a concept is, or is not, instantiated, but it adds that we may also indicate the extent of such an instantiation. But Strawson then points out a class of exceptions to this theory. We can say that most of the characters listed in the Classical Dictionary existed (though some are mythical). That is, 'Most . . . exist(ed)' can do a job closely analogous to that done by 'Most . . . growl'; it can assign a predicate, 'exist', to a roughly indicated proportion of a presupposed class. The main difference is that this will be a heterogeneous class embracing, say, real, fictional, mythical, and legendary persons, such as may be listed in a dictionary or mentioned in a novel or in a conversation. This argument turns upon and develops the point noted above that we seem to be able to refer to non-existents-King Arthur, Pegasus, Mithras, and the like. If we can refer to such, we can group them along with existing individuals in heterogeneous classes and say significantly that some members of such a class exist and some do not. However, I would reject this argument. The sense in which we can refer to non-existents is very different from that in which we can refer to existents. An ordinary sentence of the form 'Fa' has as its truth-condition that the individual denoted by 'a' should have the characteristic connoted by 'F', and to refer to a will typically be to say things that would be made true by a's satisfying what is said of it. But none of this applies to a sentence that is apparently of the form 'Fa' where a is a non-existent: we cannot in this sense refer to King Arthur. What makes it possible to do what counts as referring to King Arthur, is the persistence of a fairly coherent though gradually developing body of legend in which stories are told of someone called King Arthur. What is actually going on is more accurately expressed if we say 'It is traditionally narrated that there was a man called King Arthur and that he etc.' We can then say that there is a legendary character King Arthur, and so on, but this is to be understood just as a transformation from the previous sort
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of account: legendary characters exist only in so far as there are bodies of legend saying that there were such persons. But then when we do what is loosely described as referring to King Arthur we are not after all referring to a non-existent. What we are really referring to, the individual whose possession of certain characteristics would make our statement true, is either the legend, that is the tradition of narration, or the legendary character, and each of these exists. When we say that King Arthur did not exist, we are playing a double game, mixing up speech-procedures that are appropriate respectively to the existent legendary character and to a non-existent but supposed historical individual. What we are really saying is not that a certain referred-to individual did not exist, but that there is not any historical person appropriately related to the legendary character, where 'appropriately related' would mean both that the person was the causal source of the legend and that a fair amount of what is narrated in the legend was true of that person. We can introduce dictionary characters analogously with legendary characters, but as being parasitic upon dictionary entries rather than upon traditional narrations, and then to say that most of the persons in the Classical Dictionary existed is merely to say that for most dictionary characters there are real persons appropriately related to them. But once the situation has been thus analysed, Strawson's argument no longer provides examples where 'does not exist' functions as a straightforward predicate of individuals. We cannot after all find heterogeneous classes of items some of which exist while others do not. But though this argument fails, the previously mentioned considerations still support the claim that 'exist(s)' can be a straightforward predicate of individuals, and is not always reducible to a quantifier. Must we then abandon the hope of finding a neat unitary theory, and just say that there are two distinct constructions, each of which can employ the word 'exist', one involving a first-order predicate of individuals, the other a second-order predicate of concepts? This would be a messy and unattractive conclusion, but, what is worse, it is just not right. Even if 'Atoms exist' or 'There are atoms' somehow conveys the information that the concept atom is
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instantiated, this is not what either of them literally says. Each of these still speaks of atoms, the things, not of the concept. The instantiation analysis has some of the same prima facie implausibility as a meta-linguistic analysis of conditionals that makes 'If p than q' speak not about the occurrences p and q but about the statements 'p' and 'q'. Also, there are constructions which bring together the 'exist(s)' that applies to general terms and the 'exist(s)' that applies to individuals. 'At least one island volcano exists, namely Stromboli.' That is, Stromboli exists and is an island volcano, so an island volcano exists. This reasoning will be immediately valid only if 'exists' has the same meaning in both places. If it were ambiguous, there would be on the face of it a fallacy of equivocation, which would need to remedy it some further rule connecting the two varieties of existence. Similarly, (many) atoms exist because this atom exists, and that one, and so on. The truth of the matter is that what is literally said in either case is said with an 'exist(s)' which is a predicate of individuals, though one way of using this entails or conveys that (or how extensively) a concept is instantiated. We can, then, approach a unitary theory of the meaning of 'exist(s)' in the opposite direction. Linguistically, this word is always a predicate of individuals. But it can be used in a special way so that it expresses quantification, so that the information conveyed is that a certain general term or concept is or is not instantiated, or how extensively it is instantiated. We do this by introducing individuals simply as possible instances of the general term in question, prefixed perhaps by a literally quantifying adjective such as 'many' or 'some' or 'at least one' or 'a few' or even 'no', and then saying of the individuals so introduced, in such quantity, that they exist. In most cases it is obvious how this works; but with, for example 'no tame tigers exist', the procedure is paradoxical. It is as if we were asked to consider an empty set of tame tigers, then told that its members exist, and left to infer that that is all that is to be said about the existence of tame tigers. Of course this way of thinking is incoherent. The logical structure of what is said can be given only by a negated existential quantification. But this is conveyed by
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a linguistic device in which 'exist' is still treated as a predicate of individuals. In the end, then all three reasons for saying that existence is not a predicate, or not a real predicate, or not a logical predicate, or only a second-order predicate, not a predicate of individuals, fail. It is a predicate of individuals in ordinary discourse, its meaning conforms to that r61le,and this part of ordinary language cannot be wholly replaced by a logical language in which 'exist(s)', or something similar, plays a different part. It is true that existential quantification is indispensable; but there are also some quite ordinary purposes for which 'exist(s)' as a predicate of individuals is indispensable. What, then, is existence? We have conceded that it is colourless: an imagined thing might be just like a real thing-except that the latter exists. Also, we must preserve the link with quantification and instantiation: existing, we may say, is that which individuals do which enables them to instantiate whatever concepts they conform to. But what is this? Etymology may give us some hints. Existere is literally to stand out. 'There is' is patently a weakened version of 'is there'. We use 'are found' as almost equivalent to 'exist', not claiming that the things in question literally are found, but only that they are in such a condition as to be in principle findable. All this suggests that the paradigm case of existing is occupying a definite position or range of positions in space and time. However, this is not a requirement for literal existence. So far as our concepts go, something that was not occupancy of space and time, but was somehow sufficiently like this, could still be real, literal, existence. If something not in space and/or time could yet operate on spatio-temporal things in a causal way or in something analogous to a causal way, it would exist. The suggestion that God is not in space or time does not in itself conflict with the belief that he quite literally exists; nor is the Kantian view that things in themselves are not spatio-temporal an obstacle to their existing; nor is there any contradiction within the view that minds exist but are not only not extended but not even located in space.
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This is literal, full-blooded existence. But in addition to these there is a quite different extension of the concept of existence. We can introduce a notion of minimal existence, so that wherever there is apparent reference to a person or thing in a story, legend, myth, or any such reasonably definite body of discourse, we shall say that such a person or thing minimally exists. Existence in a novel, existence in myth, and so on are species of minimal existence. But here we need to tread warily. Mr. Micawber, the man, only minimally exists; he exists in the story. But we can say (with Kripke) that there is-simply, absolutely, not merely in fiction-a fictional character Mr. Micawber. This item, qua fictional character, exists in the full-blooded sense. We can take 'There is a fictional character X', and 'X, the person, exists minimally in fiction' as two different systematic transformations of 'There is a work of fiction, narrating things about a person called X'-where the work of fiction exists quite literally; we may regard it as a universal, which exists in so far as it is instantiated, or perhaps as a collective particular, made up of its tokens and existing in a rather diffused way in space and time, and in a multiplicity of forms-on paper, in silent or audible readings, translated into various languages. Similarly even atheists can admit both that the Christian God, as a god or as a person, minimally exists, namely in the system of Christian thought, and also that God as a religious character exists in the full sense; there really is a religious character, God, in the same way that there really is a fictional character, Mr. Micawber. But neither of these admissions goes any way towards satisfying the demands of theism. If we have fictional and religious characters and the like, simply existing as such, do we also need minimal existence? No, we do not need it, and of course this way of speaking is liable to mislead, it invites the mistaken interpretation that there is after all a shadowy realm in which there actually are such individuals. We must hold fast to the fact that minimal existence is wholly parasitic upon the actual existence of things which are not what is said minimally to exist. Mr. Micawber, the man, minimally exists only in that tokens of the book David Copperfield exist in the fullblooded sense and describe him and his doings. But though
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it is both dispensable and dangerous, the concept of minimal existence can be used, once we have learned to handle it with care, to clarify such arguments as St. Anselm's ontological proof. Is mathematical existence only another species of minimal existence? Or should we say that numbers simply and absolutely exist? This is a large and controversial question on which I can only touch. But it is not settled merely by the fact that it is very convenient to admit variables that range over numbers and to quantify existentially with regard to them. Speaking within the legend, we could quantify with regard to Knights of the Round Table. We can say, first, that many numbers exist as universals do, in so far as they have instances: the number seven exists simply in that there are seven-membered sets, and this is full-blooded existence. But over and above this, there is a well-developed realm of mathematical discourse. Within this, number-terms no doubt started as quantifiers corresponding to the first few positive integers-'There are five sheep in that pen'-but progressive systematic extensions have not only introduced different kinds of numbers-fractional, negative, irrational, imaginary-but have also introduced number-individuals within the system. So within this system there is apparent reference to numbers as individuals which is confident and seems precise. There is also apparent collective reference to numbers-for example the real numbers-even though being non-denumerably many they could not be all individually named or described. So all numbers-real, complex, transfinite, the lot-exist within the system, that is, minimally exist. We can also say that just as the fictional character Mr. Micawber, qua fictional character, exists in the fullblooded sense, so numbers, qua mathematical entities, exist in the full-blooded sense. There really are mathematical entities just in that there really is a system which speaks about numbers: the former statement is merely a transformation of the latter. But apart from this, and apart from the above-mentioned point that numbers considered as universals full-bloodedly exist in so far as they are instantiated (for example by n-membered classes, ratios of one quantity to another, and so on), I see no ground for assigning
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minimal existence.And their minimal existenceis, as always, wholly parasitic.It is how the appropriate thingsare in space and time that enables us to refer to the real, or imaginary, numbers,no less thanto the man, Mr. Micawber. Let us now return to the Ontological Argument. Have our criticismsof the thesis that existence is not a predicate done away with the main reason for denying that such an argument can be sound? I think not. There is a truth of which Kant's first and third points are admittedlyobscure formulations,which can survive the rejection of his second. We can do all that mattersnot by denying that 'exist(s)'is a predicate,but by noting just what sort of predicateit is. The general question is whether there is, or can be, a definition which ensures the actual existence of the thing defined, or a concept which cannot fail to be instantiated, or a possibilitywhich entails its own realisation.Let us take the first two of these together.It might seem that there are trivial (and theologicallyuninteresting) examples that fill this bill. If we define Nature, say, as 'Whateverthere is', is it not logicallyinevitable that Nature exists? No, this would follow only with the provisothat somethingexists. Of course, we know that this proviso is satisfied.But the certaintyof the conclusiondependson this knowledge,not wholly upon the proposeddefinition. The same holds for the certainty that any concept of the form '. . . is either F or not F' is instantiated.In neither case does the definition or concept alone guaranteeexistenceor instantiation. Kant's principle is that whatevera definition or concept includes, it is alwaysa further question whether something exists to satisfy the definition, to instantiate the concept. Everyonewill admit that the principle holds in most cases; what is controversial is whether it holds in all, and in particular whether the definition of an ens realissimumis an exception to it. What the defender of an ontologicalproof holds is that we have a conceptof an X, or of the X, or can define a term 'X', such that it will be self-contradictory to X not exist' 'An does or X does 'The not exist'. He say may argue this rathercrudely,as Descartesdoes,or in the subtler style favoured by St. Anselm and his imitators. It was to
to numbers generally full-blooded as opposed to merely
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block all such moves that Gassendi and Kant and their followers propounded the now discredited thesis that existence is not a predicate. Our problem is whether such moves are still blocked by our revised account of existence. The point of the discredited thesis was to rule out as improper either the explicit or the implicit inclusion of existence in a concept or a definition. Even on our revised view, the explicit inclusion would still be rather strange. The charge of colourlessness still stands: existence does not contribute to the determination of a sort of thing. But I do not see that this makes the explicit inclusion of existence in a definition improper. Implicit inclusion is still more defensible; it is conceivable that there might be a sort that required existence. No doubt the onus of showing that there is such a sort rests heavily on the proponent of an ontological proof. But at the moment we are considering whether the very possibility of such a proof can be ruled out in advance, and it is not clear that there could not be a sort that required existence. Let us suppose, then, that we can find a general term 'X' such that Xness explicitly or implicitly includes existence. Does it follow that 'An X does not exist' is selfcontradictory? This sentence is ambiguous. If it presupposes an actual X and goes on to say that it does not exist, then indeed it is doubly contradictory, since the X must exist to be actual and then further must exist in order to be an X. But if the sentence means rather 'No Xs exist', then there is no contradiction. This is Kant's first principle, that if we reject subject and predicate alike there is no contradiction. This principle still holds; it does not need the support of the thesis that existence is not a real predicate, or that it is naughty to include existence in a definition. But it does rest on the fact that there is an existential quantifier, the negation of which can be applied to any concept at all. Consequently if the atheist, St. Anselm's fool, says 'The X does not exist' where an X is something than which nothing greater can be conceived, he is in trouble; his predicate denies what is presupposed twice over in his subject, 'the X'. But if he has the concept only of an X, even of a unique X, he is all right; he can still say coherently 'There is no X'. What is more, even if the fool uses the concept the X, so
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that he cannot coherentlysay 'The X does not exist', we can still say 'No Xs exist'. But it is here that there comes the most ingenious, but fallacious, twist in St. Anselm's argument, the claim that if the X which the fool conceivesexisted only in his mind, and not in reality also, what he conceives would not really be the X. In our terminology,since this X would exist only minimally, it would not be an X, something than which nothing greatercan be conceived.But this argumentmistakenlytreats minimal existence as the actual existence of an inferior sort of entity. Once we see that minimal existence, existence 'in the fool's mind', is just a manner of speaking,that it is wholly reducible to the fact that the fool has such and such concepts,we see also that the fool can have the concept, the X, nothing less-his thought is accuratelyexpressedby his use of the phrase 'that than which nothing greatercan be conceived'-and yet there may be no such thing. We can coherentlysay that the X, nothing less, minimally exists, exists in the fool's mind, but only minimally exists, there is really no such thing, though the fool himselfcannotcoherentlysaythis. In short, we have general groundsfor rejecting any ontological proof of this sort. Even if existence were somehow included in a definitionor concept,we could still coherently deny that there was anything that actually satisfied the definition or instantiated the concept. What this amounts to is that with our revised accountof existence we can still get all the advantagesof the instantiation theory without the claims which were embarrassing becausethey were false. Or, what comes to much the same thing, we can adhere to Kant's first principle without getting involved in the difficulties of his second. Finally, let us look brieflyat the third sort of ontological proof which was mentioned above but left aside: can there be a possibilitywhich entails its own realisation? Alvin Plantinga has offered a variant of the ontological argument along these lines. After developing, in the now fashionablestyle, an accountof de re modalitiesin termsof
possible worlds, he defines unsurpassable greatness so that if that thing exists in every possible world and has maximal
somethingis unsurpassably great, in any possibleworld,only
L. MACKIE I-J. 264 excellence (power, knowledge, moral perfection) in every possible world. He then puts forward the vital premiss that unsurpassable greatness is possibly exemplified-that is, that there is a possible world in which it is exemplified. From this it follows that what exemplifies unsurpassable greatness in that possible world exists and has maximal excellence in every possible world, including the actual one. Hence there is in the actual world something omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good (and necessarily so, since it has these features in every possible world), that is, God. If we allow the framework within which this argument is developed, the system of realistically interpreted possible worlds, this argument is valid. But, even with this framework, there seems to be no reason why we should accept the vital premiss. Plantinga himself mentions an alternative premiss, that no-maximality is possible, from which it follows just as cogently that there is (necessarily) no God. Why should the one premiss be any more acceptable than the other? Of course, neglecting for the moment little difficulties like the Problem of Evil (for which Plantinga has indeed offered a solution, though I think a quite unsatisfactory one) we might say that we do not know that unsurpassable greatness is not exemplified, that is, its exemplification is epistemically possible. But in neither case does it follow that the property is de-re-possibly exemplified, that it exists in a possible world. Both Plantinga's argument and its atheistic rival then, though valid, are unsound, in that no good reason has been given for accepting the vital premiss of each. That is, we can imagine a kind of possibility which entails its own realisation, but then the question remains whether it is a real possibility, whether there actually is a possibility of this sort. That it is epistemically possible that there should be such is not enough. With this kind of construction, as with the others discussed above, the question 'Is there such a thing?' remains unsettled. I conclude, then, that there is a general objection to all forms of ontological proof, and an objection on which Kant put his finger, and that this objection survives and stands out more clearly when it is freed from embarrassing entanglement with the doctrine that existence is not a predicate and cannot therefore be included in a definition or concept.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Throughout this paper I have made extensive use of the following works: J. Barnes, The Ontological Argument (London, 1972). I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (A 592-602, B 620o-630). W. C. Kneale, "Is Existence a Predicate?" in Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 15 (1936), reprinted in Readings in Philosophical Analysis ed. H. Feigl and W. Sellars (New York, 1949). D. F. Pears and James Thomson, "Is Existence a Predicate?" in Philosophical Logic, edited P. F. Strawson (Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Oxford, 1967). A. Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford, 1974). W. V. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York, 1969). P. F. Strawson, "Is Existence Never a Predicate?" in Freedom and Resentment (London, 1974). B. Miller, "In Defence of the Predicate 'Exists' " in Mind vol. 84, No. 335 (July, 1975). I have also made many changes, and I hope improvements, in response to criticisms by M. G. J. Evans of an earlier draft.
J. L. Mackie and W. Bednarowski

II-W. Bednarowski
There are three topics which Mackie discusses in his paper, namely: (1) Do we need existential propositions? (2) What sort of concept is existence?
(3) Ontologicalproof.
I agree with the general tenor or tendency of what he says. Some of the differences I will point out when particular topics are discussed. Existence has been discussed in many ways and in many contexts. The most articulate ways to talk about existence seem to be two: (a) to talk about ideas, concepts, judgments or generally about mental phenomena (if concepts are necessarily mental phenomena); this way of talking is connected partly with the theory of mind of the philosophers concerned (for instance, Descartes, Spinoza, or Hume, although it is not clear what Hume's theory of mind is); (b) to talk about verbal expressions in which 'existence' or 'exist' occur, or about expressions which are somehow concerned about or connected with existence. The first way seems to be more difficult and to require phenomenological analysis, which may be complicated if one wants, like Husserl, to discuss pre-verbal judgments and so on. Nevertheless I will need to say something about this side of the problem later. Linguistic expressions, on the other hand, are more identifiable in their articulation, more determined, tangible, and I am inclined to limit the discussion, as much as possible, to language. It is a result of this inclination that I formulate the first question as: Do we need existential propositions?
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This question can be taken in a stronger or in a weaker sense. In the weaker sense, what we are asking is: can one construct a language without existential propositions? What is meant here is: a language which is sufficient to describe all objects we want to describe, and to make all assertions we want to make about them, without utilising existential propositions. A language with existential propositions would be regarded as being an alternative language, but not a necessary one. The assertion that we don't need existential propositions, if taken in the stronger sense, amounts to saying that existential propositions are somehow wrong propositions, which either need to be reformulated (e.g., in Frege, in terms of instantiation) or, in extreme cases, don't have any meaning whatsoever. What Mackie says in parts of his paper dealing with these topics amounts to rejection of the stronger sense and also (perhaps only partly) of the weaker sense of the assertion what we don't need existential propositions. I am largely of the same opinion as Mackie and I should like to add some further discussion of some attempts to construct a language without existential propositions. It will turn out that either: (a) we have a language, to whose vocabulary 'existence' or 'to exist' does not belong, but 'existence' or 'to exist' is involved in the rules of the language, or (b) 'existence', 'to exist' do not belong to theory but to meta-theory; or, to state the matter otherwise, existential statements are second order statements; here several versions are possible, e.g., (i) existential statements even in their ordinary form are second order statements [although rules of language is a clearer idea here]; (ii) existential statements in ordinary form are elliptical and have to be translated into statements of some other form. When so translated they will be immediately seen to be second order statements. Without entering into discussion concerning the second
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version one can make one remark here, namely that such translations seem to be artificial and arbitrary. One can ask here a general question put by Wittgenstein: what right have we to translate? We will now consider three languages which appear to exclude existential propositions, languages which we can call respectively Platonic, Aristotelian and Boolean. Let us take first two contentions of Plato: (a) to exist is to partake in ideas; (b) negation is otherness. Let us further change the first statement into: (c) to exist is to have a characteristic. A simple model for negation as otherness is the relation of a coloured object to colour-predicates. For instance, if an object 0 is not red, then a disjunction must be true, namely: O is blue or 0 is green or 0 is yellow, etc. Accepting (b) and (c) as rules we get a language in which, in regard to any existing object, some affirmativestatements attributing a property to it must be true, and in which negation understood as otherness confines true negative statements to existing objects. One cannot talk in this language about non-existing objects because: (1) If a statement of the type: "O is f" is true, O being an object and f a characteristic, then, according to (c) O must exist. (2) If "O0is f" is false, then "O is not f" is true and this means that O has some other characteristic than f and in consequence O is an existing object. (3) If "0 is not f" is true, the O has some other characteristic than f and as having a characteristic O exists; (4) If "0 is not f" is false, then 0 has the characteristic f and is an existing object. Someone may claim that one can talk about non-existing objects in Platonic language, namely, in this language pairs of contradictory statements will be false about non-existing
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objects. But as long as one preserves the law, that if a given statement is false its negation is true, to claim that two contradictory statements are false implies that two contradictory statements are true, and in consequence, that nonexisting objects have characteristics. Turning now to the Aristotelian language we can say that Aristotle accepts with Plato that whatever exists is qualified, i.e., has a property. But, instead of negation as otherness, Aristotle accepts a pure negation, i.e., 'O0is not red', means only that it is not the case that 0 has the property red, and does not mean or imply that O has any other colour predicate, if we remain confined to our model, or any predicate whatsoever if we don't. It is clear that in the Aristotelian language affirmative propositions attributing a property can be true only about existing objects, whereas a negative proposition can be true about an existing object, namely, when the object does not possess the characteristic which is denied in this statement, but also about non-existing objects, because non-existing objects don't possess any characteristics. Thus in Aristotelian language, if a proposition of the type "0 is red" is true, then the object O exists. But if the foregoing proposition is false or if "0 is not red" is true, the existence of the object O is left undetermined. If the foregoing version of the Aristotelian language is accepted one can have an interesting corollary concerning Aristotelian syllogistic. Usually people maintain, I think following Lukasiewicz, that in Aristotelian syllogistic no empty terms are allowed. In consequence Aristotelian syllogistic is confined to statements about existing objects. It is true that Aristotelian syllogistic works if empty terms are excluded. But it is not true that it works only if they are. In modern logic, i.e., in the calculus of predicates, existence is presupposed for the truth of particular propositions, whereas the universal ones can be true also about nonexisting objects. But in the version of the Aristotelian language which I presented existence is connected with true affirmative propositions not with particular propositions There are two remarks concerning this point:
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(a) Aristotelian syllogistic works also on the assumption that existence is connected with true affirmative propositions; (b) it seems that it is an historical fact, that Aristotle himself treated his syllogistic in this way. As we have seen, for Aristotle non-existing objects have no characteristics. But there is another possibility, namely, that non-existing objects have all characteristics. Starting with two assertions from Boolean algebra concerning empty classes, namely: (i) the empty class is unique. (ii) the empty class is included in every class, we can reformulate these assertions as: (A) there is no possibility of distinguishing between non-existing objects; (B) non-existing objects have all characteristics. Accepting (A) and (B) we have what we may call a Boolean language, in which about non-existing objects all propositions attributing properties to them are true. On the other hand, about existing objects some affirmative propositions attributing properties to them are true, but some are false, and in consequence some negative ones are true. Thus in this language existence is connected with the truth of negations, not with the truth of affirmations. It is due to the fact that existing objects not only possess some characteristics but also don't possess some others, that it is possible to make distinctions between them. To two groups of objects so far discussed, namely, existing ones and non-existing ones, one may add an infinite being or absolute object. Such an object may seem to be very much too metaphysical for positivists. But every kind of object is metaphysical and metaphysics is the central domain of philosophy. The anti-metaphysical standpoint of positivism gives me a somewhat paradoxical feeling of emptiness and claustrophobia. Now let us see how the absolute object can be accommodated into Aristotelian and Boolean languages respectively.
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In the Aristotelian scheme, about non-existing objects only and all negations are true. About an existing finite object some affirmations and some negations are true. It seems to remain that, about the absolute object, only and all affirmationsare true. On the other side, in the Boolean scheme, or rather in the scheme which is a modification of the Boolean scheme, about non-existing objects only and all affirmationsare true. About an existing finite object, in the same way as in the Aristotelian scheme, some affirmations and some negations are true. It seems to remain that, about the absolute object or the absolute reality, only and all negations are true. It is noteworthy that in these systems, which are built on three elements, non-existence, existence and absolute existence, and within which non-existence is homogeneous in the sense that, about it, either only and all negations are true, or only and all affirmations are true, it turns out that absolute existence, in contrast to the entirely positive or entirely negative character of non-existence, is entirely positive or entirely negative respectively. We have criteria for deciding, in regard to ordinary existing objects, which characteristics they possess and which they do not. We don't speak very much about absolute objects. Which characteristics non-existing objects possess is arbitrary or conventional. From this point of view both Aristotelian and Boolean language are on the same level. But there is some difference. Most (perhaps all) affirmative propositions about existing objects are such that when they attribute some characteristic to an object they exclude some other characteristic. For example soft excludes hard, made of wood excludes made of iron, etc. Now affirmations which are true about non-existing objects don't produce this exclusion and are therefore different from affirmationswhich are true about existing objects. Thus as far as this point is concerned Aristotelian language is less artificial. It is also worth noticing that the view according to which the absolute object or reality has all characteristics is reminiscent of coincidentia oppositorum of Nicolaus Cusanus; and the view, that absolute reality has no characteristics is reminiscent of theologia negativa.
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We have sketched three languages within which existence or existential statements do not belong to the language itself but existence is involved in the rules of language or in the meta-theory, in the following way: one's particular view of the character of existing and non-existing objects is what determines which kinds of propositions are true about them and conversely, by knowing which kinds of propositions attributing a property are true about a given object one knows whether the object in question exists or not. And these matters, as to what determines the truth of propositions, and as to how propositions are to be interpreted, are matters appropriate to a meta-theory or to rules of language. Thus existence or existential statements are not eliminated; they are simply not statements on the lowest level. But they are indispensable for understanding or interpreting the significance of statements of the language. I come now to Frege. As I said, for Aristotle existential statements should be second-order statements, although it is not clear what sort of statements they are; i.e., are they statements within the language or are they rules of the language determining the assessment of truth values. Frege tells us clearly what existential statements are: they are statements about concepts. What they tell us about a particular concept is that the concept has instances when the existential statement is affirmative, or that the concept has no instances, when the existential statement is negative. Thus for instance the statement: x exists actually means the concept X has instances. That a given concept has instances is a mark of that concept and in this way existence is not a characteristic of those things which are the instances. Concepts, as Frege says, are objective. In Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik p. 35 we read; "I distinguish what I call objective from what is handleable or spatial or real. The axis of the earth is objective, so is the centre of gravity of the solar system, but I should not call them real in the way the earth itself is real." Frege adds: what is objective is not
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created by thought but only recognized or apprehended by thought. Thus for Frege concepts are not mind-dependent; they have independent existence, although they are not 'handleable or spatial or real'. Frege's approach has these two features: (1) first it consists of getting rid of existential statements by reducing them to property attributing (qualifying) ones, although this qualifying applies to concepts; (2) existential statements are never about something that does not exist, because they are always about concepts and concepts do exist. Naturally, if there are such entities as Frege's concepts, for instance when the statement
unicorns don't exist
instances. But the equivalence of the two statements:

x exists
is true, it is also true that the concept Unicorn
has no
and the concept X has instances can be easily denied by those who don't accept the existence of Frege's concepts. There are several difficulties in Frege's position. Mackie is kind to Frege and tries to avoid some of these difficulties by maintaining that what Frege is saying is only that the two statements: x exists and the concept X has instances are equivalent. But what Frege's view amounts to is that statements of the type x exists somehow don't have their own meaning; if they have any meaning at all it is somehow what the statements of the type
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the concept X has instances mean. And this is one of the implausibilities of Frege's position, namely, that there are statements, which don't have their own meaning, which somehow have the meaning of other statements. It is not even the case that they have the same meaning as these corresponding statements. They oddly enough indicate or refer to meanings of these other statements. It will require a long analysis to state more exactly what the relation between these two statements could be. The second implausibility is this: if x exists really means the concept X has instances and x does not exist really means that the concept of X has no instances, one can ask how it is possible that people who were not instructed by Frege could understand existential statements of the type x exists and x does not exist. If they did, this seems to imply, that one can understand a statement without knowing what its meaning is. The third implausibility pointed out also in Mackie's paper is that the statement Lions exist would be most naturally taken as being about lions and not about concepts. Here one can repeat again Wittgenstein's question: What right have we to translate? I will mention one oddity more of Frege's treatment of existential statements. In Grundlagen p.65 Frege says:
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"Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought". How is this statement to be understood? We know the Duns Scotus-Sigwart-Russellview that negations are secondorder statements because they are rejections of attempted affirmations.Is Frege suggesting here that positive existential statements are rejections of the most universal negative existential statement, which perhaps implies that universal nothingness is logically prior to something existing? If this is his view one can wonder what kind of epistemological and psychological theory has to be adopted to make this position plausible. Now we turn to an attempt to get rid of existential propositions altogether, namely, by means of quantifiers. It is claimed here not only that the so-called existential propositions are somehow wrongly formulated propositions (existence is not a predicate) but also, that no reformulation is needed as these existential propositions have no r6le to play. The attempt to get rid of existential propositions by means of quantifiers is connected both with Kant and Frege. It is in agreement with Kant, that 'existence' or 'exist' is not a logical predicate and it shares the feature of Frege's view that existential propositions, whether affirmation or negative, are always about something existing, In Frege's view it was concepts, in this case (in the case of the attempt we are discussing) it is values. Here also existential propositions are reduced to qualifying ones. Thus: lions exist is rendered as ( 3 x) x is a lion
and
unicorns don't exist (x) ~(x is a unicorn). The first thing about this theory is that it does not seem to manage to get rid of existence or rather existential
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statements, because the existence of values is assumed [to exist is to be a value of a variable]. Secondly, there is something odd about those statements which are supposed to replace negative existential statements. '( 3 x)' is called an existential quantifier and even if one insists on reading it as 'for some x' and not 'there is an x such that', the existential aura is about it. Further, the statement (3 x) x is red can be true only if there are red objects, or only if there are true statements of the type: this is red or this is an object and it is red; or something else on these lines (something similar). One can of course use always ' (x)' instead of '( 3 x)' but statements quantified in this way can also be true only if corresponding objects exist. However if one translates the statement: the devil does not exist into: (x) e(x is the devil) this implies, that by whatever value x is replaced in the propositional function: x is the devil the result will be always a false proposition. But if 'x' is replaced by 'the devil', we get: the devil is the devil and to regard this as a false statement some further assumptions are needed and the question is, how far such assumptions are arbitrary. One of such assumptions is that x has a determined range: it ranges over a set of objects accepted as existing.
II-W. BEDNAROWSKI 278 But this assumption creates a new trouble. Suppose the so-called universe consists of four objects: a platform and, on the platform, a tree and John and Michael. Suppose John says: God exists
and Michael says God does not exist and he says that this, if properly stated, amounts to: (x) - (x is God) with 'x' ranging over four objects mentioned. In consequence Michael says further: God does not exist, because: you are not God and I am not God and the tree is not God and the platform is not God. However the trouble with Michael's argument is that, if by 'God' John means a being which is transcendent to the world, infinite, omnipotent and the rest, Michael's conjunction will be true even if God does exist. In fact, Michael's conjunction is a refutation of the statement: One of the four following objects, John, Michael, the tree and the platform, is God. To make it a refutation of the statement 'God exists' one has to add: and this is all that exists, nothing exists except these four objects or something on these lines. Michael's interpretation of God does not exist as (x) e-(x is God) and x ranging over four existing objects, led to the conjunction, which is a refutation of the following disjunction: John is God or Michael is God or the tree is God or the platform is God.
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It is obvious that John would not agree that the foregoing disjunction is equivalent to, or is the proper interpretation of, his statement: God exists, the more so as most likely he would regard the disjunction as being false and trivially false. The attempt to get rid of existential statements by means of quantifiers consisted of two moves: (1) making the subject of the existential proposition a predicate in a qualifying proposition, (2) in the case of negative existential statements the introduction of a determinate range for quantifiers. In general both these moves require a considerable care in handling. One can illustrate this by the following example. Suppose there is a man in love with Carmencita. Suppose further he is in the room alone and thinks 'Carmencita is not here I' If one is allowed to shift subject into the predicate, one would reformulate his statement as: No object here is Carmencita. As Carmencita is a person the above statement will be rendered as No person here is Carmencita. As he is the only person here, he can say I am not Carmencita. Suppose he now thinks: I wish she was here. It looks that following his previous formulation he can say, or has to say: I wish I was she. It seems that such a logo-analysis renders more astonishing
results than Freud's psycho-analysis.
The idea of existence Plato says (Theaetetus, 184b-187a): (1) existence is not a sense quality; (2) existence is not given in perception.
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If one identifies perception with experience, as Plato seems to be doing, it follows that: (3) existence is not given in experience. To account for the idea of existence Plato says that: (4) the idea of existence is due to the activity of the soul itself. For Plato our knowledge contains two kinds of elements: ideas of sense qualities received by means of bodily senseorgans and concepts like number, existence, similarity, identity and so on, which are directly grasped by the soul and not merely indirectly via sense organs. The question arises how the idea of existence is related to existential statements. Usually one would maintain that 'exist' or 'has existence' is the predicate in the existential statements. This presupposes that there is a distinction between ideas and judgments. The distinction in question was, for instance, maintained by Descartes. For Descartes ideas are representations in the intellect whereas judgments are connected with the will. Unfortunately, when Descartes discussed ideas in connexion with arguments, even important arguments for establishing dualism, he did not manage always to make it clear where the dividing line is. And this perhaps partly explains how it is possible for Spinoza to deny that there is any difference between ideas and judgments. Thus Spinoza says that every idea is a judgment. As far as the idea of existence is concerned a real complication is due to Hume. In the Treatise, I (Everyman's Library, p. 71) we read: (1) The idea of existence, then, is the very same with the idea of what we conceive to be existent. (2) Whatever we conceive, we conceive to be existent. Any idea we please to form is the idea of a being; and the idea of a being is any idea we please to form. In both quotations the distinction between ideas and judgments is somehow blurred. But the first quotation seems to indicate that only in the case of what we conceive to be
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existent, is the idea of existence and, if one may say so, idea of the object, one and the same. However, in the second quotation is stated unambiguously that: Whatever we conceive we conceive to be existent. Mackie points out that this certainly goes too far. Perhaps one can defend Hume here by saying that he is simply pointing out a psychological fact, or alleged psychological fact, that representations or ideas are always of things as if they existed. But we are not allowed to claim, that whatever we conceive, exists. And Hume says op. cit., p. 96: But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object and the belief of it, and as this difference lie not in the parts of composition of the idea which we conceive, it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it. His hypothesis concerning the manner in question is: that it is only a strong and steady conception of any idea, and as such approaches in some measure to an immediate impression. Can we infer from these quotations that there is a second sense of existing, which is not 'in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive'? It seems that existential statements employ this second sense. It is not clear whether this different manner, or different 'feeling', as Hume also says, is the reason or cause for asserting existence or whether this manner is the meaning of existence. The 'manner' or 'feeling' rather belongs to our way of conceiving than to the objects conceived. Thus the causal version seems to be more acceptable. In such a case however the idea of existence (in the second sense) would share the fate of all the other 'subjective' ideas, i.e., the ideas which, for Plato, were ideas of intellect. For such ideas Hume gives his 'empirical' explanation, which consists simply of indicating how the non-existing mind operates in accordance with the laws of non-existing causality. And thus it appears that Hume is not very helpful in explaining the riddle of existence. Let me now turn to Kant.
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According to Kant the concept of ioo possible, or thought of, thalers does not differ from the concept of 100 real or existing thalers. This reminds us of Hume's: To reflect on anything simply, and to reflect on it as existent, are nothing different from each other. That idea [i.e., of existence] when conjoined with the idea of any object, makes no addition to it. Mackie dealt with these views on the idea of existence when he was talking about the colourlessness of existence and I don't feel any need to add anything here. As we have seen, according to some formulations of Hume, whatever we conceive we conceive as existing, but we are not entitled to say that everything so conceived exists. So it seemed that some other sense of existence was needed to account for the fact that some of the conceived objects do exist. Hume talks here of different manners of conceiving, belief, feeling, strength of representation. What sort of existential statement can be based on that? It does not look as if the existence of an object is the manner of its representation. What is required is some sort of concept or predicate which applies to objects and not to representations of them. It does not seem that we can find clear formulations concerning this point in Hume's texts. It looks at first sight as though a clear account of the situation is to be found in Kant. Kant agrees with Plato that our knowledge of so-called real (as opposed to ideal) objects consists of sense-elements and intellect-elements and maintains that these elements together constitute the experience. Existence is an intellect-element, an a priori concept, a category. There are two features of Kant's conception of existence as a category that I intend to pay some attention to. Categories for Kant are forms of thinking, so that (1) existence is a formal concept. Furthermore existence belongs to the group of modality, along with possibility and necessity. Thus: (2) existence is a modal concept.
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I will begin with modality. We have here three or three pairs of categories: possibility-impossibility, existence-non-existence, necessity-contingency. The question is where the existence of so-called real objects or phenomena (as opposed to ideal objects) in fact belongs. One can say that existence is a category applied to actual experience. But Kant says that to exist is to be an object of possible experience. So it seems to be a puzzle here: why is existence possibility and not actuality? Kant's motive is the same as Berkeley's: the transition from esse = percipi to esse = percipi posse. Existence, reality is relative to experience, but not limited to actual experience. But what is the relation between actual and possible experience? Kant's category of existence seems to belong to actual experience. How does one come across possible experience? If by inference according to the rule: A b esse ad posse valet consequentia, then two remarks can be made here: (i) The rule only allows us to infer that what was actually experienced was possible to be experienced. One can wonder what is achieved by such an inference, but anyhow it does not lead us out of the circle of actual experience. What is needed is an inference to possible experiences which so far were not actual, or never will be actual. (2) Even if one can go outside of the circle of actual experience, it remains that existence is never given directly but always inferred. And this is a strange peculiarity of the idealistic idea of reality, which, apart from Berkeley and Kant, is also exhibited in Mill's conception of matter as permanent possibility of perception, in Husserl's idealism and in such idealistic conceptions as mind being just a disposition. Turning now to existence as a formal concept, as something which belongs to the form of objects, I will mention only: (1) Ingarden's Bemerkungen zum Problem IdealismusRealismus, in Festschrift, Edmund Husserl zum 70.
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Geburstag gewidmet, (Jahrbuch fiir Philosophie und Phenomenologische Forschung, Halle 1929), where distinctions are made between material, formal, and existential ontology. These distinctions were elaborated later in Die Streit um die Existenz der Welt. (2) Sartre's violent protest in his NAUSEA against the view that existence is a formal concept. Ontological proof Ontological proof of God's existence is a priori proof. It is proof from the concept of God or more exactly, from the concept of God as ens realissimum or as ens perfectissimum. Cosmological, physico-teleological and Descartes' anthropological proofs are proofs from 'effects', and thus contain a posteriori elements. Frege says that the distinction between a priori and a posteriori, analytic and synthetic concerns the justification for making the judgment. When a proposition is called a priori or a posteriori, analytic or synthetic, it is a judgment about the ultimate ground upon which rests the justification of its truth (cf. Frege, Grundlagen, p. 3). The justification is the proof. If the proof rests exclusively on general logical laws, which themselves neither need nor admit of proof, the truth is analytic. Ontological proof is not analytic in the foregoing Fregean sense; its validity rests ultimately on the analysis of the concept of God. Now I am inclined to claim that there are not any valid proofs concerning things (objects) which rest solely on the meaning of a relevant word or on the content of a relevant concept. This is a big claim and cannot be settled in a short space. But it seems to be possible to show that some particular statements, which are regarded as true merely on the ground of the content of the concepts or of the meanings of words involved, if one wants to call them true at all, are true in a very disappointing way. What is established by the ontological proof? That (a) God exists or only a bit of analytic theology (if there is such a thing), namely, (b) only the existing God is a genuine God; the nonexisting God is an impostor.
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Or, more seriously: (b') the concept of God involves existence. I believe that none of these statements is established by the ontological proof. Ontological proof is similar to other cases where the truth of some specific statements is claimed to be based simply on the meaning of the words involved or on the definitions. Let us consider three examples: (1) all bachelors are unmarried, (2) all blue unicorns are blue, (3) all square circles are circular. I don't know how far (i) is analytic, a priori and necessary. But if it is, this is not due merely to the meaning of the word 'bachelor' or due merely to the definition of bachelor. And (1) is not analytic in the sense that it is a statement whose truth is solely due to logical principles. On the other hand, if its truth were based merely on the meaning of words or on the definition, one would be inclined to claim that (,) and (3) are also analytic. Let us begin by examining the argument in regard to (2). One can formulate it provisionally as: (2') (x) (x is a blue unicorn =df x is a unicorn SC x is blue) C (x) (x is a blue unicorn Z x is blue) In the antecedent we have a symbol of definitional equivalence, namely '= d1'. Now some people maintain that definitions are neither true nor false, and if one accepts this one has to decide whether the consequent in (2') is or is not implied by the antecedent and one has to decide this in a logic which has more values than two. This is a complication which is irrelevant for our problem and I will replace the definitional equivalence '=df' by simple equivalence '='. The new formulation obtained in this way is, as matter of fact, more favorable for the view that (2) is an analytically true statement. The new formulation is as follows: x is a unicorn Sc (2") (x) (x is a blue unicorn x is blue) D (x) (x) is a blue unicorn = x is blue).
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If the two statements on both sides of the equivalence sign are true the equivalence is true. If they are both false the equivalence is also true, but in this case 'blue unicorn' is an empty term and in addition there isn't anything about which it is true that it is both a unicorn and blue. But in both
these cases, when the equivalence is true (the equivalence being the antecedent), the whole implication will be true only if the consequentis true. It is here that the illusion is created,that from the two statements: All blue unicornsare blue and No blue unicornsare blue only the first follows with necessityfrom the definition or from the equivalence. But this is not the case. As in the statement:
(2"') (x) (x is a blue unicornD x is blue)
the antecedentis alwaysfalse (assumingof coursethat there this statement aren'tany unicornswhetherblue or otherwise), is also true if the consequentis replacedby: --(x is blue). Thus in spite of the equivalencebeing true we have both: All blue unicornsare blue and No blue unicornsare blue And this is what I call a disappointing as true propositions. truth. Only if in addition to definition or the equivalence there are blue unicorns,does the statement: All blue unicornsare blue exclude the statement: No blue unicornsare blue. The language of quantification is different from the sketchedin the beginning and Booleanlanguages Aristotelian
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of this paper. In the Aristotelian language all affirmative statements are false about non-existing objects. In the Boolean language all negative statements are false about non-existing objects. In the language of quantification, when the subjectterm is empty, two contrary statements are true. And as one and the same statement about non-existing objects can be true in one language and false in the other, one can wonder what sort of truth it is when such a statement is true. Mackie, discussing mathematical objects and characters in fiction, makes a distinction between full-blooded existence and minimal existence. One is tempted to say that the statement: This pillar-box is red if true, is true in the full-blooded sense, but that the statement: All unicorns are red if true, is not true in the full-blooded sense. The statement about bachelors is different from the statement about unicorns. If one accepts the formulation:
x is (1') (x) (x is a bachelor = x is a male &8
unmarried) Z) (x) (x is a bachelor Z x is unmarried) one can see that, because 'bachelor' is not an empty term, only the statement: (x) (x is a bachelor : x is unmarried) is true, and the statement: (x) (x is a bachelor D -~(x is unmarried)) is false (not-unmarried = married). Let us now consider square circles. In analogy with the blue unicorn case one can formulate the alleged analytic truth about square circles in the following way: = x is square (3') (x) (x is a square circle 8c x is circular) D (x) (x is a square circle Z) x is circular). The difference between blue unicorns and square circles is that square circles are supposed to have properties which are
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incompatible and lead to contradiction, as incompatibility of properties f and g can be defined as: (x) (x is f D (x is g)). Consequently two contradictory propositions about square circles have to be analytically true. But in the same way as in the case of unicorns, because 'square circle' is an empty term, both: (x) (x is a square circle : and (x) (x is a square circle = are true. --(x is circular)) x is circular)
One kind of ontological proof, namely, the version with God as ens realissimum, rests on two assertions, namely (i) that 'x is ens realissimum' is equivalent to 'x exists of necessity' and (ii) that God is ens realissimum. Accordingly, the proof can be formulated as follows: x exists of necessity) &c (4) [ (x) (x is ens realissimum ens is God is realissimum)]3 (x) (x :)x (x) (x is God D x exists of necessity) This statement is logically true as were the statements (1'), (2") and (3'). If one drops the quantifiers, which are irrelevant here, one will get tautologies that can be checked by truth tables. But in the same way as in the previous three cases, the 'proof' does not establish what it was supposed to have established. Only if 'God' is not an empty term is it excluded that God is not ens realissimum and that God does not exist of necessity. But to say that:
-
'God' is not an empty term is tantamount to saying that God exists. Thus, in conclusion, I am in agreement with Mackie that even if existence is a predicate or a characteristic, the so-called ontological proof fails to establish that God exists. Now for the contention that the concept of God involves the concept of necessary existence. Ens realissimum is a
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technical term and, if one wants to introduce such a term as being definitionally equivalent to existing with necessity, there does not seem to be any obstacle to one's doing so, provided that 'existing with necessity' has a reasonably clear meaning. But 'God' is a term that due to its long usage has some established meaning, and it is not very clear that the concept of God is necessarily connected or identical with the concept of necessary existence. The term ens perfectissimum is more vague than 'ens realissimum'. First, it is not particularly clear that existence is a perfection. Secondly, it is not particularly clear what perfections God is supposed to possess in order to be ens perfectissimum. God is claimed to be a spirit. But if God were also extended, would he be more or less perfect. Or, is it not the case, as Spinoza thought, that in order to be infinitely perfect God has to possess an infinite number of attributes and not solely those of extensio and cogitatio?

The Riddle of Existence

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The Riddle of Existence Author(s): J. L. Mackie and W. Bednarowski Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol.

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

J. L. Mackie and W. Bednarowski

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

to numbers generally full-blooded as opposed to merely

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

somethingis unsurpassably great, in any possibleworld,only

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

J. L. Mackie and W. Bednarowski

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

instances. But the equivalence of the two statements:

is true, it is also true that the concept Unicorn

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE

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