Is Existence a Predicate.pdf

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Is Existence a Predicate?Author(s): Murray KiteleySource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 73, No. 291 (Jul., 1964), pp. 364-373Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2251942 .Accessed: 12/12/2014 13:50

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IV.-IS EXISTENCE A PREDICATE?

BY MURRAY KITELEY

KANT'S aconic observation that existence is not a predicate hasenjoyed an almost spotless reputation. Few philosophical dictahave been this fortunate. The fortunes of this dictum may reston the incontestability of the arguments which have been givenfor it and there are several of them.

I should like to look at four of these arguments. I think theyall fail, some more seriously than others. Their failure is, how-ever, instructive.

1. The First Argument

Professor Malcolm has recently made this observation aboutexistence again, being careful all the while to disengage simplefrom necessary existence, so that the latter might not be touchedwith the impredicative taint of the former. He cannot, he lam-ents, find a rigorous proof of the doctrine that existence is not apredicate, but Kant's reasoning should, he hopes, be sufficientto convince.' The Kant-Malcolm argument is of the you'll-see-it-to-be-quite-obvious-if-you-just-look-at-it-from-this-angle type.Kant's angle is got by the comparison of 100 existing with 100non-existent Thalers ; 2 Malcolm's by the king's specificationsof the desired qualities to be sought in a chancellor, existenceoccurring last on the list (pp. 43 and 44). Kant wants us to ask," Are there more Thalers in the first than in the second ? "and Malcolm wants us to ask, " Can qualifications for ministerialappointment include existence

?"

(" No non-existent candidatesneed apply.") To both questions we can only answer " No ".But what do these cases show ? Consider the following two.Say that you were ordering a shipping box for books from a

carpenter and among the specifications, size, wood, strength, youincluded non-emptiness. "I don't want a non-empty boxdelivered, is that clear ? " "But what," the inarticulate car-penter might ask, " has that got to do with making boxes ?Non-emptiness, he might have said, is not a real predicate.

Consider a candy manufacturer. Does he, make two kinds ofchocolates, packaged and unpackaged ? Packagedness, Kant-

1 Norman Malcolm, " Anselm's Ontological Arguments ", PhilosophicalReview, lxix (1960), 42-44.

2 The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Norman Kemp Smith (London,1929), p. 505.

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IS EXISTENCE A PREDICATE ? 365

Malcolm might say, is not a real predicate. Only size, fillingand topping make a difference among chocolates; packages arecoverings not characteristics.

If you look at existence from these angles, you are likely toagree with the orthodox opinion that existence is not a predicate.But if you look at it from other angles, you are liable to entertaindoubts. You can imagine all sorts of cases where what is wantedis to know whether or not some thing does exist. There are manytimes where the important thing is to find out, not whether it hasa short or long snout, but whether or not it is extinct or extant.You do not ask the

White Hunter to lead you to the habitat ofan existent wildebeest, but you might instruct a research assistantto track down Greek opinions on existent (rather than mythical)animals.

Kant's 100 real Thalers add up to no more, of course, than100 imaginary Thalers. Existence and non-existence make nodifference in counting. But that does not mean that they makeno difference. You cannot, e.g. deposit imaginary Thalers inyour bank account.

I do not wish to deny that there is something in this line ofreasoning. It does have, as Malcolm indicates, a certain intuitiveappeal, but this appeal rests on looking at the right examplesand drawing the right conclusion from these examples. Thereare other examples which might have just the opposite effect.

2. The Second Argument

This argument goes as follows: (1) If existence is a predicate,then all positive existential claims are analytic and all negativeones self-contradictory. This is so because the ascription of apredicate to a thing implies the existence of the thing. Theascription of the predicate existence would, thus, already implythe existence of the thing asserted to exist, so making the ascrip-tion analytic.1 And mutatis mutandis, one may show the self-contradictory character of negative existential claims. (2) It is,however, false that all existential claims are either analytic orself-contradictory. So, (3) it is false that existence is a

predicate.This efficient little argument can perhaps be traced back toKant. Its recent versions, at any rate, have been sharply

1 Ayer, Wisdom and Broad, use respectively the three words " tauto-logous " " silly " and " platitudinous " to describe positive existentialclaims in their statements of this argument. See " 'Exists' as a Predicate "by George Nakhnikian and Wesley C. Salmon, Philosophical Review, lxvi(1957), 535, where their arguments are cited.



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IS EXISTENCE A PREDICATE 367There may yet be one false charm of this doctrine unexposed.

Ryle, while arguing the necessarily general character of state-ments about the future, says that particular, future episodescannot be got to make statements about (Dilemmas, p. 27). Iam not at all sure that Ryle is right, but there is this point I mustconcede: if what you are talking about is non-existent, it mustat least be a conversation piece in some body of legend, fable orfiction, or some passe scientific hypothesis. You must be ableto make, if challenged, identifying references-" you know,Bellerephon's horse "-, and you must be able to say if challenged,

why just those predicates apply-" see Bullfinch7-, neither of

which you could do without at least the existence of the Pegasuslegend, if not the legendary Pegasus.

The major premise of this argument is, then, faulty. Thereis no reason to believe that even were existence a predicate,all affirmative, existential assertions would have to be tauto-logous. It does not follow, of course, that existence is apredicate.

Nakhnikian and Salmon reach the same conclusion by a differ-

ent, and I think wrong, line of argument (pp. 536 ff). Theyargue that " Horses exist ", when elliptical for " Some horsesexist ", can be logically transcribed with " E " the existentialpredicate as " (3x) (Hx . Ex) " which is not a tautologous form.They further argue that even when the predicate " E " is, asthey claim, plausibly defined by the trivial property of self-identity, the foregoing statement is not a tautology. Thetrivial property of existence just drops out.

This is true enough for general existence claims, but what aboutsingular ones ? " Pegasus exists ", by their definition of " E ",becomes " Pegasus is self-identical ", which is patently trivial.They have, thus, only undercut half of what the major premiseclaims. The rest stands; singular existential statements re-main trivial, and, we would have to suppose, singular existenceis not a predicate.

3. The Third Argument

The third argument says that if existence is a predicate, thenyou should be able to affirm it universally and deny it particu-larly. You can, however, do neither of these. It is equallynonsensical to say either " All tame tigers exist " or " Some tametigers do not exist". The square of opposition for existence-statements is fearfully truncated, indeed to the point of losing adimension. Thus, existence cannot be a predicate.



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368 M. KITELEY:

The " tame tigers " example is taken from G. E. Moore'sdiscussion of this argument in his contribution to the AristotelianSociety symposium on whether existence is a predicate (1936).Moore compares " All tame tigers exist " with " All tame tigersgrowl"; and he also compares " Some tame tigers don't exist"with " Some tame tigers don't growl ". The twofold comparisonshows, he thinks, an important difference between the usage of

exists " in the one case, and the usage of " growls " in the other."All tame tigers exist" and " Some tame tigers don't exist"are, says Moore, " queer and puzzling expressions ". He does

not outright say that they are nonsensical, but they do not, hesays, carry their meaning, if they have any, on the face ofthem.

This argument turns on the queerness or nonsensicality ofstatements of the form " All ----s exist " and " Some ----s do notexist". The queerness comes out well enough with " tametigers " in the blanks. But other fillings seem to give quitenatural expression, e.g. " All the stamps in this issue still exist,but some in this one do not ". And even " All tame tigers exist "

can be given a setting that makes it come to life. If a zoologicalsurvey team were compiling a directory of all tame tigers, theymight first assign number-designations to all those known to havebeen brought into the country after such and such a date. Saythat they have fifty number-designations. They check theseoff to see which, if any, have survived. Then, at the end of theirtally they say " Extraordinary, they all exist ".

What do these examples show ? They seem to show that theverb " exists " does have uses, perhaps predicative uses, that goeasily and naturally through all the quantifier changes from noneto all in the schedule of generality. Moore was not unaware ofthis. He found a use of "not exists ", viz. being imaginary,that went through the schedule. The examples do not, however,show the argument to be faulty. They only show that there aresome uses of " exists" which, since they do not make nonsenseout of statements of the form " All ---s exist ", might be predica-tive; they do not rule out the possibility of there being other

uses of this verb which, by making nonsense out of such statements,would be non-predicative. If then, one use of " exists " can befound which does make nonsense out of universal affirmativestatements in which it appears, then the concept of existenceassociated with this use of the verb would not be a predicate.

There is, I think, such a use of " exists ". It is the mostexiguous use of it, the use which most closely corresponds to thenon-locative use of the " there is " idiom. The oddness of " All



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IS EXISTENCE A PREDICATE 2 369

tame tigers exist" is the same, thus, as the oddness of " Thereare all tame tigers ".1 The oddness is somewhere in the samefamily with " The warmth of the temperature was . . . " and,more closely, " All the cars on the freeway were numerous "." Exists," when employed exiguously, tells you something abouttame tigers but nothing about each and every tame tiger; it tellsyou something about the membership, but nothing about themembers. Existence, here, is something like full strength of aregiment: the regiment can be at full strength, but none of themembers can be.

The non-exiguous uses of " exists " (where one can say, e.g.that all tame tigers exist) might be called, following Hall, ex-cluder uses. Excluders, he says, " serve to rule out somethingwithout adding anything, and ambiguously rule out differentthings according to the context." 2 Thus, when the tiger-canvassers exclaimed " Extraordinary, they all exist " theydid so because they had ruled out death in captivity, escape andshipment back to India. The force of their exclamation is notthe absurd " None of them do not exist ", but rather the intellig-

ible " None of them have died, nor escaped, nor been shippedback to India ". You can, then, say that all A's exist when byso saying you are denying for all the A's that there are that theyare, e.g. extinct, out of production, destroyed, hallucinatory,mythical, fabulous, or fictional. Each item in this list is anattribute and as an attribute can be affirmed universally ordenied particularly.

I am tempted to think that if you state existence using theformula " There are ---s " rather than " ---s exist ", the ex-cluder business would never crop up. I cannot imagine, andhere is the source of my temptation, " There are all ---s " evermaking sense. I have italicized above, however, a form of thisidiom which might be thought to be universal, viz. " all the A'sthat there are ". I am uncertain about it, but I suspect that itwould demand the same kind of excluder-analysis as " exists ".

Before drawing the moral from all this, there is an old puzzlewhich I should like to exorcise. If, so the puzzle goes, " Horses

exist" and"

There arehorses"

cometo the same thing, then

you would expect the statement " There are horses which exist "to be redundant, and the statement " There are non-existenthorses" to be self-contradictory. The logical transcription of

1 Jesperson calls this use of " there " existential, as contrasted with itsuse as a " local adverb ", e.g. " There are all the tame tigers ", ModernEnglishi Grammar, vii (Copenhagen, 1949), 107.

2 Roland Hall, " Excluders ", Analysis, xx (1959), 1.



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370 M. KITELEY:

these two statements shows this clearly enough. The first iswritten " (3a) [Hxx. (3y) (y = x)] "; the second is written"(3x)[Hx. - -(3y) (y = x)] ", where " x exists " is defined by"(3y) (y x) ". Since " (3y) (y = x) " is true of all x's, thesecond conjunct of the first statement adds nothing to the con-junction, and the denial of the second conjunct of the secondstatement, being contradictory, makes the conjunction self-contradictory. But so long as " exists " is used in a non-exiguousway neither redundancy nor self-contradiction will be incurred:" There are non-existent horses, e.g. Pegasus " is quite consistentbecause cc non-existent " is used in the way of an excluder.

The argument under consideration, then, can only be used toshow that the verb to exist will fail, when used exiguously, to runthrough the complete schedule of generality. Only this use ofthe verb, then, is shown to be non-predicative. Other uses mightwell be predicative.

4. The Fourth Argument

This argument is similar to the last one. It is as follows. Ifexistence is a predicate, then there are certain kinds of inferencesthat should be valid. For example, the inference from " Donkeysexist and Eeyore is a donkey " to " Eeyore exists " should bevalid. It is clearly not valid, so existence cannot be a predicate.

Russell spoke of such inferences as " pseudo-syllogisms " andadded that their fallaciousness was parallel to that of theargument " Men are numerous, Socrates is a man, thereforeSocrates is numerous ". Russell did not conclude that the fal-

laciousness of these arguments rested on the predicative use of" exists " and " numerous ", but rather on the predicative misuseof them. They are predicates, but not predicates of particularthings. Thus, to say that Socrates exists is to say somethingwhich is " a mere noise or shape, devoid of significance ". Soto say is to misapply a predicate which only rightly applies topropositional functions.

It is the conclusions of these pseudo-syllogisms which Russellmarks as nonsensical. But if the conclusion of an inference isnonsense, one of the premises must be also, and the one which is,quite clearly, is the major. That premise says, in my example,that donkeys exist. For the inference to be valid it must beread " All donkeys exist ". But " All donkeys exist" may ormay not be nonsensical depending on whether " exists" is usedexiguously or as an excluder. If it is used as an excluder, thenthe statement might just be the false claim that no donkeys



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occur in fiction, a statement from which you could infer, Eeyorebeing a donkey, that Eeyore does not occur in fiction, i.e. heexists. This would, then, be a perfectly good argument withone false premise.

But for the exiguous use of " exists " this argument, like thelast one, seems to be sound. Subsumption inferences, with" exists " in the place of the predicate, are invalid. Surely theywould not be invalid unless it were improper for this verb tooccupy the predicate position; and this impropriety may bewhat is heralded by the maxim that existence is not a real

predicate.Only two of the four arguments have survived, and they notcompletely intact. What exactly do they show ?

All four of the arguments advance in the same formation.They start with a claim about the way bona fide predicatesbehave; they continue with the observation that the putativepredicate, existence, does not so behave; and they end with theconclusion that existence is not a real predicate. All the argu-ments claim to know what a real predicate is or does.

Each of the arguments, then, states certain requisites of allpredicate behaviour. Kant and Malcolm both seem to think thatyou can only be using an expression in the predicative way if,by this use, you can add something to the subject, something new.Their slogan might have been: existence is not news. Theother arguments have variously insisted on, as the tests of pre-dicate behaviour: occasional occurrence n contingent assertions,appearance in predicate position in universal affirmative state-ments, and appearance in predicate position of the major premisesof valid subsumption arguments. " Exists ", however, some-times, meets all these tests. What, then, are we entitled to say ?At best we are entitled to say that some of the ways we use thisverb are not predicative. And that modest entitlements restssolely on the assumption that these tests or requisites accuratelybound the limits of predicate behaviour.

But do they ?What are the marks of a genuine predicate ?

Webster saysthat a

logical predicateis that which

canbe

affirmed or denied of a subject. But what kind of subject ? Ifthe subject is a pseudo-subject, then the predicate affirmed ordenied of it would be a pseudo-predicate. What, then, are themarks of a real or logical subject ? Webster says two things.He says, first, that the grammatical subject of a sentence neednot be the same as the logical subject, which is the real subject ofpredication. For example, in " It is hard to do right ", " it)"



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372 M. KITELEY:

is the grammatical while to " do right" is the logical subject.Then the logical or real subject, the entry goes on to say, " is theterm a proposition is about; also, what such a term denotes:the topic of an affirmation or denial ".

This is not too helpful. What seems to be given as the markof a term which serves as the grammatical predicate is simplyappearance in the predicate position. Thus, in the exampleabove, " hard to do right " serves as the grammatical predicate.But the mark of a logical predicate, the entry seems to imply,is appearance in the predicate position of a standard sentence, .e.a sentence in normal word order. " It is hard to do right " isnot in normal word order; " To do right is hard " is. Thus thelogical predicate in both these sentences is " hard ", even thoughit only occurs in the predicate position in one of them.

Before applying this test to our verb, I should at least acknow-ledge the difficulties. What is the predicate position ? Howdo you know when a sentence is in normal word order ? Thefirst question can be answered if you allow the adequacy of agrammar like Chomsky's. We need nothing more than his

schematised set of parsing rules, the first of which, " SentenceNP + VP ", indicates the predicate position as that occupiedby the verb phrase (" VP "), or some part of it (Syntactic Struc-tures, pp. 26 ff.). The second question is less easy. For ex-ample, are active constructions in normal word order whilepassive are not ? We surely would not want to say this, implyingas it does that " loves wisdom " is the logical predicate of" Socrates loves wisdom" in contrast to the merely grammaticalpredicate " by Socrates" in " Wisdom is loved by Socrates ".

We want, that is, to make room for double-subject or relationalconstructions, so that the second, logical subject might be eitherthe grammatical, direct object or the object of a prepositionalphrase.

The only sentences, then, with mixed-up word order, are those,like the example " It is hard to do right ", in which a pronounserves as a dummy subject, what Jesperson calls the " preparatoryit ". We must say, then, that the sentence " Lions exist " is innormal word order. And, since the verb " exists " occupies thepredicate position in this standard sentence, we must concludethat this verb behaves predicatively, that it is the logical, notjust the grammatical, predicate of the sentence. Note alsothat "lions " would be the logical as well as the grammaticalsubject.

I argued above, however, for an assimilation of the exiguouspse of to exist with the use of the " there is " idiom, i.e. where



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"there " is not a local adverb. For example,

(1) Tame tigers exist,and

(2) There are tame tigerscome to the same thing. This assimilation must, of course, besharply restricted; it is wrong for any of the excluder uses of" exists ". This wrongness comes out when it is recognizedthat both " There are non-existent tigers " and " There are tigerswhich exists " are neither contradictory nor redundant, as theywould have to be if the assimilation were bonafide, when " exists"

is used as an excluder.But, for the exiguous use of " exists " the assimilation is alright.And if the assimilation is alright, then clearly " tame tigers "cannot be the logical subject of either (1) or (2) above, and" exists " cannot be the logical predicate of (1).

This, it seems to me, is the substance of the slogan that exist-ence is not a real predicate.

San Jose State College

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Is Existence a Predicate.pdf