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    Philosophers including Kant and more recently Peter van I... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→The prime task for the philosophical theist is to demonstrate that God is not impossible.

    Philosophers including Kant and more recently Peter van Inwagen argue that existence is not a genuine predicate or perfection, undermining the coherence of 'necessary existence' as a concept.

    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Existence adds nothing to a concept's intension; all predicates presuppose something already exists to instantiate them.
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    • 2.Saying 'necessary existence' conflates logical necessity (analytic truths) with metaphysical facts about what is instantiated.
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    • 3.We don't enhance a description by adding 'exists'; we merely assert an instance satisfies that description somewhere.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Existence differs crucially from predicates like 'red': it's a second-order property about instantiation itself, not a first-order quality.
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    • 2.Some entities (abstract objects, numbers) plausibly possess necessary existence, making the concept coherent even if not a simple predicate.
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    • 3.The claim 'existence is not a predicate' itself seems to make a metaphysical claim about existence—potentially undermining its own coherence.
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    Key Terms

    Immanuel Kant(as the originator of this concept)
    An 18th-century German philosopher who developed major ideas about ethics, reasoning, and how we understand the world; he's famous for arguing that morality is based on universal rules that apply to everyone equally.
    Necessary existence(Contrasted with contingent existence in discussion of God's mode of being)
    Existence that is not contingent; the being does not just happen to exist or not exist.
    Peter van Inwagen(as a philosopher whose ideas are discussed)
    A contemporary American philosopher who specializes in metaphysics (the study of what exists and how things are fundamentally structured).
    coherence(Applied uniformly by Bosanquet to both religious and non-religious truth claims.)
    The standard by which truth is assessed — a belief or system of beliefs is true insofar as it forms a consistent, internally unified whole.
    perfection(Sulzer's conception of perfection as involving teleological inner constitution)
    A property of objects that includes purposiveness, such that an object can be perfect through its material, its external form, or its inner constitution as a means to a final end.
    predicate(Logical/grammatical ontology in Eisagoge)
    Either a sound signifying a meaning or a meaning signified by a certain sound

    Connections

    1 topic

    Natural Theology1 linked

    Related

    Existence adds nothing to a concept's intension; all predicates presuppose somet...Existence differs crucially from predicates like 'red': it's a second-order prop...Saying 'necessary existence' conflates logical necessity (analytic truths) with ...Some entities (abstract objects, numbers) plausibly possess necessary existence,...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    +3 moreShow less
    The claim 'existence is not a predicate' itself seems to make a metaphysical cla...The prime task for the philosophical theist is to demonstrate that God is not im...We don't enhance a description by adding 'exists'; we merely assert an instance ...