There is no universally accepted theory of what the word existence means. The dominant (though by no means universal) view in twentieth-century and contemporary Anglo-American philosophy is that existence is what is asserted by statements of first order logic of the form "for some x Fx". This agrees with the simple and commonsensical view that, in uttering "There is a bridge across the Thames at Hammersmith", or "A bridge crosses the Thames at Hammersmith", we are asserting the existence of a bridge across the Thames at Hammersmith. The word "existence", on this view, is simply a way of describing the logi ...

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• Existence - The problems of existence
• Existence - Modern approaches to the problem
• Existence - Earlier views
• Existence - European views
• Existence - Quotations

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The first comprehensive treatment of the subject was by Aristotle in the Metaphysics. He developed a complicated theory of being, according to which only individual things, called substances fully have being, but other things such as relations, quantity, time and place (called the Categories) have a derivative kind of being, dependent on individual things (See the article on Ontology for a detailed discussion). The medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas, perhaps following the Persion philosopher Avicenna, argued that God is pure being, and that ...

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Existence, Existence - The problems of existence, Existence - Modern approaches to the problem, Existence - Earlier views, Existence - European views, Existence - Quotations

Read more here: » Existence: Encyclopedia II - Existence - Earlier views

1. The first problem is that, on the simple view above, any sentence of apparently subject-predicate form "S is P" must assert the existence of an object satisfying "S" and "P". Thus any noun phrase whatsoever that is the subject or predicate of a true sentence of this form, must be presumed to denote something. This leads to the question of what is denoted in sentences containing abstract noun phrases, such as "goodness is a virtue", "blindess can be overcome", "the number 9 is the sum of 6 and 3" and so on. Are goodness, blindness, virtue &c. objects i ...

See also:

Existence, Existence - The problems of existence, Existence - Modern approaches to the problem, Existence - Earlier views, Existence - European views, Existence - Quotations

Read more here: » Existence: Encyclopedia II - Existence - The problems of existence

The problem is then evaded as follows. "Pegasus flies" implies existence in the wide sense, for it implies that something flies. But it does not imply existence in the narrow sense, for we deny existence in this sense by saying that Pegasus does not exist. In effect, the world of all things divides, on this view, into those (like Socrates, Venus the planet, New York) that have existence in the narrow sense, and those (like Sherlock Holmes, Venus the goddess, Minas Tirith) that do not. Supporters of this view (which derives from ...

See also:

Existence, Existence - The problems of existence, Existence - Modern approaches to the problem, Existence - Earlier views, Existence - European views, Existence - Quotations

Read more here: » Existence: Encyclopedia II - Existence - Modern approaches to the problem