Abstract

This paper is a continuation of a long line of footnotes to discussions of the ontological argument which began with Ayer, Wisdom, and Broad, and then progressed through Nakhnikian, Salmon, and Kiteley. In this series, one of the major theses proposed by the first trio and queried by the second is that, if existence is indeed a predicate, then all positive existential statements become analytic and all negative existentials self-contradictory. I should like to question this claim from yet another perspective than that of the more recent writers, viz., that of essential predication. Since it is the so-called second version of the proof which is allegedly more cogent, such a perspective is after all much closer to the core of the ontological argument. Though the remarks here are presented only with regard to positive existentials, they are nevertheless applicable to negative existentials, mutatis mutandis, as well.