1688 | Properties must be proved, but not essence; but existents are not a kind, so existence isn't part of essence [Aristotle] |
12278 | 'Being' and 'oneness' are predicated of everything which exists [Aristotle] |
2636 | Many primitive people know nothing of the gods [Cicero] |
22736 | God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus] |
22740 | God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus] |
1892 | The existence of God can't be self-evident or everyone would have agreed on it, so it needs demonstration [Sext.Empiricus] |
1420 | Anselm's first proof fails because existence isn't a real predicate, so it can't be a perfection [Malcolm on Anselm] |
21251 | We can't know God's essence, so his existence can't be self-evident for us [Aquinas] |
1864 | It is heresy to teach that we can know God by his essence in this mortal life [Anon (Par)] |
3633 | We can never conceive of an infinite being [Gassendi on Descartes] |
3632 | We mustn't worship God as an image because we have no idea of him [Hobbes on Descartes] |
3638 | Existence is not a perfection; it is what makes perfection possible [Gassendi on Descartes] |
5036 | Descartes cannot assume that a most perfect being exists without contradictions [Leibniz on Descartes] |
4817 | If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence [Spinoza] |
2244 | It can never be a logical contradiction to assert the non-existence of something thought to exist [Hume] |
21255 | No being's non-existence can imply a contradiction, so its existence cannot be proved a priori [Hume] |
13732 | Kant never denied that 'exist' could be a predicate - only that it didn't enlarge concepts [Kant, by Fitting/Mendelsohn] |
8451 | Existence is merely derived from the word 'is' (rather than being a predicate) [Kant, by Orenstein] |
3321 | Modern logic says (with Kant) that existence is not a predicate, because it has been reclassified as a quantifier [Benardete,JA on Kant] |
5609 | If 'this exists' is analytic, either the thing is a thought, or you have presupposed its existence [Kant] |
5608 | Is "This thing exists" analytic or synthetic? [Kant] |
5610 | If an existential proposition is synthetic, you must be able to cancel its predicate without contradiction [Kant] |
5611 | Being is not a real predicate, that adds something to a concept [Kant] |
5612 | You add nothing to the concept of God or coins if you say they exist [Kant] |
7741 | The predicate 'exists' is actually a natural language expression for a quantifier [Frege, by Weiner] |
8491 | The Ontological Argument fallaciously treats existence as a first-level concept [Frege] |
22286 | Existence is not a first-level concept (of God), but a second-level property of concepts [Frege, by Potter] |
8644 | Because existence is a property of concepts the ontological argument for God fails [Frege] |
18312 | The supreme general but empty concepts must be compatible, and hence we get 'God' [Nietzsche] |
5773 | The ontological argument begins with an unproven claim that 'there exists an x..' [Russell] |
6119 | You can discuss 'God exists', so 'God' is a description, not a name [Russell] |
5187 | When we ascribe an attribute to a thing, we covertly assert that it exists [Ayer] |
17573 | There is no reason to think that mere existence is a valuable thing [Inwagen] |
6072 | If Satan is the most imperfect conceivable being, he must have non-existence [McGinn] |
6073 | I think the fault of the Ontological Argument is taking the original idea to be well-defined [McGinn] |
3905 | 'Existence' is not a predicate of 'man', but of the concept of man, saying it has at least one instance [Scruton] |
15133 | A thing can't be the only necessary existent, because its singleton set would be as well [Williamson] |
7417 | God can't have silly perfections, but how do we decide which ones are 'silly'? [Joslin] |