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| 4475 | Saying a thing 'is' adds nothing to it - otherwise if my concept exists, it isn't the same as my concept [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We do not make the least addition to a thing when we declare the thing 'is'. Otherwise it would not be exactly the same thing that exists, but something more than we had thought in the concept, so we could not say the exact object of my concept exists. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B628/A600) | |
| A reaction: This still strikes me as a wonderful objection to the ontological argument for God. It raises the question of what 'is' does mean. Is it a 'quantifier'? What is the ontological status of a quantifier? |