Full Idea
Paraphrasing existence statements into statements about the instantiation of a property does not establish that existence is not a predicate, since the notion of instantiation must be taken to have existence built into it.
Clarification
'Instantiation' means there being instance or cases of
Gist of Idea
Existence can't be analysed as instantiating a property, as instantiation requires existence
Source
Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2)
Book Reference
McGinn,Colin: 'Logical Properties' [OUP 2003], p.22
A Reaction
Thank you, Colin McGinn! This now strikes me as so obvious that it is astonishing that for the whole of the twentieth century no one seems to have said it. For a century philosophers had swept the ontological dirt under the mat.