Kant supports (34) with only an example, that “necessarily a triangle has three sides” is
really “necessarily, for all x, if x is a triangle, x has three sides” (A704/B622). His case
for (35) is left implicit. In parallel to the triangle example, “necessarily, God exists”
would on Kant's account really assert “necessarily, for all x, if x is a God, x exists.” This
is an “identical proposition” (A704/B622), since “x is a God” includes the note that x
exists, at least on the plausible assumption that only existing things have any attributes at
all. If this is an “identical proposition,” it is also an analytic proposition, because its
consequent merely makes explicit something its antecedent clearly includes. So if Kant's
conditional account of necessity-claims is correct, then any necessary existential
proposition is analytic. Kant's denial that existence is a “predicate”—by which he means
something that describes or characterizes an object—helps back (36). Analytic
propositions unfold the contents of a concept of some item. Concepts characterize their
objects, that is, ascribe to them conjunctions of characterizing properties. So analytic
propositions can only ascribe characterizing properties. So if existence is not a
characterizing property, there can be no analytic existentials.
How much did Kant actually achieve? As to the claim that existence is not a predicate,
Anselm's backing for (2), as explained above, does not involve any particular doctrine
about the logical status of existence, nor even the claim that existence has some general
great-making or perfective aspect. The point about existence doesn't even really cut
against Descartes. One version of his argument uses the premise that existence is a
perfection, but the having of a perfection could be expressed other than by what Kant
would call a “real predicate.” Another version claims that necessary existence is a
perfection—but to claim that necessary existence is a property is not to claim that any
existential proposition is necessary. Propositions predicating such a property need not be
quantified at all. In any case, the claims that existence is not a predicate or a
characterizing predicate are quite likely false. We can well understand a woman who
concedes that her hus
end p.107
band, Harvey, is not as brave as Batman or as brilliant as Lex Luthor, then adds “But at
least Harvey exists!” This claim predicates existence of Harvey, telling us something
substantive about him that “enlarges our concept” of Harvey, namely, that he is not a
fictional character.
As to Kant's other line of attack, mathematics features numerous apparent necessary and
nonconditional existential truths, for example, that there is a prime number between one
and ten. (Kant's friends might dig their heels in and insist that this is really something like
a claim that if anything is a series of natural numbers, it includesBut this would pretty
plainly be stretching things.) Note that worries about the ontological status of numbers
aren't really to the point here: the truths involved are of this form, whatever precisely it is
that makes them true, and even if one assigns some unusual interpretation to the
existential quantifier in mathematical contexts. So Kant's (34) seems frail indeed, and
without it, (35) is at best irrelevant. If the logicists are right, these necessary truths are all
analytic. If they are not, these are synthetic propositions which (pace Kant) do not
concern how things must appear to us. Either way, Kant's theory of necessity is in serious
trouble.