Que é existência?

In this seminal essay, Nathan Salmon challenges the Kantian maxim that existence is not a real predicate, arguing that “to exist” is a first-order monadic property attributable to individuals. Opposing Kant, Frege and Russell, Salmon argues that existence should be treated semantically as an ordinary property, and not as a logical quantifier. He examines cases of empty reference, such as fictional characters, and proposes that existential sentences with non-designative terms are not false, but lack truth value. The analysis articulates logic, metaphysics and philosophy of language, offering a robust critique of traditional approaches and proposing a theory of existence as a predicate.