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I have trouble understanding the article on existence in this Philosophy dictionary.

Instantiation in reality, or actual being. Kant pointed out that existence is not a predicate.

What is the meaning of predicate in other words, put simply?

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is there any eBook or Book for Philosophy for dummies? or dictionary for other foreign languages. –  saber tabatabaee yazdi Jan 6 '13 at 8:49
Predicate is a unary Boolean function. For example, Even(n) is a predicate that takes a number n as its argument and returns true just in case n is even. –  Hunan Rostomyan Feb 8 at 0:59
This isn't really a "look it up in the dictionary" kind of question, it's a context specific technical term. –  James Kingsbery Feb 9 at 18:43

1 Answer 1

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Predicate is a fact about some thing or person, e.g.:

I am tall

I am a man

I am going for a walk

tall, a man and going for a walk are predicates about me. But in

I exist

(according to Kant) exist isn't a predicate, because if I didn't exist there wouldn't be me to apply the predicate to. Cf.:

I don't exist

Here I isn't someone at all, while in:

I am not a man

I is someone about whom it is told that she is not a man.

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