Abstract

It is a premise of a widely endorsed putative refutation of Anselm's ontological argument that ‘exists’ is not a predicate. This Note argues that although ‘exists’ has the superficial grammatical appearance of a predicate in the Proslogion, Anselm does not in fact rely on the premise that ‘exists’ is a logical predicate in his putative proof. It follows that even if some argument for the conclusion that ‘exists’ is not a predicate is sound, that argument is not a refutation of Anselm's argument