Excerpt from The Terms of and Terms; Existence and Reality: A Dissertation Submitted to the Board of University Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in Conformity With the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
What then does it mean to "exist"? That is the question with which we are to deal. And we are to deal with it without concern for the future of our souls. We are to deal with it by concentrating our attention upon the concept "existence," by analyzing out various senses in which the term has been used, and by making each of these senses of the word definite, precise, and meaningful.
Indeed, if we are to come to close quarters with any concept, "existence" is the one that requires our attention. For we have here a concept that is particularly important in our judgments. In nearly everything we say we are implicitly saying something about existence. Except for a few classes of judgments, each judgment we make is an assertion of the existence or of the non-existence of some entity; it is an assertion, that is to say, that can be turned into an existential proposition. It has sometimes been said that whenever we make a judgment we imply the existence of the subject of that judgment. But that this is not the case it has not been hard to show. We need only think of an hypothetical proposition of the form: If A is, B is. Here neither A nor B is said to exist, but the existence of B is said to be contingent upon the existence of A. Exactly the same interpretation holds when the proposition is thrown into the categorical form: A implies B. And since perhaps the most important judgments we have are judgments of this latter form, judgments in which the existence of the subject is not asserted, we cannot accept the thesis that in all judgments the existence of the subject is assumed. But though it cannot be maintained that a judgment assumes the existence of its subject, it does not follow that judgments as a rule have no existential import. Indeed, nearly all propositions, it seems to me, can be turned into propositions having a reference to existence. And it may be worth while to show this in some detail in order that the importance of the concept "existence" may be realized.
Let us start with the proposition: "Some men are bald." Here I am asserting the existence, not only of men, but of bald men. "Bald men exist" is exactly equivalent to "Some men are bald." There is the same assertion of existence when the particular proposition is negative. "Some men are not patriotic" means that some unpatriotic men exist.
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