The Transcendence of The Natural-Language “Exist” When Used to Assert or Deny Ontological Commitment

It’s shown that the existence concept that we express in natural languages and that we use to think about what we—philosophers and non-philosophers—take to exist in the world is criterion-transcendent, transcendent, and univocal. That is, speakers use a notion that they take to be fixed in its extension across languages and to be the same one they’ve used in the past and will use in the future. Furthermore, the existence concept has no meaning entailments. We do not understand what exists to have certain properties (or not to have certain properties) on the basis of the meaning of the word “exist.” “Exist” and “there is,” when used to express or deny ontological commitments, are neither ambiguous nor polysemous. Language-usage evidence is presented that confirms these claims.