Ontology

== Other ontological topics ==
{{More citations needed|section|date=January 2021}}
=== Ontological formations ===
The concept of ''ontological formations'' refers to formations of social relations understood as dominant ways of living. Temporal, spatial, corporeal, [[Epistemology|epistemological]], and performative relations are taken to be central to understanding a dominant formation. That is, a particular ontological formation is based on how ontological categories of time, space, embodiment, knowing, and performing are lived—objectively and subjectively. Different ontological formations include the ''customary'' (including the tribal), the ''traditional'', the ''modern'', and the ''postmodern''. The concept was first introduced by [[Paul James (academic)|Paul James]] in 2006, together with a series of writers including Damian Grenfell and [[Manfred Steger]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=James |first=Paul |url=https://www.academia.edu/1642214 |title=Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back. In Volume 2 of Towards a Theory of Abstract Community |publisher=Sage Publications |year=2006 |location=London, England |language=en-uk |author-link=Paul James (academic)}}</ref>

In the ''[[engaged theory]]'' approach, ontological formations are seen as layered and intersecting rather than singular formations. They are 'formations of being'. This approach avoids the usual problems of a great divide being posited between the modern and the pre-modern. From a philosophical distinction concerning different formations of being, the concept then provides a way of translating into practical understandings concerning how humans might design cities and communities that live creatively across different ontological formations; for example, cities that are not completely dominated by modern valences of spatial configuration. Here the work of Tony Fry is important.<ref>{{Cite book |last=James |first=Paul |title=Design in the Borderlands |publisher=Routledge |year=2014 |editor=Fry |editor-first=Tony |location=London, England |language=en-uk |chapter=Urban Design in the Global South: Ontological Design in Practice |author-link1=Paul James (academic) |editor2=Kalantidou |editor-first2=Eleni |chapter-url=https://www.academia.edu/9161853}}</ref>

=== Ontology of fictional characters ===
{{Cleanup section|reason=This section requires an introduction and some signaling language.|date=March 2023}}
According to [[Edward N. Zalta]], the ontology of fiction analyses such sentences as:<ref>[[Edward N. Zalta|Zalta, Edward N.]] 2009. "Fictional truth, objects, and characters." pp. 267–269 in ''A Companion to Metaphysics'' (2nd ed.), edited by J. Kim G. S. Rosenkrantz, and E. Sosa. [[Chichester]], UK: [[Wiley-Blackwell|Wiley–Blackwell]]. {{ISBN|978-1405152983}}. p. 267.</ref>
* '[[Nero]] worshipped (the god) [[Mars (mythology)|Mars]]';
* '[[Mars (mythology)|Mars]], the god, does not exist'; and,
* '[[Eliza Doolittle]], in [[George Bernard Shaw]]'s [[Pygmalion (play)|''Pygmalion'']], is a flower girl'.

According to [[Amie L. Thomasson]], fictional discourse can be of four sorts:
* uttered ''within'' works of fiction;
* philosophical exercises such as '[[Captain Marvel (DC Comics)|Captain Marvel]] does not exist';
* treating fictional characters as if they were 'real', such as '[[Superman]] can leap tall buildings;' and,
* discourse ''about'' works of fiction, such as '[[Pygmalion (play)|Professor Higgins]] was created by [[George Bernard Shaw]]'.<ref name="Thomasson">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Fictional Entities |last=Thomasson |first=Amie L. |author-link=Amie Thomasson |url=https://uh.edu/~garson/Thomasson%20-%20Fictional%20Entities.pdf |encyclopedia=A Companion to Metaphysics |editor1-last=Kim |editor1-first=Jaegwon |editor-last2=Sosa |editor-first2=Ernest |editor-last3=Rosenkrantz |editor-first3=Gary S. |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |year=2009 |edition=Second}}</ref>

[[Jeremy Bentham]] distinguished three kinds of entities:<ref>Harrison, R. (2009). Jeremy Bentham, p. 145 in ''A Companion to Metaphysics'', ed. Kim, J., Rosenkrantz, G.S., Sosa, E., Wiley–Blackwell, Chichester UK, 2nd ed., {{ISBN|978-1405152983}}.</ref>
* the ''real'': those that can be perceived, or can be inferred from perception
* the ''fictitious'': abstractions that referred to perceptible things; and,
* the ''fabulous'': those that can be found only in the imagination, where the word 'exist' applies to such only in the sense that they do not really exist.

[[Francis Herbert Bradley]] thought that real things exist, respectively, at particular times and places. He recognized several kinds of entity:<ref>Stock, G. (2009). Francis Herbert Bradley, pp. 155–158 in ''A Companion to Metaphysics'', ed. Kim, J., Rosenkrantz, G.S., Sosa, E., Wiley–Blackwell, Chichester UK, 2nd ed., {{ISBN|978-1405152983}}, p. 157.</ref>
* the genuinely historical;
* the fictional;
* the real;
* the merely imagined;
* the existent; and,
* the non-existent.

[[Alexius Meinong]] would put fictional entities into the category that he called ''subsistence''.<ref name=":0"/> This category contains objects that neither exist spatially or non-spatially. However, they do have properties. The properties are given to these objects in the way they are said to be described. For example, we can talk about the tall unicorn even though the tall unicorn does not exist. We can say the unicorn is, in fact, tall because this follows from the properties in which the object is characterized.<ref name=":0">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Fictional Entities |last1=Kroon |first1=Fred |last2=Voltolini |first2=Alberto |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |encyclopedia=[[The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |year=2018 |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/fictional-entities }}</ref>

=== Ontological and epistemological certainty ===
[[René Descartes]], with ''[[cogito, ergo sum]]'' (''je pense donc je suis'': "I think, therefore I am"), argued that a person's thinking agency, their ''res cogitans'' – as distinct from their material body, their ''res extensa'' – is something that we can know exists with [[epistemology|epistemological]] certainty. Descartes argued further that this knowledge could lead to a proof of the certainty of the [[existence of God]], using the [[ontological argument]] that had been formulated first by [[Anselm of Canterbury]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.iep.utm.edu/ont-arg/|title=Anselm: Ontological Argument for God's Existence.|website=IEP}}</ref>

=== Body and environment, questioning the meaning of being ===
Schools of [[metaphysical subjectivism|subjectivism]], [[metaphysical objectivism|objectivism]], and [[relativism]] existed at various times in the 20th century, and the [[postmodernism|postmodernists]] and [[embodied philosophy|body philosophers]] tried to reframe all these questions in terms of bodies taking some specific [[philosophy of action|action]] in an environment. This relied to a great degree on insights derived from scientific research into animals taking instinctive action in natural and artificial settings—as studied by [[biology]], [[ecology]],<ref>{{Cite web |last=Smith |first=Barry |date=2001 |title=Objects and their environments: From Aristotle to ecological ontology |url=https://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/napflion.pdf |access-date=2023-11-26 |language=en}}</ref> and [[cognitive science]].{{Citation needed|date=January 2012}}

The processes by which bodies related to environments became of great concern, and the idea of [[being]] itself became difficult to define. What did people mean when they said "A is B", "A must be B", "A was B"...? Some linguists advocated dropping the verb "to be" from the English language, leaving "[[E-Prime|E&nbsp;Prime]]", supposedly less prone to bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, tried to dig into the word and its usage. [[Martin Heidegger]] distinguished ''human being'' as ''existence'' from the being of things in the world. Heidegger proposed that our way of being human and the way the world is for us are cast historically through a fundamental ontological questioning. These fundamental ontological categories provide the basis for communication in an age: a horizon of unspoken and seemingly unquestionable background meanings, such as human beings understood unquestioningly as subjects and other entities understood unquestioningly as objects. Because these basic ontological meanings both generate, and are regenerated in everyday interactions, the locus of our way of being in a historical epoch is the communicative event of language in use.<ref name="Hyde">Hyde, R. Bruce. "Listening Authentically: A Heideggerian Perspective on Interpersonal Communication". In ''Interpretive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication'', edited by Kathryn Carter and Mick Presnell. State University of New York Press, 1994. {{ISBN|0791418472}}.</ref> For Heidegger, however, communication in the ''first'' place is not among human beings, but language itself shapes up in response to questioning (the inexhaustible meaning of) being.<ref>Heidegger, Martin. 1971 [1959]. ''On the Way to Language.'' New York: Harper & Row.

''original'': 1959. ''Unterwegs zur Sprache'' Neske. [[Pfullingen]].</ref> Even the focus of traditional ontology on the 'whatness' or ''quidditas'' of beings in their substantial, standing presence can be shifted to pose the question of the 'whoness' of human being itself.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Eldred |first=Michael |title=Social ontology: recasting political philosophy through a phenomenology of whoness |date=2008 |publisher=Ontos Verl |isbn=978-3-938793-78-7 |location=Frankfurt |pages=xiv, 688 |url=http://www.arte-fact.org/sclontlg.html}}</ref>

=== Ontology and language ===
Some philosophers suggest that the question of "What is?" is (at least in part) an issue of ''usage'' rather than a question about facts.<ref>{{cite book | title= Introduction to an Ontology of Intellectual Property | publisher=The Scitech Lawyer, ABA| author=Carvalko, Joseph | date= Summer 2005 }}</ref> This perspective is conveyed by an analogy made by [[Donald Davidson (philosopher)|Donald Davidson]]: Suppose a person refers to a 'cup' as a 'chair' and makes some comments pertinent to a cup, but uses the word 'chair' consistently throughout instead of 'cup'. One might readily catch on that this person simply calls a 'cup' a 'chair' and the oddity is explained.<ref name="Davidson">{{cite journal|author=Davidson, Donald|year=1974|title=On the very idea of a conceptual scheme|url=http://files.meetup.com/328570/davidson_on-the-very-idea.pdf|journal=Proceedings and Address of the American Philosophical Association|volume=47|pages=5–20}}

Davidson refers to a 'ketch' and a 'yawl' (p. 18).</ref> Analogously, if we find people asserting 'there are' such-and-such, and we do not ourselves think that 'such-and-such' exist, we might conclude that these people are not nuts (Davidson calls this assumption 'charity'); they simply use 'there are' differently than we do. The question of ''What is?'' is at least partly a topic in the philosophy of language, and is not entirely about ontology itself.<ref name="Krieger">{{cite journal|author=Kriegel, Uriah|year=2011|title=Two defenses of common-sense ontology|url=http://www.uriahkriegel.com/downloads/defenses.pdf|url-status=dead|journal=Dialectica|volume=65|issue=2|pages=177–204|doi=10.1111/j.1746-8361.2011.01262.x|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181221041700/http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/defenses.pdf|archive-date=2018-12-21|access-date=2013-04-27}}</ref> This viewpoint has been expressed by [[Eli Hirsch]].<ref name="Hirsch">Hirsch, Eli. 2011. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=iPRqtcjeHPsC&pg=PA144 Physical-object ontology, verbal disputes and common sense]." pp. 144–177 in ''Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in Metaontology''. New York: [[Oxford University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0199732111}}.

First published as "[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00506.x/abstract Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense]."</ref><ref name="Hirsch1">Hirsch, Eli. 2011. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=iPRqtcjeHPsC&pg=PA68 Quantifier variance and realism]." pp. 68–95 in ''Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in Metaontology''. New York: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0199732111}}.

First published as "[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1758-2237.2002.tb00061.x/abstract Quantifier variance and realism]."</ref>

Hirsch interprets [[Hilary Putnam]] as asserting that different concepts of "the existence of something" can be correct.<ref name=Hirsch1/> This position does not contradict the view that some things do exist, but points out that different 'languages' will have different rules about assigning this property.<ref name=Hirsch1/><ref name="Hirsch2">{{cite book|author=Hirsch, Eli|title=Ernest Sosa and His Critics|publisher=Blackwell|year=2004|isbn=978-0470755471|editor=John Greco|pages=224–232|chapter=Sosa's Existential Relativism|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Moz8OeX4w8AC&pg=PA224}}</ref> How to determine the 'fitness' of a 'language' to the world then becomes a subject for investigation.

Common to all [[Indo-European copula]] languages is the double use of the verb "to be" in both stating that entity X exists ("X is") as well as stating that X has a property ("X is P"). It is sometimes argued that a third use is also distinct, stating that X is a member of a class ("X is a C"). In other language families these roles may have completely different verbs and are less likely to be confused with one another. For example they might say something like "the car has redness" rather than "the car is red". Hence any discussion of "being" in Indo-European language philosophy may need to make distinctions between these senses.{{citation needed|date=September 2017}}

=== Ontology and human geography ===
In human geography there are two types of ontology. The first, small "o" accounts for the practical orientation, describing functions of being a part of the group, thought to oversimplify and ignore key activities. The second "o", or big "O", systematically, logically, and rationally describes the essential characteristics and universal traits. This concept relates closely to Plato's view that the human mind can only perceive a bigger world if it continues to live within the confines of its "caves". However, in spite of the differences, ontology relies on the symbolic agreements among members. That said, ontology is crucial for the axiomatic language frameworks.<ref>Harvey, F. 2006. "Ontology. pp. 341–343 in ''Encyclopedia of Human Geography'', edited by B. Warf. Thousand Oaks, CA: [[SAGE Publications]].</ref>

=== Anthropology ===
The topic of ontology has received increased attention in [[anthropology]] since the 1990s. This is sometimes termed the "[[ontological turn]]".<ref name="Scott2013">{{cite journal |last=Scott |first=Michael W. |title=The anthropology of ontology (religious science?) |date=2013 |issue=4 |journal=The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute |volume=19 |pages=859–872 |doi=10.1111/1467-9655.12067 |jstor=42001687 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42001687 |quote=Since roughly the 1990s, a growing number of anthropologists have become interested in the study of ontology – the investigation and theorization of diverse experiences and understandings of the nature of being itself. This generally takes the form of ethnographic accounts of indigenous non-Western modes and models of being, presented in more or less explicit contrast with aspects of a Euro-American or modern ontology imputed to conventional anthropology.}}</ref> This type of inquiry is focused on how people from different cultures experience and understand the nature of being. Specific interest in this regard has been given to the ontological outlook of [[indigenous people]] and how their outlook tends to differ from a more Western perspective.<ref name="Scott2013"/><ref name="Heywood2012">{{cite journal |last=Heywood |first=Paolo |title=Anthropology and What There Is: Reflections on 'Ontology' |journal=The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology |date=2012 |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=143–151 |doi=10.3167/ca.2012.300112 |jstor=43610895 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43610895 |issn=0305-7674}}</ref> As an example of this contrast, it has been argued that various indigenous communities ascribe [[intentionality]] to non-human entities, like plants, forests, or rivers. This outlook is known as [[animism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ludwig |first1=David |last2=Weiskopf |first2=Daniel A. |title=Ethnoontology: Ways of world-building across cultures |journal=Philosophy Compass |date=September 2019 |volume=14 |issue=9 |doi=10.1111/phc3.12621 |s2cid=199516840 |quote= Consider the animism debate. Animists consider nonhuman entities (e.g., plants, forests, or rivers) as intentional actors (Harvey, 2005). There is substantial evidence that animism is a widespread metaphysical view. For example, the Nayaka people of South India consider not only certain animals but also stones, hills, cups, and knives to be devaru: beings that stand in active, quasi-social relationships with them (Bird-David, 1999). Devaru are aspects of a larger kin structure that incorporates potential "partners" in the nonhuman world. In addition to these ethnographic observations, there are intriguing cross-cultural similarities in animist ontologies. Indigenous communities around the world tend to be much more permissive in their ascription of intentionality than Western participants (Ojalehto, Douglas, & García, 2017).|doi-access=free }}</ref>

=== Reality and actuality ===
According to [[Alfred North Whitehead|Alfred N. Whitehead]], for ontology, it is useful to distinguish the terms 'reality' and 'actuality'. In this view, an 'actual entity' has a philosophical status of fundamental ontological priority, while a 'real entity' is one which may be actual, or may derive its reality from its logical relation to some actual entity or entities. For example, an occasion in the life of Socrates is an actual entity. But Socrates' being a man does not make 'man' an actual entity, because it refers indeterminately to many actual entities, such as several occasions in the life of Socrates, and also to several occasions in the lives of [[Alcibiades]], among others. But the notion of man is real. It derives its reality from its reference to those many actual occasions, each of which is an actual entity. An actual occasion is a concrete entity, while terms such as 'man' are abstractions from many concrete relevant entities.{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}}

According to Whitehead, an actual entity must earn its philosophical status of fundamental ontological priority by satisfying several philosophical criteria, as follows:{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}}
* There is no going behind an actual entity, to find something more fundamental in fact or in efficacy. This criterion is to be regarded as expressing an axiom, or postulated distinguished doctrine.
* An actual entity must be completely determinate in the sense that there may be no confusion about its identity that would allow it to be confounded with another actual entity. In this sense an actual entity is completely concrete, with no potential to be something other than itself. It is what it is. It is a source of potentiality for the creation of other actual entities, of which it may be said to be a part cause. Likewise it is the concretion or realization of potentialities of other actual entities which are its partial causes.
* Causation between actual entities is essential to their actuality. Consequently, for Whitehead, each actual entity has its distinct and definite extension in physical [[Minkowski space]], and so is uniquely identifiable. A description in Minkowski space supports descriptions in time and space for particular observers.
* It is part of the aim of the philosophy of an ontology such as Whitehead's that the actual entities should be all alike, ''qua'' actual entities; they should all satisfy a single definite set of well stated ontological criteria of actuality.

Whitehead proposed that his notion of an occasion of experience satisfies the criteria for its status as the philosophically preferred definition of an actual entity. From a purely logical point of view, each occasion of experience has in full measure the characters of both objective and subjective reality. Subjectivity and objectivity refer to different aspects of an occasion of experience, and in no way do they exclude each other.<ref>[[Alfred North Whitehead|Whitehead, Alfred N.]] 1929. ''Process and Reality''. Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]]. ''passim''.</ref>

Examples of other philosophical proposals or candidates as actual entities, in this view, are Aristotle's 'substances', Leibniz' monads, and Descartes' ''res verae'', and the more modern 'states of affairs'. Aristotle's substances, such as Socrates, have behind them as more fundamental the 'primary substances', and in this sense do not satisfy Whitehead's criteria. Whitehead is not happy with Leibniz' monads as actual entities because they are "windowless" and do not cause each other. 'States of affairs' are often not closely defined, often without specific mention of extension in physical Minkowski space; they are therefore not necessarily processes of becoming, but may be, as their name suggests, simply static states in some sense. States of affairs are contingent on particulars, and therefore have something behind them.<ref>[[David Malet Armstrong|Armstrong, D. M.]] (1997). ''A World of States of Affairs'', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, {{ISBN|0521580641}}, p. 1.</ref> One summary of the Whiteheadian actual entity is that it is a process of becoming. Another summary, referring to its causal linkage to other actual entities, is that it is "all window", in contrast with Leibniz' windowless monads.{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}}

This view allows philosophical entities other than actual entities to really exist, but not as fundamentally and primarily factual or causally efficacious; they have existence as abstractions, with reality only derived from their reference to actual entities. A Whiteheadian actual entity has a unique and completely definite place and time. Whiteheadian abstractions are not so tightly defined in time and place, and in the extreme, some are timeless and placeless, or 'eternal' entities. All abstractions have logical or conceptual rather than efficacious existence; their lack of definite time does not make them unreal if they refer to actual entities. Whitehead calls this 'the ontological principle'.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Haring |first=Ellen S. |date=1962 |title=The Ontological Principle |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20123918 |journal=The Review of Metaphysics |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=3–13 |jstor=20123918 |issn=0034-6632}}</ref>

=== Microcosmic ontology ===
There is an established and long philosophical history of the concept of atoms as microscopic physical objects. They are far too small to be visible to the naked eye. It was as recent as the nineteenth century that precise estimates of the sizes of putative physical [[atom]]s began to become plausible. Almost direct empirical observation of atomic effects was due to the theoretical investigation of [[Brownian motion]] by [[Albert Einstein]] in the very early twentieth century. Even then, the real existence of atoms was debated by some. Such debate might be labeled 'microcosmic ontology'. Here the word 'microcosm' is used to indicate a physical world of small entities, such as for example atoms.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Definition of Microcosm |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/microcosm |access-date=2022-09-13 |website=Merriam-Webster |language=en}}</ref>

Subatomic particles are usually considered to be much smaller than atoms. Their real or actual existence may be very difficult to demonstrate empirically.<ref>Kaiser, D. 1994. "Niels Bohr's legacy in contemporary particle physics." pp. 257–268 in ''Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy'', edited by J. Faye and H. J. Folse. Dordrecht, Holland: [[Springer Publishing|Springer]]. {{ISBN|978-9048142996}}. s. 4 ("Questions of ontology and particle physics phenomenology"). pp. 262–264.</ref> A distinction is sometimes drawn between actual and [[virtual particle|virtual]] subatomic particles. Reasonably, one may ask, in what sense, if any, do virtual particles exist as physical entities? For atomic and subatomic particles, difficult questions arise, such as do they possess a precise position, or a precise momentum? A question that continues to be controversial is "to what kind of physical thing, if any, does the [[Quantum mechanics|quantum mechanical]] [[wave function]] refer?"<ref name="Isham">Isham, C. J. 1995. ''Lectures on Quantum Theory: Mathematical and Structural Foundations.'' London, England: [[Imperial College Press]]. {{ISBN|1860940005}}. pp. 63–67.</ref>

=== Ontological argument ===
{{Main|Ontological argument}}

In the [[Christian philosophy|Western Christian]] tradition, in his 1078 work ''[[Proslogion]]'', [[Anselm of Canterbury]] proposed what is known as 'the ontological argument' for the existence of God.{{NoteTag|"There are three main periods in the history of ontological arguments. The first was in 11th century, when St. Anselm of Canterbury came up with the first ontological argument."<ref>Szatkowski, Miroslaw, ed. 2012. ''Ontological Proofs Today''. Ontos Verlag. p.&nbsp;22.</ref>}} Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be thought", and argued that this being must exist in the mind, even in the mind of the person who denies the existence of God. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible—one which exists both in the mind and in reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality. Seventeenth-century French philosopher [[René Descartes]] deployed a similar argument. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which centered on the idea that God's existence is immediately inferable from a 'clear and distinct' idea of a supremely perfect being. In the early eighteenth century, [[Gottfried Leibniz]] augmented Descartes's ideas in an attempt to prove that a 'supremely perfect' being is a coherent concept. [[Norman Malcolm]] revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work; [[Alvin Plantinga]] challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on [[modal logic]]. Attempts have also been made to validate Anselm's proof using an [[automated theorem prover]].<ref>{{Citation |last1=Benzmuller |first1=Christoph |title=Automating Gödel's Ontological Proof of God's Existence with Higher-order Automated Theorem Provers |date=2014 |url=https://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/cbenzmueller/papers/C40.pdf |work=ECAI 2014 |pages=93–98 |access-date=2023-11-26 |doi=10.3233/978-1-61499-419-0-93 |last2=Woltzenlogel Paleo |first2=Bruno|s2cid=46020663 }}</ref> 

More recently, [[Kurt Gödel]] proposed a [[Mathematical logic|formal argument]] [[Gödel's ontological proof|for God's existence]]. Other [[existence of God|arguments for God's existence]] have been advanced, including those made by Islamic philosophers [[Mulla Sadra]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ayatollahy |first=Hamidreza |url=https://www.academia.edu/8187996 |title=Mulla Sadra's Seddiqin Argument for the Existence of God An Islamic Response to Hume and Kant}}</ref> and [[Allama Tabatabai]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tabatabai |first=Allama |title=Encyclopaedia Iranica |url=https://iranicaonline.org/ |access-date=2023-11-18 |website=iranicaonline.org |language=en-US}}</ref>

===Hintikka's locution for existence===

[[Jaakko Hintikka]] offers the view that a useful explication of the notion of existence is in the words "one can find" implicitly in some world or [[Domain of discourse|universe of discourse]].<ref>[[Jaakko Hintikka|Hintikka, Jaakko.]] 1998. ''Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays''. Dordrecht, Holland: [[Springer Science+Business Media]]. {{ISBN|978-9048149308}}. p. 3.</ref>
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