Abstract

I first give a very short characterization of contextualism in the philosophy of language; then I present the traditional debate about the question whether “exists” is a first or second order predicate, to conclude, firstly, that there is a first order as well as a second order use for that predicate, with no ambiguity, and, secondly, that the debate was couched in too restrictive terms. I defend that there is a huge variety of contexts to be scrutinized, and that a contextualist approach could be useful in that discussion. I close the paper with a critical note to what I call “serious ontology”. Key words: existence as a predicate, contextualism, ontology, philosophy of language.