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Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Existence

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Existence

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This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 6, 2024 by Gog the Mild (talk) 20:47, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Logic uses the existential quantifier ∃ to express existence.
Logic uses the existential quantifier ∃ to express existence.

Existence is the state of having being or reality. It is often contrasted with essence, since one can understand the essential features of something without knowing whether it exists. Ontology studies existence and differentiates between singular existence of individual entities and general existence of concepts or universals. Entities present in space and time have concrete existence, in contrast to abstract entities, like numbers and sets. Other distinctions are between possible, contingent, and necessary existence and between physical and mental existence. Some philosophers talk of degrees of existence but the more common view is that an entity either exists or not, with no intermediary states. It is controversial whether existence can be understood as a property of individual objects and, if so, whether there are nonexistent objects. The concept of existence has a long history and played a role in the ancient period in Presocratic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist philosophy. (Full article...)