w, if one were take the subject (God) with all its predicates (omnipotence being one), and say, God is, or There is a God, new predicate is added to the conception of God. Instead, the existence of the subject is merely posited with all its predicates in relation to a particular conception. Accordingly, what goes wrong with the first version of the ontological argument is that the notion of existence is being treated as the wrong logical type. Concepts, as a logical matter, are defined entirely in terms of logical predicates. Since existence isn’t a logical predicate, it doesn’t belong to the concept of God; it rather affirms that the existence of something that satisfies the predicates defining the concept of God.

Although this choice of criticism is phrased in a somewhat obscure manner in the logic of predicates and copulas, it still makes a metaphysical point which is plausible, namely that existence is not a property (in the same way that redness is the property of an apple). Instead, it is a precondition for the manifestation of properties in the following sense: it is not possible for a non-existent thing to instantiate any properties as there is nothing to which such a property could instantiate itself. Nothing is by definition deficient of properties. Thus, To declare that x instantiates a property P is akin to presupposing that x itself exists. Thus, on this line of reasoning, existence isn’t a great-making property because it is not a property at all; it is rather a condition which is metaphysically necessary in order to have the instantiation of any properties.
At the same time, even if we are to concede that existence is a property, it does not seem to be the sort of property that makes something better for having it. As Norman Malcolm expresses the argument: “The doctrine that existence is a perfection is remarkably queer. It makes sense and is true to say that my future house will be a better one if it is insulated than if it is not insulated; but what could it mean to say that it will be a better house if it exists than if it does not? … One might say, with some intelligibility, that it would be better (for oneself or for mankind) if God exists than if He does not-but that is a different matter.” The idea here is that existence is very different from, say, the property of lovingness. A being that is loving is, other things being equal, better or greater than a being that is not. But it seems very strange to think that a loving being that exists is, other things being equal, better or greater than a loving being that doesn’t exist. But to the extent that existence doesn’t add to the greatness of a thing, Kant’s criticisms mean that classic version of the ontological argument fails.

However, Anselm made two arguments in the proslogion, and the second version of his Ontological argument responds much more convincingly to those issues such as those made by Kant. This is because it refrains from addressing existence as a property of a given thing. Although as before, the argument includes a premise as