Grammar and the dead
If we think of dead people as ceasing to exist in death, then they must become non-existent. Some people think that, philosophically, only people and things who exist can properly be the subjects of present-tense verbs (or at least that sentences which make them the subjects of present-tense verbs will be false). This leads to strange problems.
There are already lots of thorny problems in the philosophy of language surrounding using a noun phrase like "the present king of France" (most famously, in a sentence like "the present king of France is bald"). But it almost seems that it gets thornier if you use a noun phrase which refers to someone who used to exist and who no longer exists. (Another twist: is there a grammatical distinction between people who once existed and then stopped existing, and people who, like the present king of France, have never existed at all?)
For that matter, if it's not legitimate to say "he is tall", or "he is friendly", of someone who's dead, why is it legitimate to say "he is dead"?
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