Edward Nouri Zalta[5] (/ˈzɔːltə/; born March 16, 1952) is an American philosopher who is a senior research scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University.

Zalta is also the Principal Editor of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[6] Zalta's most notable philosophical position is descended from the positions of Alexius Meinong and Ernst Mally,[7] who suggested that there are many non-existent objects.

On Zalta's account, some objects (the ordinary concrete ones around us, like tables and chairs) exemplify properties, while others (abstract objects like numbers, and what others would call "non-existent objects", like the round square, and the mountain made entirely of gold) merely encode them.

[8] While the objects that exemplify properties are discovered through traditional empirical means, a simple set of axioms allows us to know about objects that encode properties.