In Predication and Ontology A. Kalbarczyk provides the first monograph-length study of the Arabic reception of Aristotle’s Categories. At the center of attention is the critical reappraisal of that treatise by Ibn Sīnā, better known in the Latin West as Avicenna. Ibn Sīnā’s reading of the Categories is examined in the context of his wider project of rearranging the transmitted body of philosophical knowledge. Against the background of the late ancient commentary tradition and subsequent exegetical efforts, Ibn Sīnā’s Kitāb al-Maqūlāt (...) of the Šifāʾ is interpreted as a milestone in the gradual reshuffle of the relationship between logic proper and ontology. In order to assess the philosophical impact of this realignment, some of the subsequent developments in Ibn Sīnā’s writings and in the emerging post-Avicennian tradition are also taken into account. The thematic focus lies on the two fundamental classification schemes which Aristotle introduces in the treatise: the fourfold division of Cat. 2 and the tenfold scheme of Cat. 4. They both pose the question of whether and how the manner in which an expression is predicated relates to extra-linguistic reality. As the study intends to show, this question is one of the driving forces of Ibn Sīnā’s momentous reform of the Aristotelian curriculum. (shrink)

Developing some suggestions of Ramsey (1925), elementary logic is formulated with respect to an arbitrary categorial system rather than the categorial system of Logical Atomism which is retained in standard elementary logic. Among the many types of non-standard categorial systems allowed by this formalism, it is argued that elementary logic with predicates of variable degree occupies a distinguished position, both for formal reasons and because of its potential value for application of formal logic to natural language and natural science. This (...) is illustrated by use of such a logic to construct a theory of quantity which is argued to be scientifically superior to existing theories of quantity based on standard categorial systems, since it yields real-valued scales without the need for unrealistic existence assumptions. This provides empirical evidence for the hypothesis that the categorial structure of the physical world itself is non-standard in this sense. (shrink)

When, for example, we say of something that it ‘is an object’, or ‘is an event’, or ‘is a property’, we are engaging in categorial predication: we are assigning something to a certain ontological category. Ontological categorization is clearly a type of classification, but it differs radically from the types of classification that are involved in the taxonomic practices of empirical sciences, as when a physicist says of a certain particle that it ‘is an electron’, or when a zoologist says (...) of a certain animal that it ‘is a mammal’, or when a meteorologist says of a certain weather‐phenomenon that it ‘is a hurricane’. Classifications of the latter types presuppose that the items being classified have already been assigned to appropriate ontological categories, such as the categories of object, species, or event. What do categorial predications mean? How are their truth‐conditions to be determined, and how can those truth‐conditions be known to be satisfied? Do they have truthmakers? Questions like these are amongst those addressed in the present paper. (shrink)

Anyone with more than casual interest in Aristotle's Categories knows the convention that "predicated of" ["κατηγορεἳται"] marks a general relation of predication while "said of" ["λέγεται"] is reserved for essential predication. By "convention" I simply mean to underscore that the view in question ranks as the conventional or received interpretation. Ackrill, for example, follows the received view in holding that only items within the same category (not arbitrarily, of course) can stand in the being-said-of relation and, thus, that only secondary (...) substances can be said of primary substances. Despite its long received status the convention has never received a fully comprehensive examination and defense. In fact such an account is needed because, while enjoying considerable textual support, certain passages of the Categories appear to clash with the convention. My aim in this paper is, first, to develop and defend the standard interpretation, as I shall call it. Since the standard interpretation has lately been challenged in a closely argued article by Russell Dancy, my defense will proceed partly with an eye to his criticisms. Having met these, I go on to raise some difficulties with the rather unorthodox reading Dancy gives the Categories. The crucial point here turns out to be what Aristotle understands by a paronym. (shrink)

Like belief revision, conceptual change has rational aspects. The paper discusses this for predicate change. We determine the meaning of predicates by a set of imaginable instances, i.e., conceptually consistent entities that fall under the predicate. Predicate change is then an alteration of which possible entities are instances of a concept. The recent exclusion of Pluto from the category of planets is an example of such a predicate change. In order to discuss predicate change, we define a monadic predicate logic (...) with three different kinds of lawful belief: analytic laws, which hold for all possible instances; doxastic laws, which hold for the most plausible instances; and typicality laws, which hold for typical instances. We introduce predicate changing operations that alter the analytic laws of the language and show that the expressive power is not affected by the predicate change. One can translate the new laws into old laws and vice versa. Moreover, we discuss rational restrictions of predicate change. These limit its possible influence on doxastic and typicality laws. Based on the results, we argue that predicate change can be quite conservative and sometimes even hardly recognisable. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate Aristotle’s account of predication in Topics I 9. I argue for the following interpretation. In this chapter Aristotle (i) presents two systems of predication cutting across each other, the system of the so-called four ‘predicables’ and of the ten ‘categories’, in order to distinguish them and explore their mutual relationship. I propose a semantic interpretation of the relationship between them. According to this reading, every proposition formed through a predicable constitutes at the same time a (...) predication according to one of the ten categories, and, consequently, signifies one of them, expressing one of the predicative relationship conveyed by them. Further, Aristotle (ii) explains the predicative connection between these two systems and the ten items signified by the ‘things said without any combination’ enumerated in Chapter 4 of the Categories, whose list is almost identical with that of categories in Top. I 9, with the only exception of their first members. (shrink)

I argue there are two ways predication relations can hold according to the Categories: they can hold directly or they can hold mediately. The distinction between direct and mediated predication is a distinction between whether or not a given prediction fact holds in virtue of another predication fact’s holding. We can tell Aristotle endorses this distinction from multiple places in the text where he licenses an inference from one predication fact’s holding to another predication fact’s holding. The best explanation for (...) each such inference is that he takes some predication facts to be mediated by others. Once the distinction between direct and mediated predication has been explained and argued for, I show how it can help solve a persistent problem for the traditional view of non-substantial particulars in the Categories—that is, the view that non-substantial particulars are particular in the sense of being non-recurrent. Along with vindicating the traditional view, the direct/mediated predication distinction gives us a distinctive way of understanding what it is for something to be recurrent (or non-recurrent) as well as a better understanding of Aristotle’s broader commitments in the Categories as a whole. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of papers on Predicative Algebraic Set Theory, where we lay the necessary groundwork for the subsequent parts, one on realizability [B. van den Berg, I. Moerdijk, Aspects of predicative algebraic set theory II: Realizability, Theoret. Comput. Sci. . Available from: arXiv:0801.2305, 2008], and the other on sheaves [B. van den Berg, I. Moerdijk, Aspects of predicative algebraic set theory III: Sheaf models, 2008 ]. We introduce the notion of a predicative category with small (...) maps and show that it provides a sound and complete semantics for constructive set theories like IZF and CZF. The main technical contribution of this paper is that it shows in detail that such categories can always be conservatively embedded in categories that are exact. These exactness properties play a crucial rôle in showing that predicative categories with small maps contain models of set theory and that they are closed under sheaves and realizability. We will prove the former statement in this paper as well, leaving a proof of the closure properties to the papers on realizability and sheaves as mentioned above. (shrink)

This book presents a rigorous foundation for defining Boolean categories and will appeal to graduate students and researchers in theoretical computer science.

What in Aristotle corresponds, in whole or (more likely) in part, to our contemporary notion of predication? This paper sketches counterparts in Aristotle's text to our theories of expression and of truth, and on this basis inquires into his treatment of sentences assigning an individual to its kinds. In some recent accounts, the Metaphysics offers a fresh look at such sentences in terms of matter and form, in contrast to the simpler theory on offer in the Categories . I argue (...) that the Metaphysics initiates no change in this regard over the Categories . The point that form is (metaphysically) predicated of matter is a contribution, not to the account of statement predication, but to the analysis of compound material substances. Otherwise put, in our terms Aristotelian form is not - in particular, is not also - a propositional function, but a function from matter to compound material substances. (shrink)

The article proposes a renewed analysis of the texts in which Aristotle claims that the term ‘good’ is spoken of in many ways and more precisely in as many ways as there are categories. After a revision of the traditional interpretations, a new reading of the texts is advanced in the light of the theory of predication described in Top. 103 b20-38 and Metaph. 1017 a7-30. The conclusion is that in the Aristotelian passages on the multivocity of ‘good’, the word (...) ‘good’ should not be meant as the predicate of categorially distinct realities, and therefore as a qualifying adjective, but itself as the subject of the question what is it? (τί ἐστι;) In this way, it is possible to advance the hypothesis that the homonymous notion of ‘good’ performs a predicative function, useful to the formulation of practical and prescriptive propositions. (shrink)

abstract: In the Categories, Aristotle relies on the truth of claims like ‘Socrates is an individual’ and ‘human is a species,’ but it is not clear how terms like ‘species’ and ‘individual’ fit into the framework of the Categories. Do these terms introduce substances or accidents? When we truly apply them to a subject, is the predication we express essential or accidental? These questions puzzled ancient commentators on the Categories but have largely been neglected in modern scholarship. My central contention (...) is that these terms correspond to entities outside of the categories. An upshot of my account is that sentences like ‘human is a species’ and ‘Socrates is an individual’ express neither essential nor accidental predications. (shrink)

This paper shows how the universals of category theory in mathematics provide a model (in the Platonic Heaven of mathematics) for the self-predicative strand of Plato's Theory of Forms as well as for the idea of a "concrete universal" in Hegel and similar ideas of paradigmatic exemplars in ordinary thought. The paper also shows how the always-self-predicative universals of category theory provide the "opposite bookend" to the never-self-predicative universals of iterative set theory and thus that the paradoxes arose from having (...) one theory (e.g., Frege's Paradise) where universals could be either self-predicative or non-self-predicative (instead of being always one or always the other). (shrink)

ON A GENERAL READING of the Metaphysics and the treatises of the so-called Organon, the types of assertion which Aristotle would allow as genuine predications seem relatively straightforward. According to the Categories, for instance, a species is characteristically predicated of the individuals falling under it, while genera and differentiae are predicated both of the relevant species and their associated individuals. The predicates are, in these instances, universals in a familiar Aristotelian sense. Furthermore, these intra-categorial predications, such as "Socrates is a (...) man" and "white is a color," are not the only instances of categorial acts. Aristotle also admits certain cross-categorial predications as logically well-formed; for example, "Socrates is white" and "Socrates is in the marketplace". These latter predications are at first glance also intelligible enough, though there are in both cases questions yet to be faced about the logical structure and ontological commitments of such ways of speaking. For Aristotle, one metaphysical theme presented even on the face of these linguistic appearances is the possibility that being a substrate for predication counts as a criterion for ontological primacy or, more generally, that being an ultimate substrate for meaningful discourse is grounds for being primarily real. An obvious corollary to this line of thought is the thesis that whatever might be said of or predicated of such primary substrata is ontologically dependent upon them. Just such a criterion seems to be at work in disqualifying universals from their claim to be substance in a significant sense. Therefore, it would be somewhat surprising to find primary substance appearing anywhere as a predicate. (shrink)

In this volume, the author investigates and argues for, a particular answer to the question: What is the right way to logically analyze modalities from natural language within formal languages? The answer is: by formalizing modal expressions in terms of predicates. But, as in the case of truth, the most intuitive modal principles lead to paradox once the modal notions are conceived as predicates. -/- The book discusses the philosophical interpretation of these modal paradoxes and argues that any satisfactory approach (...) to modality will have to face the paradoxes independently of the grammatical category of the modal notion. By systematizing modal principles with respect to their joint consistency and inconsistency, Stern provides an overview of the options and limitations of the predicate approach to modality that may serve as a useful starting point for future work on predicate approaches to modality. Stern also develops a general strategy for constructing philosophically attractive theories of modal notions conceived as predicates. The idea is to characterize the modal predicate by appeal to its interaction with the truth predicate. This strategy is put to use by developing the modal theories Modal Friedman-Sheard and Modal Kripke-Feferman. (shrink)

The possibility of formal representation of Aristotle’s discussion about singular predication in Categories 10, 13b27-35 is investigated through three symbolic idioms: the first-order language with identity, with and without definitive description, and through the languages of free logics. I show that such representations are not fully adequate. According to the first option, we are committing Aristotle with some (meta)logical implications he is not willing to accept. According to the second option, we are burdening Aristotle with Russell’s theory of names. Finally, (...) the third option leaves us with the assumption that ‘exist(s)’ could be represented with a predicate. This assumption, however, Aristotle emphatically rejects. (shrink)

The article provides a linguophilosophical analysis of theoretical approaches to the symbolism of Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Bely using the predicative concept of Lyudmila Gogotishvili. It is shown that the consideration of the category of symbol in the dimensions of the unmanifest and the manifest makes it possible to expand the problematics of symbolism into phenomenological and linguophilosophical perspectives. In this case, symbolization turns out to be associated with reference, determined by the specifics of the “participation” in it of the (...) linguistic subject and predicate and the status of the referent as a phenomenon of consciousness. The antinomy of the unmanifest and the manifest presupposes in symbolic reference the allocation of a special extra-linguistic category of the most real, which is fundamentally outside the field of natural language and is energetically associated with it through verbal myth. It is shown that the ratio of myth, name and the most real in the reference allows using Gogotishvili’s predicative concept to evaluate the linguophilosophical features of this or that approach to the symbol. It is concluded that the symbolism of Vyacheslav Ivanov presupposes the prevailing role of the predicate in the reference to the unmanifest most real and can be designated as mythological, while the symbolism of Andrei Bely presupposes the prevailing role of the subject in the reference to the real, manifested in language, and can be designated as metaphorical. (shrink)

Reconstructs the original Greek version of the confatalia-argument that Cicero attributes to Chrysippus in De fato and misrepresent in crucial ways. Compares this argument with Seneca's discussion of determinism in the Naturales quaestiones. Clarifies that Seneca makes a different distinction from that attested in Cicero's De fato. Argues that problems with interpreting both accounts derive from disregarding terminological distinctions harder to spot in the Latin versions and, related to this, insufficient attention to the ontological distinction between bodies (such as Fate) (...) and predicates (e.g. "what is fated"), which unfortunately does not square well with the modern ontological category "event." Contains some corrections to the author's earlier discussion of the topic in Seneca und die Stoa: Der Platz des Menschen in der Welt, De Gruyter 2006, ch. 3.3.4. (shrink)

A natural approach to representing and reasoning about temporal propositions (i.e., statements with time-dependent truth-values) is to associate them with time elements. In the literature, there are three choices regarding the primitive for the ontology of time: (1) instantaneous points, (2) durative intervals and (3) both points and intervals. Problems may arise when one conflates different views of temporal structure and questions whether some certain types of temporal propositions can be validly and meaningfully associated with different time elements. In this (...) paper, we shall summarize an ontological glossary with respect to time elements, and diversify a wider range of meta-predicates for ascribing temporal propositions to time elements. Based on these, we shall also devise a versatile categorization of temporal propositions, which can subsume those representative categories proposed in the literature, including that of Vendler, of McDermott, of Allen, of Shoham, of Galton and of Terenziani and Torasso. It is demonstrated that the new categorization of propositions, together with the proposed range of meta-predicates, provides the expressive power for modeling some typical temporal terms/phenomena, such as starting-instant, stopping-instant, dividing-instant, instigation, termination and intermingling etc. (shrink)

This paper investigates the typology of copulative predication in Tarifit Berber. Three main copulas are identified: (1) verbal, (2) nominal and (3) locative. Given that these elements can all be used as predicates, a uniform configuration which accounts for their derivation is proposed. The structure consists of a lower lexical layer occupied by the predicate (VP, NP etc.) and a higher functional projection represented by the Predicate Phrase (PredP). The Pred – head then enters into an agreement relation with the (...) lower head in the complement position, yielding a predicational copula sentence. Since these constructions are all marked for tense/aspect, the derivation is extended further to a TP projection where the relevant feature is valued. In view of the unified syntactic analysis, the difference between various copula predicates is optimally reduced to the categorial status of the basic predicate occupying the lower lexical projection. The paper identifies another copula construction, which correlates with the proxemics-locative. An examination of this configuration from a close range reveals that this particular locative occupies the subject position whereas the Pred – head is only filled with a bare syntactic feature but encodes no phonological information. (shrink)

In this paper the machinery and results developed in [Awodey et al, 2004] are extended to the study of constructive set theories. Specifically, we introduce two constructive set theories BCST and CST and prove that they are sound and complete with respect to models in categories with certain structure. Specifically, basic categories of classes and categories of classes are axiomatized and shown to provide models of the aforementioned set theories. Finally, models of these theories are constructed in the category of (...) ideals. (shrink)

For many recent readers of Hegel, Wilfrid Sellars’s 1956 London lectures on the “Myth of the Given” have signaled an important rapprochement between Hegelian and analytic traditions in philosophy. Here I want to explore the ideas of another philosopher, also active in London in the 1950s, who consciously pursued such a goal: John N. Findlay. The ideas that Findlay brought to Hegel—sometimes converging with, sometimes diverging from those of Sellars—had been informed by his earlier study of the Austrian philosopher Alexius (...) Meinong, and transformations of Meinong’s ideas by his student, the logician Ernst Mally. These ideas that Findlay found Hegel-friendly are ones that have had a particular bearing on more recent analytic modal metaphysics, especially via the work of Findlay’s own former student, Arthur Prior. Given this, we might not be surprised at the similarities between the type of actualist interpretation of modal logic that Prior offered in opposition to David Lewis’s variant on Leibnizian possibilism, and Hegel’s approach to the category of “Actuality” [Wirklichkeit] at the end of the Objective Logic of The Science of Logic. But the similarities, I suggest, do not end there, as elements of Hegel treatment of predication in the Subjective Logic parallel similar elements found in the work of Mally and, more recently, “modal actualists” such as Prior and Stalnaker. In this paper I explore some puzzling features of Hegel’s treatment of predication in the Subjective Logic from the point of view of the need for a logic for thought about the modally complex actual world, as Hegel conceived it. (shrink)

Here, we present a category ${\mathbf {pEff}}$ which can be considered a predicative variant of Hyland's Effective Topos ${{\mathbf {Eff} }}$ for the following reasons. First, its construction is carried in Feferman’s predicative theory of non-iterative fixpoints ${{\widehat {ID_1}}}$. Second, ${\mathbf {pEff}}$ is a list-arithmetic locally cartesian closed pretopos with a full subcategory ${{\mathbf {pEff}_{set}}}$ of small objects having the same categorical structure which is preserved by the embedding in ${\mathbf {pEff}}$ ; furthermore subobjects in ${{\mathbf {pEff}_{set}}}$ are classified by (...) a non-small object in ${\mathbf {pEff}}$. Third ${\mathbf {pEff}}$ happens to coincide with the exact completion of the lex category defined as a predicative rendering in ${{\widehat {ID_1}}}$ of the subcategory of ${{\mathbf {Eff} }}$ of recursive functions and it validates the Formal Church’s thesis. Hence pEff turns out to be itself a predicative rendering of a full subcategory of ${{\mathbf {Eff} }}$. (shrink)

Cet article se propose d’étudier la discussion de la conception aristotélicienne de la prédication chez Simplicius, et notamment de la relation entre la prédication synonyme et la prédication essentielle. Tant dans l’œuvre d’Aristote que dans le Commentaire sur les Catégories d’Aristote de Simplicius, il y a un lien étroit entre les deux formes de prédication. Dans la littérature scientifique sur Aristote, on trouve l’hypothèse que, pour Aristote, la prédication synonyme implique la prédication essentielle. On trouve également l’argument selon lequel cette (...) hypothèse est compatible avec la théorie aristotélicienne, mais que cela n’est pas le cas chez Platon. L’abondante discussion que mène Simplicius à propos de la prédication synonyme et de la prédication essentielle suggère que celui-ci s’est rendu compte des difficultés qui découlent de l’hypothèse selon laquelle la prédication synonyme implique la prédication essentielle. Il s’agit alors de montrer que Simplicius, grâce à une interprétation originale du prédicat, rend cette hypothèse moins problématique pour Platon et pose ainsi un cadre exégétique qui permet d’harmoniser les théories de Platon et d’Aristote. (shrink)

One of the earliest and most influential treatises on the subject of this volume is Aristotle's Categories. Aristotle's title is a form of the Greek verb for speaking against or submitting an accusation in a legal proceeding. By the time of Aristotle, it also meant: to signify or to predicate. Surprisingly, the "predicates" Aristotle talks about include not only bits of language, but also such nonlinguistic items as the color white in a body and the knowledge of grammar in a (...) man's soul. (Categories I/ii) Equally surprising are such details as Aristotle's use of the terms 'homonymy' and 'synonymy' in connection with things talked about rather than words used to talk about them. Judging from the evidence in the Organon, the Metaphysics, and elsewhere, Aristotle was both aware of and able to mark the distinction between using and men tioning words; and so we must conclude that in the Categories, he was not greatly concerned with it. For our purposes, however, it is best to treat the term 'predication' as if it were ambiguous and introduce some jargon to disambiguate it. Code, Modrak, and other authors of the essays which follow use the terms 'linguistic predication' and 'metaphysical predication' for this. (shrink)

First, given criteria for identifying universals and particulars, it is shown that stuffs appear to qualify as neither. Second, the standard solutions to the logico-linguistic problem of mass terms are examined and evidence is presented in favor of the view that mass terms are straightforward singular terms and, relatedly, that stuffs indeed belong to a metaphysical category distinct from the categories of universal and particular. Finally, a new theory of the copula is offered: 'The cue is cold', 'The cube is (...) ice', and 'Ice is water' all have the form 'A is B'. On the basis of the logical behavior of stuff-names with respect to this univocal copula, definitions are suggested for 'X is a stuff', 'X composes Y', 'X is a material object', and even 'Matter'. Hence an expanded form of logicism. (shrink)

The study considers development and use of verb/predicate chaining constructions by Hebrew speakers from early childhood to adolescence, based on analysis of authentic conversational and narrative corpora. Three types of such constructions are considered, ordered hierarchically by stage of acquisition: (1) monoclausal extended predicates consisting of a verb (modal, aspectual, or evaluative) marked for tense or mood and followed by one or more complements in the infinitive – e.g., yaxol la-asot ‘can, is able to-do’; (2) coreferential interclausal predicate chaining; and (...) (3) mature discursively-motivated topic-chaining. Relevant typological features of Modern Hebrew are reviewed to explain the lack of canonic clause-chaining construction in the language (e.g. the paucity of non-finite constructions in everyday usage, lack of an uninflected basic form of verbs, lack of auxiliary verbs expressing categories of aspect and voice, and monolexemic verb-internal complexity). Monoclausal verb-chaining emerges early in the speech of toddlers in interaction with their caretakers, whereas predicate chaining by coordination across clauses occurs only later, and chunking of such constructions at the service of discourse connectivity is a late-developing device. Nonfinite subordination is an advanced form of clause-combining, in contrast to straightforward subordination with the multifunctional subordinator še’that’. The conclusion is that, unlike the obligatorily fused monoclausal “extended predicates”, bi- and multi-clausal predicate chaining represents an optional rhetorical choice on the part of a given speaker-writer in a particular communicative context. (shrink)

Reconstructs the original Greek version of the confatalia-argument that Cicero attributes to Chrysippus in De fato and misrepresent in crucial ways. Compares this argument with Seneca's discussion of determinism in the Naturales quaestiones. Clarifies that Seneca makes a different distinction from that attested in Cicero's De fato. Argues that problems with interpreting both accounts derive from disregarding terminological distinctions harder to spot in the Latin versions and, related to this, insufficient attention to the ontological distinction between bodies (such as Fate) (...) and predicates (e.g. "what is fated"), which unfortunately does not square well with the modern ontological category "event." Contains some corrections to the author's earlier discussion of the topic in Seneca und die Stoa: Der Platz des Menschen in der Welt, De Gruyter 2006, ch. 3.3.4. (shrink)

This paper explores a neglected category of propositions in Arabic logic, propositions with negative predicates (sālibat al-maḥmūl), by addressing two pivotal questions concerning this propositional form: first, whether it is possible to defend it as distinct from metathetic and simple negative propositions and second, whether affirmative instances of these propositions have existential import. The paper argues for the existence of two distinct and conflicting theories of existential import frequently implicit in the views of Arabic logicians: one centered on the copula (...) and the other on the predicate. (shrink)

This paper explores a neglected category of propositions in Arabic logic, propositions with negative predicates (sālibat al-maḥmūl), by addressing two pivotal questions concerning this propositional form: first, whether it is possible to defend it as distinct from metathetic and simple negative propositions and second, whether affirmative instances of these propositions have existential import. The paper argues for the existence of two distinct and conflicting theories of existential import frequently implicit in the views of Arabic logicians: one centered on the copula (...) and the other on the predicate. (shrink)

Strawson offers three accounts of singular predication: a grammatical, a category and a mediating account. I argue that the grammatical and mediating accounts are refuted by a host of counter-examples and that the latter is worse than useless. In later works Strawson defends only the category account. This account entails that singular terms cannot be predicates; it excludes non-denoting singular terms from being logical subjects, except by means of an ad hoc analogy; it depends upon a notion of identification that (...) is too vague; and it is unnecessarily complicated, relying on analogies where a more uniform explanation should be possible. But I show how the account can be corrected to avoid all these difficulties and to provide an accurate account of singular predication. (shrink)

Contemporary orthodoxy affirms that singular terms cannot be predicates and that, therefore, ‘is’ is ambiguous as between predication and identity. Recent attempts to treat names as predicates do not challenge this orthodoxy. The orthodoxy was built into the structure of modern formal logic by Frege. It is defended by arguments which I show to be unsound. I provide a semantical account of atomic sentences which draws upon Mill's account of predication, connotation and denotation. I show that singular terms may be (...) predicates, that it is highly implausible that there is an ‘is’ of identity in natural languages, and that modern formal logic is deficient in that it cannot recognize sentences, including singular existentials, in which singular terms are predicates, or inferences which depend upon the logical role rather than the logical category of expressions. (shrink)

A theory of higher-order vagueness for partially-defined, context-sensitive predicates like is blue is offered. According to the theory, the predicate is determinately blue means roughly is an object o such that the claim that o is blue is a necessary consequence of the rules of the language plus the underlying non-linguistic facts in the world. Because the question of which rules count as rules of the language is itself vague, the predicate is determinately blue is both vague and partial in (...) a sense analogous (though not completely identical) to the sense in which is blue is vague and partial. However, higher-order vagueness stops there. Although the anti-extension of is determinately blue differs from that of is blue, further iterations of determinately have no semantic effect. The paper closes with a discussion of the need to posit sharp and precise lines dividing the range of potential application of a vague predicate into semantically distinct categories. It is argued that this is less of a problem for the present theory than for many others, because the categories into which the range is divided by the present theory -- like the category of counting as blue because the rules of the language offer speakers no discretion, as opposed to the category of counting as blue because speakers have invoked an absolute minimum of discretion in adjusting the contextually sensitive boundaries of the predicate -- are not those that the linguistic competence of ordinary speakers equips them to make highly accurate and reliable judgments about. (shrink)

The central questions addressed in this paper are: (1) how are forms related to predication? And (2) what role do forms and predication play in the discovery and articulation of truth? The first section of the paper provides—in broad strokes—a synopsis of Plato’s account of forms. The second section considers predication in relation to forms showing that the existence and nature of forms is a necessary condition for predication, and that Plato’s account of predication is consistent with, in fact, anticipates, (...) Aristotle’s treatment of reality in the Categories. The conclusion of the paper is that forms and predication are central to philosophical hermeneutics, to the discovery and articulation of truth. (shrink)

Predicates involved in language and reasoning are claimed to radically differ from categories applied to objects. Human predicates are the cognitive result of a contrast between perceived objects. Object recognition alone cannot generate such operations as modification and explicit negation. The mechanism studied by Hurford constitutes at best an evolutionary prerequisite of human predication ability.

This work, the first book-length study of its topic, is an important contribution to the literature of philosophical logic and philosophy of language, with implications for other branches of philosophy, including philosophy of mathematics. However, five of the book's ten chapters , including many of the author's most original contributions, are devoted to issues about natural language, and lie pretty well outside the scope of this journal, not to mention that of the reviewer's competence. For this reason I will here (...) largely confine my attention to the other half of the book, and so will be far from doing full justice to the book as a whole; indeed, there is such a wealth of detail in the book that I will be unable to do full justice even to the five chapters selected for comment.Non-distributive predicates.To begin with some points that have often been remarked, formulas in classical first-order logic are built up from predicates by means of a limited range of logical operators . Natural language involves many other such operators, beginning with temporal and modal operators, that are of great philosophical interest, but these are ignored by classical first-order logic. The reasons why it ignores them are surely that classical first-order logic was developed primarily for analyzing mathematical arguments, and that such grammatical categories as tense and mood play no significant role in mathematics.It has been less often remarked that the range of predicates considered in classical first-order logic is also limited. From Frege onwards, predicates have been taken to be essentially sentences with one or more gaps or places suitable to be filled in by singular noun phrases. Natural language involves also plural predicates, as well as mixed predicates with some …. (shrink)

Platonism, in its most recent and seemingly most cogent form, has rested on (a) the supposed indispensability of descriptive predicate terms in so-called "improved," or "clarified," or "perspicuous" languages; (b) the distinction between subject and predicate terms based on the asymmetry of the predication relation; and (c) the claimed ontological significance of the different categories of terms implied by (a) and (b). Nominalism, in one of its most pervasive recent forms, has involved the denial of the criterion of ontological commitment (...) embedded in (c) by explicitly or implicitly adopting the criterion expressed in Quine's formula "to be is to be the value of a variable." To avoid the obvious charge that nominalists merely ignore abstract entities by the arbitrary ploy of changing the rules, i.e. denying that ontological commitments are made by the inclusion of primitive predicates in schemata of certain kinds by simply employing a different criterion of commitment, some nominalists have sought to argue for their criterion by pointing to the distinction between singular and general terms and the radically different roles such terms play. The distinction between singular and general terms becomes the premise for an argument that purportedly supports Quine's criterion of ontological commitment. This criterion, in turn, provides the basis for the nomin'alist's use of primitive predicates, as general terms, without ontological commitment to abstract entities. In this paper I shall argue that the nominalist's gambit is inadequate in that the distinction between singular and general terms, as employed by a philosopher like Quine, merely provides a way of stating the nominalist's position and does not provide a reason for holding such a position. To put it another way, if we consider the contemporary nominalist to argue from the distinction between singular and general terms to the cogency of nominalism, since the former provides a ground for Quine's criterion of ontological commitment which, in turn, provides the basis for the latter, then the line of thought is question begging. It is so in that the very way the nominalist draws the distinction presupposes a nominalistic view, since a careful statement of that distinction amounts to a restatement of the nominalistic position. (shrink)

In this article, we address the problem of how people understand predicative metaphors such as “The rumor flew through the office,” and argue that predicative metaphors are understood as indirect (or two-stage) categorizations. In the indirect categorization process, the verb (e.g., fly) of a predicative metaphor evokes an intermediate entity, which in turn evokes a metaphoric category of actions or states (e.g., “to spread rapidly and soon disappear”) to be attributed to the target noun (e.g., rumor), rather than directly evoking (...) a metaphoric category as argued by CitationGlucksberg's (2001) categorization theory. We test our argument using two experiments, namely, offline comprehension and online priming. The offline comprehension experiment showed that interpretation of predicative metaphors had greater overlap with words indirectly associated with the verb than those directly associated with the verb. The online priming experiment demonstrated that indirectly associated words were activated during predicative metaphor comprehension, but directly associated words were not. These results provide convergent evidence for our argument, and thus the psychological validity of two-stage categorization as a process of predicative metaphor comprehension was confirmed. (shrink)