Category: Predication
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Collective Inconsistency and Plural Predication
We often say things like 1. The propositions p, q, r are inconsistent. Suppose, to keep things simple, that each of the three propositions is self-consistent. It will then be false that each proposition is self-inconsistent. (1), then, is a plural predication that cannot be given a distributive paraphrase. What (1) says is that the three…
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A Problem With the Multiple Relations Approach to Plural Predication
Consider 1. Sam and Dave are meeting together. 2. Al, Bill, and Carl are meeting together. 3. Some people are meeting together. Obviously, neither (1) nor (2) can be decomposed into a conjunction of singular predications. Thus (2) cannot be analyzed as 'Al is meeting together & Bill is meeting together & Carl is meeting…
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Irreducibly Plural Predication: ‘They are Surrounding the Building’
Let's think about the perfectly ordinary and obviously intelligible sentence, 1. They are surrounding the building. I borrow the example from Thomas McKay, Plural Predication (Oxford 2006), p. 29. They could be demonstrators. And unless some of them have very long arms, there is no way that any one of them could satisfy the predicate,…
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The Hatfields and the McCoys
Whether or not it is true, the following has a clear sense: 1. The Hatfields outnumber the McCoys. (1) says that the number of Hatfields is strictly greater than the number of McCoys. It obviously does not say, of each Hatfield, that he outnumbers some McCoy. If Gomer is a Hatfield and Goober a McCoy, it…
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I Need to Study Plural Predication
Here is a beautiful aphorism from Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), in Escolios a un Texto Implicito (1977), II, 80, tr. Gilleland: Stupid ideas are immortal. Each new generation invents them anew. Clearly this does not mean: 1. Each stupid idea is immortal and is invented by each new generation anew. So we try: 2. The…
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Richard Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition
The current issue of Dialectica (vol. 64, no. 2, June 2010) includes a symposium on Richard Gaskin, The Unity of the Proposition (Oxford 2008). Gaskin's precis of his work is followed by critical evaluations by William F. Vallicella ("Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition"), Manuel Garcia-Carpintero ("Gaskin's Ideal Unity"), and Benjamin Schnieder ("Propositions United:…
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Predicates and Properties
We are warming up to an examination of deflationary theories of truth according to which truth is either not a property or not a metaphysically substantive property. (I oppose deflationary theories of truth just as I oppose deflationary theories of existence.) But first some clarification of 'predicate' and 'property.' 1. I begin by resisting the traditional conflation…
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The Truthmaker Theory of Predication and Divine Simplicity
In this post I first try to get clear about the truthmaker theory of predication proposed by Michael Bergmann and Jeffrey E. Brower in their A Theistic Argument Against Platonism. I then try to understand how it solves a certain problem in the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). Finally, I raise a question about the authors'…
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Scholastic Realism and Predication
This post continues our explorations in the philosophy of The School. What is a scholastic realist? John Peterson (Introduction to Scholastic Realism, Peter Lang, 1999, p. 6) defines a scholastic realist as follows: S is a scholastic realist =df i) S is a moderate realist and ii) S believes that universals exist in some transcendent…
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Divine Simplicity and Truthmakers: Notes on Brower
1. One of the entailments of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) is that God is identical to: God's omniscience, God's omnipotence, and in general God's X-ness, where 'X' ranges over the divine attributes. And it is easy to see that if God = God's F-ness, and God = God's G-ness, then (by transitivity of…