II: [Critique of Mr. Wilson Strawson's Contribution] Wilfrid Sellars Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 17, No. 4. (Jun., 1957), pp. 458-472. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28195706%2917%3A4%3C458%3AI%5BOMWS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society.
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SYMPOSIUM LOGICAL SUBJECTS AND PHYSICAL OBJECTS
1. When I arrived on the Oxford scene, what struck me with truly revolutionary force was not the surging undercurrent of radical empiricism and positivistic analysis, but rather - and some of you may be surprised to learn this - the framework of philosophical ideas developed by John Cook Wilson and his students, particularly H. A. Prichard. I can say in all seriousness that twenty years ago I regarded Wilson's Statement and Inference as the philosophical book of the century, and Prichard's lectures on perception and on moral philosophy, which I attended with excitement, as veritable models of exposition and analysis. I may add that while my philosophical ideas have undergone considerable changes since 1935, I still think that some of the best philosophical thinking of the past hundred years was done by these two men. I t pleases me greatly, therefore, to call attention to the fact, that Oxford philosophy todayis at least as close to the spirit of Statement and Inference as it is to that of Language, Truth and ~ o ~ i Let c . me quote an interesting passage from Richard Robinson's The Province of Logic, a study of Wilson's conception of logic published in 1931.
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. . Cook Wilson's attitude to language is very striking, and will repay consideration.. . He regularly examines the usage of speech in respect to a problem.. . The ordinary modern philosopher. . . refers occasionally to isolated instances of usage when they happen to support his contentions, but never considers the bearing of usage as a whole on what he says.. . In contrast to this procedure, Cook Wilson comiders the testimony as a whole, and builds not on the occasional ambiguity of a particular word in a particular language, but on those features of usage that are highly general and persistent. . . Cook Wilson almost regularly examines common usage with regard to a problem. . . .His account of inference begins by asking what we should say about what we should ordinarily call cases of inferring . . . He is anxious to have his own views confirmed by usage (pp. 190-196 pssim). Now my purpose in all this is to set the stage for my critique of Mr. Strawson's contribution to this symposium. For, in essence, I shall claim that Strawson's paper fails to do what it sets out to do; that the reason for this failure lies in the unsatisfactory character of his account of the distinction between logical subject and predicate; and, finally, that the correctives for this account are to be found in Cook Wilson's discussion of the subject-predicate distinction in Part 11, Chapters IV-VII, of Statement and ~nferenie.I am not, however, going to present you with a summary
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of Cook Wilson's analysis of the subject-predicate distinction. For while I said that the correctives for Strawson's account of this distinction are to be found in Statement and Inference, I did not say, and do not think, that Wilson's account will do as it stands. I am therefore going to begin my argument by developing an independent account of this distinction, one, however, which will show the impress of his work. I shall then use this account as a background for an examination of Strawson's interpretation of the logical subject, predicate distinction. Finally, I shall ask what remains of the points he wishes to make when the interpretation of this distinction on which they are based is replaced by a more Wilsonian, and, I hope, more adequate account.
2. I shall begin by drawing a number of ontological distinctions. I shall draw no more of these, however, and shall draw them no finer, than is necessary for the purposes of the present discussion. The first distinction is between particulars and what, following Strawson, I shall simply refer to as non-particulars. I agree with Strawson that Socrates is a sound examele of a particular, and that among the other examples that could be given are physical objects. Particulars may be named or referred to by description or referred to by indexical signs. I agree wholeheartedly that proper names are not shorthand for descriptions. Within the ontological category of non-particulars, I shall be primarily concerned with two sub-categories, namely attributes and facts. Thus, Wisdom (in the sense of being wise, where it is people rather than remarks or decisions that are said to be wise) is an attribute, and the fact that Socrates is wise is a fact. Attributes, like particulars, can be referred to by description. They can also be directly designated, or, as we can say, if we are careful, named. Before drawing any further distinctions, let me say that I shall adopt Stawson's device of ignoring the temporal aspects of what is asserted or implied by such statements as "Socrates is wise," and, like him I shall take as my working assumption the idea that the fact that Socrates is wise can be stated by means of the verbal form "Socrates : Wisdom." (I introduce the colon merely as a grammatical device to keep the terms separated where there is danger that they may be wrongly grouped.) Thus I shall speak of the fact Socrates: wisdom (or Socrates: being wise), and shall say that it has two constituents, namely the particular Socrates and the attribute wisdom, or being wise. The second fact I shall adduce by way of example is the fact that wisdom is a virtue. This I shall correspondingly represent by the verbal form "wisdom: being a virtue." Now the interesting thing about this
second fact is that both the constituents of wisdom: being a virtue are attributes. Traditionally this would be put by saying that in the first fact, wisdom plays the role of being exemplified by Socrates, in the second, it plays the role of exemplifying the attribute being a virtue. And I think that this is not too misleading provided we do not make the mistake of supposing that either Socrates exemplifies wisdom Wisdom is exemplified by Socrates is an analysis of the fact Socrates: wisdom. These more complex locutions, instead of analyzing or unpacking the fact that Socrates is wise, are relational forms introduced for the purpose of making explicit the serial character of the categories to which the constituents of this fact belong, I shall call them the categorizing counterparts of "Socrates: wisdom". The fact Socrates: wisdom, itself, consists exhaustively of the constituents Socrates and wisdom. I t is not a disguised asymmetrical relational fact, nor does "Socrates: wisdom" state that Socrates and wisdom are related by the asymmetrical relation, exemplifies, or even is an instance of. On the other hand, the items Socrates, wisdom, being a virtue. . .do form a series. This series has a beginning. There is nothing which stands to Socrates, as Socrates to wisdom, or wisdom to being a virtue. Whether or not the series has an end, or must have an end, I shall not ask. Nor am I concerned to explore the puzzles of the theory of types. If I am committing myself to types, a t least I want to keep the commitment down to a minimum by sticking as close as I can to the examples I shall use. I hope to show that the idea, which must already have occurred to you, that by introducing a serial order into these ontological categories, I have begged the question at issue is without foundation. I shall indeed examine further this asymmetrical aspect of the fact Socrates: wisdom - an asymmetry which, though ontological, has an extremely close connection with the properly logical distinction between subject and predicate. But I shall subsequently locate a symmetry pertaining to the statement "Socrates: wisdom" which concerns the distinction between subject and predicate as what I shall call dialectical categories, I shall argue that the idea that there is no ontological asymmetry to the fact Socrates: wisdom rests on a confusion between the logical and the dialectical senses of "subject" and "predicate." With this promissory note in your hands, I shall unabashedly make use of the language of the theory of types and distinguish the following ontological categories : particulars,
first level attributes ("attributes of particulars"),
second level attributes ("attributes of attributes"),
etc.
One more group of ontological distinctions before we turn to logic. We want a word to express the fact that in both Socrates: wisdom and wisdom: being a virtue, we have a unity of two items from successive catagories. Let us say that is each of them the item from the "earlier" category is the ontological subject, and that the other item is the attribute. Since the concepts of ontological subject and attribute are correlative, when it is clear that the term "subject" is being used as the correlative of "attribute" I shall drop the qualification "ontological." Notice, next, that whereas the term "particular" stands for the first in a series of categories, to which belong the constituents of facts and possible facts of the kind with which we shall be concerned, the term "(ontological) subject" doesn't stand for a category in the series, but, with its correlative "attribute" for a distinction within any of these facts between the item belonging to the nth category, the ontological subject, and the item belonging to the (n 1)th category, the attribute. I t follows, of course, that a particular cannot be an attribute, although what is the attribute of one fact may be the subject of another. Next notice that "first level attribute," "second level attribute," etc., are names of categories in the series, chosen because they reflect the above distinctions. Finally, "attribute" in a second sense of this term (and, incidentally, the one with which we began this discussion) is a general term for items belonging to one or other of the just-mentioned specific categories. In concluding this section, I want to emphasize two points: (1) that both the particular-attribute and the subject-attribute distinctions are purely ontological distinctions; and (2) that the principle that a particular cannot appear in a fact as its attribute constituent, whereas an attribute can appear in a fact as its subject constituent, is a purely ontological principle.
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3. We must next consider certain logical distinctions which are intimately connected with the foregoing. We therefore turn our attention to statements rather than facts. And just as there are many ontological categories which we have not paused to examine, e.g., necessary connection, possibility, actuality; so there are many logical categories which we shall either not mention, or dismiss in passing with a bow. Thus, though the concepts of inference, premise, conclusion, etc., are logical concepts par excellence, so central, indeed, that no explication of the concepts with which we shall be concerned can possibly by adequate unless it relates them to these concepts, we shall have to limit ourselves, by and large, to concepts that are immediately relevant to our problem, and take the connection for granted. Our concern is with the logical distinction, if any, which can be drawn between the logical subject and the logical predicate of such a statement as "Socrates : wisdom."
Any one who is familiar with the idea that ontological categories are syntactical categories "in the material mode of speech" will be able to predict pretty well what I am going to say. Let me therefore emphasize a t the very beginning that I regard the task of explicating the parallel between syntactical categories and ontological categories as the key task of a philosophy of logic, and that I regard the usual things that are said in this connection, including the very contrast between the "formal" and the "material" "modes of speech" as question-begging of the most obvious sort. I shall therefore avoid this terminology, now that it has served my purpose by indicating the sort of thing I am about to say. Thus, corresponding to each ontological category of entities listed on the left, we have the logical category of expressions paired with it to the right : particular attribute ontological subject attribute of first level fact
individual constant
logical predicate
logical subject
predicate of first level
?
Notice that the logical category corresponding to fact is actually the semantical category of true statement. We could have avoided the need for (explicitly) dragging in selnantical concepts by taking as our point of departure states of affairs rather than facts, where a fact is, ontologically, an actual as opposed to a merely possible state of affairs. Thus, we could 1.c. have spoken of Socrates and tallness as constituents of the (nonactual) state of affairs Somtes: tallness. However, having started out with facts, let us stick to them. Now, just as there can be no facts in which Socrates is attribute, though there can be facts in which wisdom is ontological subject, as well as facts in which wisdom is attribute, so there can be no statement in which the term "Socrates" is logical predicate, though there are statements in which ,,wisdomu is logical subject, and others in which it is logical predicate. At this point there may be those who will say "why not? Isn't this a matter of convention? Couldn't we adopt a system of syntactical rules according to which something could both be a sentence and have "Socrates" as its logical predicate?" Fortunately, the essential point can be made without entering the lion's den of alternative logics. The terms "individual constant," "logical predicate," etc., as I have presented them are no more isolated in meaning than their ontological counterparts, though we have not traced their connections as we did in the case of the latter. Thus, it is as logically absurd, given these interconnections, to say that a statement could have an individual constant for its logical predioate, as we found it to be to say that a fact could have a particular as its attribute constituent. Whether a fruitful alternative system of logical
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and ontological categories can be devised is another matter, and whether it even makes sense to speak of such systems, I shall not discuss. For the major point I wish to make in this paper is that although, as Strawson has noticed, there is a sense in which Socrates can be said to be the predicate and wisdom the subject of the statement "Socrates: wisdom", with respect to its use on a given occasion, it is a mistake to conclude that the logical distinction between the subject and the predicate of a statement is relative to its use on particular occasion. And the exposure of this mistake depends on no subtle considerations concerning alternative systems of logical categories. So far we have applied the distinction between logical sz~bjectand logical predicate to expressions, thus I have said that "Socrates" - not Socrates - is the logical subject and "wisdom" - not wisdom - the logical predicate of the statement "Socrates: wisdom." But we can now introduce the convention whereby the particular, Socrates, will be said to be or to 6< appear as" the logical subject of the statement "Socrates: wisdom"; by virtue of the fact that "Socrates" is the name of Somates, and "SocratesH,is in the previous sense the logical subject of the statement. Similarly wisdom will now be said to be or to "appear as" its logical predicate. Notice, therefore, that whereas to say of a particular that it is an ontological subject involves no reference to statement (though it does involve reference to a fact), to say of a particular that it is a logical subject is always to say that it is the logical subject of a statement. Again, the attribute wisdom is logical predicate with respect to the statement "Socrates: wisdom," but logical subject with respect to the statement "wisdom: being a virtue."
a
4. I have referred on two occasions to a sense of the contrast between "subject" and "predicate" in which wisdom can be the subject and Socrates the predicate on the occasion of a particular use of the statement "Socrates: wisdom." But what is this sense? and what is the status of this subject-predicate distinction if it is not logical? Let me back into this section by taking up the latter point first. I shall call the distinction a dialectical one, not, however, because I should deny that it is a logical distinction, but because I want to emphasize that it is a distinction which concerns the role of a statement utterance or statement event in a given context of discourse, and cannot be defined solely with reference to statements as types. In this respect it resembles, by the way, the concept of premise. A statement is not a premise as statement type. As type the most we can say is that it can be either a premise or a conclusion, i.e., that some of its tokens function as premises, others as conclusions. And in this respect the dialectical distinction between subject and predicate differs from the distinction we have just been drawing between logical subject and logical predicate, for the latter can be defined with respect to statement types alone.
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In approaching this new distinction, I shall make the assumption that the question "what (i.e., of what character) is Socrates?" can be represented by the verbal form "Socrates: 01" where the question mark serves to indicate that a person who uses a token of this form is, so to speak, holding it out and requesting the person a t whom he directs it to "fill in" a value for the free variable "0."In terms of this picture, then, the answer "Socrates: wisdom" is a statement utterance which shares the term "Socrates" with the question, but contains the "filler" "wisdom" in place of the variable "0." I shall therefore distinguish the term-events "Socrates" and "wisdom" in the statement-event "Socrates: wisdom" given in answer to the question "Socrates: 01" as the old term and the new term, respectively. Now it is clear that a statement event "Socrates: wisdom" may be an answer to the question "Socrates: 01" or to the question "x:wisdom?" In the latter case, "wisdom" is the old term, and Socrates the new term. And if the question is raised with respect to the statement type, "which is the old term, and which the new term?" the strict answer is that neither is either, though in a pickwickian sense it may be said that each is both, since in some of its tokens"Socrates" is the new term and "wisdom" the old term, while in other the new and old terms are reversed. Which is which depends on which question the statement is being used to answer. Notice that just as we first defined logical subject and logical predicate as categories of expressions (with respect to a given statement in which they occur), and then introduced a sense in which non-linguistic entities can be logical subject or logical predicate with respect to a given statement; so we can now introduce a sense in which the particular, Socrates (or the attribute wisdom) is an old term or a new term, this time, however, with respect to a given statement-event. Thus, we can say that Socrates is the old term with respect to the statement-event "Socrates: wisdom" as an answer to the question "Socrates : 0 3" and that wisdom is the new term with respect to this same statement-event. Now it might be thought that I am about to say that the distinction between subject and predicate as dialectical concepts is identical with that between old term and new term. But while this is the heart of what I am going to say, certain other distinctions must be brought into play in order to explain why the dialectical and logical distinctions have so often been confused - so much so that one pair of words is used for both distinctions. But first, a simple point. We can, if we wish, sum up what was said a moment ago by saying that statement types are symmetrical with respect to the new term, old term distinction. To the extent, then, that this distinction explicates the dialectical dimension of the traditional distinction between subject and predicate, it accounds for the symmetry
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which logicians have noticed when reflecting on this distinction, and which when they have failed to distinguish between the dialectical and the logical dimensions of this distinction, has puzzled them greatly. 5. I said a moment ago that while the new term, old term distinction is the heart of the distinction between dialectical subject and dialectical predicate, this is by no means the whole story. And, indeed, a moment's reflection reminds us that it would be puzzling in the extreme to say without further ado that Socrates is the (dialectical) predicate of "Socrates: wisdom" even if we are considering this statement as an answer to the question "x: wisdom?" The reason for this lies in the connection between the term "predicate" and the phrase "to predicate.. . of - -." And, as we explore this connection, we shall discover the specific way in which the dialectical notions of new term and old term have been blended with the logical distinction between subject and predicate, to form the dialectical distinction between subject and predicate. Consider the following exchange, A : "Socrates : 0 1'' B : "Socrates : wisdom." and imagine a rather stuffy logician to be asked "What was the subject of A's question? and what did he want to know about it?" We can imagine him to reply: "The subject was Socrates, and he wanted to know what attribute he has." If we then ask him to describe what B did, we can imagine him to say, "B replied by asserting that Socrates has the attribute wisdom." But we can also imagine him to say, "B predicated wisdom of Socrates." Now it is clear to begin with that the dialectical concept of predicating something-1 of something-2 - and notice that what is predicated is always an attribute - is not the same as that of uttering assertively a statement having something-1 as its logical predicate and something-2 as its logical subject. For if it were, then wisdom, being the logical predicate of "Socrates: wisdom." could never be the dialectical subject of an utterance of "Socrates: wisdom." And it is equally clear that if the dialectical predicate were simply what is predicated of something by the utterance (or by the person who makes it) then Socrates could never be the dialectical predicate of ' Socrates-wisdom." Fortunately, the way out of the difficulties that seem to lurk in these remarks is simple in the extreme. All that is necessary is to remember that correlated with 'Socrates is wise" are its categorizing counterparts, "Socrates exemplifies wisdom," and "Wisdomis exemplified by Socrates." I t is the second categorizing counterpart that is the key to the solution. For although it is equivalent in its descriptive force to "Socrates is wise," it has wisdom as its logical subject and being exemplified by Socrates as its logical predicate. Suppose, there-
fore, we construe "predicating something-1 of something-2" in such a way that when "Socrates: wisdom" is the answer to "Socrates: 03" the respondent would be said to have predicated wisdom of Socrates [in which case what is predicated coincides with the logical predicate of the statement], whereas when it is the answer to the question "x: wisdom?" the respondent would be said to have predicated being exemplified by Socrates of Wisdom [in which case what is predicated is the logical predicate of the appropriate categorizing counterpart]. The result would be the same if we identified predicating something-1 of something-& with uttering assertively the statement of which something-1 is the logical predicate and something-& the logical subject, but treated the second type of case as though the respondent had said "Wisdom : being exemplified by Socrates" in reply to the question "Wisdom: being exemplified by x?" Now the above considerations naturally lead to the idea that whereas in the exchange, A: "Socrates: 0 3 " B : "Socrates : wisdom"
Socrates is the dialectical subject, wisdom the dialectical predicate, in the exchange, A: "x: wisdom?" B : "Socrates : wisdom" wisdom is the dialectical subject, but being exemplified by Socrates the dialectical predicate. But nothing compels us to use the term "(dialectical) predicate" in such a way that if x is the (dialectical) predicate, the respondent must be predicating x of something. And no harm is done if we so construe "dialectical predicate" that when, for example, being exemplified by Socrates is what is predicated, Socrates (tout court) will be said to be the dialectical predicate. That is to say, this will do no harm if we don't forget what we have done, and suppose that if Socrates is the dialectical predicate of a statement event, then the respondent must be predicating Socrates of something. This would be logical nonsense, indeed, and would give rise to all kinds of perplexities. Now the outcome of all these distinctions and definitions is that we now see how it can be that the statement-type "Socrates: wisdom" can be "symmetrical" with respect to "the subject-predicate distinction" in the dialectical sense, of course - without this giving aid or comfort to the idea that the statement-type is "symmetrical" with respect to the logical subject-predicate distinction or, which is more important, to the distinction between (ontological) subject and attribute. The symmetry of
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the dialectical distinction between subject and predicate has not the slightest tendency to support talk to the effect that Socrates and wisdom "enter symmetrically" into Socrates: wisdom. 6. Against the background of these distinctions, let me make some specific criticisms of Strawson's argument. I shall begin by pointing out that the closest counterpart in Strawson's paper to the idea that the distinction between (dialectical) subject and predicate concerns the status of a statement-event as an answer to a question conceived of as a statement function with a free variable held out for "filling," is his suggestion that If we look a t the singular sentence "Socrates is wise" from the standpoint of the quantified sentence "None but the wise deserve the fair," we shall be inclined to count Socrates as an individual and wisdom as the predicate. But if we look a t the same singular sentence from the point of view of the quantified sentence "All Socrates' virtues were possessed by Plato," we should count wisdom as the individual and Socrates as the predicate. The whole distinction is relative to our decisions to quantify.
I propose to show that this won't do at all. But first some terminological remarks. Strawson uses the term "individual" as equivalent to "logical subject." Thus, the contrast "individual-predicate" is, in his terminology, identical with that between "logical subject-predicate." Again, Strawson draws no distinction corresponding to that we have drawn between the pairs "logical subject-logical predicate" and "dialectical subject-dialectical predicate." In effect, viewed from our standpoint, he is claiming that all there is to the subject-predicate distinction is the dialectical distinction, which, as we have seen, he construes along quite different lines. Let us focus our attention somewhat more closely on the dialectical aspects of his account. Our two interpretations have in common the fact that we determine the status of wisdom as subject or predicate of "Socrates: wisdom" by determining whether or not, on a given occasion, it was, to put the matter as simply as possible, paired with a variable. On our account, the variable is the free variable of the question "Socrates : a?" and if paired with it, wisdom is the dialectical predicate. On Strawson's account, the variable is the bound variable of a generalization, and, if paired with it, wisdom is (in his terminology) the logical subject or individual. Now the heart of Strawson's account, as well as the fundamental mistake he is making, is to be found in the following passage: At the level of the quantified sentence, whatever we quantify over are individuals; and looking back from the level of the quantified sentence to the related singular sentence, we read the distinction back into this sentence and say that whatever is designated by those names in this sentence which have given place to variables
in the quantified sentence, is an individual, a logical subject, while what the rest of the sentence introduces appears as a predicate.
Well, suppose that we view "Socrates: wisdom" against "(EM) Socrates:0." According to the above passage we should be considering wisdom as an individual. But this is plausible only because Strawson has confused viewing something as one item among many (which, of course, is viewing it as an individual in one sense of this term), with viewing something as an individual in the sense of logical subject. Or, to put the matter still more directly, he has confused viewing something as belonging to the range of values of a variable, with viewing something as belonging to the set of items which satisfy a certain function. Thus, suppose we view wisdom against the statement "(EM) : being one of Socrates' virtues." Since in any singular statement corresponding to this quantified statement, e.g.9 "Temperance: being one of Socrates' virtues" the item corresponding to "0," e.g., temperance, is, in our sense, the logical subject, in so viewing wisdom we may well be said to view wisdom as a subject. But notice that here we are viewing wisdom as belonging to a set of items which satisfy the function "0: being one of Socrates' virtues." We are viewing it as the ontological subject of the state of affairs Wisdom: being one of Socrates' virtues. On the other hand, when we view wisdom against the statement "(E0) Socrates: 0," the situation is quite different. In any singular statement corresponding to this quantified statement, e.g., 'Socrates : temperance" the item corresponding to "0" functions as (in our sense) logical predicate, or, to go to the root of the matter, as attribute in the state of affairs formulated by the statement. Thus, in viewing wisdom against the statement "(E0) Socrates: 0," we are viewing it as a logical predicate (in our sense) and, fundamentally, as the attribute in the state of affairs Plato: wisdom. I have been claiming that Strawson has confused being one item among others in the range of a variable with belonging to a set of items ("individuals") satisfying a certain function. But, it may be said, is this a valid distinction? Do not the values of "0" which make the second statement, that is "(E0) Socrates: 0," true, satisfy the function "Socrates: 0" just as the values which make the first statement, that is "(E0) 0: being one of Socrates' virtues" true, satisfy the function "0 : being one of Socrates' virtues"? The plausibility of this retort, however, rests on an equivocation in the use of the word "function." In one context the term refers to a propositional function; in the other to, shall we say, a real function. For though an item cannot satisfy a real function without satisfying a propositional function, it is not the case that to satisfy a propositional
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function is necessarily to satsify a real function. To satisfy a real function is to be subject constituent in a fact, and therefore the logical subject (in our sense) of the statement which formulates the fact; whereas merely satisfying a propositional function is compatible with playing either subject or attribute role in a fact belonging to the range of the function, and therefore with being either logical subject or predicate (in our sense) of the statement which formulates this fact. I t is interesting to note that when Strawson chooses a quantified statement against which to view "Socrates: wisdom" with the result that wisdom appears as an "individual", he chooses one in which some of the items in the range of the variable with which wisdom is being matched are asserted to exemplify an attribute (of second level), and do appear (in our sense) as logical subjects. For he chooses as his example not "(E0) Socrates: 0" of which this would not be true, but "All Socrates' virtues were possessed by Plato."
If he bad chosen the former, he might have seen his mistake. I suspect that one reason why he didn't discover his mistake is that the ordinary language equivalent of statements which quantify over first level attributes are extremely dull unless these statements present these attributes as exemplifying a second level attribute. What fire can one strike with "Socrates has some attribute" as compared with "All Socrates' virtues were possessed by Plato." To sum up our results to date, not all quantification over non-particulars presents them as logical subjects. does, but does not. On the other hand, all quantification over non-particulars presents them as items in a set of items. But to be an item in a set of items is not the same as to be an individual in the sense of logical subject. But if Strawson's attempt to explicate the notion of logical subject rests on a clear-cut and straightforward mistake, his treatment of the notion of predicate is baffling in its obscurity, especially when he sets out to explain how Socrates can be the predicate of "Socrates: wisdom." To begin with, he ties together the notion of appearing in discourse as a predicate with that of appearing in discourse as a principle of grouping. This is all very well as far as it goes, for clearly to predicate something-1 of something-2 is to consider somehting-2 as one of the items which is grouped by something-l. But in the course of introducing this idea, he
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draws a distinction between primary and secondary principles of grouping. Thus, he writes : Things which can supply of themselves such a principle (and can appear as predicates) may be called primary predicates. Not all predicates are primary predicates. For instance, wisdom is a quality which can supply a principle of grouping or counting things (and can appear as a predicate); but it can supply such a principle only if we know whether we are to count, or group, men or remarh or decisions etc. So wisdom is not, by itself, a primary predicate.
Now I would have thought that what we have in the case of "wisdom" is an interesting kind of ambiguity clarified by Aristotle in his well-known discussion of "healthy." If this is so, we could not have a statement or statement function or a predicate unless the sense in which the term is being used is specified by the context, as it is, of course, in the statement "Socrates: wisdom." But this is not the point I want to press. I t is rather that having introduced the distinction between primary and secondary principles of grouping without any genuine explication, Strawson files it away for use when he is up against the problem of explaining how Socrates can be the predicate of ('Socrates: wisdom." By the terms of his problem he has to find a sense in which Socrates can serve as a principle of grouping. Thus he looks for something involving Socrates which can be predicated of something. He sees, of course, that Socrates pure and simple can't be predicated of anything. He puts this, however, by saying that Socrates does not yield a primary principle of counting or grouping. But, he goes on to say, Socrates can serve as a secondary principle of grouping. Sticking to the view of a predicate as yielding a primary or non-primary principle of counting or grouping, we can easily see that Socrates, no less than wisdom, can yield such a principle. Evidently not a primary principle, not a primary predicate. "Now many things are of #ocratea" is not an answerable form of question as it stands, for we do not know what to count. "Of Socrates" does not itself supply a primary principle of counting. But if we suppose a primary predicate already supplied, a kind of thing specified, then we can certainly use "of Socrates" as a principle of counting or grouping among the things picked out by the primary predicate. Thus we can certainly ask "How many speeches are of Socrates?" or "Which speeches are of Socrates?" And in yielding only a secondary predicate, Socrates is not inferior to wisdom.
Now there is a sense in which our account can be said to bring in Socrates as a secondary principle of grouping when Socrates is appearing as the dialectical predicate of "Socrates: wisdom." For according to our account, what is predicated of wisdom is being exemplified by Socrates, and Socrates is the dialectical predicate by virtue of supplying this principle of grouping, though not himself a principle of grouping. Strawso.n, however, has cut himself off from this course, and, as a result, he has to suppose that the secondary principle of grouping furnished by Socrates comes from outside the proposition. Thus, whereas on our account, to
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determine what "Socrates: wisdom" predicates of wisdom, when it does predicate something of wisdom, one has merely to understand the statement "Socrates: wisdom." On Strawson's account, one has to bring in extraneous matters. "Of Socrates" does not itself supply a primary principle of counting. But if we suppose a primary predicate already supplied, a kind of thing specified, then we can certainly use "of Socrates" as a principle of counting or grouping.
7. But if I am right in claiming that Strawson has made serious mistakes in setting up the framework of his argument, what remains of the points he wishes to make when this framework is revised? He argues, it will be reme~bered,and I use his terminology, that the idea that particulars are the individuals (logical subjects) par excellence, cannot be accounted for as long as one focusses attention of such statements as "Socrates: wisdom," in which both the items referred to are named. The named particular Socrates has no exclusive claim to appear in this statement as logical subject nor wisdom as predicate. On the other hand, once we take into account the fact that particulars are by-and-large referred to by description whereas this is not true to anywhere near the same extent of non-particulars (save in such exotic talk as that of mathematicians), we have found an asymmetry between particulars and non-particulars with respect to the subject-predicate distinction which throws light on two problems: (1) Why have philosophers tended to hold that particulars are the logical subjects par excellence? (2) Why have they tended to hold that particulars can be only logical subjects, never predicates? For, the argument, continues, "when we speak of "a so-and-so" and remain at the level of non-identifying reference, we speak of one of the things which fall under a certain principle of counting or grouping (specified by "so-and-so'') without specifying the thing itself and hence without specifying any principle of grouping or counting which the thing itself might supply. One might say: The thing itself appear as an individual because it fails to appear as a possible predicate." Now I am not a t all clear why an item appearing in discourse as the so-and-so can't previde a secondary principle of grouping. But to explore this point would take us into the theory of descriptions and the distinction between the denotation and sense of a descriptive phrase as well as into the question of what exactly is meant by a secondary principle of grouping. This I am not going to do. For we are already in a position to see that Strawson's account of the situation won't do a t all. For the only relevant difference between "Socrates :wisdom" and "The so-and-so : wisdom"
is that in the case of the second statement, an unnamed particular is, so
to speak, given as exemplifying one attribute in order to state of it that it exemplifies another. I t is referred to as exemplifying so-and-so in order to state that it exemplifies wisdom. Thus, in the first statement it is simply stated that a certain named particular exemplifies a named attribute; whereas in the second case it is presupposed that a certain unnamed particular exemplifies a certain attribute in order to state that it exemplifies another. (Whether, and if so in what sense, it also states what it presupposes, I shall not go into on this occasion). But while the second statement highlights in this way the idea of a particular as the subject of attributes, the first statement, "Socrates: wisdom" equally presents a particular as a logical subject. Whether Socrates, presented by the statement type as its logical subject (and also as the ontological subject of the state of affairs formulated by the statement) is also the dialectical subject can only be determined, of course, with respect to a given statement-event. Strawson's account of the situation thus rests, from the standpoint of our analysis, on the idea that since the statement type doesn't present Socrates as dialectical subject, it doesn't present Socrates as logical subject. I t is this which leads him to suppose that the statement-type "The so-and-so : wisdom" presents a particular as subject, whereas "Socrates : wisdom" does not. The truth of the matter is that while "The so-and-so: wisdom" presents a particular as a subject in a different way, both statements present particulars as subjects, though neither presents a particular as dialectical subject unless they are construed as answers, respectively, to the questions, "Socrates: 01" and "The so-and-so: 01" What light does the fact that we ordinarily refer to particulars by means of descriptions, but to non-particulars by names throw of the idea that particulars alone really exist? None, I think. I t is the fact that in ordinary discourse the statements we make usually have particulars or sets of particulars as their logical subjects (in our sense) whether or not they are referred to by names or by description, that is the relevant consideration. Thus, by using Strawson's dictum that "The things which appear predominantly as individuals are, predominantly, the individuals," we can go some part of the way toward accounting for the fact that philosophers who are dominated by the emphases of ordinary discourse, and, say, by such a science as biology, tend to think of non-particulars as less real than particulars; a tendency to which philosophers who resonate to pure mathematics would be less prone. But I am inclined to think that this is not even a significant part of the story. WILFRID SELLARS. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA.
