Logical subjects

Abstract

The major concern of this essay is the subject/predicate analysis of propositions. When I say "The subject/predicate analysis" I do not assume (what is false) that there is just one such analysis; rather, I assume that there is one version of this analysis widely current in contemporary philosophy. It is the analysis of singular propositions into referring components and non-referring components. This conception of the subject/predicate distinction is exceptionally imprecise, but is not completely uninformative. We do have a rough idea of what it is to refer to something and an intuitive conception of which propositional components we use as devices of reference and which ones we do not. And this gives us an embryonic conception of what the subject/predicate analysis looks like. For the most part I will be working from this intuitive starting point (which does not, of course, rule out the drawing of counter-intuitive conclusions). And since this conception of the analysis is the received one in contemporary philosophy, my argument may be said to have a built-in conservative bias (which will make any radical conclusions all the more interesting). My major concern will be with singular propositions, that is, with those propositions to which the above conception seems to apply fairly straightforwardly. I share the common assumption that it is in terms of an analysis of singular propositions that we must turn to the analysis of general propositions, i.e. that the former are logically or analytically prior to the latter. My first chapter will be concerned with Frege, and forms an exception to the above statement of methodological stance. For, while generally I assume that the notion of reference and the notion of a logical subject go together, this assumption would clearly be out of place in a discussion of Frege, who argued or assumed that the notion of reference applies equally to the two components of his analysis. And, since his analysis (into 'proper name' and 'concept expression') is clearly in the same line of business as the subject/predicate analysis with which I am concerned, Chapter I is a convenient place to consider, and, hopefully, to reject, his alternative conception of that analysis