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General Terms and Logical Subjects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael Durrant
Michael Durrant*
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Cardiff
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Extract

Can general terms stand as logical subjects? viz., following Professor Geach's exposition of subject and predicate, can general terms ever occur as an expression which is such that it can be said to stand for something that the sentence S (in which it occurs) is about, S itself being formed by attaching a predicate to that expression? Frege, in ‘On Concept and Object’, contended that no ‘concept’ could stand as the reference of a grammatical subject, in view of the essentially predicative nature of the ‘concept’, and, as for Frege a concept is what is expressed in language by a general term, no general term can stand as a logical subject.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , June 1974 , pp. 525 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 In Reference and Generality, p. 23.

2 Reprinted in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege by Geach, Peter and Black, Max Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1952.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., pp. 46–7.

4 Translated by J. L. Austin, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1950, p. 63.

5 In Reference and Generality, Chapter 2.

6 In Individuals, Chapter 8, pp. 226–7.

7 Ibid., p. 40.

8 Ibid., p. 38.

9 I have rephrased Geach's argument in the first person to avoid excessive verbiage.

10 Cf. his article on Aquinas in Three Philosophers, p. 109.

11 In her article on Aristotle in Three Philosophers.

12 Ibid., p. 43-4.

13 For a powerful argument against the theses mentioned here cf. Searle's, John paper ‘Proper Names’ reprinted in Philosophical Logic edited by Strawson, P. F. (O.U.P. 1967) pp. 89–96.Google Scholar

14 Reprinted in Strawson, P. F.: Logico-Linguistic Papers, Methuen, 1971.Google Scholar

15 Cf. ‘Form and Existence’ reprinted in God and the Soul, pp. 42–64.

16 ‘On Concept and Object’, op. cit., p. 47.

17 Cf. Foundations of Arithmetic, op. cit., p. 60.