7 - Terms and Propositions

Summary

Several ancient philosophers and philosophical schools address issues about terms and propositions. The most important contributions are offered by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In the Sophist, Plato distinguishes names and verbs (which roughly correspond to subject-expressions and predicate-expressions), he claims that truth and falsehood qualify only speeches (which roughly correspond to complete sentences), and he sketches accounts of truth and falsehood for speeches of the simplest sort. In De Interpretatione, Aristotle picks up Plato’s distinction between names and verbs and identifies the bearers of truth and falsehood with sentences of a special sort, namely, declarative sentences. In the Prior Analytics, he develops a theory of inferences constructed from propositions and terms, but he ignores the distinction between names and verbs. With the Stoics, a contrast analogous to that between terms and propositions is found at the level (not of speech, but) of sayables, incorporeal items signified by utterances. The Stoics single out a special type of sayable, the statable, as the bearer of truth and falsehood. Of the four sections of this chapter, the first is dedicated to Plato, the second to Aristotle’s views in De Interpretatione, the third to his position in the Prior Analytics, and the fourth to the Stoics.