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Single Idea 7528

[filed under theme 5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 1. Logical Form ]

Full Idea

The metaphysics of Leibniz was explicitly based upon the doctrine that every proposition attributes a predicate to a subject and (what seemed to him almost the same thing) that every fact consists of a substance having a property.

Clarification

In 'the sky is blue', 'the sky' is the subject, and 'is blue' is the predicate

Gist of Idea

Leibniz bases everything on subject/predicate and substance/property propositions

Source

Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.5)

Book Ref

Russell,Bertrand: 'My Philosophical Development' [Routledge 1993], p.48

A Reaction

I think it is realised now that although predicates tend to attribute properties to things, they are far from being the same thing. See Idea 4587, for example. Russell gives us an interesting foot in the door of Leibniz's complex system.

Related Idea

Idea 4587 From the property predicates P and Q, we can get 'P or Q', but it doesn't have to designate another property [Heil]

The 36 ideas with the same theme [structure of a sentence relevant to its logical role]:

18896 Aristotle places terms at opposite ends, joined by a quantified copula [Aristotle, by Sommers]
4730 For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady]
21400 Stoics avoided universals by paraphrasing 'Man is...' as 'If something is a man, then it is...' [Stoic school, by Long]
6020 'Man is a rational mortal animal' is equivalent to 'if something is a man, that thing is a rational mortal animal' [Sext.Empiricus]
7729 Frege replaced Aristotle's subject/predicate form with function/argument form [Frege, by Weiner]
4975 A thought can be split in many ways, so that different parts appear as subject or predicate [Frege]
8645 Convert "Jupiter has four moons" into "the number of Jupiter's moons is four" [Frege]
6115 Vagueness, and simples being beyond experience, are obstacles to a logical language [Russell]
7528 Leibniz bases everything on subject/predicate and substance/property propositions [Russell]
7758 'Elizabeth = Queen of England' is really a predication, not an identity-statement [Russell, by Lycan]
6092 In a logically perfect language, there will be just one word for every simple object [Russell]
6101 Romulus does not occur in the proposition 'Romulus did not exist' [Russell]
18276 A statement's logical form derives entirely from its constituents [Wittgenstein]
18743 Wittgenstein says we want the grammar of problems, not their first-order logical structure [Wittgenstein, by Horsten/Pettigrew]
18268 Apparent logical form may not be real logical form [Wittgenstein]
22434 Reduction to logical forms first simplifies idioms and grammar, then finds a single reading of it [Quine]
8358 There are no rules for the exact logic of ordinary language, because that doesn't exist [Strawson,P]
18893 Translating into quantificational idiom offers no clues as to how ordinary thinkers reason [Sommers]
7332 There is a huge range of sentences of which we do not know the logical form [Davidson]
3080 Logical form is the part of a sentence structure which involves logical elements [Harman]
3081 A theory of truth in a language must involve a theory of logical form [Harman]
3084 Our underlying predicates represent words in the language, not universal concepts [Harman]
16464 We regiment to get semantic structure, for evaluating arguments, and understanding complexities [Stalnaker]
8132 We now have a much more sophisticated understanding of logical form in language [Burge]
6339 Logical form is the aspects of meaning that determine logical entailments [Horwich]
2544 Thoughts have a dual aspect: as they seem to introspection, and their underlying logical reality [McGinn]
8072 Sentences of apparent identical form can have different contextual meanings [Devlin]
12220 Is it the sentence-token or the sentence-type that has a logical form? [Fine,K]
13632 Finding the logical form of a sentence is difficult, and there are no criteria of correctness [Shapiro]
18168 'Propositional functions' are propositions with a variable as subject or predicate [Maddy]
10407 Logical Form explains differing logical behaviour of similar sentences [Swoyer]
10373 Logical form can't dictate metaphysics, as it may propose an undesirable property [Schaffer,J]
10754 In proof-theory, logical form is shown by the logical constants [Rossberg]
18741 Logical formalization makes concepts precise, and also shows their interrelation [Horsten/Pettigrew]
18905 Propositions can be analysed as pairs of terms glued together by predication [Engelbretsen]
18922 Logical syntax is actually close to surface linguistic form [Engelbretsen]