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In the next example the predicate as well as the subject are abstract names: “Whiteness is a color;” or “The color of snow is a whiteness.” These attributes being grounded on sensations, the equivalent propositions in the concrete would be, The sensation of white is one of the sensations called those of color—The sensation of sight, caused by looking at snow, is one of the sensations called sensations of white.
When I do this, I perceive that this operation introduces no new fact, but is only a different mode of contemplating the very fact which I had previously expressed by the words, all oxen ruminate. The fact is the same, but the mode of contemplating it is different. The like may also be said about his other innovation, the Quantification of the Predicate.
Thus if "necessary" means "what is true under all circumstances," then "if x is a man, x is mortal" is necessary, because it is true for any possible value of x. Thus we should be led to the following definition: "NECESSARY is a predicate of a propositional function, meaning that it is true for all possible values of its argument or arguments."
Of the position of the Simile, it needs only to remark, that what has been said respecting the order of the adjective and substantive, predicate and subject, principal and subordinate propositions, &c., is applicable here. As whatever qualifies should precede whatever is qualified, force will generally be gained by placing the simile before the object to which it is applied.
A general proposition is one in which the predicate is affirmed or denied of an unlimited number of individuals; namely, all, whether few or many, existing or capable of existing, which possess the properties connoted by the subject of the proposition. “All men are mortal” does not mean all now living, but all men past, present, and to come.
But in the following, All bitter partisans are dangerous citizens, This man is not a bitter partisan, Therefore this man is not a dangerous citizen, one may have to scrutinize the reasoning a little to see that the fallacy lies in the fact that dangerous citizen is taken universally in the conclusion, since a proposition with a negative predicate makes an assertion about the whole of its predicate, but that it is not taken universally in the premise in which it occurs.
But the case is widely different with the Chess-Player. With him there is no determinate progression. No one move in chess necessarily follows upon any one other. From no particular disposition of the men at one period of a game can we predicate their disposition at a different period.
The only propositions of which Hobbes’ principle is a sufficient account, are that limited and unimportant class in which both the predicate and the subject are proper names.
An adjective, however, is capable of standing by itself as the predicate of a proposition; as when we say, Snow is white; and occasionally even as the subject, for we may say, White is an agreeable colour.
How could a predicate become associated with its subject, or a principal clause with its subordinate clause, if they were in separate consciousnesses, and how could the conclusion be drawn from them? Consciousness of the Ego. This unified self-consciousness is consciousness of the ego.
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