Sommers on predicability

✍ Scribed by B. A. Brody

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1972
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 135 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8116
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00354738

✦ Synopsis

Sommers has argued 1 that there is a principle of predication that rules out certain types of ontologies, e.g., the Strawsonian ontology of persons. We will argue that it is his principle, rather than these ontologies, that should be ruled out.

The principle that he offers is:

If a, b, and c are any three things and P and Q are predicates such that/it makes sense to predicate P of a and of b but not of c and it makes sense to predicate Q of b and c but not of a, then P must be equivocal over a and b or Q must be equivocal over b and c. Conversely, if P and Q are univocal predicates, then there can be no three things a, b, and c such that P applies to a and to b but not to c while Q applies to b and to c but not to a. (pp.