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Index for ON INTERPRETATION Book 1 Part 11

Concerning the unity of affirmations

Paragraph 1 There is no unity about an affirmation or denial which, either positively or negatively, predicates one thing of many subjects, or many things of the same subject, unless that which is indicated by the many is really some one thing.
Paragraph 2 If therefore the dialectical question is a request for an answer, i
Paragraph 3 At the same time it is plain that a question of the form 'what is it
Paragraph 4 Some combinations of predicates are such that the separate predicates unite to form a single predicate.
Paragraph 5 We will now explain what ought to be laid down.
Paragraph 6 Those predicates, and terms forming the subject of predication, which are accidental either to the same subject or to one another, do not combine to form a unity.
Paragraph 7 Thus, again, whereas, if a man is both good and a shoemaker, we cannot combine the two propositions and say simply that he is a good shoemaker, we are, at the same time, able to combine the predicates 'animal' and 'biped' and say that a man is an animal with two feet, for these predicates are not accidental.
Paragraph 8 Those predicates, again, cannot form a unity, of which the one is implicit in the other:
Paragraph 9 Yet this is not always possible:
Paragraph 10 Yet the facts of the case might rather be stated thus:
Paragraph 11 Thus, in the case of those predications which have within them no contradiction when the nouns are expanded into definitions, and wherein the predicates belong to the subject in their own proper sense and not in any indirect way, the individual may be the subject of the simple propositions as well as of the composite.


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