History
The problem was discussed under this name by Bertrand Russell, but it actually goes back to Plato. According to Plato's dialogue The Sophist, the simplest kind of sentence consists of just a proper name and a universal term (i.e. a predicate). The name refers to or picks out some individual object, and the predicate then says something about that individual.
The difficulty is to explain how the predicate does this. If, as Plato thinks, the predicate is the name of some universal concept or "form", how do we explain how the sentence comes to be true or false? If, for example, "Socrates is wise" consists of just a name for Socrates, and a name for the universal concept of Wisdom, how could the sentence be true or false? In either case, the "Socrates" signifies Socrates, and the predicate signifies Wisdom. But the sentence asserts that Socrates is wise. The assertion of wisdom must consist in the assertion of some relation between Socrates and Wisdom. What is this relation?
The problem was discussed much later by Francis Bradley. If we assume that a sentence consists of two objects and a relation that connects them, and we represent this by three names, say John, loving, Mary, how do we express the fact that John loves Mary? For "John", "loving" and "Mary" would name the objects they do, even if this were not a fact. This is known as Bradley's regress.
Read more about this topic: Unity Of The Proposition
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)