Editing Unity of the proposition (section)

== History ==

The problem was discussed under this name by [[Bertrand Russell]], but can be traced back to [[Plato]]. In Plato's ''[[Sophist_(dialogue)|Sophist]]'', the simplest kind of sentence consists of just a proper name and a [[Universality (philosophy)|universal]] [[terminology|term]] (i.e. a [[predicate (grammar)|predicate]]). The name refers to or picks out some [[individual]] [[object (philosophy)|object]], and the predicate then says something about that individual.

The difficulty is to explain how the predicate does this. If, as Plato thinks,<ref>{{cite SEP |last=Silverman |first=Allan |title=Plato's Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology |date=14 July 2014 |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-metaphysics/ |url-id=plato-metaphysics}}</ref> the predicate is the name of some universal [[concept]] or form, how do we explain how the sentence comes to be [[Truth|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" [[Sign (linguistics)|signifies]] Socrates, and the predicate signifies Wisdom. But the sentence ''[[Logical assertion|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 [[F. H. Bradley|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]].