Philosophical Perspectives: History of Philosophy by Wilfrid Sellars

Author:Wilfrid Sellars [Sellars, Wilfrid]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Ridgeview Publishing Digital
Published: 2014-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

x is a lion = x is lions1 or x is lion2 or ...

to represent this attempt.

[Note 35: Thus ‘This lion is tawny’ is explicated in terms of ‘This is a lion and it is tawny’.]

56. Now we have seen that Aristotle rejected the idea that universals are constituents of individuals. Unfortunately he went from the sound idea that the individual which corresponds to the true statement

This is a K

does not consist of a particular corresponding to ‘this’ and a universal corresponding to ‘K’ to the mistaken idea that the item which makes the statement true (in accordance with the correspondence theory of truth) is a nameable (object) rather than a stateable (fact).36 Thus, even if he were prepared to say that in a sense what directly makes the statement ‘This is a K’ true is the fact that this is a K, he would not stay here, but, thinking (correctly) of the fact as a complex consisting of an individual and a universal,37 would go on to attribute to it a secondary status derivative from a nameable and primarily knowable entity. This nameable (as opposed to stateable) real which is the ultimate counterpart of the true statement and which, qua nameable, is ultimately responsible for its truth must show by its name that it is responsible for the truth. The Aristotelian is thus led to the fiction that the referring expression ‘this-lion’ or ‘lion1’ is prior to the predicative expression ‘lion’.

[Note 36: Even if the nameable is complex as consisting in some sense of matter and form, it does not consist of matter and a universal. It is essential to the argument that in this context forms are not universals.]

[Note 37: Which, indeed, it is, as being the concatenation of items playing the role of ‘this’ and ‘is a K’ in our language.]

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