Categorical Propositions and Existential Import: A Post-modern Perspective

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This article examines the traditional and modern doctrines of categorical propositions and argues that both doctrines have serious problems. While the doctrines disagree about existential imports of categorical propositions, they share a fundamental assumption: matching categorical propositions of the same kind (e.g. universal affirmatives, particular negatives) are logically equivalent (the logical homogeneity thesis). The article shows that this common thesis is false, and argues that one cannot deal with the logical diversity of categorical propositions with minor modifications of the traditional or modern doctrine. It also gives a sketch of an account that pays close attention to the logical diversity of categorical propositions. In doing so, the article examines differences among various versions of the traditional doctrine and discusses categorical propositions involving plural constructions and non-distributive predicates.