Predication and Ontology

Abstract

It is an historical fact that one of Russell's greatest philosophical contributions was to highlight the role that premises about logical form play in ontological arguments. A pair of quotations will introduce his point that great metaphysical systems are often not only based on, but are debased by, the belief that certain statements of philosophical discourse are logically subject-predicate in form.Speaking of Hegel's Absolute Idealism, Russell wrote in Our Knowledge of The Extemal World:Mr. Bradley has worked out a theory according to which, in all judgment, we are ascribing a predicate to Reality as a whole; and this theory is derived from Hegel. Now the traditional logic holds that every proposition ascribes a predicate to a subject, and from this it easily follows that there can be only one subject, the Absolute, for if there were two, the proposition that there were two would not ascribe a predicate to either. Thus Hegel's doctrine, that philosophical propositions must be of the form, “the Absolute is such and such,” depends on the traditional belief in the universality of the subject-predicate form. This belief, being traditionaL scarcely self-conscious, and not supposed to be important, operates underground, and is assumed in arguments which, like the refutation of relations, appear at first sight to e;tablish its truth.