Abstract

The problem of the unity of the proposition—what distinguishes a proposition from a mere list of constituents, so that the former is able to say something while the latter is not?—is as old as philosophy. It is evoked at the end of Plato’s Sophist, where the Stranger affirms that when one makes a statement “he does not merely give names, but he reaches a conclusion by combining verbs with nouns” ; and it is discussed by Aristotle in De Interpretatione, where it is said that since “falsity and truth have to do with combination and separation”, then “the first single statementmaking sentence is the affirmation, next is the negation” ; but “every statement-making..