Abstract

It seems to make perfectly good sense to distinguish between what is expressed and the way in which it is expressed. There is little doubt that there are many different ways of saying the same thing open to us. If I denied this, I would certainly be wrong. And yet a word of caution may not be amiss. Among logicians a tendency has grown up to concentrate their attention on those properties of a statement which make it true or false, what they call a “proposition”, and to neglect the form in which it is expressed. I think it is a dangerous tendency as it may lead to overlooking all sorts of differences which are due to the form. Let me give an example taken from F. P. Ramsey.