4. Predication
Frege found the most
important thing in the philosophy of language is the distinction of the meaning (sense) and reference. He explained
this distinction based on the issue about the identity of statement. Frege then
develop this distinction to the expression of predicate and the entire
sentence. Predicate is a term that mentioned something about the subject. He
said that in addition to express its meaning, the expression of predicate also
refers to the concept of the sentence (at least the sentence that showed the
issue about whether it is right or wrong) expressing thoughts and has
references to the value of truth (which is the state that the sentence was true
or false).
According to Frege, any
sentence that expresses a singular thought consists of an expression (a proper name or a general term plus the definite
article) that signifies an Object together with a predicate (the copula "is", plus a general term
accompanied by the indefinite article or an adjective) that signifies (bedeutet)
a Concept. Thus "Socrates is a philosopher" consists of "Socrates",
which signifies the Object Socrates, and "is a philosopher",
which signifies the Concept of being a philosopher.
A predicate is a sentence
contains a referring expression and a different sort of expression. In
'Socrates is bald' or 'Mother loves to cook', the predicate are '... is bald'
and '... loves to cook' respectively. I shall call the expressions coupled with
predicates the 'subjects' of the sentences. Thus 'Socrates' and 'Mother' are
the subjects of the sentences. Typically a subject will be a referring
expression.
Definition of predication:
A person successfully uses a predicate ‘F’ if and only if (a) he intentionally says something true about a referent by using
‘F’ with one of its proper meanings, and (b)
the referent can be said to be included among the things which are F. I shall
devote the rest of this section to expanding upon, and explaining, this
definition. Just as referring expressions function by being used to refer to
particulars, so predicates function by being used to refer to something else.
It might, for example, be claimed that just as ‘John’ refers to John, so ‘is
bald’ refers to the property of baldness. So, on this view which I shall call
the ‘reference’ theory of predication, subjects and predicates differ only in
the nature of the entities they refer to.
