Abstract

The acceptance of a regimented theory involves both an ontological commitment to the entities in the domain of the theory and a judgment that certain predicates to be applied to those entities are admissible predicates. This chapter is about predication: the criteria for admissibility and the compositional role of predicates in determining propositions, and in defining complex predicates in terms of their constituents. It is argued that the assumption that the sentences of a regimented language express proposition helps to sharpen these questions and to defend some answers to them. After discussing these general questions about predicates, the last part of the chapter addresses questions about the specific predicates of the theory of proposition: consistency, truth, and predicates defined in terms of them such as necessity and entailment.