predication

1. Introduction

Predication is a central notion in philosophy and logic, designating the act or structure by which something is said of something else. In its most familiar form, it underlies sentences such as “Socrates is wise,” where a predicate (“wise”) is affirmed of a subject (“Socrates”). Philosophers have treated this apparently simple pattern as the locus of questions about language, logic, and reality.

Different traditions emphasize different aspects of predication:

• As a linguistic act, it is the making of an assertion that can be true or false.
• As a logical form, it is the subject–predicate structure that organizes propositions or judgments.
• As a metaphysical tie, it is the way properties, universals, or kinds belong to things.

From Aristotle onward, predication has been used to articulate distinctions between substance and accident, essence and attribute, analytic and synthetic judgment, and more. Medieval scholastics refined a taxonomy of modes of predication (essential, accidental, univocal, equivocal, analogical) and linked them to theological and metaphysical issues. Modern and contemporary logicians reconceived predication using function–argument analysis, set theory, and model theory, often abstracting away from natural language grammar.

Despite these theoretical differences, most accounts accept that predication is the minimal unit in which something can be truly or falsely said about something. Disagreement concerns what, at a deeper level, is going on when such saying occurs: a conceptual inclusion, an underlying metaphysical relation, a formal operation in a calculus, or a cognitive act of judgment.

This entry surveys these approaches, tracing predication from its linguistic and historical origins through its major philosophical formulations, and examining related debates about properties, truth, cognition, and alternative frameworks that challenge the traditional subject–predicate model.

2. Etymology and Linguistic Origins

The term “predication” in English descends from Medieval Latin praedicatio, formed from prae- (“before, in front of”) and dicare/dicere (“to say, speak”). The etymological core is thus “saying forth,” “declaring publicly,” or “asserting in front of others.”

Greek Roots

Philosophically, Latin praedicare translates and reinterprets earlier Greek terms:

In Aristotle, κατηγορία comes to denote both a type of being and a type of predicable (e.g., substance, quantity, quality), connecting language and ontology.

Latin Development

Roman and late antique philosophers rendered these Greek notions in Latin:

Medieval scholastic logic used praedicatio as a key technical term in the analysis of propositions, mapping Aristotelian distinctions into Latin terminology and adding new classifications (e.g., praedicatio per se, per accidens).

Modern Languages

Modern European languages inherit this mixed Greco‑Latin legacy:

These terms simultaneously carry grammatical, logical, and metaphysical resonances. This layered inheritance underlies many of the translation and interpretation challenges discussed later, as the same word may alternately denote a linguistic expression, a logical role, or an ontological relationship.

3. Pre-Philosophical and Ordinary Usage

Before becoming a technical term, predication-related vocabulary functioned in ordinary discourse as ways of speaking about or against someone or something.

Greek and Latin Everyday Meanings

In classical Greek:

• κατηγορεῖν (katēgorein) primarily meant to accuse in public, especially in a legal context.
• κατηγορία (katēgoria) meant an accusation or charge.

In everyday Latin:

• praedicare meant to proclaim, to announce, or to praise (e.g., praising someone’s virtues in public).
• praedicatio could denote public exhortation or preaching, a sense that survives in some religious uses of “preaching” and “predication” in historical theology.

These uses emphasized the public, declarative aspect of speech rather than any refined logical form. What was central was that something was stated about someone or something, often with normative weight (accusing, praising, exhorting).

Ordinary Language Patterns

Across languages, everyday speech naturally distinguishes between:

• What is talked about (topic, subject)
• What is said of it (description, characterization)

Even without formal grammar, people intuitively grasp differences between expressions like “the king” versus “is generous,” or “this tree” versus “is tall,” and combine them to make claims about the world.

Ordinary usage also reveals different types of everyday predicates:

These patterns provided the material from which philosophers abstracted more technical notions of predication. Aristotle and later thinkers systematized distinctions already implicit in everyday talk—such as between what a thing is (substance or essence) and how it is (qualities, quantities)—but the ordinary, pre‑theoretical sense of saying something of something remains a shared background for subsequent theories.

4. Aristotelian Foundations of Predication

Aristotle offers one of the earliest systematic accounts of predication, treating it as both a logical and ontological relation.

Saying “of” and “in” a Subject

In the Categories, Aristotle distinguishes two key ways in which things relate to a subject:

Predication in the strict sense often involves a universal (e.g., animal, white) being said of a particular or another universal. This underlies Aristotle’s classification of categories (substance, quantity, quality, relation, etc.) as the most general kinds of predicates.

Predication and Propositions

In De Interpretatione, Aristotle shifts to the logical dimension, analyzing statements (ἀποφάνσεις) as combinations of name and verb:

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“A statement (ἀπόφανσις) is a sentence that is true or false.”

— Aristotle, De Interpretatione 4

Here, predication is the structure in which a subject term and a predicate term are joined, commonly via a copula (explicit or implicit), to form truth‑apt assertions.

Substance and Essential Predication

In the Metaphysics, especially book Z, predication becomes tied to the theory of substance (οὐσία):

• Primary substances (this man, this horse) are ultimate subjects that are not themselves predicated of anything.
• Secondary substances (human, horse) and other categories are things that can be predicated of primary substances.

Predication thus reflects and reveals ontological hierarchy:

Later Aristotelian and Peripatetic commentators elaborated these distinctions into formal doctrines about essential versus accidental predication and the structure of scientific definitions, laying a foundation that medieval scholastics would further systematize.

5. Scholastic Theories and Modes of Predication

Medieval scholastic philosophers adopted Aristotelian predication and developed an intricate taxonomy of modes of predication, linking logic closely with metaphysics and theology.

Logical Act and Metaphysical Ground

Scholastics generally distinguished:

• Predication as a logical act: the intentional relation between subjectum and praedicatum in a proposition.
• Predication’s metaphysical foundation: real relations such as essence–attribute or substance–accident that make predication appropriate.

Thomas Aquinas, for example, treats propositional predication as grounded in how forms and natures are present in things.

Major Scholastic Distinctions

Peter of Spain’s Summulae Logicales and similar textbooks codified these into pedagogical schemes.

Analogical Predication and Theology

A central scholastic issue concerned how terms are predicated of God and creatures. For Aquinas and many others, such terms are neither purely univocal nor purely equivocal; they are analogical:

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“Names said of God and of creatures are said not in a purely equivocal nor in a purely univocal sense, but in an analogical sense.”

— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 5

Different scholastics nuanced this:

• Some emphasized proportionality (God is wise as cause and source; humans are wise by participation).
• Others stressed priority (the primary sense in God, secondary in creatures).

These debates show how predication served as a bridge between logical analysis and doctrinal concerns, especially within Christian, Islamic, and Jewish medieval philosophies.

6. Predication in Early Modern and Kantian Philosophy

Early modern philosophers retained subject–predicate talk but reinterpreted it within new metaphysical and epistemological frameworks.

Early Modern Transformations

• Descartes integrated predication into a dualistic ontology. Predicates such as “thinking” or “extended” were tied to distinct substances (mind, body). Predication helped articulate clear and distinct ideas and innate conceptual structure.
• Leibniz offered a strong containment view: he famously suggested that in a true proposition, the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject. For him, this underpinned doctrines of complete individual concepts and pre‑established harmony.
• Locke and empiricists tended to see predication as linking ideas derived from experience, with less emphasis on metaphysical containment and more on associative or representative relations.

These thinkers often used traditional subject–predicate grammar but disagreed on what conceptual or ontological relation it reflected.

Kant’s Analytic and Synthetic Predication

Kant placed predication at the center of his theory of judgment. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he defines:

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“In analytic judgments the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something that is (covertly) contained in this concept A. [...] In synthetic judgments B lies entirely outside the concept A.”

— Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A6–7/B10–11

Kant further argued for the crucial category of synthetic a priori judgments (e.g., in mathematics and fundamental physics), where the predicate is not conceptually contained but is nonetheless necessary. Predication thus becomes tied to the categories of the understanding, which legislate how subject and predicate can be legitimately united in objective, experience‑conforming judgments.

Kant’s account influenced later debates about whether predication is fundamentally conceptual containment, structural synthesis, or something else, and prepared the ground for the more formal reconceptions of Frege and subsequent logicians.

7. Frege, Predicate Logic, and Function–Argument Analysis

Gottlob Frege reshaped the notion of predication by replacing the traditional subject–predicate schema with a function–argument analysis.

From Subject–Predicate to Function–Argument

Frege argued that the grammatical subject–predicate distinction is not the most perspicuous logical structure. Instead, he analyzed sentences like “Socrates is wise” as involving:

• A concept (or predicate) understood as an unsaturated function (e.g., “__ is wise”).
• An argument (e.g., Socrates) that saturates the function.

When the argument is applied, the result is a truth‑value:

Predication as Saturation

Predication becomes, on this view, simply the application of a function to an argument. Frege explicitly distances this from psychological acts:

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“A predicate, when joined to a proper name to form a sentence, does not assert anything about the name, but about what it designates.”

— Frege, “Function and Concept” (1891)

Key features of this approach:

• The logical form of predication is captured in a formal language (Begriffsschrift) using quantifiers and predicate symbols.
• Concepts are unsaturated (in need of completion), while objects are saturated; predication is the completion process.
• Complex predicates and relations (e.g., “__ loves __”) are treated as functions of multiple arguments.

Concept and Object

In “On Concept and Object” (1892), Frege distinguishes sharply between concepts (predicates) and objects (including proper names and, controversially, truth‑values). This gave rise to:

• A hierarchical view of types (objects vs. first‑level concepts vs. second‑level concepts).
• A re‑interpretation of quantified predication (e.g., “All humans are mortal”) in terms of second‑order functions.

Frege’s reconceptualization profoundly influenced modern predicate logic and the semantics of predication, shifting focus from grammatical structure or metaphysical ties to formal, compositional operations defined over domains of objects and functions.

8. Predication in Contemporary Logic and Formal Semantics

Contemporary logic and formal semantics extend Frege’s insights, modeling predication within formal systems and model‑theoretic frameworks.

Predicate Logic and Model Theory

In first‑order predicate logic, a predicative sentence such as “F(a)” is interpreted via:

• A domain of objects (individuals).
• Predicate symbols (F) interpreted as sets of objects or relations on them.
• Predication as membership or satisfaction: “F(a)” is true iff the interpretation of a lies in the set assigned to F.

Tarski’s work on truth provided a precise semantic account:

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“‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is white.”

— Paraphrasing Tarski, “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages” (1933)

Here, predication becomes an instance of a more general satisfaction relation between structures and formulas.

Formal Semantics of Natural Language

In generative and formal semantics (e.g., Montague, Heim & Kratzer), predication is handled through typed λ‑calculus:

Predication corresponds to function application:

• The predicate “is wise” denotes a function of type ⟨e,t⟩.
• A name like “Socrates” denotes an entity of type e.
• Their combination yields a proposition (type t).

This framework allows systematic treatment of:

• Multi‑place predicates (relations)
• Event predicates (e.g., Davidsonian event arguments)
• Higher‑order predication (predicates of predicates, generalized quantifiers)

Extensions and Variants

Different semantic theories extend or modify this basic picture:

While these frameworks differ, they typically treat predication as a formal operation in a compositional system, often abstracting from traditional metaphysical accounts and focusing on truth‑conditions, information flow, or context sensitivity.

9. Predication and Metaphysics: Properties, Universals, and Instantiation

Metaphysical discussions of predication ask what in reality makes true predicative statements true, and what ontological structure they presuppose.

Properties, Universals, and Tropes

Many accounts assume that predication corresponds to objects’ having properties or instantiating universals:

• Realist views: Predicates like “is red” or “is just” correspond to real universals or properties.
• Nominalist views: Predicates do not require such entities; they may track similarity classes, linguistic conventions, or conceptual groupings.
• Trope theories: Predication is grounded in particularized properties (tropes) such as “this specific redness,” rather than repeatable universals.

Instantiation and Truth‑Making

The relation by which an object bears a property is often termed instantiation, exemplification, or compresence. Some metaphysicians treat this as a primitive relation; others analyze it further or reduce it.

Truth‑maker theorists ask what truth‑makers correspond to predicative truths:

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“Something in the world makes it true that Socrates is wise.”

Candidates include:

• An object–property complex (Socrates + wisdom).
• A state of affairs (Socrates’s‑being‑wise).
• A fact understood as a structured entity.

Disagreement concerns whether such complexes are needed or whether simple objects and properties suffice.

Relational vs. Attributive Conceptions

Two broad metaphysical interpretations of predication are often contrasted:

Some philosophers, influenced by Aristotle, stress that substances are primary and that predicative structure mirrors their priority. Others hold that properties or universals are equally or more fundamental, making predication derivative from a network of instantiated properties.

These metaphysical debates inform how philosophers interpret logical and linguistic predication: whether it accurately reflects deep ontological joints or is largely a surface phenomenon shaped by conceptual or linguistic practices.

10. Subject–Predicate Structure and the Role of the Copula

Subject–predicate structure has been a traditional lens for analyzing predication, with the copula (often “to be”) treated as the grammatical marker of their connection.

Subject–Predicate Schema

In many languages, a typical declarative sentence can be parsed as:

• Subject: what the sentence is about.
• Predicate: what is said of the subject.

Examples:

• “Socrates is wise.”
• “This tree is tall.”

Philosophers have used this schema to articulate logical form, though, as noted in Fregean and contemporary accounts, it does not always capture underlying logical complexity (e.g., in relational or quantificational sentences).

Functions of the Copula

The copula (from Latin copula, “link”) plays multiple roles:

Philosophers disagree on whether these are distinct uses of a single verb or reflections of deeper logical distinctions.

Analyses of the Copula

Several views have been proposed:

• Verbal view: The copula is a full verb expressing existence or predicative being.
• Purely syntactic link: The copula has no substantive semantic content and merely marks grammatical predication.
• Multi‑meaning view: “Is” is ambiguous between identity, existence, and predication.

Aristotelian and scholastic logicians often treated the copula as expressing a kind of being (esse) that can be further specified (e.g., esse in vs. esse ad). Modern logicians frequently analyze “is” away using formal devices (identity symbol “=”; quantifiers for existence; predicates for classification).

Tensions with Non‑Standard Sentences

Not all sentences fit the subject–predicate pattern neatly (e.g., “It rains,” “There are prime numbers between 10 and 20,” “Running is fun”). These cases have motivated alternative or more flexible accounts of predication, but the subject–predicate plus copula model remains historically influential and continues to inform many philosophical discussions of language and logic.

11. Predication, Judgment, and Cognition

Philosophers have often linked predication to judgment and broader cognitive processes, treating it as the minimal unit of thought that can be true or false.

Predication as Act of Judgment

In many post‑Aristotelian traditions, to predicate is not merely to combine words but to affirm or deny something in thought. Predication, in this psychological or noetic sense, is:

• An act of the mind, not just a linguistic pattern.
• The basis for beliefs and knowledge claims.

Kant, for instance, identifies judgment as the act of “bringing representations under rules,” manifested in the uniting of subject and predicate. Predication is thus where categories of the understanding are applied to intuitions to form objective cognition.

Cognitive and Phenomenological Accounts

Later phenomenologists and philosophers of mind have explored the experience of predication:

• Husserl distinguished between pre‑predicative experience (vague, intuitive awareness) and predicative judgment, where features of objects are explicitly thematized and affirmed.
• Some cognitive scientists and philosophers of language treat predication as a fundamental conceptual operation: assigning properties to mental representations of objects or individuals.

In this light, predication is seen as:

Predication and Conceptual Structure

Several questions arise:

• Is predication language‑dependent, or can non‑linguistic animals engage in a form of predicative cognition?
• Does predication mirror an underlying conceptual schema of objects and properties, or is that schema itself a product of linguistic practices?
• Are there forms of thought (e.g., imagistic, procedural) that are not naturally predicative?

Different cognitive and philosophical traditions answer these questions differently. Some hold that predication reflects a deep, species‑typical way of structuring experience, while others emphasize cultural and linguistic variability in how predicative structures are realized and used.

12. Related Concepts: Categories, Assertion, and Truth-Making

Predication is closely connected to several neighboring concepts that structure philosophical accounts of language, logic, and reality.

Categories

In an Aristotelian sense, categories are the highest kinds of what can be predicated of a subject (substance, quantity, quality, relation, etc.). They function as:

• A taxonomy of predicate types.
• A bridge between linguistic and ontological classification.

Later traditions reinterpret categories (e.g., Kant’s categories of the understanding; modern logical types), but the idea that predication operates within a categorial framework persists.

Assertion and Speech Acts

Predication often appears within the broader notion of assertion:

• To assert is to present a predicative content as true.
• Some philosophers distinguish the content (a predicative proposition) from the illocutionary force (asserting, questioning, commanding).

On many views, assertion presupposes predication: one cannot assert without attributing some property or relation (explicitly or implicitly) to some subject or situation.

Truth-Making and Facts

The concept of a truth‑maker is tightly tied to predication. For a simple predicative statement “a is F,” truth‑maker theorists ask:

• What entity or structure in the world corresponds to this predication?
• Is it a fact, state of affairs, object‑property complex, or something else?

Some philosophers question whether talk of facts or truth‑makers adds anything beyond ordinary predication plus general principles about truth. Others see these notions as essential for explaining why some predicative statements are true and others false.

Together, categories, assertion, and truth‑making form an interconnected web around predication, situating it within broader theories of meaning, communication, and the structure of reality.

13. Translation Challenges Across Greek, Latin, and Modern Languages

Translating predication‑related terms across historical and linguistic contexts poses several difficulties, as key words carry overlapping but non‑identical meanings.

Shifting Semantic Fields

Core terms such as κατηγορία, praedicatio, and predicate span multiple domains:

Translators must often choose among these senses based on context, sometimes adding explanatory glosses.

Conceptual Mismatches

Modern logical vocabulary (e.g., “property,” “set,” “function,” “truth‑value”) has no direct equivalents in classical Greek or medieval Latin. Conversely, historical distinctions such as “said of” vs. “present in” or per se vs. per accidens lack straightforward modern analogues.

This leads to issues such as:

• Whether to render κατηγορεῖν as “to predicate,” “to say of,” or “to assert.”
• How to translate scholastic praedicatio analogica into contemporary terms without importing later semantic theories.

Continuity vs. Anachronism

Interpreters face a tension:

• Stressing continuity makes it easier to trace lines from Aristotle to modern logic but risks anachronistically reading set‑theoretic or model‑theoretic ideas into earlier texts.
• Stressing difference preserves historical nuance but can obscure shared intuitions about “saying something of something.”

Some scholars propose using neutral paraphrases (“said of a subject,” “attribution,” “belongs to”) rather than committing to loaded technical terms. Others advocate careful differentiation between grammatical and logical uses of “predicate” and related words in translations and commentary.

These translation challenges affect how the history of predication is understood, influencing assessments of continuity, transformation, and rupture between ancient, medieval, and modern theories.

14. Critiques and Alternatives to Traditional Predication

Traditional subject–predicate models and their metaphysical underpinnings have faced several lines of criticism, leading to alternative frameworks.

Logical and Linguistic Critiques

Some logicians and linguists argue that the subject–predicate scheme is too narrow:

• Relational and quantificational structures (e.g., “Everyone admires someone”) resist simple subject–predicate analysis.
• Non‑verbal predicates, existential constructions, and certain languages’ grammars challenge the universality of subject–predicate form.

Frege’s function–argument analysis, discussed earlier, was partly motivated by such concerns and is itself an alternative to traditional predication.

Nominalist and Anti‑Property Views

Metaphysical critics question whether predication requires properties or universals at all:

• Nominalists contend that positing universals is unnecessary; predication can be explained via linguistic or conceptual practices.
• Some philosophers adopt predicate nominalism, treating predicates as mere linguistic labels for classes, without ontological correlates.

These views challenge the idea that predicative structure reveals deep metaphysical facts.

Non‑Propositional and Inferential Approaches

Pragmatist and inferentialist theories (e.g., associated with Sellars, Brandom) sometimes downplay predication as a fundamental notion:

• Meaning is tied to inferential roles (what inferences are licensed) rather than to subject–predicate form.
• The focus shifts from truth‑conditions of predicative contents to practices of giving and asking for reasons.

Similarly, some philosophers and cognitive scientists emphasize non‑propositional content (e.g., maps, images, skills), suggesting that not all representational states are naturally captured by predicative, sentence‑like structures.

Alternative Formal Frameworks

Various logical systems offer different ways of capturing information traditionally expressed via predication:

Critics and alternative theorists do not always reject predication outright but often regard it as one representational format among others, historically central but not exhaustive of thought, language, or logical form.

15. Legacy and Historical Significance

Predication has played a sustained and formative role across the history of philosophy, shaping conceptions of logic, language, and reality.

Structuring Logical Traditions

From Aristotle’s syllogistic to medieval scholastic logic, subject–predicate structures provided the basic template for:

• Systems of inference (e.g., syllogisms).
• Classifications of propositions (universal/particular, affirmative/negative).
• Analyses of scientific explanation (demonstrations from essential predications).

Modern predicate logic reinterpreted predication in formal, function–argument terms but continued to place it at the core of logical consequence and quantification theory.

Guiding Metaphysical and Theological Debates

Predication has been pivotal in:

• The universals debate (realism, nominalism, conceptualism).
• Theories of substance and accident, essence and existence.
• Discussions of divine attributes and the analogical use of language about God.

These debates have influenced not only technical metaphysics but also broader doctrinal and philosophical traditions in multiple religious cultures.

Influencing Modern Philosophy of Language and Mind

In analytic philosophy, predication has informed:

• The development of formal semantics and model theory.
• Investigations into the structure of thought, the nature of judgment, and the relation between language and cognition.
• Discussions of truth, facts, and truth‑makers.

Even where alternative frameworks arise, they frequently position themselves in relation to inherited notions of predication.

Continuing Relevance

Predication remains a reference point for:

• Comparative work across philosophical traditions (Greek, medieval, modern).
• Interdisciplinary research in linguistics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence, where representing objects and their properties or relations is central.
• Ongoing debates about whether human thought is fundamentally propositional and predicative, or whether a richer variety of representational formats is needed.

As a result, predication continues to serve both as a historical anchor for understanding past theories and as a live concept in contemporary inquiry into how language, thought, and reality interrelate.