4.2 QUALITY, QUANTITY, AND DISTRIBUTION 4 Categorical Propositions

Quantity, Quality, and Distribution Quantities: there are just two quantities: 1 Universal (All or None) 2 Particular (Some … at least one). Qualities: there are just two qualities: 1 Affirmative 2 Negative

Quantity, Quality and Distribution PropositionLetter NameQuantityQuality All S are PAUniversalAffirmative No S are PEUniversalNegative Some S are PIParticularAffirmative Some S are not POParticularNegative Quantity and Quality are properties of Propositions. A proposition is what a sentence asserts, or what we assert with a sentence. ‘I love the girl’ and ‘Puellam Amo’ are two different sentences that assert the same proposition.

Quantity, Quality, and Distribution Distribution is a property of terms, not propositions. A term is distributed if the proposition asserts something about every member of the class the term refers to, so… In ‘All S are P’, something is asserted about every member of the class referred to by the term S, and so S is distributed. For instance, All Salads are Priced to sell … something is asserted about every salad, but not about everything that is priced to sell (on sale). ‘All S are P’ assigns or distributes a property to every member of S (being priced to sell)

Quantity, Quality, and Distribution All S are P can be symbolized like this: P S

Quantity, Quality, and Distribution No S are P looks like this: ‘No S are P’, on our grocery interpretation, says something about everything Priced to sell, and every Salad. Therefore, both S and P are distributed. SP

Quantity, Quality, and Distribution Some S are P: This says that at least one member of S is also a P (at least one salad is priced to sell). This “I” proposition asserts something about at least one member of S and at least one member of P, so neither term is distributed. S* P

Quantity, Quality and Distribution Some S are not P: This propositions asserts that at least one Salad is not Priced to sell (it says nothing about all salads, but it does say something about all the sale items: none of them is that particular salad—or subclass of salads). S* P

Quantity, Quality and Distribution Summary … All S D are P No S D are P D Some S are P Some S are not P D PropositionLetter NameQuantityQualityDistribution All S are PAUniversalAffirmativeSubject only No S are PEUniversalNegativeSub & Pred Some S are PIParticularAffirmativeNeither Some S are not POParticularNegativePredicate only