Categorical proposition

Categorical proposition is a proposition that relates two classes of objects. Categorical proposition
contain a subject and a predicate term. The subject term comes first in a standard-form Categorical
proposition. The predicate term comes second in a standard-form Categorical proposition.

A standard-form Categorical proposition has quantity and quality, and a specific distribution method for
the subject or predicate term (or both). “Universal” and “particular” refer to the quantity of a
Categorical proposition. “Affirmative” and “Negative” refer to the quality of a Categorical proposition.

Universal Affirmative
 All politicians are liars.
 All men are mortal.
 All good Web pages are written in html.
 All good men come to the aid of their party.
 All men have what it takes to become a successful salesman.
 All dogs go to heaven
 The universal affirmative as stated by Aristotle is not two-way. Consider, for example, example 1
above. It doesn’t mean that all liars are politicians. In example 2, we are not stating that all
mortal things are men. (This “reverse” of the original statement is called the converse of the
statement)

Universal Negatives
 No politician is intelligent.
 No man is immortal.
 No good Web pages contain Java or browser-specific tags.
 No good men will betray their principles.
 No men have what it takes to be a successful mother.
 The universal negative is effectively two-way, unlike the universal affirmative. In other words, a
universal negative statement does imply its converse. For instance, in Example 1, we propose
that no politicians are intelligent, and therefore imply that no intelligent people are politicians.
In Example 2, we not only say that no men are immortal, but that no immortal beings are men.
This is the most important distinction between the universal affirmative and the universal
negative, functionally speaking.

Particular Affirmative
 Some man is mortal.
 There is a woman who is a politician.
 At least one computer runs Microsoft products.
 There is a fun Web site.
 The particular affirmative states that there is at least one member of one class that is a member
of a second.
  It doesn't imply that all members of one class are members of the second.These sentences
sound strange: a more natural language might say that "This Web site is fun." or "Socrates is
mortal." However, at this stage of the development of our logical language, we want to be able
to distinguish between saying that there is at least one fun Web site and that a specific Web site
is fun. While it is true that if this Web site is fun then there is at least one Web site that is fun, it
doesn't necessarily follow that if there is at least one Web site that is fun, that this one is. You
might think this Web site was lame and Yahoo was fun, for instance.
 This takes us naturally to the first thing to remember about the particular affirmative: It isn't
exactly right to talk about the particular affirmative having a converse in the same way that it is
to say that a universal term has one.
 However, there is an implication involved in certain natural language statements that forms the
basis for most proofs of particular affirmative statements. It's simple: to prove that some A is B,
all you need to do is find one example of when A is B, and bingo! You're done.

Particular Negative
 Some fictional creatures are not mortal.
 Some Web sites are not fun.
 Some philosophers don't make sense.
 Some computers are not expensive.
 The connection between the particular affirmative and negative is easy to see. In fact, in our
natural language, we often don't make much of a distinction between the two: modern logic
doesn't either.
 For example, when you think of the negative particular statement "Some woman is not
beautiful." it seems equivalent to the affirmative particular statement "Some woman is
homely." On further examination, we see that this is only true if every woman is either beautiful
or homely.
 Similarly to the particular affirmative, the particular negative can be proven by finding a single
example. For instance, if we want to prove that some politician is corrupt, all we have to do is
find one corrupt politician.
Categorical propositions are statements about classes of things. A class is a group of objects. There are
two class terms in each categorical proposition, a subject class (S) and a predicate class (P).

There are four types of categorical proposition.

A-proposition: Asserts that the entire subject class is included in the predicate class.
Standard-form of the A-proposition: All S are P.
All members of the Subject class are members of the Predicate class.

This is the universal affirmative proposition.

I-proposition: Asserts that at least one member of the subject class is included in the predicate class.
Standard-form of the I-proposition: Some S are P.

At least one member of the Subject class is a member of the Predicate class.
This is the particular affirmative proposition.
E-proposition: Asserts that the entire subject class is excluded from the predicate class.
Standard-form of the E-proposition: No S are P.None of the members of the Subject class are members
of the Predicate class.
This is the universal negative proposition.

O-proposition: Asserts that at least one member of the subject class is excluded from the predicate
class.
Standard-form of the O-proposition: Some S are not P.At least one member of the Subject class is not a
member of the Predicate class.
This is the particular negative proposition.

The Components of Categorical Propositions –

1. Subject Term - first category or class

2. Predicate Term - second category or class
3. Copula - the grammatical link (verb) between subject and
predicate terms.
4. Quantifiers - words that specify the quantity of the subject
and predicate terms.
Quantifier: “all”, “no” or “some”
1. Universal -

a. affirmative - 'all' (includes all of a class)

b. negative - 'no' (excludes all of a class)

2. Particular - ‘some' (includes part of a class)
All S are P.

Some S are P.

No S are P.

Some S are not P.

Examples
Cats are mammals

Subject Copula Predicate

Astronomical objects do not have fur.

Subject Copula Predicate

Quantity, Quality, and Distribution
Categorical propositions can be viewed in terms of quantity (universal or particular), quality (affirmative
or negative) and whether or not a class is distributed. If a categorical proposition asserts something
about every member of a class, then the term designating that class is said to be distributed. If a
proposition does not assert something about every member of a class, then the term designating that
class is said to be undistributed. In summary:

 All S are P. The subject term is distributed; the predicate class is not.
 Some S are P. Neither the subject nor predicate term is distributed.
 No S are P. Both the subject and predicate terms are distributed.
 Some S are not P. The subject term is not distributed; the predicate class is distributed.

Quality
• If the proposition affirms some class inclusion, whether complete or partial, its quality is
affirmative.

• If the proposition denies class inclusion, whether complete or partial, its quality is negative.

• Quality It is described as whether the proposition affirms or denies the inclusion of a subject
within the class of the predicate. The two possible qualities are called affirmative and negative.
For instance, an A-proposition ("All S is P") is affirmative since it states that the subject is
contained within the predicate. On the other hand, an O-proposition ("Some S is not P") is
negative since it excludes the subject from the predicate.

Quantity
• If the proposition refers to all members of the class designated by its subject term, its quantity is
universal.

• Quantity refers to the number of members of the subject class that are used in the proposition.
If the proposition refers to all members of the subject class, it is universal. If the proposition
does not employ all members of the subject class, it is particular. For instance, an I-proposition
("Some S is P") is particular since it only refers to some of the members of the subject class.

Distribution
 The two terms (subject and predicate) in a categorical proposition may each be classified as
distributed or undistributed. If all members of the term's class are affected by the proposition,
that class is distributed; otherwise it is undistributed. Every proposition therefore has one of
four possible distribution of terms.
 A distributed term is a term of a categorical proposition that is used with reference to every
member of a class. If the term is not being used to refer to each and every member of the class,
it is said to be undistributed.