JUDGEMENT AND

LOGICAL PREDICATION

ALFIE JOHN C. LORENTE & ROXANNE CLEOFE

BSM - 1
JUDGEMENT • Mental operation that pronounces the agreement
and disagreement of two ideas.
• Also known as adjudication which means the
evaluation of evidence to make a decision.
• It is also the ability to make considered decisions.
• is the mental act which affirms or denies
something.
THREE KINDS OF JUDGEMENT

Analytic judgements have no descriptive

content.

Synthetic judgements have just descriptive

content.

Evaluative judgements go beyond descriptive

content.
JUDGEMENT
ANALYTICS
• An analytic judgement is one
whose subject matter is
abstract or conceptual.
• It tells us about the
relationships between
concepts, or about the
characteristics of abstract
entities, not about the nature of
the material world.
• Knowing the meaning of the
concepts, and engaging in
some process of logical
analysis, suffices to establish
the truth of an analytic
judgement.
SYNTHETIC
• A synthetic judgement reaches
out to the real world,
employing concepts to make a
statement about how things
are as a matter of fact.
• Concepts here are the vehicle
for a substantive assertion
which excludes certain
otherwise possible
configurations of the material
universe.
• Knowing the meaning of
concepts and language will not
suffice to establish anything
about the real world which is
their subject matter, for this
empirical observation is
necessary.
EVALUATIVE
• A synthetic judgement reaches
out to the real world,
employing concepts to make a
statement about how things
are as a matter of fact.
• Concepts here are the vehicle
for a substantive assertion
which excludes certain
otherwise possible
configurations of the material
universe.
• Knowing the meaning of
concepts and language will not
suffice to establish anything
about the real world which is
their subject matter, for this
empirical observation is
necessary.
 LOGICAL PREDICATION
• Predication, in logic, the attributing of characteristics to a subject to
produce a meaningful statement combining verbal and nominal elements.

• It expresses a relationship between two ideas.

 PREDICATION IN PHILOSOPHY 

refers to an act of judgement where one term is subsumed under another.  A comprehensive conceptualization describes it as the understanding of the relation expressed
by a predicative structure primordially (i.e. both originally and primarily) through the opposition between particular and general or the one and the many.
BACKGROUND

• Predication emerged when ancient philosophers began exploring reality

and the two entities that divide it: properties and the things that bear them.
These thinkers investigated what the division between thing and property
amounted to. It was argued that the relationship resembled the logical
analysis of a sentence wherein the division of subject and predicate arises
spontaneously.
 ARISTOTLE 

• posited that the division between subject and predicate

is fundamental and that there is no truth unless a
property is "predicated of" something
PLATO

- predication is demonstrated in the analysis of desire. He stated

through Socrates that the type of dominant excess gives its name
to the one who has it such as how drunkenness gives its name to a
drunkard. Here, predication confirms the reality of this form of
excess on the being who partakes in it.
 PYTHAGOREANS

- also
touched on predication as they explained how number is the
essence of everything. They hold that a number has an
independent reality, arguing that substances such as fire and water
were not the real essences of the things they are predicated
CHARLES KAHN

•  In
describing Greek philosophy, he identified
predication as one of the three concepts - along with
truth and reality - that ontology connected.
THEORIES

• In the philosophy of language, predication is distinguished from the linguistic predication with the
notion that a predicable is a metaphysical item and is ontologically predicated of its subject. The
subjects are also distinguished: in linguistic predication, a subject is a grammatical item while in
philosophy, it is an item in the ontology.
• The Aristotelian conceptualization of predication, for instance, focused on the metaphysical
configurations that underlie sentences.
• here are scholars who note that Aristotle's thought on the subject can be distinguished in two levels:
ontological (where predicates pertain to things); and, logical (where predicates are something that
is said of things). Like Plato, Aristotle used predication to address the Problem of Universals.
• Philosophers have long debated what predicates really are. In the
early Middle Ages, they were usually treated as having a being
beyond all linguistic and mental entities and thus were viewed
as metaphysical. Garland the Computist, the author of an early
system of logic, however, viewed predication as mere utterance
(vox). Peter Abelard, the foremost dialectician of the 12th
century, amended this view to include significatio as well as vox.
IN GRAMMAR

• The predicate of a sentence is a portion of it which makes a

claim about the subject. For instance, in "Mary smokes", the
predicate would be the verb "smokes". In traditional grammar,
sentences are regarded as consisting of a subject plus a predicate
PREDICATE LOGIC 
- deals with predicates, which are propositions containing
variables.

PREDICATE LOGIC – DEFINITION

a predicate is an expression of one or more variables defined on some specific

domain. a predicate with variables can be made a proposition by either assigning a
value to the variable or by quantifying the variable.
THE FOLLOWING ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF PREDICATES

LET E(X, Y) DENOTE "X = Y"

LET X(A, B, C) DENOTE "A + B + C = 0"
LET M(X, Y) DENOTE "X IS MARRIED TO Y"
WELL FORMED FORMULA

Well Formed Formula (wff) is a predicate holding any of the

following −
•All propositional constants and propositional variables are wffs
•If x is a variable and Y is a wff, ∀xY∀xY and ∃xY∃xY are also
wff
•Truth value and false values are wffs
•Each atomic formula is a wff
•All connectives connecting wffs are wffs
 Quantifiers
The variable of predicates is quantified by quantifiers. There are two types of quantifier in
predicate logic− Universal Quantifier and Existential Quantifier.

Universal Quantifier
- Universal quantifier states that the statements within its scope are true for every value of the
specific variable. It is denoted by the symbol ∀∀.
∀xP(x)∀xP(x) is read as for every value of x, P(x) is true.

Example − "Man is mortal" can be transformed into the propositional form ∀xP(x)∀xP(x) where

P(x)
is the predicate which denotes x is mortal and the universe of discourse is all men
 Existential Quantifier
Existential quantifier states that the statements within its scope are
true for some values of the specific variable.
It is denoted by the symbol ∃∃.
∃xP(x)∃xP(x) is read as for some values of x, P(x) is true.

Example − "Some people are dishonest" can be transformed into the propositional
form ∃xP(x)∃xP(x) where P(x) is the predicate which denotes x is dishonest and the
universe of discourse is some people
 NESTED QUANTIFIERS

if we use a quantifier that appears within the scope of another

quantifier, it is called nested quantifier.

Example
•∀ a∃bP(x,y)∀ a∃bP(x,y) where P(a,b)P(a,b) denotes a+b=0a+b=0
•∀ a∀b∀cP(a,b,c)∀ a∀b∀cP(a,b,c) where P(a,b)P(a,b) denotes a+(b+c) =(a+b)+ca+
(b+c)=(a+b)+c
Note − ∀a∃bP(x,y)≠∃a∀bP(x,y)
The limitations of predication as a logical form are increasingly evident. The
predicate logic is now seen to be but one species of the logic of terms—the
others being the logic of classes, the logic of relations, and the logic of
identity; and the entire logic of terms, in turn, is distinct from the
propositional logic, which deals with whole or unanalyzed statements. In the
logic of relations, it is even questionable whether there is any predicate at all,
since all of the terms can be regarded as subjects on the same footing (as in
“Jane is the sister of Edith is the sister of Rachel”). Moreover, logics that
distribute the predicate (with the quantifiers “all,” “some,” etc.) have also
been explored.
 Predicate Instantiated/Domain

• A predicate instantiated (where variables are evaluated in specific values) is a proposition.

• The domain of a predicate variable is the collection of all possible values that the variable may
take.

• Predicate logic extends (is more powerful than) propositional logic.

EXAMPLE Let P(x, y) = “x > y”.

Domain: integers, i.e. both x and y are integers.
• P(4, 3) means “4 >3”, so P(4, 3) is TRUE;
• P(1, 2) means “1>2” , so P(1, 2) is FALSE;
• P(3,4) is false (in general, P(x,y) and P(y,x) not
equal).
THANK YOU