A Critical Examination of the Traditional Theory of Original Research Subject-Predicate Asymmetry

Abstract

According to the asymmetrical view that has its roots in Aristotelian philosophy, there is a close correspondence between syntactic categories and ontological categories, and the reference of the subject term and predicate term belong to different ontological types of objects. This asymmetry is defended by Frege and his philosophy of language in a different way. On the other hand, some believe in a symmetrical interpretation of subject and predicate relation. Suppose there was no ontological difference between the subject and predicate. In that case, we could have neutral language in which we can change the position of the subject and predicate terms without any change in the proposition's meaning. However, as we show in this paper, this language would be syntactically inconsistent and produce some contradictions. Moreover, the scientific generalizations would become nonsense in semantic analysis, and all the existential sentences would be true. Therefore, the neutral language does not have the expected adequacy, and the symmetry of the subject and predicate could not be defended accordingly

Keywords

• grammatical categories
• logical categories
• metaphysical categories
• subject-predicate symmetry
• neutral language