Predication Synonyms

Predication, as Aristotle saw, is as various as the categories of being.

On the other hand, in the Metaphysics, the distinction between inherence and predication disappears; and what is more, the relation of an attribute to a substance is regarded as so close that an attribute is merely the substance modified.

These theories are of varying value in proportion to their proximity to Aristotle's point that predication is about things, and to Mill's point that judgments and propositions are about things, not about ideas.

For three-quarters of a century, then, philosophy was at a standstill; and, when in the second decade of the 4th century the pursuit of truth was resumed, it was plain that Zeno's paradox of predication must be disposed of before the problems which had occupied the earlier thinkers - the problem of knowledge and the problem of being - could be so much as attempted.

Again, when it presently appeared that the theory of the immanent idea was inconsistent with itself, and moreover inapplicable to explain predication except where the subject was a sensible thing, so that reconstruction became necessary, the Zenonian difficulty continued to demand and to receive Plato's best attention.