Author. “Why, I thought you said that some of the Members——”
[pg168]Jones (contemptuously). “You don’t seem to be aware that we’re working on strictly Logical principles. A Particular Proposition does not assert the existence of its Subject. I merely meant to say that we’ve made a Rule not to admit any Members till we have at least three Candidates whose incomes are over ten thousand a year!”
Author. “Oh, that’s what you meant, is it? Let’s hear some more of your Rules.”
Jones. “Another is, that no one, who has been convicted seven times of forgery, is admissible.”
Author. “And here, again, I suppose you don’t mean to assert there are any such convicts in existence?”
Jones. “Why, that’s exactly what I do mean to assert! Don’t you know that a Universal Negative asserts the existence of its Subject? Of course we didn’t make that Rule till we had satisfied ourselves that there are several such convicts now living.”
The Reader can now decide for himself how far this second conceivable view would fit in with the facts of life. He will, I think, agree with me that Jones’ view, of the ‘Existential Import’ of Propositions, would lead to some inconvenience.
Thirdly, let us suppose that neither I nor E “asserts”.
Now the supposition that the two Propositions, “Some x are y” and “No x are not-y”, do not “assert”, necessarily involves the supposition that “All x are y” does not “assert”, since it would be absurd to suppose that they assert, when combined, more than they do when taken separately.
Hence the third (and last) of the conceivable views is that neither I, nor E, nor A, “asserts”.