Statements versus a Proposition

Statement: A statement is a sentence that is either true or false.

Proposition: A proposition is the information content of a statement. A proposition is independent of language sentence structure, word choice and such.

For more details, see Propositions and Statements.

Categorial Propositions

Definition

Categorial Proposition: A categorical proposition (CP) is a proposition that relates two or more classes or categories.

Now, here are the subconcepts.

Proposition: A statement is a sentence that is either true or false, and the information content of this sentence is called a proposition; see Propositions and Statements.

Category: A category is a group of things that share some set of similar characteristics. Examples: lawyers, highways, running, freedoms, reliable computer code, and so on.

In summary, a CP is the information content of a sentence that relates two categories.

Examples of Categorical Propositions

Here are some examples in which I’ve describe the categories.

1. Example: All planets orbit the sun.  Discussion: Planets is first category. Things that orbit the sun is the second. The information is that “all planets are bodies that rotate around the sun.”

2. Example: No squares have five sides.  Discussion: Squares is the first category. Things with five sides is the second. The information is “No things that have five sides are squares.”

3. Example: Some roses are not red. Discussion: Roses is the first category. Things that are not red is the second one. The information is “Some rose are things that are not red.”

4. Example: Some engineers excel at project management. Discussion: Engineers is the first category. People who excel at project management is the second. The cognitive meaning of the sentence is “Some engineers are people who excel at project management.”

Recognizing CPs

Input: A person has a sentence they want to check to see if is a CP or not.

Question: Is this sentence a categorical propositions?

Method:

1. Statement Check: Let X represent the sentence. Plug X into the following template. If the result makes grammatical sense, then X is a statement.

   Template: “Is it true that X?”

2. Check for Two Categories: Determine if the sentence relates two categories: if it does than the sentence is a categorical statement and the information content is a categorical proposition.