Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

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world beyond the subject. The past tense of the word ‘thas’ shows that this point of ambiguity is irrelevant, so that the proposition can be framed so as to ignore it. But it need not be so framed: one of Caesar’s old soldiers may in later years have sat on the bank of the river and meditated on the assassination of Caesar, and on Caesar’s passage over the little river tranquilly flowing before his gaze. This would have been a different proposition from the more direct one which I am now considering. Nothing could better illustrate the hopeless ambiguity of language; since both propositions fit the same verbal phraseology. There is yet a third proposition: a modern traveller sitting on the bank of the Rubicon, and meditating on his direct perceptions of actual occasions can locate, relatively to himself by spatio-temporal specifications, an event which inferentially and conjecturally he believes to include a portion of the past history of the Rubicon as directly known to him. He also, by an analogous process of inference and conjecture, and of spatio-temporal specification, locates relatively to himself another event. which he believes to contain the life of Caesar of whom he has no direct knowledge. The proposition meditated on by this traveller sitting on the bank of the modern river is evidently a different proposition to that in the mind of Caesar’s old soldier. Then there is the proposition which might have been in the mind of one of the crowd who listened to Antony’s speech, a man who had seen Caesar and not the Rubicon.

It is obvious that in this way an indefinite number of highly special propositions can be produced, differing from each other by fine gradations. Everything depends upon the differences in direct perceptive knowledge which these various propositions presuppose for their subjects. But there are propositions of more general type, for which ‘Caesar’ and ‘Rubicon’ have more generalized, vaguer meanings. In these vaguer meanings, ‘Caesar’ and ‘Rubicon’ indicate the entities, if any, located by any one member of a type of routes, starting from ap. 299 certain type of inference and conjecture. Also there are some such propositions in which the fact of there being such entities, to be thus located, is part of the content whereby the judgment is true or false; and there are other propositions in which even this requisite is evaded, so far as truth or falsehood is concerned. It is by reason of these various types of more abstract propositions that we can conceive the hypothetical existence of the more special propositions which for some of us, as judging subjects, would be meaningless.

This discussion should show the futility of taking any verbal statement, such as ‘Caesar has crossed the Rubicon,’ and arguing about the meaning. Also any proposition, which satisfies the verbal form so as to be one of its possibilities of meaning, defines its own locus of subjects; and only for such subjects is there the possibility of a judgment whose content is that proposition.

A proposition is the potentiality of the objectification of certain presupposed actual entities via certain qualities and relations, the objectification being for some unspecified subject for which the presupposition has meaning in direct experience. The judgment is the conscious affirmation by a particular subject—for which the presupposition holds—that this potentiality is, or is not, realized for it. It must be noticed that ‘realized’ does not mean ‘realized in direct conscious experience, but does mean ‘realized as being contributory to the datum out of which that judging subject originates.’ Since direct, conscious experience is usually absent, a judgment can be erroneous.

Thus a proposition is an example of what Locke calls an ‘idea determined to particular existences.’ It is the potentiality of such an idea; the realized idea, admitted to decision in a given subject, is the judgment, which may be a true or false idea about the particular things. The discussion of this question must be resumed (ef. Part III) when conceptual activity is examined. But it is evident that a proposition is a complex entity whichp. 300 stands between the eternal objects and the actual occasions. Compared to eternal objects a proposition shares in the concrete particularity of actual occasions; and compared to actual occasions a proposition shares in the abstract generality of eternal objects. Finally, it must be remembered that propositions enter into experience in other ways than through judgment feelings.

SECTION IV

A metaphysical proposition—in the proper, general sense of the terms ‘metaphysical’—signifies a proposition which (i) has meaning for any actual occasion, as a subject entertaining it, and (11) is ‘general,’ in the sense that its predicate potentially relates any and every set of actual occasions, providing the suitable number of logical subjects for the predicative pattern, and (111) has a ‘uniform’ truth-value, in the sense that, by reason of its form and scope, its truth-value is identical with the truth-value of each of the singular propositions to be obtained by restricting the application of the predicate to any one set of logical subjects. It is obvious that, if a metaphysical proposition be true, the third condition is unnecessary. For a general proposition can only be true if this condition be fulfilled. But if the general proposition be false, then it is only metaphysical when in addition each of the derivate singular propositions is false. The general proposition would be false, if any one of the derivate singular propositions were false. But the third condition is expressed in the proposition without any dependence upon the determination of the proposition’s truth or falsehood.

There can be no cosmic epoch for which the singular propositions derived from a metaphysical proposition differ in truth value from those of any other cosmic epoch.

We certainly think that we entertain metaphysical propositions: but, having regard to the mistakes of the past respecting the principles of geometry, it is wise top. 301 reserve some scepticism on this point. The propositions which seem to be most obviously metaphysical are the arithmetical theorems. I will therefore illustrate the justification both for the belief, and for the residual scepticism, by an examination of one of the simplest of such theorems: One and one make two.’