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The hypothetical class makes an assertion under a condition, or with an alternative,
for instance:--
"If the world is not the work of chance, it must have had an intelligent maker."
"Either mankind are capable of rising into civilization unassisted, or the first beginnings of
civilization must have come from above." (Archbishop Whately).
Another method of classifying propositions is the following:--
UNIVERSAL.--"All men are mortal."
PARTICULAR.--"Some men are mortal."
INDEFINITE.--"Man is mortal."
SINGULAR.--"Julius Caesar is mortal."
The signs of a universal proposition are the words "all", "no" and "every". The word
"some" indicates the particular, and a proper name indicates the singular. The absence of
these signs characterizes the indefinite proposition:--
"What is the immediate object of belief in a proposition? What is the matter of fact
signified by it? What is it to which, when I assert the proposition, I give my assent, and
call upon others to give theirs?
One of the clearest and most consecutive thinkers whom this country or the world has
produced, I mean Hobbes, has given the following answer to this question. In every
proposition (says he) what is signified is the belief of the speaker that the predicate is a
name of the same thing of which the subject is a name; and if it really is so, the
proposition is true. Thus the proposition, All men are living beings (he would say) is
true, because living being is the name of everything of which man is a name. All men are
six feet high, is not true, because six feet high is not a name of everything of which man
is a name."
Propositions, however, are not always set out as formally as logic requires. Usually
they take the form of "propositions considered as sentences", as indicated at the top of
this page. These are compound: the first one cited includes a series of assertions and
inferences from the presence of the "world" of design and its association with
intelligence. Consequently Hobbes' rule will only apply when all sentences are reduced
to their simplest forms, as indicated in the four classifications that follow.
Another way of expressing it, is that a proposition consists in referring something to a
class. Thus, "Man is mortal", according to this view of it, asserts that the class, "man", is
included in the class "mortal". Matters of fact fall under five heads, and every
proposition makes an assertion or denial corresponding to one of these five divisions:
Existence, Co-existence, Sequence, Causation and Resemblance:--
"This fivefold division is an exhaustive classification of matters of fact: of all things
that can be believed, or tendered for belief: of all questions that can be propounded, and
all answers that can be returned to them."
"An attribute, therefore, is necessarily either an existence, a co-existence, a causation,
a sequence or a resemblance."