Rather...

Rather, affirmation rests on judgment, and this is the very difference between a proposition and several ideas accompanying each other and following one upon the other in the mind, pictured without any relation between them. Elements of the Proposition We know that ‘affirmation’ in the sense of judgment is something simple, but in the sense of proposition it is composed of several elements. Several different views have been expressed about the elements of the proposition.

Since it would require a lengthy discussion to survey all of them, and such a survey properly belongs to the subject of logic, we shall merely have a glance at them here. Some say that each predicative proposition ( qaḍiyyah ḥamliyyah ) is composed of two elements: subject and predicate. Others add the relation between these two as a third element.

Yet others consider the judgment of the occurrence of the relationship or the lack of occurrence of the relationship to be a fourth element of the proposition. Some distinguish between affirmative and negative propositions and say that with regard to negative propositions a judgment does not exist, but rather they consider it to be a case of the negation of judgment. Others deny the existence of the relation in simple existential propositions ( halliyyah basīṭah ), i.e.

propositions which assert the existence of the subject in the external world, and in primary predications, i.e. propositions in which the conceptual content of the subject and the predicate are the same, such as ‘Man is a rational animal.’ However, undoubtedly, in logic no proposition can be without either a relationship or judgment, for, as we said, affirmation rests on judgment, and judgment is with respect to two elements of the proposition.

However, it is possible that one may have to recognize a difference among propositions from a philosophical and ontological point of view. Divisions of Ideas From one perspective, ideas can be divided into two types: universal and particular. A ‘universal idea’ is a concept which can represent numerous things or persons, such as the concept of man which applies to millions of individuals. A ‘particular idea’ is a mental form which only represents one existent, such as the mental form of Socrates.

Each of the ideas, whether universal or particular, may be further divided by other divisions about which we shall provide a brief explanation.