One of the characteristic features of contemporary logic is that it incorporates the Frege‐Russell thesis according to which verbs for being are multiply ambiguous. This thesis was not accepted before the nineteenth century. In Aristotle existence could not serve alone as a predicate term. However, it could be a part of the force of the predicate term, depending on the context. For Kant existence could not even be a part of the force of the predicate term. Hence, after Kant, existence (...) was left homeless. It found a home in the algebra of logic in which the operators corresponding to universal and particular judgments were treated as duals, and universal judgments were taken to be relative to some universe of discourse. Because of the duality, existential quantifier expressions came to express existence. The orphaned notion of existence thus found a new home in the existential quantifier. (shrink)

In this paper I will consider several interpretations of the fallacy of secundum quid as it is given by Aristotle in the Sophistical Refutations and argue that they do not work, one reason for which is that they all imply that the fallacy depends on language and thus fail to explain why Aristotle lists this fallacy among the fallacies not depending on language, amounting often to a claim that Aristotle miscategorises this fallacy. I will argue for a reading that preserves (...) Aristotle’s categorization by a quite different account of how qualifications function. (shrink)