In The Three Acts of the Mind you met the term as the product of simple apprehension. A term is a word or phrase that names a class of things or one individual thing. In a proposition, terms are the building blocks that the verb joins.
Key idea
A singular term names exactly one thing ("Mount Everest", "the tallest student in our class"). A general term names a class, so it applies to each of its members ("mountains", "students who play the violin"). Count ideas, not words.
Why it works
Logic cares about what a phrase picks out, not how long it is. "The first president of the United States" uses seven words, but it names one person, so it works exactly like a name. "Dogs" is one word, but it applies to millions of animals. When we later ask whether a statement is about all of a class or only some of it, we need to know which phrases name classes.
| Phrase | Words | Kind of term |
|---|---|---|
| Jupiter | 1 | singular |
| the oldest tree in the park | 6 | singular |
| planets | 1 | general |
| large brown dogs that herd sheep | 6 | general |
Worked example
Worked example: Counting the terms in a proposition
How many terms does "The first president of the United States was a skilled surveyor" join, and what are they?
- Find what the sentence is about: "the first president of the United States". That whole phrase is one idea, a singular term.
- Find what is said about it: "a skilled surveyor". That is a second term (a general term: there were many skilled surveyors).
- The verb "was" joins the two.
Answer: 2 terms: "the first president of the United States" and "a skilled surveyor"
Common mistake
Counting words instead of ideas. "Large brown dogs" is one general term, not three, and "the first president of the United States" is one singular term. Check: could you replace the whole phrase with a single name or a single plural noun without changing what it picks out? Then it is one term.