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Definition:
In philosophy, the term "class" is used to denote some collection of objects which
are conceptually linked together. Thus, everyone who lives in Los Angeles belongs to a
class, all of the furniture in your house is another class, and all of the mammals
missing one toe are another class. Objects do not normally belong to a class
arbitrarily - such a collection would be a "set."
In traditional logic, a class is designated by a categorical term. For example:
All cats are mammals.
...is a categorical proposition. This proposition has two categorical terms, "all cats" and "mammals" - the former is the subject and the latter is the predicate. The categorical term "all cats" refers to the entire class of "cats" and the categorical term "mammals" refers to some portion of the class "mammals" (but not the entire class). In logic, knowing whether or not a categorical term says something about all members of the class it designates is important. The term "distributed" is used in this context, and a categorical term is said to be "distributed" when it does refer to all members of a class. It is "undistributed" when it does not.
Notice that whenever a categorical term establishes some class, it is implied that there also exists some second class which is essentially "everything else." Thus the world is divided into two groups: everything which belongs to this designated class and everything which does not. So, we have the explicitly designated class "all cats," but also the implicitly designated class "all non-cats." The second, implied class is called the ""complement" of the first, explicitly designated class.
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Related Resources:
What is the Logic and the Philosophy of Language?
The two fields Logic and the Philosophy of Language are often treated separately, but they are nevertheless close enough that they are presented together here. Logic is the study of methods of reasoning and argumentation, both proper and improper. The Philosophy of Language, on the other hand, involves the study of how our language interacts with our thinking.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
