SOURCE: “On McTaggart's Criticism of Propositions,” in Mind, Vol. XXXVI, No. 148, October, 1928, pp. 439-53.

In the following essay, Blake presents several arguments against McTaggart's theories on propositions.

The second chapter of The Nature of Existence contains an elaborate argument against the reality of something which McTaggart calls “propositions”. In what follows I wish first to point out that despite his polemic McTaggart does explicitly admit that there are propositions, in a certain sense of the term; but that he nevertheless betrays a very strong reluctance to state his theory of truth and falsity in terms of this admission—a reluctance which can only be explained by the fear that if propositions are admitted at all, they will turn out to be of a sort the reality of which he wishes to deny. I shall then proceed to argue that this fear is by no means baseless—that in...