If the proposition is the unit of logical discourse then the question “how am I predicating?” never arises. This destroys the distinction between the per se and the per accidens, the hypothetical and the categorical, the demonstrative and dialectical, and in so doing makes sophistry unavoidable. This is true a fortiori of philosophies that see the proposition not just as the basic unit of logical discourse, but of conscious awareness; or of those philosophies that take this notion to its limit and assert that the world itself is a totality of facts.
There’s nothing wrong with starting with the proposition as the unit of ones consideration, so long as one realizes that he’s starting with a middle and not a beginning.
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Aristotle insists that we don’t affirm or deny a proposition, but a predicate of a subject. As soon as we start thinking that the proposition is affirmed or denied as a proposition, the proposition itself becomes indifferent to truth or falsity, and becomes, of itself, hypothetical. This commits us to the view that truth for us is always hypothetical, as opposed to being sometimes hypothetical and sometimes not, depending on whether we predicate one thing of another hypothetically or not.
