ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates that the search for an underlying basis for the distinction, in the sense of a search for some one type of empirical proposition which contains no reference to sortals and is formed independently of any reference to sortals, is misconceived in principle by reference to P. F. Strawson. It claims that failure to recognise the category and nature of the sortal, to reduce sortals to predicates, indirectly leads to the search for an underlying basis for the subject-predicate distinction as manifested in a language in which the categories of name and predicable are introduced. The chapter argues that Strawson's search is so misconceived in that a sortal has to be invoked in order to articulate the proposed basis. It concludes that Strawson may not claim that all sortals in the extended sense rest for their introduction upon 'feature' universals.
