Which sentence illustrates logical supposition?

• A. man has five notes
• B. man is rational
• C. man is a three-letter word
• D. man was created by God

Answer: (A)

Logical supposition concerns how a term stands for the things it denotes within a proposition. The sentence that best shows this uses the subject term to refer to the real things it designates—the actual men who have five notes—rather than merely commenting on the word itself or on men in a purely general sense. In this case, “man” functions as the term standing for the people, and the statement makes a claim about those people and a property they possess. The other sentences shift focus to whether humans have a particular attribute in general, or to the word itself as a linguistic object, or to a claim about creation, none of which illustrate the way a term stands for its referents in a proposition.