Self-application and Higher-orderese

Following Arthur Prior, some philosophers have thought that English allows predicate quantification, as exemplified by a sentence like ‘Carlos is something Diana is not—kind’. This paper both defends this conclusion and argues that if the second-order reading of Prior sentences is correct, English also admits of self-applicative predication (SAP): cases in which a predicate applies directly to itself, not to a reified variant of itself. The presence of SAP in English is used to argue for the use of a SAP-friendly language for the purposes of metaphysics, based largely on grounds analogous to those on which some philosophers have recently defended the use of higher-order languages.