Unity of the proposition

In philosophy, the unity of the proposition is the problem of explaining how a sentence in the indicative mood expresses more than just what a list of proper names expresses. The problem was discussed under this name by Bertrand Russell, but it actually goes back to Plato. According to Plato's dialogue The Sophist, the simplest kind of sentence consists of just a proper name and a universal term (i.e. a predicate). The name refers to or picks out some individual object, and the predicate then says something about that individual.