Existence is not the only notion whose status as a predicate has been questioned. Goodness and truth, classed together traditionally with ‘being’ as transcendentalia, have also had their credentials as predicates examined. G. E. Moore marked the difference between yellow and good by calling the latter a ‘non-natural property’ – but still a property. R. M. Hare denied that in calling something good we ascribed a property to it at all. What is achieved when ‘good’ is, ostensibly, predicated of, say, a penknife is that the penknife is thereby commended. Regarding goodness as a property and – what is perhaps the same thing – ‘good’ as a predicate is, for Hare, an instance of what Austin called the ‘descriptivist’ fallacy. Not all indicative sentences are used to describe things, to attribute properties to them. Description, the stating of facts, constatation, is only one of the illocutionary acts indicative sentences can be used to perform. Some indicative sentences, or key words in such sentences, are not constatives but performatives. ‘Good’, the most general adjective of commendation, is one of these.

So, according to the early Strawson, is ‘true’. When we call a statement ‘true’ we do not make a further statement: rather, we endorse, or corroborate, or concede, the first statement.