## 1. Signification and Concepts




In order to understand medieval theories of singular terms, we need to
consider medieval semantics, and why the question of singular terms
was so closely linked to the issue of singular concepts. 




The central semantic notion for medieval authors was that of
signification, which must not be identified with the notion of meaning
for two reasons. First, the meaning of a term is not an entity to
which the term is related in some way, but one can say that an
utterance signifies or makes known an entity, whether conceptual or
real, universal or particular. Moreover, meaning is not transitive,
but signification is. A spoken word was said to be a conventional sign
of a concept, which in turn, at least for later authors, was a natural
sign of a thing, and so spoken words were said to be at least indirect
signs of things. This is not to deny that medieval thinkers had a
general notion of meaning. They did talk about sense (*sensus*),
about the thought or content (*sententia*) of a phrase, and about
the force of a word (*vis verbi*), and they often used the word
'significatio' itself along with its cognates quite
widely. When they were discussing indexicals, especially personal
pronouns and demonstratives, they drew a distinction between a term's
general signification or what Kaplan has called
'character' and its particular signification, that is, its
'content' or contribution to what is actually said on a
particular occasion of use.




If we take signification in a narrow sense, as a technical notion, we
find that there were two not entirely compatible approaches, each
based on a sentence from Aristotle, and each emphasizing the role of
concepts, whether the hearer's or the speaker's. According to the
first approach, based on *De interpretatione* 16b19-21, to
signify is to generate or establish an understanding. This definition
places emphasis not on the speaker, but on the hearer. So long as the
hearer can acquire some understanding through hearing, the utterance
is significant even if the speaker is incapable of rational, abstract,
thought, and even if the speaker has no intention of conveying a
message. The second and most influential approach tied the
significative power of an utterance to its making known a concept. The
crucial text here is *De interpretatione* 16a3-4, read as saying,
"Spoken words are signs of concepts." This supports the
view that it is the speaker's intellectual capacity and intentions
that are crucial to significant utterance.




Aristotle, as interpreted by medieval commentators, had gone on to say
that concepts were similitudes or signs of things, and this raised the
question of what is meant by 'thing'. In other words, what
is it that we understand when an utterance such as 'man'
or 'animal' establishes an understanding? The usual
assumption from Boethius at least until the end of the thirteenth
century was that the understanding is of some kind of universal, an
essence or common nature, and when logicians asked whether spoken
words primarily signified concepts or things, the issue was whether
concepts or common natures should be taken as the primary significates
of an utterance. If the concept was said to be the primary
significate, then the common nature was the secondary significate. If
the common nature was said to be the primary significate, then
individuals having that nature were often said to be the secondary
significates. The issue was complicated by various views about the
nature of concepts as opposed to intelligible species, and about the
status of common natures, and their precise relation to individuals,
but fortunately these details do not concern us here. So long as
common natures in some sense played a role in the signification of
common nouns, there was a strong temptation to speak as if there are
individual natures which play a similar role in the signification of
singular terms. From Boethius on, there are many references to
individual forms, and such terms as Socrateity (*Socrateitas*)
and Platonicity (*Platonitas*) were frequently used, even by
Thomas Aquinas. On the other hand, the Aristotelian insistence, taken
up by Aquinas in particular, that the intellect cannot grasp
individuals as such made the explanation of how we can understand
Socrates more complicated. There did not seem to be a concept of
Socrateity that corresponded to the form spoken of. Moreover, the very
notion of an individual nature seemed incompatible with
Aristotelianism. As a result, some thinkers in the second half of the
thirteenth century held that what the grammarian counts as a proper
name is not properly a name, since it does not signify a common
nature.


 The issue of individual natures also affected the way in which the
newly developed theory of supposition was presented, since it
emphasised the fact that terms could exhibit a variety of semantic
features. Thus one and the same term could have material supposition
when it referred to the actual word, as in "'man'
has three letters," or simple supposition when it referred to
the form signified, as in "Man is a species of animal," or
personal supposition when it referred to individuals, as in
"Some man is running." Certainly singular terms could have
material supposition, but, at least for non-nominalists, the
distinction between simple or formal supposition and personal
supposition was more problematic. Either singular terms lacked a
semantic property that common nouns had, or singular terms could stand
for an individual nature. William of Sherwood explicitly allowed the
singular term 'Socrates' to have formal supposition in the
sentence "Socrates is said of just one individual", on the
grounds that 'Socrates' does signify a form, but he went
on to deny that the term had the further property of appellation,
which belonged to predicates, because, unlike common nouns, it could
not properly function as a predicate. However, other
thirteenth-century logicians tended to by-pass the problem of whether
what they took to be fundamental semantic features all applied equally
to both singular terms and common nouns.




This general problem of semantic variation remains in the background,
since many features other than simple supposition were attributed to
terms, but the nature of the debate about concepts and things was to
change completely in the fourteenth century, first with the insistence
of John Duns Scotus, like others before him, that individuals can be
grasped by the intellect, but more especially with the rise of
nominalism, according to which all that exists are individual things,
and that only concepts can be common or universal. The question
whether words primarily signify concepts or things was now construed
as the question: does a word signify an individual thing in the world
directly, or does it signify first the concept which is a necessary
condition for signification? John Buridan and his near contemporary
William Ockham differed on this issue. Buridan held that words first
signify concepts, because only then can we explain why terms such as
'being' and 'one' which have the same
extension nonetheless differ in signification. Ockham preferred to say
that words signify only individual things and are subordinated to
concepts without signifying them. Both thinkers are noteworthy for
their insistence that the concept itself was a sign which plays a
crucial intermediary role in language production and understanding and
that concepts are the terms of a fully-fledged mental language.
Moreover, the concept as sign was defined as a formal representation
of its object. However one construes the notion of representation here
(and any crude pictorial theory can be ruled out), it is clear that
conceptual representation was taken to involve some level of
generality, and so there is an obvious problem where singular concepts
are concerned. Yet, given John Buridan's claim that a spoken term
cannot be called universal or singular unless it corresponds to a
universal or singular concept, we must have singular concepts if we
have any genuine singular terms. As we shall see in SS9, Buridan
introduces an extra condition for the singular concept, while allowing
it to have a certain kind of generality.




Concepts were said to signify naturally, and to have the same
signification for all thinkers, or at least all thinkers with the same
experience, but spoken terms, and the written terms which were
subordinated to them, were thought to acquire their signification by
some original act of imposition. While most authors were careful not
to commit themselves to any account of how this original imposition
actually occurs, and while it was recognized that words such as
'person' and 'spirit' (both important in
theological contexts) do acquire new connotations, it was generally
supposed that the signification of common nouns within a given
conventional language remains stable. Proper names were both easier
and more difficult to account for. They were
more difficult because it is not entirely plausible to account for the
stability of their signification by appeal to standard
definitions. They were easier because there are
easily ascertainable instances of original imposition, particularly
through Christian baptism, though Paul of Venice explicitly recognized
that non-Christians have equivalent name-giving ceremonies. 




Medieval logicians insisted that original imposition had to be carried
out by someone (or some group) with special authority, and this
produced some puzzles about our use of proper names. If the word
'lion' signifies a particular species of animal, then we
can say that lions are always lions, but is Mary always Mary? Buridan
devoted one of the sophisms in his *Summulae de Dialectica* to
the question of whether one can truly say "Ba will be
baptized" (where 'ba' was deliberately chosen as a
nonsense syllable), given that 'ba' does not signify a boy
before his baptism takes place. He concluded that the sentence in
question had no truth-value, though both "'This boy is
ba' will be true tomorrow" and "This boy will be
called 'ba'" could be true. Paul of Venice asked
what would happen if, after being baptized 'Socrates', a
person was consistently called 'Plato' by a whole
community, and even forgot his original name. Paul thought that the
person would still be Socrates, since only the original baptism
involved the appropriate authority. On the other hand, legitimate
changes were possible, as when a newly elected pope takes on a new
name. As a result of these various remarks, it seems that Mary is not
Mary before she is named, and she can cease to be Mary if she is given
a new name by someone with authority.


## 2. Porphyry's Classification of Singular Terms




Discussions of singular terms were frequently related to a passage
from Porphyry's *Isagoge*. In the version used by medieval
logicians, Porphyry writes: "Individual is said of one
particular alone. Socrates is said to be individual, and this white
<thing>, and this approaching <person>, and son of
Sophroniscus, if Socrates be his only son. Such things are said to be
individuals, since each of them consists of properties whose
collection will never be the same in another." 




The last sentence of Porphyry's text ties the ontological notion of an
individual to a collection of properties, and as a corollary, it can
be taken to tie the notion of an individual term to a descriptive
phrase. However, there was fairly general agreement that a collection
of properties could not constitute an individual, and there seems to
have been no attempt to make the description of these properties into
a definition of the individual, or to see them as providing the
primary signification of singular terms. In the twelfth century,
Abelard pointed out at some length in his *Dialectica* that
Socrates is the name of an individual substance and that the accidents
associated with him by some description cannot enter into the
imposition of the signification of the name, else the name would be
equivocal through time. Socrates was called Socrates before he became
a poet (or musician) and after he ceased to be the son of Sophroniscus
(presumably by the latter's death). The notion that one could define
an individual by giving a list of common properties was also ruled out
by Priscian's account of names (see SS4), and the resulting
distinction between primary and secondary signification.




The main part of Porphyry's text offered medieval logicians the basis
for a classification of three types of singular term. First, there is
the determinate individual, represented by the proper name
'Socrates'. Everyone realized that different people could
have the same name, but it is important to note that
'Socrates' said of two different people was a standard
example of an equivocal term, a word with two unrelated significations
(see SS5). For each individual named 'Socrates', there
had to be a specific semantic convention associating that individual
with that name-type. John Buridan remarked that even if there were a
thousand other people called John, all entirely similar to him, the
name 'John' as bestowed on Buridan would signify only
Buridan and no one else. 




The second type of singular term is the vague individual
(*individuum vagum*), represented by the phrases 'this
white <thing>' and 'this approaching
<person>'. In other contexts, especially commentaries on
Aristotle's *Categories* 2a11-13, the vague individual was
represented by such phrases as 'some man', but in all the
texts we are concerned with, the presence of the demonstrative pronoun
is crucial. The word 'vague' is used partly because the
same phrase will have a different reference when uttered in different
contexts, but mainly because the identification of the individual in
question is indeterminate, though to a varying extent. 'This
being' and 'this body' are highly indeterminate,
'this animal' is less indeterminate, and 'this
man' is even less indeterminate, but it still lacks the
precision of 'Socrates'. I can recognize someone as a man
without being able to distinguish him from other men in any reliable
manner. As we shall see below (SS9), Buridan took the vague
singular to be the most proper type of singular term.




Finally, we have the individual by supposition (*ex
suppositione*) or by circumlocution (*circumlocutione*),
represented by the phrase 'son of Sophroniscus' . Some
people distinguished two cases here. For John Versor, a
fifteenth-century thinker, 'son of Sophroniscus' is
determinate by virtue of supposition, but 'man with a fat head,
a long nose and so on' is determinate by virtue of
circumlocution. In works which did not comment on Porphyry directly,
the third type was often omitted, and there was agreement that
although the phrases involved are referring expressions and may in
fact refer to just one thing, they are not properly speaking singular
terms. Just as some common terms, such as 'sun' and
'moon', in fact have only one referent, so there are
referring phrases which in fact have only one referent, but do not
count as singular terms because by the mode of their signification
they could supposit for more than one thing. 




We should note that in the context of Porphyry's discussion, we are
dealing with indefinite descriptions, given that the stipulation that
Sophroniscus has only one son is not part of the phrase but merely
background information. This fact is enough to ensure that the phrase
in fact refers to only one individual, but it does not alter the
linguistic generality of the phrase. There was little specific
discussion of definite descriptions, but it seems that they would have
been treated in the same way. John Buridan has the most direct
discussion of the issue. In one place he considers the phrase,
'first Christian king of France' (*primus rex Francie
christianus*). This he took to be general, insofar as it is made
up of common concepts. In another place he considers the phrase
'largest and brightest heavenly body' (*planeta maximus
et lucidissimus*) used to refer to the sun, and he remarks that the
very same phrase, without any new imposition, could supposit for a
second sun if God were to create another, either similar or greater in
size and brightness. He could be interpreted as saying that the very
same phrase, without being given any new signification, could refer to
different individuals in different possible worlds.


## 3. Other Types of Singular Term




Porphyry's divisions by no means exhausted the types of term and
phrase that could be regarded as singular. For those who accepted
simple supposition as supposition for a common nature, "Man is a
species" had a singular subject. Later nominalists regarded the
same sentence as indefinite, on the grounds that 'man' had
material supposition and could refer either to itself or to its
equiforms. Indeed, any term whatsoever could be taken as having
material supposition for itself or its equiforms, or as having
personal supposition, and in early sixteenth-century Parisian logic
texts it was normal to remark that all singular terms are common, and
all common terms are singular when taken in these different
ways. Collective terms of one sort and another were included under the
heading of singular terms. 'These' in "These are
running," 'all God's apostles' in "All God's
apostles are twelve <in number>," 'Rome', and
'Salamanca' are examples. Phrases containing a mixture of
singular and common terms, such as 'the being which is
Socrates', were also counted as singular. Other phrases
containing mixtures of singular and common terms together with logical
connectives were the subject of many rules and lengthy discussions
from the late fourteenth century onward. Thus we discover that
'Socrates or Plato' is a common term because it can be
verified of more than one thing while 'Socrates and Plato'
is a collective singular term. On the other hand, if we write
'Socrates and a donkey', the phrase is common because it
contains a common term as an equally principal part. This feature
distinguishes it from aggregates in which the singular term determines
the common term, as in 'the substance John' and 'the
man Socrates'.


## 4. Proper Names




The Stoics had made a clear distinction between proper names and
common nouns, listing them as different parts of speech, but while
this possibility was recognized by Priscian and the influential
twelfth century grammarian, Peter Helias, it was not adopted.
According to Priscian, the *nomen*, the noun or name, is the
first of the principal parts of speech, and it signifies substance
with quality, that is, it signifies a thing of a certain sort, or an
individual established in a certain nature. The *nomen* is
divided into the common or appellative name and the proper name. 
Because the proper name is a subdivision of the name, and hence a
fully-fledged part of the language, it is taken to have the same
semantic properties as the common name, and it can, indeed must, be
taken to have a sense. According to Priscian, the proper name
signifies a particular substance and its quality, and it may also
include the apprehension of something common. Thus if I say
'Virgil', the common notions 'man' and
'poet' will be understood. Hence there are two kinds of
senses attached to proper names, a particular sense which cannot be
expressed by common notions, and an associated sense, a
description.




There are four types of proper name according to Priscian, the
Encyclopedist Isidore of Seville, and medieval grammarians, namely
*praenomen*, *nomen*, *cognomen*, and
*agnomen*. For Isidore of Seville, the *nomen* was the
name of the *gens* or clan, a group of people with a common
ancestor, but for Priscian, Peter Helias and the modistic grammarians,
such as Thomas of Erfurt, the *nomen* was the most properly
proper name, that which signified an individual "in an absolute
way under the properties which gave him his individuality" as
Thomas put it. The *praenomen* distinguished between people of
the same family. The *cognomen* was the family name, and the
*agnomen* was a name, such as 'Africanus', given in
honour of some achievement, especially military. Peter Helias asked
whether the four types of name had the same signification, and whether
the *cognomen* was a common noun. In his reply, he made an
explicit distinction between a principal signification which is unique
and a secondary signification. The *cognomen* principally
signifies an individual quality, but secondarily signifies the common
quality of belonging to a certain family group. He added that this
distinction applied to all four types of proper name, and so they all
have the same principal signification when used of one person. This
reinforces the claim that proper names are not equivalent to a set of
common characteristics, and cannot be defined. 


## 5. Synonymy, Metaphor, and Equivocation




Proper names were allowed to exhibit the features of common nouns in
various respects. For instance, they could be used
metaphorically. Aquinas mentions the use of 'Achilles' to
refer to strong men, and others used 'Nero' as an example
of cruel men. More importantly, 'Marcus' and
'Tullius', as two names of the Roman orator Marcus Tullius
Cicero, were favourite examples of synonymous terms. As such they
featured in discussions of the problem of intentional contexts. The
early thirteenth century theologian Praepositinus of Cremona discussed
the relation between the speaker's understanding and the signification
of a proposition in the situation where a man knows Marcus, but does
not know that he is also called Tullius, and hence believes that the
sentence "He is Tullius" (said by someone pointing to
Marcus Tullius) is false. A century later Walter Burley asked whether
one could infer that a person knows that Tullius is running, given
that he knows that Marcus is running, and given that Marcus is
Tullius.




The most interesting issues arise in the context of equivocal
terms. These were divided into two kinds, chance equivocals, and
deliberate equivocals. In the first case, the occurrences of the
equivocal term were totally unconnected, but in the second case, some
intention on the part of the speakers was involved, and the
occurrences of the equivocal term could be related in various
ways. From classical times onward, proper names such as
'Ajax' and 'Alexander' provided standard
examples of equivocal terms. However, it was obvious that there were
reasons for giving one proper name rather than another, and Aquinas,
for instance, gave an elaborate list of such reasons. This suggested
to at least some authors that proper names need not be regarded as
chance equivocals. In his commentary on the *Categories*, Paul of
Venice claimed that some names were purely equivocal, and he instanced
'Aristotle' and 'Plato'. However, if several
men were called John because they were born on the Feast of St. John,
the name 'John' should be regarded as a univocal term. He
overlooked the distinction made by his contemporary, John Dorp,
between a common reason for giving the same name to two children, and
the different singular concepts which that name signified. Dorp argued
that a common reason was not enough for univocity. In the sixteenth
century, Domingo de Soto used the newly-rediscovered commentary on the
*Categories* by Philoponus (attributed wrongly to Ammonius) to
introduce a new type of deliberate equivocal, 'from hope and
memory'. One might call one's son Plato in the hope of his
becoming a philosopher, or Nicomachus in memory of one's father or
Charles in honour of the Emperor.




While almost everyone except Paul of Venice agreed that proper names
must always be equivocal when used of two different people, not
everyone wanted to say that they were univocal when used of the same
person. Except for Roger Bacon, who thought of proper names as
constantly receiving new impositions (see SS7), the reason had to
do with the definition of a univocal term as involving a concept or a
nature predicable, at least in principle, of several individuals. The
usual solution was simply to redefine 'univocal' so that
proper names were included, but the *Categories* commentaries of
Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen and Paul of Venice contain
fairly extensive discussions of the issue. Both Albert and Paul agreed
in opposition to Marsilius that a proper name could be equivocal
without being called univocal when used of one person.




An issue to do with the grammatical properties of proper names was
whether they could be pluralized or quantified. Most people said that
no plural could be grammatically correct, and that such phrases as
'every Socrates' were ill-formed, but various logicians in
late fourteenth-century Oxford pointed out that such locutions as
"There are several Roberts" or 'every William'
had their uses in ordinary speech, even if they were somewhat
deviant. The use of demonstratives with proper names could also pose a
problem. Domingo de Soto remarked that in the case where there are
several people called Peter in the room, and we want to distinguish
this Peter from that Peter we may speak of this or that Peter, but in
the mind, where there are no equivocal concepts, the singular concept
corresponding to a proper name cannot properly be further
singularized, any more than it can be universalized.


## 6. Demonstrative Pronouns




Priscian made a strong connection between the proper name and the
pronoun (*pronomen*), saying that the pronoun is taken in place
of a proper name. It also has a kind of primacy over the proper
name. As Priscian said, even if we know that Virgil is a man and a
poet, we won't be able to identify him (assuming we are in his
presence) unless someone says "This is Virgil." The type
of pronoun we are interested in here is what medieval grammarians
called the primitive (non-derived) demonstrative pronoun, which
includes personal pronouns such as 'I' and demonstratives
such as 'this'. Demonstration (construed as
'pointing to') can be either direct, when something is
before one's eyes, or intellectual, or a mixture of the two. Leaving
aside intellectual demonstration, which occurs when an object is
incorporeal or absent (see SS8), we can note that the use of a
demonstrative pronoun in normal circumstances has the implication that
the object pointed to must be present to the speaker.




The standard case is represented by 'this' or by
'this man', and the mental correlate in both cases is a
common concept singularized by a demonstrative act. Because
'this' is tied to particular demonstrative acts, Buridan,
like many other logicians in the fourteenth, fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, took it that genuine referring uses of the phrase
'this man' are equivocal. What I signify when I say
'this man' pointing to Socrates is quite different from
what you signify when you say 'this man' pointing to
Plato, and every use of the phrase requires a new imposition. As Soto
pointed out, this is quite compatible with the claim that 'this
man' has an unchanging general sense which is understood by all
speakers of Latin. It is also compatible with failures of reference
of various sorts, as Buridan and others frequently remarked. I can say
'this man' and point to a donkey, or to
nothing. Similarly, I can utter 'this chimera', a phrase
which can never have a referent, given that chimeras are impossible
objects.




One might suppose that mere pointing is all that a demonstrative
pronoun does, and certainly Priscian had claimed that while the name
signifies substance with quality, that is, a referent plus its nature,
the pronoun signifies substance without quality, that is, a bare
referent (cf. SS8). However, medieval grammarians and logicians
tended to demand some identification of the object denoted. One
context for the demand is found in the discussion of constructions
mixing first-person pronouns and first-person verb forms with proper
names, which were counted as third-personal. Priscian took such
locutions as "Priscian read" (*Priscianus lego*) to
be ill-formed, and preferred the expansion, "I Priscian
read" (*Ego Priscianus lego*). In his discussion of this
sentence, Peter Helias placed the emphasis on the presence of
'I'. He explained that "I" cannot pick out a
form, so 'Priscian' has to be supplied in order for there
to be a perfect subject. Nearly two and a half centuries later John
Dorp appealed to the same grammatical doctrine in order to explain
that the sense of the spoken phrase "I run" is either
"I John run" or "I, a man, run." The mental
correlate of a personal pronoun must involve an identifying concept,
whether singular or universal.




For Dorp and other later logicians ordinary demonstrative pronouns
such as 'this' similarly require the presence of an
identifying concept. This raised the issue of what in the mind
corresponds to the pronoun itself, an issue which relates to the more
general issue of the mental correlate of syncategorematic terms, that
is, terms which perform some logical function, as opposed to
categorematic terms, or terms such as nouns and adjectives, which fall
under Aristotle's categories. Some people apparently held that there
are no pronouns in the mind. Hence one can argue that a demonstrative
pronoun is a disguised categorematic term, and that the mental
correlate of "This man runs" is "The man Socrates
runs." On the more common view, pronouns are subordinated to
special demonstrative or relative acts in the mind. If the pronoun is
joined to a noun in the spoken phrase, then it represents a purely
syncategorematic act in the mind. If it appears alone in the spoken
phrase, there are two possibilities, as John Dorp argued. It can be
taken to be subordinated to a mental phrase containing both a
syncategorematic act and a name, and this case would be
legitimate. Alternatively, it could be taken as purely
syncategorematic, and this use would be illegitimate, because there
would be no sign of the thing pointed to, and a purely
syncategorematic term cannot be the subject of a proposition. You
cannot successfully *think* "This is running" without
identifying the 'this' in some way. However, it seems
that the identification need not involve a sortal concept. A singular
concept is enough. 


## 7. Singular Terms in Logic




The use of singular terms in inferences raised various issues. So far
as syllogistic was concerned, some logicians, such as Lambert of
Auxerre (or Lagny) gave a standard account of the Aristotelian
syllogism which is centered on the universal and particular
quantification of general terms at the same time as they gave examples
with singular terms, such as "Every man is an animal, Socrates
is a man, therefore Socrates is an animal." More detailed
presentations of syllogistic included an account of the expository
syllogism, which is in the third figure and has a singular middle
term, and of other syllogisms with singular terms. Such syllogisms
were said to be governed by the two principles "When two things
are the same as a third, they are the same as each other" and
"When one of two things is the same as a third and one is not,
then the two things are not the same as each other." The
existence of syllogisms with singular terms could be thought to cast
doubt on such general syllogistic principles as "One premise
must always be universal" and "Nothing follows from two
particular premises." Lambert dealt with the former problem by
appealing to the formulation "Everything that is Socrates runs,
Socrates is a man, therefore a man runs." Buridan preferred to
reject the first principle, and John Dorp explained that the second
principle did not apply unless one specified that
'particular' was used in the narrow sense of
'neither universal nor singular'. In the seventeenth
century, some logicians were to treat singular propositions as
equivalent to universal propositions, but, as Dorp's remarks suggest,
medieval logicians preferred to class singular propositions with
particular propositions.




Another place in which singular terms were used was suppositional
descent, as when one infers from "Every man is running"
that Socrates is running or Plato is running or Cicero is running, or that
this man is running, and that man is running. In the earlier Middle
Ages, logicians did not seem to worry about the use of proper names as
opposed to demonstrative phrases, but there was some discussion of
possible problems in the later period. One problem had to do with the
fact that there are different types of singular name. Men are called
Socrates, Plato and Cicero, but donkeys are called Brownie
(*Brunellus*), Tawny (*Favellus*) and Little Grey
(*Grisellus*), so what happens if someone produces the inference,
"Every man is running, therefore Brownie is running and Tawny is
running"? After all, this inference has exactly the same logical
form as "Every man is running, therefore Socrates is running and
Plato is running." Moreover, even if one has the correct type of
proper name, its bearer may die, rendering the conclusion false while
the premise remains true. If one adopts the preferred solution of
replacing proper names by demonstrative phrases, a similar problem
arises. If 'this' does not succeed in pointing to a living
man, then "Every man is running, therefore this man is
running" may have a true premise and a false conclusion. The
problem was dealt with by the provision of extra premises which
ensured that the very same things referred to by a true premise are
the things referred to by the demonstrative phrases in the
conclusion.




The problem of reference to dead men was also discussed by
logicians. There were three issues. First, there was the problem of
words used of a living man and of a corpse. Following Aristotle
(*Meteorology* 389b31), and also Augustine's *On Dialectic*,
logicians were content to accept that if I point to a corpse and say
"This is a man" or "This is Peter," then
'man' and 'Peter' are being used equivocally,
in some different or extended sense. Second, there was the problem of
establishing a referent for such claims as "Adam was in
Paradise" or "Adam is dead." Here supposition theory
came into play, for it allowed reference to past objects as well as
present objects, future objects, and possible objects. Third, there
was the problem which was the focus of special attention in the second
half of the thirteenth century, namely whether the proposition
"Caesar is a man" can be true when Caesar is dead. This
question had to do in large part with the interpretation of
'is', but what concerns us here is the related issue of
whether proper names lost their signification when their bearer
died. If they do, it seems that any discussion of the past will be
senseless. The answers given show the particular importance of the
place of the mind in signification. For instance, Boethius of Dacia
wrote "after Socrates's destruction 'Socrates'
signifies such a being as Socrates once *was*...when the
real thing has been destroyed, conceiving of that thing is possible
for the intellect as it was earlier; for it is possible to think the
thing after its destruction. Therefore, it is also possible to signify
the thing by means of an utterance as it was earlier." An
opposing view was presented by Roger Bacon, who held that proper names
were radically equivocal because they were subject to constant
reimposition. The person who cries out "John is dead,"
intending to refer either to a thing of the past or to a corpse, has
given a new imposition to the word 'John', even if his
grief prevents him from realizing this.




One issue that did not arise is that of fictional names. Medieval
logicians were concerned with problems of reference to dead persons,
or to fictional entities such as chimeras or the phoenix, but I have
yet to come across any discussion of fictional singular terms such as
Frodo Baggins or Harry Potter. Buridan remarked that one might acquire
fictitious singular concepts in dreams, but he did not speak of naming
their non-existent objects. Perhaps the nearest anyone came to raising
the problem of fictional names was hinted at in an early
fifteenth-century discussion by Nicholas of Amsterdam. He mentioned
the problem of Antichrist, who is named, though he does not yet
exist. The solution depended on the claims that signification involves
an aptitude, and that since Antichrist would exist in the future, he
would then give rise to a genuine singular concept 


## 8. Singular Terms in Theology




Problems of naming often arose in theological contexts, and Aquinas's
own list of reasons for giving proper names is part of his discussion
of whether Christ was appropriately named 'Jesus'. The
word 'God' was the focus of particular
attention. Praepositinus of Cremona said that properly speaking it was
neither a proper name nor a common term, while other early theologians
apparently suggested that it was a proper name, because it referred to
a reality that could only be singular. The majority view was expressed
by Aquinas, who argued that the word 'God' was much like
the word 'sun'. We know that this word has only one
referent, and in the case of God, we know that the word *can*
have only one referent; nonetheless, 'God' is a common
term. In many later logicians 'God' appears along with
'sun' and 'moon' as an example of words that
are not singular terms, despite the fact that they supposit for only
one thing.




The Trinity caused particular problems for logicians because of the
unique relation between the three persons and the one divine essence
which is, as Ockham put it in his *Summa logicae*, "one and
simple and one in number and singular to the highest degree, and yet
is several things." Such inferences as "This divine
essence is the Father, this divine essence is the Son, therefore the
Father is the Son" seem to have true premises which assert an
identity between singular things, yet the conclusion is
unacceptable. Various solutions were found, including an exploration
of different senses of identity and of different types of
predication. In his *Perutilis* *logica* Albert of Saxony
suggested that in expository syllogisms the middle term should always
be qualified by the phrase, "Everything which is," which
makes the premises false in the divine case. In the *Summa
logicae*, Ockham preferred to say that a singular proposition of
the sort required for expository syllogisms could not have a subject
which supposited for a reality that was both one and many, as occurs
in the Trinitarian example.




The Roman Catholic doctrine of transsubstantiation led to a discussion
of demonstrative phrases. When during the Eucharist the priest takes
the bread and utters the words "This is my body," the
substance is said to change from bread into the body of Christ. What
then is the referent of the word 'this'? It cannot be the
bread, for that would falsify the sentence, but it cannot be the body
of Christ, for the change of substance only occurs when the utterance
is complete. In their solutions, theologians discussed a wide range of
topics, including the relation between the use and mention of a
proposition, the relation of a proposition to the stretch of time
during which it is uttered, and the difference between factual and
performative utterances, but what concerns us here is their treatment
of the word 'this'. Priscian's reference to intellectual
demonstration was found useful, and the thought that a demonstrative
could refer either to something absent or to something spiritual was
supplemented by a further kind of intellectual demonstration in which
the thing actually pointed to is not numerically identical to the
thing signified and to which the predicate applies. "This herb
grows in my garden," said while in someone else's garden, was
the standard example here. Aquinas seized on Priscian's further claim
that demonstratives signify substance without quality, and argued that
'this' refers to something indeterminate which is first
qualified by the properties of bread and then by the properties of
Christ's body. 


## 9. Buridan's Theory of Singular Terms


 

John Buridan was the medieval author who produced the fullest and most
coherent account of singular terms. In his commentary on Aristotle's
*De anima*, Buridan claims that the vague individual is the most
proper singular term. While it is true that the phrase 'this
man' can lack reference through improper use, if it is used
properly it must point to one united existent present object, the very
situation in which we form genuinely singular concepts. Demonstrative
phrases are so clearly tied to the here-and-now that no problem of
identity through time can arise. On the other hand, this allows for
only a very time-bound usage. In his consideration of whether the
singular term 'Socrates' could be defined by the phrase
'this man', Buridan remarked that if Socrates leaves the
room, he is still Socrates, but he is no longer the referent of
'this man'. 




Buridan's view of vague individuals was related to his discussion of
Aristotle's claim (*Physics* 1 184a22-24) that we must proceed
from universals to particulars. On the one hand, he insisted that
cognition can only begin when a singular thing is present to the
senses; on the other hand, he argued that our cognition must move from
the more general to the less general, because it requires more skill
to grasp the less general. Adults, he remarked, distinguish easily
between dogs and cats, but small children do not. Instead of
supposing that the only appropriate singular is Socrates, Buridan
argued that for each level of generality, there is an appropriate
vague singular. First we cognize this body, then we cognize this
animal, and then we cognize this man. This account of the standard
progression allows recognition both of the primacy of singulars, and
of the move from more to less general. It depends on Buridan's
epistemological claim that general notions are always involved in
apprehension, and that what makes an apprehension singular is the
'confusion' or fusing together of circumstances, so that
being a man is not abstracted from being here and now in such and such
a way. Singularity is not tied to the absence of generality, but to
the presence of 'confusion' or the lack of
discrimination. In other words, a concept can be semantically simple
or singular while being metaphysically rich. It has a complex content
without being compositional, and without the elements having been
distinguished from one another.




John Dorp recognized that Buridan's account depends on the claim that
we can grasp generality directly, and that what makes a concept
singular is not the absence of generality but the fact that the
general has not yet been separated from the set of particular
circumstances. Dorp rejected this account, and argued that we have no
such singular term as a vague individual in our language. To cognize a
thing as singular must involve cognition of particular circumstances,
and the general concept 'man' cannot be part of the
singular cognition. If we want to introduce vague singulars into our
language, we will have to invent some special term, such as
'a', to signify Socrates together with a connotation of
all the individual circumstances, and 'a' will then count
as a vague singular. Dorp's view was not adopted any more than was
Buridan's own. For most later logicians, the vague singular was
(contrary to Dorp) one type of singular term, but (contrary to
Buridan) less properly singular than the proper name, on the grounds
that it did indeed involve some generality. 




Buridan's treatment of proper names depends on his insistence that a
singular term must be subordinated to a singular concept, and that the
formation of a singular concept depends on the actual presence of the
singular thing. No one can hand on a singular concept to another by
definition or explanation. In his *Questiones* *in
Metaphysicam*, Buridan considered the names
'Antichrist' and 'Aristotle'. He argued that
'Antichrist', the favorite example of a name referring to
a person who does not yet exist, is not a singular term, since it is
formed from 'anti' and 'Christ', and could
apply to many individuals. He then turned to his own favourite
example, 'Aristotle'. If I am in the presence of
Aristotle, and I dub him 'Aristotle', then the name is a
genuinely singular term. But if Aristotle is a figure in the distant
past, then my concept of Aristotle must be a descriptive one,
containing such general elements as 'man', 'great
philosopher', 'born in Greece', and so on. Given that there was
indeed such a man, having just those characteristics, then my concept
supposits for Aristotle, and so stability of reference is guaranteed,
but since the concept is not and cannot be a singular concept, it
seems that 'Aristotle' cannot be a proper singular term
when uttered by me, but only an individual by circumlocution. 




Buridan adds a very important clause to his discussion at this
point. He remarks that I can treat 'Aristotle' as a
singular term because I believe that the name was imposed or given its
signification by a person who did have the appropriate singular
concept. This move allows him to avoid the awkward consequence that
whether 'Aristotle' is a proper name or not depends
entirely on the experience of the speakers, and not at all on the
linguistic practices of the community. If I have never known
Aristotle, but am speaking with someone who did know him, we can both
be taken to be using a proper name when we utter the word
'Aristotle'. Buridan's remarks can be expanded in at
least two closely related ways. On the one hand, given his references
to an original baptism or name-giving ceremony, we can regard Buridan
as offering an early hint of the historical chain theory of proper
names. On the other hand, given his apparent recognition that the
speaker's intention to refer to the person who was baptized is related
to a body of information which, accurate or not, is causally connected
with the man baptized 'Aristotle', perhaps Buridan is
nearer to the richer causal account given by Gareth Evans. Buridan's
hints were picked up, though not developed, by later authors. For
instance, Dorp remarked that we treat such names as
'Aristotle' as singular because they were singular for the
original impositor.




The importance of some sort of causal link between the original
producer of the name and the individual named and its relation to the
representative nature of even singular concepts was brought out by
Buridan and Dorp in their discussion of two cases. In the first case,
Plato and Socrates are exactly similar and, without my knowing it, one
replaces the other in my field of sight. Buridan and Dorp argue that
while my first-formed singular concept is equally similar to the
second person to appear, it is not a concept of him, because it is
caused by a different individual. The criterion for distinction is not
the fit between concept and object but the causal relation. The
second case was discussed by Dorp alone. If identical twins are born,
and are both called 'Socrates', it may seem that
'Socrates' will function as a common name in this case,
because the concepts will be exactly alike, but here too the causal
relation becomes all-important. There are two singular terms, each
with its own signification.


## 10. Proper Names and Identity through Time




Further issues to do with proper names arose from Buridan's discussion
of identity through time in the last redaction of his commentary on
Aristotle's *Physics* where he posed the question "Is
Socrates the same today that he was yesterday?" In his answer,
Buridan makes a careful distinction between three kinds of numerical
identity through time. In the strictest sense, being totally the same
in number, no change of any kind is allowed, and so there are very few
real individuals, perhaps only God. In the less strict sense, being
partially the same in number, the continuity of one part is
sufficient. Socrates is the same Socrates despite bodily changes,
because he has the same soul, but the human body will not retain its
identity through time, and neither will a horse. In the least strict
sense of identity, being the same according to the continuity of
diverse parts succeeding one another, we find that animals, bodies,
and rivers can be regarded as minimally the same through time. The
Seine is the same river now as it was ten years ago because of the
continuous succession of water-parts. This allows us to use the word
'Seine' as if it were a singular term in accordance with
the customary modes of speech. It is important to note that we are
allowed to retain singular concepts through memory, so I can keep the
same concept through time provided I have had the requisite original
experience of the individual in question.




One consequence of Buridan's account is that the names
'Socrates' and 'Aristotle' on the one hand and
'Seine' and 'Brownie' (the donkey) on the
other have a different status. The former are more properly singular
terms than the latter even for those who are acquainted with all of
these individuals through time. Domingo de Soto was strongly opposed
to this consequence. He appealed to Aristotle's doctrines in order to
argue that the continuity of soul is not the only condition for
identity of the second type, and that horses, trees and even rivers
could enjoy a strong enough identity, by virtue of the continuity of
their forms and functions, to give a basis for the application of one
singular concept through time.




Another consequence of Buridan's account is found in some early
sixteenth-century logicians whose reflection on the problem of
identity through time led them to adopt an even more restrictive
account of proper names than Buridan himself had countenanced, and one
which has much in common with Roger Bacon's theory (see
SS7). These logicians argued that a sequence of different concepts
of Socrates will be formed through time, even by one acquainted with
him, and hence that the name 'Socrates' is no more a
proper singular term than is the name 'Seine'. It is
radically equivocal, since at every moment it is subordinated to a
different concept. Nor is this incompatible with the intentions of the
person who originally gave Socrates his name. Strictly speaking, only
the baby was called Socrates, but the name was imposed equivalently or
as a consequence to signify every successor to the boy by means of
different concepts. 




 Once more, Domingo de Soto was strongly opposed. He said that to
regard the name 'Socrates' as an equivocal term which
refers to a succession of individuals is a denial of common speech and
of the common sense of the wise men who originally gave terms their
signification. Identity of the second type is sufficiently strong to
be the basis for one singular concept to be predicated non-ambiguously
through time.