Thus there are scholars who would place Scotus among the extensionalists. Nuchelmans (1973: 196), for instance, referring to the commentary on the sentences (Opus Oxoniense I, 27, 3, 19), declares: “Duns Scotus already affirmed that what is signified by the vocal utterance is a thing rather than a concept.” For others, such as Heidegger (1915),11 Scotus is very close to a phenomenological view of meaning as a mental object. And finally, there are still others, like Boehner (1958: 219), who have no qualms about confessing their ongoing perplexity.12
9.10. Ockham
There has been considerable discussion as to whether Ockham’s extensionalist theory is really as straightforward and explicit as might appear at first sight. If we consider in fact the four meanings of significare proposed by Ockham (Summa logicae I, 33), only the first has an unmistakable extensional sense. Only in this first meaning in fact do the terms lose their ability to signify when the object they stand for does not exist.
That said, even though we cannot be completely certain that Ockham used significari and denotari (invariably in the passive form) exclusively in the extensional sense,13 nevertheless in many passages he did use the two terms with this meaning.
What happens with Ockham—and had already happened with Bacon—is that the semiotic triangle is turned completely on its head once and for all. Words are not connected first and foremost with concepts and then, thanks to our intellectual mediation, to things: they are imposed directly on things and on states of affairs; and, in the same way, concepts too refer directly to things.
At this point, the semiotic triangle would look like Figure 9.7: there is a direct relation between concepts and things, given that concepts are the natural signs that signify things, and there is a direct relation between words and the things on which they impose a name, while he relation between words and concepts is completely neglected (see Boehner 1958: 221 and Tabarroni 1984).
Figure 9.7
Ockham is familiar with the Boethius’s dictum according to which “voces significant conceptus,” but in his opinion it is to be understood in the sense that “voces sunt signa secundario significantia illa quae per passiones animae primario importantur,” where it is clear that illa refers to the things, not the concepts. Words signify the same things signified by concepts, but they do not signify concepts (Summa logicae I, 1). In addition, there exists a rather disconcerting text in which Ockham, taking issue with the notion of an intelligible species, equates it with an image that cannot be more than a sign permitting us to remember something that we have already encountered as an individual entity: what is represented must be in some way already known, otherwise the representing image could never help us recognize the represented object. For instance a statue of Hercules would not help me recognize the real Hercules if I had never seen Hercules before; and I could not tell whether the statue looked like Hercules or not.14
This text assumes (as an issue on which there exists general agreement) the fact that we are not able to imagine, on the basis of an icon, something previously unknown to us. This would seem to be at odds with our actual experience (take, for example, the case of the identikit photo), given the fact that people use paintings or drawings to represent the characteristics of persons, animals, or things they have never seen. Ockham’s position could be interpreted in terms of cultural history as an example of aesthetic relativism: although he lived in the fourteenth century, Ockham was familiar for the most part with Romanesque and Early Gothic iconography, in which statues did not represent individuals in a realistic way, but universal types. When we view the portal of the Moissac cathedral or of Chartres, we have no trouble recognizing the Saint, the Prophet or the Human Being, but certainly not a unique individual. Ockham was unacquainted with the realism of Roman sculpture or the portrait tradition of later centuries.
There is nonetheless an epistemological explanation to account for such an embarrassing affirmation. If the concept is the only sign of individual things, and if its material expression (word or image) is merely a symptom of the inner image, then, without a prior notitia intuitiva of an object, the material expression cannot signify anything at all. Words and images cannot create or implant something in the mind of the addressee (as could occur in Augustine’s semiotics), unless there already exists in that mind the only possible sign of experienced reality, namely, its mental sign. In the absence of that sign, the external expression ends up being the symptom of an empty thought. The subversion of the semiotic triangle, which for Bacon was the end point of a protracted debate, for Ockham is an inescapable point of departure.
There are convincing demonstrations of the fact that Ockham also used significare in the intensional sense—we refer the reader to Boehner (1958) and Marmo (1984) for all of those cases in which propositions maintain their meaning regardless of whether they are true or false. We are not concerned here, however, with Ockham’s semiotics, but with his semiotic terminology. He clearly uses supponere in the extensional sense, inasmuch as suppositio exists “quando terminus stat in propositione pro aliquo” (Summa logicae I, 62). It is, however, equally evident that on more than one occasion Ockham uses significare (in the first meaning of the term) and supponere interchangeably: “aliquid significare, vel supponere vel stare pro aliquo” (Summa logicae I, 4; see also Pinborg 1972: 5).
It is, however, in the context of his discussion of propositions and suppositions that Ockham uses the term denotari. Consider, for example: “terminus supponit pro illo, de quo vel de pronomine demonstrare ipsum, per propositionem denotatur praedicatum praedicari, su supponens sit subiectum” (Summa logicae I, 62). If the term is the subject of a proposition, then the thing the term stands for (supponit) is the one of which the proposition denotes that the predicate is predicated.
In the phrase homo est albus, both terms suppose the same thing, and it is denoted by the whole proposition that it is the case that the same thing is both a man and white: “denotatur in tali propositione, quod illud, pro quo subiectum supponit, sit illud, pro quo praedicatum supponi” (Exp. in Porph. I, 72).
Likewise, denotari is used to indicate what is demonstrated to be the case by the conclusion of a syllogism: “propter quam ita est a parte rei sicut denotatur esse per conclusionem demonstrationis” (Summa logicae III, 2, 23; see also Moody 1935: sect. 6.3).15
The repeated use of the passive form suggests that a proposition does not denote a state of affairs: rather, by means of a proposition a state of affairs is denoted. It is, then, open to discussion whether denotatio is a relationship between a proposition and what is the case, or between a proposition and what is understood to be the case (see Marmo 1984). Through a proposition something is denoted, even if that something supposes nothing (Summa logicae I, 72).
Be that as it may, considering that (i) the suppositio is a extensional category, and the word “denotation” occurs so frequently in conjunction with the mention of the supposition’ and that (ii) in all probability the proposition does not necessarily denote its truth value, but at least denotes to someone that something is or is not the case,16 we are led to suppose that Ockham’s example may have inspired some later thinkers to use the term denotatio in extensional contexts.