Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

106 Ian Wilks
Whatever philosophical problems may beset the propositional semantics arising
from the construals in (i) and (ii) are beside the point. The point is that the notion
Abelard is attempting to articulate the sort of notion that figures commonly in
contemporary semantic theory, and that the dictum should not be seen, from
our perspective, as an especially exotic notion. It is undoubtedly, however, an
unfinished one, and in need of further specification.
There is one point about it, however, that Abelard stresses: it is not a thing
(res) [Nuchelmans, 1973, p 153]. 45 Here his concerns echo those expressed in his
discussion of the status. The status is the cause of the applicability of a general
name to a plurality of objects; but even though it causes this applicability, it
is not a thing. The dictum is likewise a cause — of the truth, falsity, etc. of
propositions — but again Abelard wants to deny that being a cause entails being
a thing. He reverts to the sort of argument, seen earlier in his discussion of the
status, that what serves as a cause does not necessarily have to be identifiable as
a thing. The thief is hung for an act of thievery committed in the past, an act
which, at time of hanging, is not a thing. One can starve to death because of the
non-act of failing to eat, or be eternally damned for the non-act of failing to act
well, and these non-acts are likewise not things. So the non-thinghood of dicta
is no bar to their causal abilities [Abelard, 1927, p. 369 (2–6); Abelard, 2006,
04.36], or their ability to explain how propositions can be true, false, etc. In this
way a further portion of Abelard’s semantic theory is set in place without evident
appeal to metaphysically controversial items. Given his initial rejection of shared
forms from his semantic theory to avoid metaphysical controversy, he is naturally
disinclined to re-introduce such controversy elsewhere.
Of course the supposed non-thinghood of the dictum does raise its own puzzles.
46 Recall the passage quoted above to introduce the notion of the dictum:
“Just as names and verbs have a twofold signification — of things and understandings
— we also grant that propositions have a twofold signification: according to
the understandings composed of the understandings of their parts, and according
to their dicta” [Abelard, 1927, p. 367 (9–12); Abelard, 2006, 04.26]. This comparison
should be approached carefully. If we press the analogy with names too far,
45 Nonetheless the Dialectica is less explicit on this matter. Abelard’s preferred term in that
work is not the dictum [Marenbon, 1997a, p. 204, note 5] but the existentia rei; translated
literally this means “the existence of a thing.” But it would not have been taken in this way,
however, given the generality of the word res, and is better rendered as “state of affairs” or
“matter of fact.” Abelard might have come to prefer the word dictum because of its non-use
of the word res, and thus its greater ability to convey the non-thinghood of the cause of truth,
falsity, etc. (For comparison, imagine a modern theorist coming to prefer “fact” over “state of
affairs” because of the latter’s sounding too much like a thing, or collection of things, in the
world.) Kevin Guilfoy in fact argues that the Dialectica theory is altogether distinct from the
one given in the Glossae super Periermeneias [Guilfoy, 2004b]. Intriguingly, John Marenbon
argues that having come to employ the word dictum, Abelard may subsequently have abandoned
it [Marenbon, 2004, pp. 76–78].
46 These are treated in Tweedale’s extensive discussion of the dictum in [Tweedale, 1976, pp.
216-278]. For other discussions of the dictum not so far mentioned see [de Libera, 1981], [de Rijk,
1975], [Jolivet, 1982, pp 77–85], [Lewis, 1987, pp. 84–88], [Jacobi et al., 1996] and [Rosier-Catach,
2004].