Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Development of Supposition Theory in the Later 12 th through 14 th Centuries 191
strict sense, called a nominal definition. In the nominal definition of a
connotative term it is frequently necessary to put one expression in the
nominative case, and another one in one of the oblique cases. The term
‘white’ provides an example. The term has a nominal definition, one
expression of which is in the nominative case and another in one of the
oblique cases. Thus, if someone should ask for the nominal definition
of ‘white’, the answer would be ‘something informed with whiteness’
or ‘something having whiteness’. [Ockham SL 1.10 (70)]
A connotative term has a “nominal definition”, which is a phrase which expresses
the “what” of a term. [Ibid. Loux translates this as “the meaning of a name”.]
Examples of connotative terms are: ‘just’, ‘white’, ‘animate’, ‘human’, and so
on. [Ibid] Ockham defines a connotative term as one that signifies something
primarily and something secondarily. It appears from his examples that a term
signifies a thing secondarily if and only if something in the nominal definition
of the term signifies the thing primarily. The adjective ‘white’ signifies white
things primarily, and it signifies whitenesses secondarily — apparently because the
term ‘whiteness’ in its nominal definition (”something informed with whiteness”)
signifies whitenesses primarily.
Examples of absolute terms are: ‘man’, ‘animal’, ‘goat’, ‘stone’, ‘tree’, ‘fire’,
‘earth’, ‘water’, ‘heaven’, ‘whiteness’, ‘blackness’, ‘heat’, ‘sweetness’, ‘smell’, ‘taste’,
and the like. [Ockham SL 1.10 (69-70)] Absolute terms do not signify one thing
primarily and another thing secondarily. Presumably, this is because they do not
have nominal definitions. Instead, absolute terms have “quidditative” or “real”
definitions. The terminology “real definition” does not mean “genuine definition”;
rather, it is a characterization of the thing in reality that the term being defined
stands for. For realists, this is typically a form existing outside of the mind. Nominalists
don’t say this; instead they take it that a real definition characterizes all
and only the things that an absolute term supposits for. A real definition is not
synonymous with the word being defined, since different non-synonymous real definitions
are possible for a term. One can correctly characterize men by saying that
a man is any animal that is rational. This, however, does not give the “what” of
the linguistic term ‘man’.
The fact that all connotative terms have nominal definitions suggests an analysis
of connotativeness of a term in terms of complexity of the concept that it is
subordinated to. If a connotative spoken or written term directly signifies the same
concept as does its nominal definition, then since the latter is a complex concept,
connotative terms would all directly signify complex concepts. Buridan [SD Soph
1 ninth conclusion (840)] says: “only a spoken term to which there corresponds
not a simple but a complex concept is one that has a nominal definition in the
strict sense.
Further, if all nominal definitions contained only absolute terms, or contained
only absolute terms when all connotative terms were analyzed in terms of their
nominal definitions, then all terms would either be absolute or would have complex
analyses in terms of absolute terms. Some commentators have speculated that