Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Assimilation of Aristotelian and Arabic Logic up to the Later Thirteenth Century 287
example ‘house’ signifies houses. He calls this kind of signification ‘secundum
parilitatem’. Secondly, a word can signify more indirectly as a consequence like
for example ‘house’ also signifies the walls of a house. He calls it ‘secundum
consequentiam’. Thirdly, an even more indirect signification as in the case of
‘roof’ which signify the walls holding it up. This he calls ‘secundum comitantiam’.
Al-Ghazālī mentions that the first two are the most useful and the third much
less so. If one were to group these three into distinct kinds of signification I
think one would have to say that the first one is primary while the other two are
secondary or derivative kinds of signification. The word ‘house’ is what later Latin
logicians (for example William Ockham) would call a connotative term, which then
has both a primary signification and a secondary, that is, it signifies both the thing
and the persons living in the house, since this is what makes the house into a house.
According to Al-Ghazālī, ‘house’ has both kinds of signification and probably
the word ‘house’ would not mean what it means for us if it did not have both these
significations. He does not use other examples, but it seems natural that he would
think that ‘human’ only has the first kind of signification. Given this reasoning
there seems not to be much of a distinction to be made between the second and
the third kinds of signification.
In Latin medieval logic, the signification of a word is taken to be that which
it makes us think of. Such a characteristic of signification seems particularly
appropriate for Al-Ghazālī’s use of the term. Many logicians also, as Al-Ghazālī,
held that words or terms signify thoughts primarily, but I have not been able to
find any evidence that they got this doctrine from Al-Ghazālī. It seems more likely
that the source for this doctrine is instead Aristotle. This is clear if one has a look
at Lambert of Auxerre’s Logica, which was written in the 1250’s and became an
authoritative textbook on logic in the Western tradition.
He begins his very short discussion of signification, which in the thirteenth century
textbooks was only a small, but important, step towards explaining supposition
theory, with the explanation that “signification of a term is the understanding
of a thing”. 22 He then continues to say that a sound is imposed by the will on
this understanding of the thing. All this is explained by a reference to the famous
passage in the beginning of Aristotle’s De interpretatione. Lambert continues to
note that according to this view, which he adheres to, sounds (words) signify the
passions of the soul (or concepts) which are in the understanding, and it is then
the understanding (concept) that signify the thing. The doctrine is then clear,
namely that words primarily signify concepts or something in the intellect. This
seems also to be Al-Ghazālī’s view of signification.
The difference between simple and complex words or terms is also explained in
terms of what the terms signify in the intellect. A term is simple if its parts do
not signify anything in the intellect. To explain what he means he uses the term
‘homo’ (‘human being’). If one breaks it apart into ‘ho’ and ‘mo’ then those parts
do not signify any concept or understanding in the intellect, and hence they are
not simple term, but ‘homo’ of course does and is hence a simple term. A complex
22 In Latin: “significatio termini est intellectus rei”, Lambert of Auxerre, Logica, 205.