Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Logic and Theories of Meaning . . . 361
species vocis and as a name it naturally signifies the species rei. It conventionally
signifies the extra-mental thing.
Thus, in Bacon’s view, the relationship between a name and what it names
exists as a result of the deliberating free choice of the name giver. When we
give the name ‘man’ to an existing man, this name can be univocally used for all
existing men, but not for the concept or species ‘man’ in our mind. The main
reason Bacon gives for this opinion is that a word’s signification of the concept
is not a question of free choice. The relation between name and concept is a
necessary one, since we cannot name an object before we know it. 72 However,
there may be another reason why Bacon so clearly deviates from the common
opinion, although he never expressly makes the point in either the Compendium
or De signis. He could have drawn an argument from his Neo-Platonist theory of
the multiplication of species. According to that theory all objects produce species
(images, likenesses) of themselves in the air. When such a species reaches the eye
it has been multiplied several times and with every multiplication it has lost some
of its intensity, as is the case with the light that comes from the sun. As a result,
the species in our intellect is an incomplete image of the object of which it is a
likeness. Consequently, it has incomplete being, according to Bacon. Since names
are imposed upon objects in complete being (in esse completo), the species of
man cannot be named ‘man’ in the same sense as the object in complete being is
a man, and the same account holds for an embryo in the mother’s womb. In fact,
Bacon argues, the nobler the things are, the more incomplete are their species. 73
The reason that, nonetheless, we have a rather accurate knowledge of things is
that our knowledge is mainly knowledge of universals. Now, in Bacon’s realistic
ontology universals are real parts of the nature of individuals. Thus, when we see
an individual, “the universal species is repeated in the medium and sense and the
intellect when it comes with the species of each singular; and thus it is fixed in
the soul more powerfully than is the species of any singular.” 74 Therefore, the
universal species, which is the concept, of man is a reliable medium of knowledge,
but not the right candidate for the name ‘man’ that has been imposed on the
individual man in complete being.
When a name has been imposed upon a being, it signifies that being by convention,
but it also signifies things that ‘follow’ from it, but this is an implied
or secondary meaning that naturally and necessarily accompanies the conventional
meaning. 75 In the Compendium (chapter III) Bacon speaks about things
co-understood or connoted in this context. The number of things connoted is infinite
and in De signis he shows his enthusiasm about this phenomenon by saying:
“And to consider this is of wondrous usefulness and beauty.” 76
Thus, according to Bacon, the name ‘man’ signifies existing men only, but what
72 Cf. Maloney [1983, p. 210].
73 De multiplicatione specierum, Pars I, cap. 1, ed. Lindberg, p. 10.
74 De multiplicatione specierum, Pars I, cap. 2, transl. Lindberg, p. 43.
75 De signis [102–104].
76 De signis [103].