Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Nominalist Semantics of Ockham and Buridan 395
term, but rather its supposita, i.e., the things the term can be used to stand for in
a proposition. Lambert makes this clear in the immediately following paragraph:
Now signification differs from supposition in that signification is prior
to supposition. For the signification is the concept of the thing represented
by means of the utterance, and before the union of it with the
utterance there is no term; rather, a term is constituted in the union
of that concept of a thing with an utterance. Supposition, on the other
hand, is a certain property of a term that has been constituted in that
way. There is another difference, because signification extends only to
the thing the term is imposed to signify; supposition, however, extends
not only to the thing signified by means of the term but can extend
to supposita contained under that thing. For example, the signification
of ‘man’ extends only to man, not to the things contained under
man; for ‘man’ signifies man, not Socrates and not Plato. ‘Man’ can,
nevertheless, supposit for Socrates, and for Plato, and for man. 10
The “thing”, therefore, that a term on this conception signifies is not any of the
ordinary things we would normally use the term to stand for in the context of
a proposition. For the thing in question is what the concept directly represents,
namely, the nature of the individuals abstracted from its individuating conditions
in the formation of the concept. Thus, on this conception, what the term ultimately
signifies is determined by the representational content of the concept immediately
signified by the term in the mind. That representational content, in turn, is
determined by the process of concept-formation, namely, abstraction.
This description of what determines the ultimate signification of a term, however,
renders the issue somewhat murky, insofar as it is not exactly clear what we
are talking about when were are referring to what a term ultimately signifies. To
be sure, it is clear enough what it is not supposed to be. It is not supposed to
be either the concept that the term immediately signifies or any of the individual
things whose nature the concept represents, which are the supposita of the term
according to Lambert’s description. What the term ultimately signifies therefore
is either some intermediary representation “between” the concept and the individuals
universally represented by the concept or it is the nature of the individuals
as represented by such an intermediary representation. But even this description
of the situation needs some further sorting out. Because we also have to clarify
what we are supposed to be referring to when we are talking about “the concept”
or understanding that the term immediately signifies “in the mind”, and what we
10 Ibid. Clearly, man here is the universal nature signified by the term ‘man’ and represented
by the concept that this term directly signifies, as opposed to the individual humans, such as
Socrates or Plato. So, the signification of this term extends only to this universal nature, the
direct object of the concept of humans, although, on account of this signification, the term can
be used in a sentence to stand for the individual humans who have this nature. The function of
the term of standing for these individuals in a sentence is its property that is called ‘supposition’
(which is why this property is often compared to the modern notion of reference, as it is contrasted
with meaning).