Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Nominalist Semantics of Ockham and Buridan 405
and the signification of the predicate, exists just in case the ultimate significate
of the predicate in the suppositum of the subject, i.e., Homer’s blindness exists.
The existence of this, however, is conditioned on the non-actuality of the ultimate
significatum of the corresponding positive predicate, namely, the non-existence
of Homer’s sight. Thus, the simple fact of the truth of the proposition ‘Homer
is blind’ will consist in the simple fact of the existence of the significatum of this
proposition. However, the existence of the significatum of this proposition is conditioned
on the existence or non-existence of several “layers” of other items, assigned
as the various semantic values of the syntactic components of the proposition.
And herein reside both the strength and the difficulty of this semantic construction.
The primary strength of this construction consists in the expressive power
of the system, which renders it capable of making the most refined distinctions,
and thus allowing the formulation of the most abstruse metaphysical questions
concerning the various semantic values of any phrases in any syntactical category.
On the other hand, this is also the difficulty with this construction. It not only allows
the formulation of abstruse metaphysical questions: it makes them inevitable,
especially concerning the identity and distinction of these semantic values and the
determination of their nature, their precise ontological status.
OCKHAM’S COMPLAINTS
In fact, the apparently inevitable obscurity of the issues concerning the multitude
and distinctions of these semantic values was the best motivation for Ockham to get
rid of them in one fell swoop, by discarding the semantics that engendered them in
the first place. Ockham’s main complaints against the semantics of “the moderns”
as he rather tendentiously refers to the representatives of the older theory 34 fall
precisely into these two categories: those concerning the sheer multitude of entities
(or quasi-entities) implied by this construction, clearly offending a nominalist’s
“taste for desert landscapes” (as Quine famously put it), and those concerning
the obscurity of the nature and distinctions of these entities. The arguments
supporting these complaints are also of two main sorts: there are those that argue
for the absurdity of the ontological commitments of his opponents, and those that
argue for the eliminability of those commitments.
The first strategy points to a number of logical and physical absurdities that
seem to follow if we allow “multiplying entities with the multiplication of terms”,
as Ockham claims the “moderns” do. 35 To be sure, as we have seen, Ockham’s
characterization of his opponents’ position is not entirely fair, for they are not
34 In the medieval intellectual context, to be “modern” is to carry lesser weight than the established
older authorities. Thus, by referring to his opponents as “moderns” Ockham was trying
to “sell” his innovations as being just an attempt to restore a simpler, original Aristotelianism
distorted by the unnecessary additions of the “moderns”.
35 Ockham, W. Summa logicae (SL), Philotheus Boehner, Gedeon Gál and Stephen F. Brown,
ed., (“Opera philosophica,” vol. 1), St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1974, p.
171.