Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

410 Gyula Klima
does not have to mean that the wire is informed by a “straightness-thing”. All
this means is that the ends of the wire are maximally distant, that is to say, the
term “straight” does not signify a straightness distinct from the straight thing;
rather, it signifies the straight thing itself, while connotes the maximal distance
between its ends. The term is true of this wire, just in case its ends are maximally
distant, and becomes false of it, when they are not. Thus, on account of the
meaning of the term “straight”, which can properly be expressed by means of a
nominal definition, Ockham can eliminate the apparent need for a “shape-thing”,
which was demanded only by what he takes to be a mistaken semantic conception.
For, as the nominal definition makes explicit, the term “straight” simply signifies
elongated substances (i.e., ones whose length is considerably greater than their
width and depth) connoting the maximal distance of their extremes along their
length. But the things signified and connoted in this way are only substances and
quantities, (which Ockham identifies with substances or qualities as measurable in
certain ways).
However, regardless of the details of the ontological project it intends to realize,
Ockham’s semantic idea is clear. In order to have a nominalist semantics that
admits in its domain of interpretation only entities of a certain limited number of
categories, one needs to do the following:
1. Take simple absolute terms in the “permitted” categories to be “primitive”,
in the sense that they are semantically simple, undefined, and they define
others.
2. Take other syntactically simple terms that appear to involve commitment
to entities in other than the permitted ontological categories to be compositionally
dependent for their semantic evaluation on their nominal definitions,
which in the last analysis will only contain “primitive” (undefined)
terms and syncategoremata (i.e., terms that signify only syncategorematic
concepts, which in turn are entities in the “permitted” ontological category
of quality).
Thus, Ockham’s semantic idea in connection with his program of ontological reduction
boils down to the strategy of using “eliminative definitions” to show that
ontological commitment to entities in the “non-permitted” categories is merely
apparent, and can be avoided in terms of providing the right sort of semantic
analysis.
There are two logical problems with this idea. The first might be termed “the
problem of the primitive vocabulary” of Ockham’s semantics, and the second “the
problem of a merely programmatic semantics”
The first problem generated much controversy in the recent literature after the
appearance of Claude Panaccio’s important study challenging “the received view”