Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Logic in the 14 th Century after Ockham 451
could expect him either to side with Ockham in maintaining that all the different
kinds of supposition that occur in spoken and written language also occur in
mental language, or to side with Buridan in maintaining that there is only personal
supposition in mental language. However, there is a striking coherence in
his position, as I shall argue.
The first element to be taken into account is that his formulations of these
three modes of supposition differ slightly but significantly from those of Ockham.
Personal supposition is defined roughly in the same way as by Ockham, as the
supposition for the things that the term signifies; material supposition, by contrast,
is defined as the supposition for terms but not necessarily spoken or written terms,
as it is by Ockham. According to Albert’s definition, a term having material
supposition can supposit for itself or for a similar term (be they written, spoken
or mental). It is clear thus that, in mental language, if a given mental term
supposits for itself or for another term (mental or otherwise), Albert’s definition
allows for it to be a case of material supposition, whereas for Ockham it had to be a
case of simple supposition, since his definition of material supposition necessitated
that the supposition be for a spoken or written term. Albert, however, with the
definitions of personal and material suppositions thus stated, could already account
for all the different kinds of supposition in mental language, making thus simple
supposition in the mental realm superfluous.
He was still left with the cases of terms in spoken or written language suppositing
for mental terms, which were presumably excluded from his definition of material
supposition. Following Ockham and against Buridan, he prefers to keep such cases
in a category of their own — perhaps in order to maintain a more fine-grained and
discriminating taxonomy — a category in which the supposition of a term for itself
could not occur. From this point of view, what characterizes and gives unity to
the concept of material supposition is above all the possibility of supposition of a
term for itself (a spoken term for a spoken term, a written term for a written
term, and a mental term for a mental term), whereas simple supposition would
deal with the ‘left-over’ cases where this could not occur, namely the cases where
a spoken or written term was explicitly meant to supposit for a concept.
As for the risk of provoking equivocation in mental language by the ascription
of different kinds of supposition to mental terms, such as in Ockham, Albert
avoids this problem with another feature of his logical system: unlike most of his
immediate predecessors such as Ockham and Buridan and his own contemporaries,
Albert denies that some propositions must be distinguished, that is, that they are
ambiguous. 19 Now, if there is no equivocation with respect to propositions in
written and spoken language, where there are three kinds of supposition, then a
fortiori there will not be this kind of equivocation in mental language either.
In sum, Albert’s preservation of simple supposition seems to be better motivated
tion.” (Translation by Parsons et al, p. 12, on the website mentioned above).
19 See [Ashworth, 1991, 156]. Albert contends that the propositions that must be distinguished
according to others in fact correspond to the conjunction or disjunction (depending on the case)
of each of their possible readings.