Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Logic in the 14 th Century after Ockham 459
concepts, just as much as spoken words, have different temporal occurrences: the
concept man does not correspond to one single concept that perdures in the intellect,
but rather to each and every occurrence of this concept in the intellect every
time it conceives of men, just as much as the spoken word ‘man’ corresponds to
each of its temporal occurrences.
Hence, if both simple supposition and material supposition concern a wide range
of objects for which a term can supposit (different occurrences of a given concept
or of a given word), just as much as personal supposition, then it seems counterintuitive
that only personal supposition should receive further distinctions. In fact,
Ockham’s and Buridan’s nominalism seems almost to require these distinctions;
for both of them, all that exists are the different actual occurrences of written,
spoken and mental terms – that is, what we now call ‘tokens’, but not the corresponding
types. For this reason, also in simple and material supposition it seems
necessary to consider the number of entities (concepts, words) being talked about
with a given proposition, just as much as with personal supposition.
Buridan seemed to be well aware of the fact that one can quantify over the
different occurrences of a term. Take this passage, from the first treatise of the
Summulae:
Next, we should say that if the subjects in the aforementioned propositions
supposit materially, then the proposition “[A] man is a species”
is [. . . ] indefinite, for the term ‘man’ is not to be understood as suppositing
only for itself, but indifferently for other similar terms as well
[...]. And in this way “Every man is a species” would be universal,
and “Some man is a species”, i.e. “Some term man is a species” would
be particular, and “This man is a species”, i.e. “This term man is a
species”, would be singular. [Buridan, 2001, 92] 27
But Buridan does not go as far as actually applying the different modes of personal
supposition to material supposition, even though from saying that a proposition
is universal to acknowledging that its subject has confused and distributive supposition
is but a small step (as it was widely recognized that the subject of an
affirmative universal proposition has confused and distributive supposition, and
similarly that the subject of a particular or indefinite supposition has determinate
supposition and the subject of a singular proposition has discrete supposition).
To my knowledge, the first author to have made the small but significant step
of introducing the distinctions originally pertaining only to personal supposition
also to other kinds of supposition is Buridan’s follower, Marsilius of Inghen. In his
treatise on supposition [Marsilius of Inghen, 1983, pp. 52-97], Marsilius presents
a compelling and elegant way of structuring the different kinds of supposition and
their subdivisions. What is most remarkable about his doctrine is that, unlike his
predecessors, who began by dividing proper supposition into personal, simple and
material, Marsilius actually begins by the division of what were traditionally the
different modes of personal supposition. This is a sensible move, considering that
27 I am indebted to Gyula Klima for having drawn my attention to this passage.