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OCKHAM ON CONNOTATION
Here is a new translation of chapter 10 of Book I of William of Ockham's Summa Logicae, where he defines 'connotative' and 'absolute' terms. It provides an interesting insight into the original meaning of these terms. The modern distinction has its direct ancestry in Mill, though he claimed it was derived from the scholastic philosophers. The passage here shows that Mill's definition of connotation was closer to the definition given by scholastic logicians like Ockham than some of his detractors have claimed.
Ockham's definition hangs upon the distinction between what the later scholastic philosophers (and, after that, early modern philosophers such as Locke) called the real essence of a thing (the quid rei, the 'what' of the thing) and the nominal essence (the quid nominis, the 'what' of the name). A connotative term, says Ockham, is one whose meaning can be expressed by a nominal definition - a form of words expressing the meaning of the name. A purely absolute term is one which does not, properly speaking, have a nominal definition.
The idea of a nominal definition is difficult. For more about that, see <a href="nominaldefinitions.htm">here</a>. Ockham gives two explanations, as follows.
1. A term has a nominal definition when it is necessary to put one part of the definition in the nominative case and another in an oblique case. For example, the term 'something white' (album) has the nominal definition 'something having whiteness' (aliquid habens albedinem) in which one word (something – aliquid) is in the nominative and another (albedinem) in an oblique case. Ockham's point seems to be that nominative signifies the subject of the sentence, so 'a white thing' signifies the actual thing that is white. But an oblique case such as the accusative or genitive or other case signifies something to which the subject bears some relation (other than identity), and so cannot be the actual thing that is white. Thus 'something just', 'something human' are connotative, because they are equivalent to 'something having justice', 'something white', 'something having humanity', whereas 'man', 'animal', 'goat' are not, because they are equivalent to expressions of the form 'something having – ness'.
2. A term has a nominal definition when it can be explained by different expressions whose meaning is different, in that one part of one expression signifies something that is not conveyed in the same way by some part of the other expression. Because of this, says Ockham, none of them is properly a nominal definition. For example, one person explains what the name 'angel' means by saying 'I understand by an angel a substance abstracted from matter', another saying 'an angel is an intellectual and incorruptible substance', and another 'an angel is a simple substance that does not join with any other'. (The example of angels is one that Locke also uses. See <a href="lockenominaldefinitions.htm">here</a>).
Neither is entirely clear. According to the first definition, 'man', 'animal', 'goat', 'stone', 'tree' are not connotative because we cannot defined them in terms of expressions of the form 'something having – ness'. But can't we say something like 'something having man-ness', or 'something informed by goat-hood'? This appears to rely on an accident of lexicology. And in any case we do have words like 'humanity', 'asineity'. Ockham's argument relies here on a claim he makes elsewhere (ibid. chapter 5) that names like 'cowship', 'goathood', and so on are never or rarely found, and that this is because the concrete term 'man' is in any case synonymous with the corresponding abstract term 'humanity', so for 'animal' and 'animality'.
According to the second definition, a name is only connotative when there is a form of words that uniquely specifies what the name means. Otherwise it is absolute. Is Ockham suggesting that non-connotative terms have more than one meaning? Or that none of the differently meaning explanations (as with the case of 'angel') give the true meaning of the word? From what he says here, it is not altogether clear.
Perhaps he is suggesting that the meaning of absolute terms derives from our unmediated grasp of the objects they signify? Thus absolute terms are all truly predicable of (past or present) things. See <a href="../latin/SummaLogicae207.htm">here</a>. By contrast, there can be connotative terms for all kinds of things that have never existed, even for things which could not possibly exist, such as the chimaera - see <a href = "ockhamdescription.htm">here</a>. Spade argues for such an interpretation <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ockham/#3.2">here</a>. As Spade argues, if any connotative term can be replaced by its nominal definition, it would follow that any nominal definition can be expanded into a definition that consists only of absolute terms. This seems consistent with Ockham's program of analysing away spurious entities by his theory of connotation. (Including the Aristotelian "categories", for example).
I have consistently translated 'quid nominis' as nominal essence, and 'definitio exprimens quid nominis' as 'nominal definition', in order to express the connection between the scholastic and early modern philosophy. Other translators use the more literal 'expression explaining what the name means'.
The passage suggests that Mill's definition of connotation was not so far from the mark as some of his critics have claimed. To be sure, Mill said that 'man' connotes being a man, whereas Ockham holds that 'man' is not connotative. But Mill held that all general names can be defined, and so all are connotative, in Ockham's sense. Mill, like Locke, though that to be a man, or of the species man, and to have a right to the name man, is the same thing. Ockham, by contrast, does not hold that all general names have a definition, so not all general names are connotative, in Mill's sense.
Note also that while Mill held that all general terms are connotative,
he thought that all proper names and demonstratives are absolute, in Ockham's sense,
because they cannot be explicated by a form of speech.
(To give an example parallel to Ockham's example about the angel, we can talk about 'the teacher of Alexander',
the pupil of Socrates and so on, and everyone knows what you mean. But these are not definitions of 'Aristotle').
See <a href="millconnotation.htm">here</a> for Mill's definition of connotation.
| Latin | English
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|---|---|
| C. 10. ON THE DIVISION OF NAMES INTO PURELY ABSOLUTE AND CONNOTATIVE | |
| After concrete and abstract names have been discussed, now we have to speak about another division of names which scholastics frequently use.
Wherefore, you should know that certain names are 'purely absolute', certain are 'connotative'. Purely absolute names are those which do not signify something principally and something else (or the same thing) secondarily, but rather, whatever is signified by that name, is equally signified primarily, thus the name 'animal' clearly does not signify anything but cattle, donkeys and men, and so for other animals, and does not signify one primarily and another secondarily in such a way that something has to be signified in the nominative case and another in an oblique case, and in the nominal definition it is not necessary to put such distinct terms in different cases, or to use some participle. | |
| Indeed, properly speaking, such names do not have a nominal definition, since, properly speaking, there is one definition of a name that has a nominal definition, explicating the nominal essence, thus it is evident that of such a name there are not different nominal definitions having distinct parts, of which one signifies something that is not conveyed in the same way by some part of the other expression.
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| But, as far as their nominal definition is concerned, such names can be explained in some way by several expressions that do not signify the same things by their parts. And on that account none of them is properly a nominal definition. | |
| For example, 'angel' is a purely absolute name (at least if it is not the name of a function, but of a substance only).
And there is not one nominal definition of this name, for one person explains what the name means by saying 'I understand by an angel a substance abstracted from matter', another saying 'an angel is an intellectual and incorruptible substance', and another 'an angel is a simple substance that does not join with any other'.
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| And so one explains what the name means just as well as the other. And yet some term put in one expression signifies something that is not signified in the same way by some term in the other expression, and for that reason none of them is properly a nominal definition. | |
| And so it is for purely absolute names that (strictly speaking) none of them has a nominal definition. Now such names are as follows: 'man', 'animal', 'goat', 'stone', 'tree', 'fire', 'earth', 'water', 'heaven', 'whiteness', 'blackness', 'heat', 'sweetness', 'smell', 'taste', and the like. | |
| But a connotative name is one that signifies something primarily and something secondarily. And such a name does properly have a nominal definition, and often it is necessary to put one part of that definition in the nominative case and another in an oblique case.
So it is for the name 'white', for 'white' has a nominal definition, in which one word is put in the nominative and another one in an oblique case.
| |
| Wherefore, if you ask what the name 'a white thing' signifies, you will say: that name signifies the same as the entire expression 'something informed by whiteness' or 'something having whiteness'. And it is clear that one part of the expression is put in the nominative and another part in an oblique case. | |
| Sometimes too a verb can occur in the nominal definition, so, for instance, if you ask what the name 'cause' signifies, it can be said, the same as 'something on whose existence something else is a consequence' or 'something that can produce another thing', or something of that sort. | |
| Now such connotative names include all concrete names of the first sort (which were mentioned in c. 5). And this is because such concrete names signify one thing in the nominative and another in an oblique case; that is to say, in the nominal definition there ought to be put one nominative term, signifying one thing, and another oblique term, signifying another thing, as is clear for all such names as 'just', 'white', 'animate', 'human', and so on. | |
| Such names also include all relative names, since in their definition there are always put different terms signifying the same thing in different ways or distinct things, such as is is clear for the name 'similar'.
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| For if 'similar' is defined, it should be said thus: 'the similar is something having a quality such as another thing has', or it ought to be defined in some similar way. Wherefore there is no great importance attached to these examples. | |
| From which it is clear that the common term 'connotative name' is of a higher genus than the common term 'relative name', taking here the common term 'connotative name' in the broadest sense. | |
| Such names also include all names pertaining to the genus of quantity, according to those who propose that quantity is not another thing from substance and quality, so that 'body', according to them, should be held to be a connotative name.
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| Wherefore, according to them, it ought to be said that a body is nothing but some thing having part distant from part in respect of length, breadth and depth; and continuous and permanent quantity is nothing but some thing having part distant from part', so that this is a nominal definition. | |
| Such persons also have to maintain that 'figure', 'curvedness', 'rightness', 'length', 'breadth' and the like are connotative names.
Indeed, those who propose that every thing is either a substance or a quality have to suppose that all the contents in categories other than substance and quality are connotative names; and even certain names in the category of quality are connotative, as will be shown below. | |
| Under these names are also comprehended all such as 'true', 'good', 'one', 'power', 'act', 'intellect', 'intelligible', 'will', 'willible'and the like.
Wherefore, concerning intellect you should know that it has this nominal essence: 'Intellect is soul able to understand.', so that the soul is signified by the nominative, and the act of understanding by the other part.
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| But the name 'intelligible' is a connotative name, and signifies the intellect in the nominative just as in an oblique case, because its definition is 'the intelligible thing is something that can be apprehended by the intellect.'
Here the intellect is signified by the name 'something', and the intellect is also signified by the oblique 'by an intellect'. | |
| And we should say the same of 'true' and 'good', since 'true', which is supposed convertible with 'being', signifies the same as 'intelligible'. 'Good' too, which is convertible with 'being',signifies the same as the expression 'something willable or lovable according to right reason'.
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