Page 514 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Key Figures
identity theory holds that an individual substance and an individual property are actually connected.
Like the terms (the integral parts of a proposition), every spoken or written proposition was said to have a mental counterpart, apropositio mentalis, composed of concepts. In addition to this traditional division, Walter Burley introduced another kind of prop- osition: the propositio in re, that is, extramental things insofar as they are thought of as being composed or divided by an affirming or denying predicative act (see Nuchelmans 1973:219-25).
In accordance with Boethius, the medievals defined the proposition as an expression signifying what is true or false (oratio verumfalsumve significans). This oratio was generally taken to be an instance of a prop- osition (in modern terminology: a sentence-token). The strict consequences of this thesis were explicitly formulated by Robert Holcot (ca. 1290-1349), who claimed that a proposition cannot be said to be true or false unless it is actually thought, spoken, or written (see Perler 1992: 162-168). This claim raises the prob- lem that even a proposition expressing a necessary truth, e.g., 'Man is an animal,' will be true only at the moment it is thought, spoken, or written by at least one person. Holcot's extreme claim was not widely accepted. Paul of Venice (1369-1429) later admitted not just sentence-tokens but also sentence-types as
propositions by introducing a slight modification into the Boethian definition: a proposition is an expression capable of signifying what is true or false. From this point of view, it is not a thought, or a spoken, or a written instance of 'Man is an animal' that is said to be true, but rather the necessary predication of the genus animal of the species man expressed by the prop- osition, whether or not the proposition actually exists in thought, speech, or writing (see Nuchelmans 1973: 203-208 and 266-271).
In asserting that a proposition signifies, the med- ievals were confronted with the problem of explaining what its significate is (see Kretzmann 1970). In general, they assigned three functions to the sig- nificate: (a) in an assertoric proposition, it is that which is expressed as being true or false; (b) in a modal proposition, it is that which is expressed as being necessary, possible, contingent, or impossible; (c) in an affirmative proposition governed by an epistemic verb, it is that which is said to be known, doubted, believed, etc. In all three cases the significate is linguis- tically marked by a 'that'-clause (in Latin an accu- sativus cum infinitive); e.g., in 'It is true (or: It is con- tingent, or: I know) that Socrates is running' the sig- nificate is 'that Socrates is running.'
Abelard had already noticed that the significate (which he called the dictum or enuntiabile of a prop- osition) is not a substance or a quality accessible to the senses, but that it nevertheless exists, since it can be grasped by reason (see Libera 1981). The anonymous author of the twelfth-century Ars Meliduna labeled
this peculiar being an extracategorical thing (extra- praedicamentale) belonging to a separate category of being not among the ten categories distinguished by Aristotle.
In the fourteenth century, philosophers again eag- erly discussed the ontological status of the significate (see Nuchelmans 1973:195-271; Perler 1994). Accord- ing to the rey-theory, held by Walter Chatton (1285-
1344) and Andre Neufchateau (fl.1360), that which is true or contingent or known is the thing signified by the terms of the proposition. Thus the significate of 'Socrates is running' is the running Socrates himself. This position succeeds in explaining propositions about actual, existing things but it can hardly explain propositions about fictive things or abstract states of affairs, for what thing could be the significate of the proposition 'The chimera is white' or 'The whole is equal to the sum of its parts'? The complexum-theory, held by Ockham, Robert Holcot, and John Buridan, tried to avoid this difficulty by claiming that the sig- nificate is nothing other than the composition of the terms—not simply the composition of spoken or writ- ten terms (in which case the significate would be a purely linguistic entity), but of mental terms signifying immediately and naturally extramental things. But this solution requires a potentially vast number of significates for one proposition, since every person thinking 'Socrates is running' forms his or her own mental terms and has therefore his or her own complexum. Adam Wodeham (ca. 1298-1358) and Gregory of Rimini (ca. 1300-58) rejected both theories and claimed that the total and adequate significate is something peculiar, a complexe significabile, which can be expressed only by a whole proposition. It is neither a being in a narrow sense (substance or quality) nor a nonbeing but rather a being of its own: some- thing which positively or negatively is the case. Thus
'Socrates is running' signifies that-Socrates-is-run- ning, a being which is neither the running Socrates the terms 'Socrates' and 'is running' stand for, nor the terms themselves. This explanation, which shows some similarity with Abelard's dictum-theory (al- though there is no textual evidence for a direct link between them), is apparently an attempt to establish an ontological category for states of affairs distinct from those for mental and extramental things.
4. Epistemological and Ontological Commitments
Taking their cue from Aristotle's De interpretations, 1 (16a 3-8) and from Augustine's De trinitate XV, 10- 11, most medieval authors held that the spoken and
written terms which signify conventionally are cor- related with mental terms (or concepts or intentions) which signify naturally. This correlation was taken to be a signification relation. The crucial question was whether the signification should be explained on the basis of an epistemological representationalism (i.e., conventional terms signify primarily mental terms and
492