Propositionalism and atomis in Ockham's semantics

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PROPOSITIONALISM AND ATOMISM 

IN OCKHAM'S SEMANTICS* 

The term "propositional ism" has been proposed as a label for Ockham's 

theory of language by the Spanish scholar Teodoro de Andrés 

in his 1969 book, El nominalismo de Guillermo de Ockham como filosofia 

del lenguaje. For de Andrés' Ockham, the proposition rather than the 

term is "the primary complete linguistic unit" and the "primary reality" 

of knowledge.' On the other hand, the expression "semantical atomism" 

is used by Michael Loux in a 1979 paper to characterize the 

standard terminist tradition which, he claims, Ockham breaks with. 

For Loux's Ockham, "the meaning of a general term is a function of 

the roles it plays in propositional contexts" and "it is impossible to isolate 

a non-propositional component in a speaker's linguistic knowledge."' 

André? and Loux's interpretations are remarkably similar to each 

other. I will call them "propositionalist interpretations of Ockham's 

semantics." They are not the only ones in the literature. The History 

of Philosophy edited in French by François Chãtelet in 1972 has a chapter 

on Ockham written by Patrick Hochart, the main theme of which is 

that the primary character of a linguistic sign is that of being a part 

of a proposition.' And Joel Biard, in a French paper on "the Ockhamist 

*1 wish to thank John Boler, Sten Ebbesen, Jerry Etzkorn, and Robert 

Nadeau for helpful comments on prior versions of this paper, and the Social 

Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial 

assistance. 

'Teodoro de Andrés, El nomirialismo de Guillermo de Ockham coino filosoha 

del lenguaje (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1969) 219-20, 233-36, and passim. 

2 Michael Loux, "Significatio and Suppositio: Reflections on Ockham's 

Semantics," The New Scholasticism 53(1979): 423-24, 

Patrick Hochart, 'Le signe et sa duplicite," in La philosophic mëdievale 

(du icr au XVe siècle), ed. by F. Châtelet (Paris: Hachette, 1972) 190- 1. 

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62 CLAUDE PANACCIO 

redefinition of signification," published in 1981, stresses what he calls 

the "propositional dimension of signification."4 Strikingly enough, none 

of these authors quotes or even mentions any of the others. They apparently 

all came to the same conclusion through their own independent 

reading of Ockham's Summa Logicae. 

Moreover, they unanimously see this propositionalist theory of 

Ockham as breaking in a very important way with the former atomistic 

philosophy of language. Let me quote Michael Loux's version of 

the claim (but more or less the equivalent can be found in the others): 

What I take to he novel or original in Ockham's account of significario 

and supposirio, then, is its incipient holism; and I want to claim 

that standard studies of his theory of language have gone wrong in 

failing to recognize this revolutionary aspect of his logic. Historians 

like to tell us that it was Kant who first rejected the atomism of traditional 

philosophy. I am suggesting that this picture of the history of 

philosophy is wrong: Ockham took the Kantian turn several centuries 

earlier; or better: Kant's emphasis on the primacy of the judgmental 

form is a variation on an essentially Ockhamistic theme.5 

A whole picture of the history of philosophy is thus at stake here. 

And it is true that the proposition alist readers of Ockham might very 

well have put their fingers on something important. But all of them 

exaggerate their case in a very misleading way when they say things 

such as: "the proposition ( ... ) is in fact the primary complete linguistic 

unit"; 6 or: "the linguistic sign ... has meaning and validity only in the 

process of the proposition"; 7 or again: "Ockham ( ... ) wants to deny 

that the word-world relations involved in personal suppositio are 

mediated by any prior semantical relation";' or finally: "signification 

presupposes supposition."9 I will here discuss the arguments in favor 

of the propositionalist interpretation and show that they cannot support 

the very strong claims that are supposed to rest on them. I will 

Joel l3iard, "La redefinition ockhamiste de Ia signification," in Sprache 

und Erkenritnis im Mitte!a!ter, ed. by W. Kluxen et al. (Berlin: Dc Gruyter, 

1981) 458. 

Loux 425. 

6 Andrés 220. 

Hochart 190. 

8 Loux 420-21. 

Biard 458.

Prnpositionalfsrn and Atomism in Ockham 63 

briefly consider two auxiliary arguments and, then, come to grips with 

the really central one. 

First, there is of course the plain fact that supposition, for Ockham, 

is propositional: it is only in the context of a proposition that 

a term acquires a supposition or, in modern dress, a referential function. 

De Andrés sees this as the basis for Ockham's propositionalism,10 

and Lambertus Marie de Rijk, as is well known, holds that in doing 

away with natural supposition, which was a non-propositional variety 

of supposition accepted by the main logicians of the thirteenth century, 

Ockham was in fact restoring the original inspiration of medieval 

semantics, the "contextual approach." I do not intend to discuss this 

point in any detail here, since I have done so in a forthcoming paper 

on "Natural supposition and Ockhamistic signification," in which I 

try to show that Ockham does not really eliminate the idea of natural 

supposition, but only the label. ' 2 Natural supposition, in Peter of Spain 

for instance, was the semantical relation of a general term taken in 

itself to each one of the individual things, present, past, or future, of 

which it is, was, or will be true.' 3 Ockham keeps this relation as a 

major piece of his semantic theory, but he calls it "signification" (or 

sometimes "primary signification"). What he gets rids of is rather the 

former realist notion of signification found in Peter of Spain and others, 

that is to say the purported semantical relation of the general term 

to a "universal thing" or a "common nature." And once this is 

eliminated, the reference to a plurality of individuals formerly called 

"natural supposition" becomes the primary semantical property of the 

general signs and, by this very fact, inherits the honorific title of "signification." 

This is not due to Ockham's contextualism, but to his 

'° Andrés 227-36. 

" Lambertus Marie de Rijk, Logica Mod ernorurn. A Contribution to the 

History of Early Tenninist Logic, vol. 2, Part One: The Origin and Early Development 

of this Theory of Supposition (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1967) 597; see 

also de Rijk, "The development of suppositio natural is in mediaeval logic. Part 

two: Fourteenth century natural supposition as atemporal (omnitemporal) 

supposition," Vivarium 11(1973): 44. 

12 Claude Panaccio, "Supposition naturelle et signification occamiste," 

in Dc Ortu Grammaticae, ed. by C. L. Bursill-Hall and S. Ebbesen (Amsterdam: 

Benjamins, forthcoming). 

11 Peter of Spain, Tracw.tus VI (ed. de Rijk, 81).


nominalism. No one doubts that supposition, for Ockham, is a contextual 

property. The point of the non-propositionalist interpretation 

is that he admits of a prior and more fundamental extensional relation, 

which he attributes to the term in itself before its insertion in 

any proposition. 

Another argument, used with some insistence by Hochart and, 

more incidentally, by Biard, has to do with the notion of a term. At 

the very beginning of his Summa Logicae, Ockham quotes Aristotle's 

definition of a term: "I call that a term into which a proposition is 

resolved, i.e., the predicate or that of which it is predicated...." 14 As 

the term is also for Ockham the basic linguistic or conceptual sign, 

Hochart concludes that the "first character" of the linguistic sign is 

that of being an element in a proposition, of which it is extracted only 

through an artificial process of abstraction. 15 This argument is plainly 

mistaken: contrary to what it presupposes, Ockham's usual notion of 

a term is not that of Aristotle. Only two pages later, in chapter two 

of the Summa, Ockham introduces his own definitions of "term." He 

distinguishes three senses, the first and third of which are, it is true, 

very similar to Aristotle's. In the first sense, a term is "anything which 

can be the copula or the extreme (i.e. subject or predicate) of a categorical 

proposition or some determination of the verb or extreme."16 

In the third sense, a term is "that which, when taken significatively, 

is able to be the subject or the predicate of a proposition."' 7 In the 

first sense, even a complete proposition or a syncategorematic expression 

can be a term. In the third sense, terms are restricted to 

categorematic names. But the important sense for Ockham is none 

14 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 1: "Definiens enim terminum 

Aristoteles, I Priorum, dick: 'Terminum voco in quern resolvitur propositio, 

ut praedicatum et de quo praedicatur ...'" (OPh I, 7; the translation in the 

text is from Loux, Ockham's Theory of Terms, Notre Dame, Univ. of Notre 

Dame Press, 1974, 49). 

Hochart 190-91. 

16 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 2: uUno modo vocatur terminus 

omne illud quod potest esse copula vel extremum propositionis categoricae, 

subiectum videlicet ye1 praedicatum, ye1 etiam determinatio extremi vel verbi" 

(OPh 1, 9; the translation is from Loux, 51). 

'' Ockham, Summa Logicac, pars I, c. 2: "Tertio modo accipitur 'terminus' 

praecise et magis stricte pro illo quod significative sumptum potest esse subiecturn 

ye1 praedicatum propositionis" (OPh I, 9; the translation is from Loux, 51).

Pro positionalism and Atomism in Ockham 65 

of these. It is the second one according to which "every simple expression 

is a term"; "term" in this sense is used in contrast with "proposition." 

I Ockham explicitly indicates that this is the meaning that he 

has been using so far, and it is quite clear that it is the one that he 

keeps on using in the rest of the Summa, especially all along the first 

part of the book, entirely devoted to the "termini." For instance, he 

ranges among the terms the syncategorematic expressions, 19 which 

shows that he is not using sense number three, and, on the other hand, 

he does not discuss in Part One the properties of propositions, not 

even when taken as subjects of larger propositions, which shows that 

he is not using sense number one either. His discussion of terms bears 

exclusively upon simple expressions or incomplexes and not upon subjects 

or predicates as such. 

But the main argument for the propositional ist interpretation 

stems from the very definitions of"signum" and "significarc." In the first 

chapter of the Summa, the basic categorematic sign is defined as "anything 

which brings something to mind and can supposit for that 

thing." 20 And in the very well known chapter 33 of Part One, the first 

two meanings of "to signify"—admittedly, the most important ones— 

are characterized with reference to the propositional property of supposition: 

First, says Ockham, a sign is said to signify something when it supposits 

for or is capable of suppositing for that thing in such a way 

that the name can, with the verb "to be" intervening, be predicated 

of a pronoun referring to that thing ( ... ). In another sense we say that 

a sign signifies something when it is capable of suppositing for that 

thing in a true past, present, or future proposition or in a true modal 

proposition.2' 

18 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 2: "Aliter accipitur hoc nomen 

'terminus' secundum quod distinguitur contra orationem; et sic omne incomplexum 

vocatur terminus" (OPh 1, 9; the translation is from Loux, 51). 

19 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c, 4: "terminorum quidam sunt 

categorematici, quidam syncategorematici" (OPh 1, 15). 

20 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 1: "accipitur signum pro illo quod 

aliquid facit in cognitionem venire et natum est pro illo supponere" (OPh 

1, 9; the translation is from Loux, 50). 

21 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 33: "Nam uno modo dicitur signurn 

aliquid significare quando supponit ye1 natum est supponere pro illo, ita scilicet 

quod de pronomine demonstrante illud per hoc verbum 'est' ibiud nomen


The whole propositionalist interpretation and the very strong claims 

that it makes rest solely on these two passages. The reasoning is the 

following one. Since the linguistic and conceptual signs are defined 

as such by their capacity for supposition and since signification itself 

is defined as being this very capacity for supposition, the propositional 

property of supposition is more basic and more fundamental than 

any property of the isolated term. Moreover, special propositional forms 

such as "this is an F" or "this was an F" and so on are required to characterize 

the signification of the term "F"; these propositional forms, then, 

must he logically prior to the signification itself. Accordingly, the basic 

unit of language and knowledge is the proposition, not the term. 

And this is supposed to be Ockham's "radical originality."22 

What are we to think of this? Well, we must distinguish between 

the order of definition and the order of determination. First, let us 

say that a notion is logically prior to another one in the order of definition 

of a certain conceptual system if and only if in this system it 

directly or indirectly enters into the definition of the other notion and 

the converse does not hold. Now it is true that in Ockham's semantics 

the notion of supposition enters into the definition of 

"signification"—that is precisely the kernel of truth in the propositionalist 

interpretation—, but the converse also holds: 

Supposition, Ockham says in chapter 63 of Part One, is said to be 

a sort of taking the place of another. Thus, when a term stands for 

something in a proposition in such a way that we use the term for 

the thing and the term or its nominative case ( ... ) is truly predicated 

of the thing (or the pronoun referring to the thing), the term supposits 

for that thing; or this, at least, is true when the term is taken 

sign ificativcly.23 

praedicatur ( ... ) Aliter accipitur 'significare' quando illud signum in aliqua 

propositione de praeterito vet de futuro vet de praesenti vet in aliqua propositione 

vera de modo potest pro illo supponere" (OPh I, 95; the translation 

is from Loux, 113). 

Loux, "Significatio" 407. 

23 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 63: "Dicitur autem suppositio quasi 

pro alio positio, ita quod quando terminus in propositione stat pro aliquo, 

ita quod utimur illo termino pro aliquo de quo, sive de pronomine demonstrante 

ipsum, ille terminus vel rectus illius termini ( ... ) verificatur, supponit 

pro jIb. Et hoc saltem verum est quando terminus supponens significative 

accipitur" (OPh 1, 193; the translation is from Loux, 189).

Pro posiona1ism and Atomism in Ocltham 67 

And, in the next chapter, personal supposition, which is the basic form 

of supposition, is defined as that which "occurs when a term supposits 

for the thing it signifies and does so significatively." 24 Accordingly, it 

is an essential part of the definitions of simple and material suppositions 

that they occur only when the term is not taken significatively.25 

The conclusion of this is that, according to the order of definition, 

neither the notion of signification nor that of supposition is logically 

prior to the other one in Ockham's semantics. The important 

thing to realize is that Ockham is not building an ordered constructional 

system a la Russell or a la Carnap, where primitive undefined 

ideas are introduced first and, then, the other notions are progressively 

defined on this basis without the occurring of any loop. Ockham is 

writing a practical manual and he just wants to be understood in such 

a way that his reader becomes able to use correctly the logical notions 

that he introduces: for him, the science of logic is "practical and not 

speculative." 26 This is an important—and often neglected—difference 

between his approach and that of today's logicians. His definitions of 

"sign" and "signification" have to be read not with reference to the 

Fregean or Russellian or Carnapian model of a definition, but to the 

Aristotelian one. The definition of certain signs, for example, as these 

things which "bring something to mind and can supposit for that thing" 

is a definition through genus and difference. The capacity for supposition 

is a differential property of the categorematic signs, but this in 

no way entails that the idea of supposition is prior to or more fundamental 

than that of signification. Along the order of definition, the 

contest between the two notions ends in a draw. 

What about the order of determination? Which semantical property, 

if any, determines the other one? The answer seems quite clear: 

24 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 64: "Sed ista est definitio quod 

'suppositio personalis est quando terminus supponit pro suo significato et significative"' 

(OPh I, 195; the translation is from Loux, 190). 

25 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 64: "Suppositio simplex est quando 

terminus supponit pro intentione animae, sed non tenetur significative 

( ... ) Suppositio materialis est quando terminus non supponit significative, sed 

supponit vel pro voce ye1 pro scripto" (OPh I, 196). 

26 Ockham, Prooemium Expositionis in Libros Artis Logicae: "logica practica 

est dicenda ( ... ); et per consequens ista scientia est practica et non speculati- 

Va" (OPh II, 7).


signification as a property of the isolated term determines supposition, 

and not the other way around. Ockham subscribes to what we now 

call the principle of compositional ity, according to which the semantical 

properties of complex expressions such as propositions are determined 

by the properties of their simple components. In chapter 41 of 

the First Part of the Summa, he approvingly quotes Aristotle saying 

that "none of these terms (Aristotle is speaking of the simple terms 

ranged in the ten categories) by themselves involves an affirmation. 

It is, on the contrary, by combining these terms with each other that 

affirmations are produced."27 

The signification of a linguistic term is set through its conventional 

subordination to a conceptual sign in the mind and this subordination 

is presupposed by any significant use of the term in a spoken 

or written proposition. As regards the signification of the conceptual 

sign itself, it is produced through the natural process of knowledge, 

and Ockham's epistemology in the Qrdinatio is quite explicit as to the 

priority of the isolated concept over any propositional combination: 

any act of judgement presupposes ( ... ) the incomplex knowledge 

of the terms, because it presupposes the act of apprehension and the 

act of apprehension with respect to a certain complex presupposes the 

incomplex knowledge of the terms.28 

And again, a little further: "... the intellect can form no proposition, 

and therefore can apprehend no proposition, unless it has first intellected 

the singulars, that is the incomplex terms." 29 This atomistic epistemology 

is still present in the Summa Logicae, for instance in chapter 

27 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 41: "Propter quod dicit Aristoteles 

( ... ): 'Singula igitur eorum quae dicta sunt ipsa quidem secundum se in 

nulla affirmatione dicuntur, horum autem ad se invicem complexionc affirrnatio 

fit" (OPh I, 115; the translation is from Loux, 129). 

28 Ockham, Scriptum in 1 Sent, prol., q. 1: "ornnis actus iudicativus 

praesupponit ( ... ) notitiam incomplexam terminorum, quia praesupponit acturn 

apprehensivum. Et actus apprehensivus respectu alicuius complexi 

praesupponit notitiam incomplexam terminorum" (0Th I, 21; the translation 

is mine). 

29 Ockham, Scriptum in 1 Sent, proi., q. 1: "intellectus nullam propositionem 

potest formare, nec per consequens apprehendere, nisi primo intelligat 

singularia, id est incornplexa" (0Th I, 21; the translation is mine).

Propositionalism and Atomism in Ockham 69 

29 of the Secunda tertiae where Ockham describes once more the natural 

epistemological process through which the concepts are produced in 

the mind and then, and only then, combined into propositions. Loux 

suggests that Ockham's semantics might very well be "inconsistent with 

the apparently atomistic tendencies at work in his epistemology." 30 A 

very strong argument would be needed to support such a serious accusation 

and the only thing the propositionalists have is the fact that 

the notion of supposition enters into the definitions of "sign" and "signification." 

We have seen that it is not even enough to prove a priority 

in the order of definition. A fortiori, in the face of Ockham's explicit 

statements, it cannot support any interesting claim about the order 

of determination. 

Loux issues a challenge to the non-propositionalist reader of Ockham. 

He points to the explicit characterization of signification in terms 

of propositional schemata in chapter 33 and he says: 

Admittedly, those explanations lack the dramatic flair of Kant's announcement 

of his holism in the Analytic; but at the very least, they 

call for a detailed explanation from anyone who embraces the standard 

view that Ockham's theory is simply a nominalistic variant on 

traditional atomistic semantics.3 

What is this explanation then? First, the relevant passages have to be 

read on the background of Ockham's own theory of definitions. "Signum" 

and "significare" are connotative terms and hence, strictly speaking, 

their proper definitions are "quid nominis" rather than "quid rei."32 

They will explicitate the intrinsic meaning of the words rather than 

single out the essential features of the things signified. 13 Such definitions, 

Ockham says in Part Three of the Summa, usually indicate one 

or other of the four Aristotelian causes pertaining to the objects signified 

by the word under consideration. 34 Seen in this light, the present cases 

quite clearly seem to involve the final causes. What the definition of 

"signum" in chapter one tells us, for example, is that the kind of signs 

with which logicians are concerned have two finalities: the first one, 

30 Loux, "Significacio" 427. 

' Loux, "Significatio" 426-27. 

32 Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars I, c. 10 (OPh I, 36). 

Ockham, Summa Logiaie, pars I, c. 26 (OPh 1, 88). 

Ockham, Summa Logicae, pars 111-2, c. 33 (OPh 1, 568-70).


which it shares with all the other kinds of signs, is to "bring something 

to mind," and the second one, which is peculiar to it, is to eventually 

"supposit for that thing" in a proposition. In this logical sense, 

"sigrium" and "significare" do involve through their very meaning a connotative 

reference to propositions, and this is exactly the kernel of truth 

in the propositionalist interpretation. It might even be an important 

innovation in the history of ideas, but, as we have seen, it is not at 

all inconsistent with semantical atomism: the first finality of the sign 

is still to "bring something to mind" and this, for Ockham, does not 

in principle require any propositional surroundings; on the contrary, 

it is this representativeness of the term taken in itself which makes 

it possible for it to fulfill its second function, that of playing various 

referential roles in propositional contexts. 

Secondly, we may conjecture that in his definition of"significare" 

Ockham uses certain special propositional schemata—"this is an F" for 

example—because they provide a convenient practical test for signification. 

Ockham, let us not forget, is not building an axiomatized theory; 

he is mainly writing a practical manual in order to teach an intellectual 

technique. He wants his reader to master correctly the tools of logic. 

Should someone wonder what "grammarian" for example signifies (as 

in Anselm's De GrammLtico), he now has a handy test which is much 

more easily manageable than the abstract question. The test is just: 

what is it that we can point at and say: "this is a grammarian"? Moreover, 

I think that the important thing in this particular maneuver is 

not really that Ockham resorts to propositional schemata, but it is 

rather that he is forced by the logic of his own atomistic semantical 

theory to rely in the last analysis on the virtues of demonstrative pronouns. 

I have tried to show elsewhere that, although Ockham's semantics does 

not show much theoretical interest in the demonstratives, it does systematically 

resort to them in practice to play a role very much like 

that of the logically proper names of Russell's logical atomism, that of 

providing a means for direct singular designation. 35 If that is true, we 

are now very far from the propositionalist interpretation of Ockham's 

semantics. 

Université du Québec CLAUDE PANACCIO 

a Trois-Rit.'iëres 

Claude Panaccio, "Occam et les démonstratifs," l-Iisroriographia Linguistica 

7 (1980): 189-200.

Propositionalism and atomis in Ockham's semantics

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