Ockham's Theory of Natural Signification

289 Franciscan Studies 63 (2005) OCKHAM’S THEORY OF NATURAL SIGNIFICATION I. Ockham’s Ontology William of Ockham’s1 nominalist2 ontology is undoubtedly his most significant contribution to the history of philosophy. Yet, this ontology 1 William of Ockham (also Occam; ca. 1285-ca. 1349), a Franciscan theologian born near London, is most famous for the nominalist doctrine that universals are names for singular things in the world, and for the term “Ockham’s Razor,” which actually refers to an Aristotelian doctrine (that simpler explanations are preferable to more complicated explanations or, as Ockham puts it, that assumptions should not be multiplied without necessity) used by many medieval philosophers prior to Ockham. Primary sources used in this article are Guillielmi de Ockham, Opera Phiosophica et Theologica, eds. Gedeon Gál, Stephen Brown, et al. (St. Bonaventure: The Franciscan Institute, 1967-1985). Specific works include: Expositio in librum Perihermeneias Aristotelis (PH), OPIII; Reportatio (books II-IV of Ockham’s commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences), OTV-VIII; and Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum (Ordinatio), OTIV, Girard Etzkorn and Francis Kelly, eds. (St. Bonaventure University, 1979). I also use Summa Logicae, ed. Philotheus Boehner (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1951). Translations and dual language texts include: Ockham’s Theory of Terms: Part I of the Summa Logicae, trans. and intro. Michael J. Loux (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1974) (including “The Ontology of William of Ockham,” 1-22 and “Ockham on Generality,” 23-46); Quodlibetal Questions, vol.1, 1-4, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso and Francis E. Kelley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Philosophical Writings: A Selection/ William of Ockham (PW), trans. Philotheus Boehner, tr. rev. Stephen F. Brown. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990); and Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham, trans. and ed. by Paul Vincent Spade (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994). In some cases, I have relied on translations cited in secondary sources; however, in many cases, I have either amended extant translations or provided my own translations. 2 W.V.O. Quine describes the position of nominalism in this way: denying the existence of abstract entities, the nominalist would say “that there is no such thing as appendicitis ,” because the word is not a name of any entity in its own right, and . . . it is a noun at all only because of a regrettable strain of realism which pervades our own particular language . . . he will say that there is not merely no such thing as a unicorn but also no such thing as unicorn – no abstract entity, so-called property, such as this word has been said to designate. He keeps the word “unicorn” merely as a contextually meaningful word like “up” – a syncategorematic expression which names nothing, abstract or concrete (W.V.O. Quine, “Designation and Existence,” 44-51, in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars, eds. (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1949), 46-7. JOSHUA RAYMAN 290 posits a dualism wholly incompatible with his mature theory of reference . In denying the mind-independent existence of universals and thereby asserting a real difference between universal thought and singular things, he effaces the ontological ground of mental reference to extramental things, namely, adequation or similarity. But if Ockham retains a traditional view of reference as similitude, as Claude Panaccio argues3 then Ockham’s transformed ontology can coexist with his mechanism of reference solely on the level of intramental reference, the reference of mental concepts to other concepts or to themselves; there can be no extramental reference. Although Panaccio does not consider Ockham’s application of similitude to a nominalist ontology problematic , it is unclear not only how there can be reference under these ontological conditions, but what Ockham’s mechanism of reference is. In this paper, I examine the descriptive and philosophical failure of previous accounts of Ockham’s theory of reference, correct these accounts, and show that Ockham’s own theory of reference fails to solve the problem created by his nominalist ontology. Ockham’s “anti-realism,” his elimination of extramental universals,4 is much more problematic for his theory of reference than his program of ontological reductionism. Paul Vincent Spade describes his antiuniversalism and his ontological reductionism...