From the Tree to the Labyrinth (65 page)

Not that medieval thinkers had all of these different issues clearly in mind from the word go. The most we can say is that question (i) became the object of debate, in terms of the opposition between
significare, nominare,
and
appellare,
very early on (at least from the time of Anselm of Canterbury). Question (ii) was probably framed for the first time by Peter of Spain with his distinction between
suppositio naturalis
and
suppositio accidentalis.
Question (iii) was variously addressed from Boethius onward—though while, among the commentators of Aristotle, the debate over the relationship of signification was conducted independently from that over true and false assertions, for a number of grammarians and theoreticians of the
suppositio,
the two issues were often superimposed, until such time as, with Roger Bacon and William of Ockham, they became completely interchangeable.

The fate of terms like
denotatio
and
designatio
is bound up with the history of the opposition
significatio
–
nominatio.
It would appear that, for a long time (at least until the fourteenth century), these terms were used sometimes in an intensional and sometimes in an extensional sense. The terms were already present in the traditional Latin lexicon and signified, among their many other meanings, “to stand as a sign for something”—regardless of whether that something was a concept or a thing. In the case of
designatio
the etymology speaks for itself, in the case of
denotatio,
however, we must bear in mind that the term
nota
indicated a sign, a token, a symbol, something that referred back to something else (see also Lyons 1968: ch. 9). According to Maierù (1972: 394), Aristotle’s term
symbolon
was in fact generally translated as
nota:
“nota vero est quae rem quamquam designat. Quo fit ut omne nomen nota sit” (“a sign is that which designates any thing. Hence every name is a sign”)(Boethius 1988: p. 108).
³

It is important, then, to establish (i) what happened to the term
significatio;
and (ii) when
denotatio
(along with
designatio
) occurs in connection with
significatio,
and when, on the contrary, it occurs in opposition to it.

As far as
denotatio
goes, it is important to record its occurrence in each of the following three usages: (i) in a
strong
intensional sense (denotation is related to meaning); (ii) in a
strong
extensional sense (denotation is related to things or states of things); (iii) in a
weak
sense (denotation is undecided between intension and extension, but with good reason to lean toward intension). We will see that the weak sense is the predominant one at least up until the fourteenth century.

From Augustine to the thirteenth century, the possibility of referring to things is always mediated by meaning. For Augustine, “signum est enim res praeter speciem, quam ingerit sensibus, aliud aliquid ex se faciens in cogitationem venire” (“a sign is something which, offering itself to the senses, conveys something other to the intellect”) (
De doctrina christiana
II, 1, 1) and signification is the action a sign performs on the mind. Only through this mediation can one refer to things (see
Figure 9.2
).

Figure 9.2

Boethius had already introduced the term
propositio
to indicate the complex expressions that assert that something is either true or false. It is difficult to decide whether by “proposition” he meant the expression itself or the corresponding concept, but it is clear that truth or falsehood were connected with propositions and not with isolated terms. Boethius affirms that the isolated terms signify the corresponding concept or the universal idea, and he takes
significare
—as he does, though more rarely,
designare
—in the intensional sense. Words are conventional tools that serve to make manifest thoughts,
sensa
or
sententias
(
De interpretatione
I). Words do not designate
res subiectae
but
passiones animae.
The most we can say of the thing designated is that it is “implied by its concept” (
significationi supposita
or
suppositum,
see De Rijk 1962–1967: 180–181).

In his first commentary on Aristotle’s
Peri hermeneias,
II, in a discussion as to whether words refer directly to concepts or to things, in both cases Boethius uses the expression
designare.
He says “vox vero conceptiones animi intellectusque significant” and “voces vero quae intellectus designant,” and, speaking of
litterae, voces, intellectus, res,
he states that “litterae verba nominaque significant” and that “haec vero (nomina) principaliter quidem intellectus secundo vero loco res quoque designant. Intellectus vero ipsi nihil aliud nisi rerum significativi sunt.” In
Categories,
col. 159 B4–C8, he says that “prima igitur illa fuit nominum positio per quam vel intellectui subiecta vel sensibus designaret.” It seems to me that in these examples
designare
and
significare
are considered as more or less interchangeable.

Figure 9.3

Therefore, for Boethius too, words signify concepts and it is only as a consequence of this that they may refer to things (see
Figure 9.3
).

It is thanks to the theory of
appellatio,
proposed in his
De Grammatico
by Anselm of Canterbury, that a more clear-cut distinction is posited between signifying and referring.

Building on Aristotle’s theory of paronyms, Anselm says that, when we call a given individual a
grammaticus
or grammarian, we are using the term paronymically. The word still signifies the quality of being a grammarian, but it is used to refer to a specific person. To indicate reference, then, Anselm uses the term
appellatio,
while, to indicate meaning, he uses
significatio
(
De Grammatico,
4, 30 et seq.). A distinction of this kind between meaning and appellation (or naming) is also observed by Abelard.

In the case of Abelard it is not possible to identify a logical terminology established once and for all, since he frequently uses the same terms in more than one sense. Nevertheless, he is the first author in whom the distinction between the intensional and extensional aspects is clearly made (if not always consistently from the terminological point of view). While he speaks indifferently of
significatio de rebus
and
significatio de intellectibus,
he nevertheless considers the principal meaning of
significatio
to be (we would say) intensional, in conformity with the anti-Aristotelian tradition, for which
significare
means to
constituere
(or “to generate”) a mental concept.

In his
Ingredientibus
(Geyer 1927: 307), Abelard states unambiguously that the intellectual plane is the necessary intermediary between things and concepts. “Not only is the
significatio intellectuum
a privileged
significatio,
it is also the only legitimate semantic function of a noun, the only one a dialectician must bear in mind when examining a discourse” (Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli 1969: 37).

But if we consider the various contexts in which terms such as
significare, designare, denotare, nominare, appellare
are compared and contrasted with one another, we are entitled to conclude that Abelard uses
significare
to refer to the
intellectus
generated in the mind of the listener,
nominare
instead for the referential function, and—at least in certain passages in the
Dialectica,
but in a way that leaves no room for doubt—
designare
and
denotare
for the relationship between a word and its definition or
sententia
(the
sententia
being what we would call the “encyclopedic” meaning of the term, whose definition represents a particular “dictionary” selection for the purposes of disambiguating the meaning of the term itself).
⁴

We have already stressed, not only the frequently contradictory nature of Abelard’s terminology, but also how the terms
designare
and
denotare
had continued to enjoy a remarkably vague definitional status down to his time. There are passages in which we encounter
designare
with a strong extensional sense, such as
Dialectica
(I, III, 2, 1, p. 119), where Abelard argues against those who maintain that syncategorematic words do not produce concepts, but merely indicate a number of
res subiectae.
In this passage Abelard goes on to speak of the possibility of designating things, and he seems to use
designare
to indicate the first imposition of names upon things (seen as a kind of baptism in which there is a strict designatory link between the namer and the thing named). See, for instance,
Dialectica
(I, III, 3, p. 114): “ad res designandas imposite.”

It is also true, however, that in certain passages (see, for instance, I, III, 3, 1, p. 123),
designare
and
denotare
do not seem to have the same meaning, while in others (such as I, II, 3, 9, p. 97, and I, III, 3, 1, p. 121) the use of
designare
suggests an intensional interpretation.

Furthermore, there are two contexts (I, III, 1, 1, pp. 112–113) in which what is designated is the relationship between a name and its corresponding definition, and the denotation is explicitly linked to the meaning (or
sententia
) of an expression.

Taking issue with those who maintained that the things upon which the
vox
or name has been imposed are directly signified by the
vox
itself, Abelard stresses the fact that names signify “ea sola quae in voce denotantur atque in sententia ipsius tenentur.” He then adds that words do not signify everything they can name, but what they designate by a definition. For example, Latin
animal
signifies a sensitive animal substance, and this is precisely what is
denoted
by (or in) the word (see
Figure 9.4
).

Figure 9.4

It is clear then that both designation and denotation continue to maintain a decidedly strong intensional sense and to refer to the relationship between an expression and its corresponding definitional content.

As for signification, it has nothing to do with the naming of things, since it continues to exist “nominatis rebus destructis
”
(“if the things named are destroyed”), making it possible to understand the meaning of
nulla rosa est
(
Ingredientibus,
Geyer ed., p. 309).