Philosophy Models

John Buridan (Jean Buridan 1301-1358) in Summulae de Dialectica writes about the signification of propositions:

• Propositions are made up of terms.
• Terms can be spoken utterances, written inscriptions, and concepts in mind.
• Spoken and written terms are parts of Spoken and written propositions.
• Spoken and written terms and concepts can be categorematic and syncategorematic.  The former represents something in themselves (e.g., man, Aristotle, number), the latter represents something connected with other concepts (e.g., non in nonhuman).
• Syncategorematic terms signify syncategorematic concepts, while categorematic terms signify categorematic concepts, which signify objects.
• Spoken and written propositions signify mental propositions in a ‘fine grained’ manner, meaning, that categorematic and syncategorematic terms are mapped to categorematic and syncategorematic concepts.
• “when the mental propositions concern things other than items in a language [extramental objects], they cannot further be mapped onto some sort of propositional entities, given the demands of Buridan’s nominalist ontology. So, because syncategorematic concepts do not represent anything in extramental reality, but only modify the representative function of categorematic concepts, the second mapping definitely has to be ‘coarser’: a mental proposition concerning things in the world can only signify things [objects] that are signified by its categorematic terms (the terms flanking its copula), whence even nonsynonymous propositions that share the same terms will end up signifying the same things.“

The following OntoUML diagram pictures the main classes in Buridan’s theory of propositions:

Class	Description	Relations
Term	A mental, spoken, or written term. “It should, therefore, be realized that three kinds of expressions and three kinds of terms can be distinguished, as is touched upon at the beginning of On Interpretation: namely, mental, spoken, and written” (Buridan).	shared part of Proposition
Proposition	Propositions are meaningful compounds of syncategorematic and categorematic terms.
Spoken_WrittenTerm	Spoken or written terms are utterances or inscriptions. “What a [spoken or written] term immediately signifies is the mental act [concept] on account of which we recognize the term as a significative utterance or inscription, as opposed to some articulate sound or discernible scribble that makes no sense to us at all. Thus, those utterances that do have signifi cation are meaningful precisely because they are associated with some act of understanding, or, in late scholastic terminology, because they are subordinated to some concept of the human mind, whatever such a concept is, namely, whether it is some spiritual modification of an immaterial mind or just a firing pattern of neurons in the brain.” (Klima)	subkind of Term; shared part of Spoken_Written Proposition
SyncategorematicTerm	Syncategorematic terms may signify only the syncategorematic concept to which they are subordinated. Because the function of such a concept (for example, the concept of negation, conjunction, and similar logical connectives) is not to conceive of anything, but merely to modify the representative function of other concepts, the purely syncategorematic term subordinated to it will not signify anything else. […] For example, the term-negation ‘non’ in the term ‘nonhuman’ does not signify anything in extramental reality, for there is no such a thing as a negation in re existing on a par with humans, beasts, plants, and rocks. However, this does not mean that this word does not signify at all. For even if it does not signify something, it does signify somehow: even if it does not signify a negation in re, it does signify negatively, namely, by negating the significata of the categorematic term with which it is construed, so that the resulting complex term supposits in a proposition for what is not signified by the negated categorematic term. […] syncategorematic terms can have material supposition (thus the term ‘non’ in ‘Non est negatio’ can be taken to stand materiallyfor its immediate signifi cata, the token concepts of negation in individual human minds or itself and other tokens of the same type).” (Klima)	subkind of Spoken_WrittenTerm; signifies SyncategorematicConcept
CategorematicTerm	“A categorematic term, therefore, is said to signify the concept to which it is subordinated immediately, but it is imposed to signify ultimately the object (or objects) conceived by this concept, in the manner that it is (or they are) conceived by means of this concept […] (Klima)	subkind of Spoken_WrittenTerm; signifies CategorematicConcept
Spoken_Written Proposition	“Spoken and written propositions have a ‘fine-grained’ semantics, insofar as they are mapped onto mental propositions.”	subkind of Proposition; signifies (fine grained) MentalProposition
Concept	A concept is a term in mental language an act of understanding.  “Buridan makes it quite clear that in his view a concept cannot vary its semantic features, which means that there is no ambiguity in mental language. The same concept always represents the same things in the same way, so there is not even a variation of supposition in mental language in the way there is in spoken or written languages” (Klima)	subkind of Term; shared part of MentalProposition
SyncategorematicConcept	“Concepts, being representative acts of the mind, are naturally classified in terms of their representative function, which in turn is specified in terms of what and how these concepts represent or naturally signify. However, some concepts represent something only in connection with other concepts, whereas others represent something in themselves. The former are called syncategorematic, whereas the latter are called categorematic concepts.” (Klima)	subkind of Concept
CategorematicConcept	“Concepts, being representative acts of the mind, are naturally classified in terms of their representative function, which in turn is specifi ed in terms of what and how these concepts represent or naturally signify. However, some concepts represent something only in connection with other concepts, whereas others represent something in themselves. The former are called syncategorematic, whereas the latter are called categorematic concepts.” (Klima)	subkind of Concept; signifies Object
MentalProposition	Mental propositions are compounds of concepts. “when the mental propositions concern things other than items in a language [extramental objects], they cannot further be mapped onto some sort of propositional entities, given the demands of Buridan’s nominalist ontology. So, because syncategorematic concepts do not represent anything in extramental reality, but only modify the representative function of categorematic concepts, the second mapping definitely has to be “coarser”: a mental proposition concerning things in the world can only signify things [objects] that are signified by its categorematic terms (the terms flanking its copula), whence even nonsynonymous propositions that share the same terms will end up signifying the same things.	subkind of Proposition; signifies (coarse grained) Object(s)
Object	An object, a thing or state of affairs in the external (or internal) world.

Sources:

• All citations from: Klima, Gyula, “John Buridan”, Oxford University Press, 2009
• Spade, Vincent, “Thoughts, Words and Things: An Introduction to Late Mediaeval Logic and Semantic Theory”, Version 1.2: December 27, 2007
• Zupko, Jack, “John Buridan“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

First published: 19/10/2021

John Buridan (Jean Buridan 1301-1358) in Summulae de Dialectica writes about types of terms, their signification, and supposition:

• Terms can be spoken utterances, written inscriptions, and concepts in mind.
• Syntactically simple spoken and written terms signify concepts that are semantically simple.
• Syntactically complex expressions combine syntactically simple spoken and written terms (words). 
• Semantically complex concepts (mental expressions) combine semantically simple concepts.
• Semantically simple expressions signify concepts. (e.g., when the expression ‘men’s best friend’ signifies a dog)
• Semantically complex expressions signify complex concepts. (e.g., when the expression ‘men’s best friend’ is taken literally)

Overall, Buridan sustains the divergence between the simplicity/complexity of the grammatical and conceptual structures.

The following OntoUML diagram pictures the main classes of simple and complex terms, expressions and concepts:

Class	Description	Relations
Term	A mental, spoken, or written term. “It should, therefore, be realized that three kinds of expressions and three kinds of terms can be distinguished, as is touched upon at the beginning of On Interpretation: namely, mental, spoken, and written” (Buridan).
Spoken_WrittenTerm	Spoken or written terms are utterances or inscriptions. “What a [spoken or written] term immediately signifies is the mental act [concept] on account of which we recognize the term as a significative utterance or inscription, as opposed to some articulate sound or discernible scribble that makes no sense to us at all. Thus, those utterances that do have signifi cation are meaningful precisely because they are associated with some act of understanding, or, in late scholastic terminology, because they are subordinated to some concept of the human mind, whatever such a concept is, namely, whether it is some spiritual modification of an immaterial mind or just a firing pattern of neurons in the brain.” (Klima)	subkind of Term; signifies Concept; exclusive part of Expression
SyntacticallySimple	“A syntactically simple utterance is one that is imposed to designate a concept as a whole, so that, although it does [or could] have distinguishable parts, none of its parts, as such, is imposed to designate some concept separately. Indeed, even if the utterance in question does have distinguishable parts that are imposed to designate some concepts separately when they do not occur as a part of this utterance, because they do not have the function of designating these concepts when they do occur as parts of this utterance, the utterance is still syntactically simple. For example, the obviously simple English word ‘polecat’ is imposed as a whole to signify a concept whereby we conceive of a particular species of stinky animals. However, a polecat is neither a pole nor a cat. Even if the utterance ‘polecat’ has the distinguishable parts ‘pole’ and ‘cat’ which separately are also imposed in English to signify concepts whereby we conceive of some sorts of things, these concepts have nothing to do with the concept to which ‘polecat’ is subordinated. The representative function of this concept is in no way dependent on the representative function of those other concepts, and, so, the signification of this utterance is in no way dependent on the signification of its parts.” (Klima)	characterizes Spoken_WrittenTerm
SemanticallyComplex Spoken_WrittenTerm	We have semantically complex spoken and written terms, when a “a syntactically simple utterance may obviously be semantically complex by virtue of being subordinated to a complex concept.” (Klima)	subkind of Spoken_WrittenTerm; signifies ComplexConcept
Expression	“a spoken expression is an utterance made up of several words” (Buridan)	subkind of Spoken_WrittenTerm
SyntacticallyComplex	Syntactically Complex: made up of several words.	characterizes Expression
SemanticallyComplexExpression	“Further, a spoken expression should be called an [semantically complex] ‘expression’ only insofar as it designates a combination of concepts in the mind.” (Buridan)	role of Expression; signifies ComplexConcept
SemanticallySimpleExpression	“despite possible appearances to the contrary, the combination of written and spoken words does not always have to run strictly parallel to the combination of concepts in the mind. As Buridan continues: For if the whole utterance ‘A man runs’ were imposed to signify simply stones, as the utterance ‘stone’ does, then ‘A man runs’ would not be an expression, but a simple word, as is ‘stone’. Hence, something is called a spoken expression or proposition only because it designates a mental expression or proposition, and a spoken proposition is called true or false only because it designates a true or false mental proposition, just as a urine sample is said to be healthy or unhealthy only because it designates that the animal is healthy or ill. It is in the same way that every utterance that appropriately designates a simple concept by convention [ex institutione] is said to be incomplex, [precisely] because it is subordinated in order to designate a simple concept. That is to say, just because some spoken or written sign has some sort of recognizable complexity (as even single words consist of syllables, and those of sounds or letters), one must not assume that the corresponding concept has some corresponding complexity. Indeed, it happens even in ordinary usage that an originally complex phrase is transferred to designate a simple concept. This is the case, for example, with the phrase “man’s best friend” in English, which, at least according to one of its uses, is transferred to designate the same concept that is designated by the simple word “dog,” which, as we can assume with Buridan, is a simple concept.” (Klima)	role of Expression; signifies Concept
Concept	A concept is a term in mental language an act of understanding.  “Buridan makes it quite clear that in his view a concept cannot vary its semantic features, which means that there is no ambiguity in mental language. The same concept always represents the same things in the same way, so there is not even a variation of supposition in mental language in the way there is in spoken or written languages” (Klima)	subkind of Term; exclusive part of ComplexConcept
SemanticallySimple	A concept is semantically simple.	characterizes Concept
ComplexConcept	“Syncategorematic concepts modify the representative function of categorematic concepts by forming with them new concepts that have a representative function different from that of the original categorematic concept. Therefore, it is natural to think of these new concepts as resulting from the combination of categorematic and syncategorematic concepts, and thus, as having some intrinsic structure, that is to say, a certain complexity. Indeed, when Buridan is talking about complex concepts as being the result of combination [complexio], he definitely gives us the impression that the conceptual combination in question strictly parallels the syntactical combination of the corresponding written or spoken phrases. […] The combination [complexio] of simple concepts is called a ‘mental expression’, [and results from] compounding or dividing [componendo vel dividendo] by means of the second operation of the intellect, and the terms of such an expression are the simple concepts that the intellect puts together or separates. Now, just as simple concepts are designated for us by means of simple utterances, which we call ‘words’, so also do we designate a combination of simple concepts by a combination of words. It is for this reason that a spoken expression is an utterance made up of several words, which signifies for us the combination of concepts in the mind.” (Klima, Buridan)	subkind of Concept
SemnaticallyComplex	Complex concepts, or mental expressions are semantically complex.	characterizes ComplexConcept
SyncategorematicConcept	“Concepts, being representative acts of the mind, are naturally classified in terms of their representative function, which in turn is specified in terms of what and how these concepts represent or naturally signify. However, some concepts represent something only in connection with other concepts, whereas others represent something in themselves. The former are called syncategorematic, whereas the latter are called categorematic concepts.” (Klima)	subkind of Concept
CategorematicConcept	“Concepts, being representative acts of the mind, are naturally classified in terms of their representative function, which in turn is specified in terms of what and how these concepts represent or naturally signify. However, some concepts represent something only in connection with other concepts, whereas others represent something in themselves. The former are called syncategorematic, whereas the latter are called categorematic concepts.” (Klima)	subkind of Concept

Sources:

• Klima, Gyula, “John Buridan”, Oxford University Press, 2009
• Spade, Vincent, “Thoughts, Words and Things: An Introduction to Late Mediaeval Logic and Semantic Theory”, Version 1.2: December 27, 2007
• Zupko, Jack, “John Buridan“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

First published: 3/10/2021