Ockham, Notes

Note 1. Socrates and Plato here and elsewhere are John Doe and Richard Roe, names for any two human individuals - not the Socrates in Plato's dialogues, not the Plato who held the theory of ideas.

Note 2. A 'consequence' is an inference. The 'antecedent' is the premise or (if there is more than one) premises taken together, the 'consequent' is the conclusion. The 'minor' is the second premise of a syllogism.

Note 3. That is, to the minor premiss, "That real unity is not unity of singularity".

Note 4. In the phrases, 'on the part of the thing', a parte rei, and 'by the nature of the thing', ex natura rei, 'thing' does not necessarily refer to one particular thing. Both phrases mean that what is being asserted is true really in the extramental world, apart from any act of the human intellect. Compare the classical Latin phrase, in rerum natura, 'in the nature of things', 'in reality'.

Note 5. The antecedent is the 'if' clause of a conditional statement, or the premise of an inference; the 'consequent' is the 'then' clause, or the conclusion; the whole conditional statement, or inference, is called a 'consequence'.

Note 6. 'Syncategorematic' terms are terms other than the subject and predicate terms of a statement, e.g. 'every', 'some', 'in so far as'. Syncategorematic terms do not by themselves refer to things. See Ockham, Summa logicae, in Hyman and Walsh, Philosophy in the Middle Ages, pp. 610-611.

Note 7. A proposition of inherence (de inesse) simply asserts that something is or is not something else, a modal proposition qualifies the assertion with a 'mode', such as 'probable', 'necessary', 'contingent'. A uniform syllogism consists of propositions all of which are of inherence, or all of which are modal; a mixed syllogism contains some propositions of inherence and some modal.

Note 8. In other words, the rules that apply to uniform or mixed syllogisms generally apply also to syllogisms in which the propositions contain determinations such as 'per se'. If a syllogism would be valid without such a determination, then it will be valid with it.

Note 9. For example: 'Every animal, of necessity, is a substance; no accident, of necessity, is a substance; therefore no accident is animal'. The conclusion is a proposition of inherence.

Note 10. On the 'destroying determination' see Aristotle, On Interpretation, ch. 1, 21 a20-4. Example: a 'dead man' - the adjective negates the meaning of the noun. From 'This is a dead man' it does not follow that 'this is a living being'. On the 'diminishing determination' see On Sophistical Fallacies, ch. 5, 166 b38-167 a20. Example: an Ethiopian white 'with repect to his teeth' - the qualification 'diminishes' the force of the word to which it applies. From 'All Ethiopians are white with respect to their teeth' it does not follow that 'some Ethiopians are white'.

Note 11. The topic or rule supposed to underly AEE in figure 1; see Abbreviatio Montana, in N. Kratzmann and E. Stump (eds.), Logic and the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge, 1988), p. 70.

Note 12. On this detail of Scotus's theory of univocity see Copleston, History, vol. 2, ch. 47, section 2, last two paragraphs.

Note 13. Aristotle's four causes. The intrinsic causes are matter and form, the extrinsic are end and agent.

Note 14. That is, taking the words literally. See Philotheus Boehner, Collected Articles on Ockham, pp. 248-53.

Note 15. A word 'supposits' when it stands for something. It supposits 'personally' when it stands for what it signifies, e.g. when 'man' stands for a man, or 'concept' stands for a concept. (Note that 'personal' here has nothing to with the distinction between persons and things.) A word supposts 'simply' when it stands for the concept of what it signifies, and 'materially' when it stands for itself as a word. (Medieval Latin did not usually use a definite or indefinite article, and medieval Latin writing did not use quotation marks.) Examples: 'Man is a three letter word' (material), 'Man is a universal' (simple), and '[A] man is standing over there' (personal). See Ockham, Summa logicae, in Hyman and Walsh, pp. 615-6.

Note 16. A word supposits 'determinately' when it stands for some particular thing or things. It supposits 'confusedly' when it stands for any one (or any several) from among a more extensive set of things.

Note 17. An indefinite proposition is one in which there is no indication whether the proposition is to be taken as universal or as particular.

Note 18. A sophism. See Summa logicae, I, c. 71.

Note 19. 'Uniformly', i.e. consistently with what is said on another topic (in this case, in the previous sentence).

Note 20. William of Ockham, Summa logicae, 'On Fallacies', chapter 4.

Note 21. 'Subjectively' means roughly 'extramentally', 'as, or in, a real subject', whereas 'objectively' means 'as an object of thought'.

Note 22. That is, is for the negative, not, as it is presented, for the affirmative.

Note 23. [1] is an application of the more general proposition: [2] 'If X befits Y (either of itself or in any way), then while X befits Y the opposite of X is (in the same way) repugnant with Y'.

Note 24. According to Scotus, the common nature in this stone is this stone, but not 'of itself', only by something that individualises it. Ockham is saying that how it is this is irrelevant.

Note 25. E.g., if uniform circular local motion is the measure of all change, then any uniform circular local motion can be used as the measure.

Note 26. First 'positively' means before all others, 'negatively' means not after any other.

Note 27. That is, a least or greatest, rather than an infinity of degrees. Often 'a stand' means an end to a series.

Note 28. 'Complex' here means a proposition. The truth or falsity of a proposition must be judged by intellect. Sensation does not make judgments.

Note 29. This refers not to generator and generated, but to what the generating cause transforms and what is thereby generated. If a brass sphere is transformed into a brass cube, the matter in sphere and cube is numerically identical.

Note 30. That is, 'X is not Y' is not an immediate proposition, but needs to be proved through some other proposition using another term or other terms. Thus 'This equilateral triangle does not have interior angles adding to 360 degrees', is not immediate, because it has to be proved from the proposition that a triangle has angles etc. and other propositions.

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