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William of Ockham’s The Sum of Logic

Article  in  Topoi · September 2007

DOI: 10.1007/s11245-007-9024-x

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 Untimely Review

to appear in Topoi: an international review of philosophy

William of Ockham, The Sum of Logic

reviewed by Stephen Read

 William of Ockham, The Sum of Logic

William of Ockham’s Summa Logicae is a classic of analytical metaphysics, using a typical

fourteenth century logic treatise to defend a reductionist ontology.i For Ockham, everything

is an individual, and this is to be shown by the correct logical analysis of language,

reinterpreting Aristotle’s Categories as a taxonomy of the many ways in which terms can be

predicated. The ultimate basis is the attribution of an individual quality to an individual

substance. This theory of the signification of terms is then extended to an account of the

truth-conditions of propositions and the truth-preservation of arguments, but always with the

reduction to individuals as the key. This classic work in the logical analysis of language still

contains lively insights for contemporary scholars.

Much of Part I of the Summa Logicae is taken up with the notion of the signification of

words. Indeed, like Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, it opens with a quotation

from Augustine, in this case coupled to another from Boethius reporting Aristotle’s three-fold

division of language from the start of his De Interpretatione. Terms and the propositions of

which they are composed are of three types, written, spoken and mental: and “these

conceptual terms and the propositions composed from them are those mental words which St

Augustine in De Trinitate XV said are of no language, because they remain only in the mind

and cannot be carried forth from it, whereas the sounds subordinate to them as signs can be

uttered publicly.”ii

Two iconoclastic ideas are contained in germ in this passage: first, the Augustinian conceit

that concepts form a mental language in parallel to spoken and written language; secondly,

the consequential insight that this language cannot be signified by spoken and written

language since it is itself a language and so open to interpretation. Rather, Ockham described

2
spoken language, and written language in turn, as subordinated to mental language, deriving

its signification from the signification of that language of thought. Mental language too, as a

language, needs to obtain its interpretation and signification in some way. But how? By being

common to all men, as Aristotle said (De Interpretatione 16a7)—but contrary to his

observation that all signs signify by convention (16a26)—mental terms signify naturally, not

by convention as do spoken and written terms in different languages. But what do they

signify?

Here the London school of Ockham and his sympathizer Wodeham, opposed by the realist

Chatton, takes inspiration from Avicenna’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

Everything which is one and not many is a singular and individual thing. Nothing is common

to other things except by signification. The only universals are names. Avicenna expresses

this nominalist credo in a passage cited by Ockham: “One form in the mind is related to many

and in this respect is a universal, since it is a concept in the mind … This form, although

universal in its relation to individuals, is individual in its relation to the particular mind in

which it is imprinted.” (I 14: 48) The idea is this: universals are words, whether spoken,

written or mental. Spoken and written words derive their signification from being

subordinated to mental words. Mental words are acts of the mind, acts of cognition of, in

general, extra-mental things, all of which are individual. Some of these acts, however,

embrace many things—they are universal to them, and unite them in a single mental act.

These acts are thereby universal.

Ockham did not always hold this view. He was persuaded of it by his Franciscan

colleague Walter Chatton. His earlier thought was this: everything is individual, but we can

think of universals. Hence universals must be without real existence, but existing only as an

object of thought (tantum obiective—existing only “objectively”).iii This is his notorious

3
fictum theory: universals are fictive entities existing only in thought. Chatton criticized the

theory presented in Ockham’s lectures on the Sentences in his own lectures: either each

fictum depends essentially on the corresponding act of thought for its existence—in which

case we multiply ficta unacceptably for each and every act— or it does not, in which case we

could have a fictum existing “objectively” (i.e., as the object of an act of thought) without any

act of thought— which is a plain contradiction. The argument is invalid,iv but was so

persuasive with Ockham that he repeated it verbatim in his Quodlibetal Disputations

presented shortly before composing the Summa Logicae, and revised shortly afterwards,

possibly in Avignon.

What, then, is the object of an act of thought concerning universals, for example, that

Socrates is a man? It needs no object other than men; indeed, that is what makes the act a

universal, its being common, by natural signification, to all men. Ockham had already

eliminated the intermediary species (or form) in so-called “intuitive” cognition of

individuals—in thinking of Socrates I think of him, not of or by means of any representative

image; now in abstractive cognition, in abstracting the universal from a range of individuals,

what is formed is not the object of an abstractive act, but the act itself which embraces,

directly, those individuals.

This reductive philosophy has dramatic, possibly heretical, implications. For it occasions

Ockham to rethink entirely Aristotle’s project in his Categories. The bulk of Part I of Summa

Logicae is taken up with consideration of the meaning of terms, which Ockham claims was

Aristotle’s real project. But if nothing is universal except by signification, then what fall into

the categories are words, not things. It is a classification of types of expression. But names

are of essentially two types, not ten. Either they describe something absolutely and simply,

like ‘man’ and ‘animal’; or they describe something indirectly, by connoting some accident

4
of it, like ‘white’ or ‘cause’: “[connotative names] have what is, in the strict sense, called a

nominal definition. In the nominal definition of a connotative term it is frequently necessary

to put one expression in the nominative case and another in one of the oblique cases. The

term ‘white’ provides an example … if someone should ask for the nominal definition of

‘white’ the answer would be … ‘something having a whiteness’.”v

Ockham proceeds to show that all the divisions of Aristotle’s non-substance categories are

misleading and unnecessary. Take privations, for example, like blindness. This isn’t any real

quality existing in the blind person, but its lack or absence. It’s no more than a function of the

way words signify. Ockham cites Anselm in support of his view. Language can mislead: “‘to

fear’ is grammatically in the active voice; in actual fact it is something passive. Similarly,

according to the form of speech blindness is said to be something; in actual fact it is not

anything at all.” (I 36: 119) Passions don’t inhere in subjects, but are only in the mind (or

loosely, in speech or in writing), for passions are predicated of things, and only elements of

propositions, that is, words, are predicated. Indeed, substance is only a word: first substance

is a proper name, and second substance a common name: for example, “when Aristotle says

that if first substance was destroyed it would be impossible for any of the other things to

remain [2b4-6], he is not talking of real distinction and real existence. He means, rather,

destructive by way of a negative proposition. Thus, he is saying that when ‘to be’ is not

predicated of anything contained under a common term, it is only denied of the common term

itself as well as of the properties and accidents proper to that common term.” (I 42: 134)

The most radical application of Ockham’s reduction of the categories is elaborated in chs.

44-52 of Part I of the Summa Logicae, where he denies the distinct reality of quantity and

relation. For the central doctrine of the Aristotelian categories is not only that they are

exhaustive and exclusive (distinct things belong to distinct categories) but they are essential

5
in that what is, for example, an animal (a substance) is essentially an animal, and cannot

cease to be an animal without ceasing to be; a weight of five kilos (a quantity) is essentially

five kilos, distinct from a quantity of six kilos; similarity (a relation) between two things is

essentially similarity, and cannot become a different relation; and so on. Ockham rejects this

orthodox interpretation: the only essences are substance and quality. This claim is heretical,vi

and Ockham realises it, so he attributes the view to Aristotle, saying he will “outline the

account without committing myself to it.” (I 44: 145) Take quantity, for example. The

quantity of air in a container can change, when it condenses or is rarefied. If quantity were a

real accident, this would be impossible unless the original quantity were destroyed and

replaced by an entirely new quantity. Since condensation and rarefaction are continuous, this

would entail an actual infinity of quantities, which all Aristotelians believe is impossible. The

correct explanation is that quantity is a connotative term, naming some quantity of

something. Quantity is not distinct from that substance of which it is some quantity.

Ockham likewise denies the reality of points, lines and surfaces distinct from the lines,

surfaces and solids which they delimit. For example, if lines were real parts of a surface,

there would be an actual infinity of them, which is impossible. Rather, a surface is

indefinitely divisible, and each division creates a line, but only as the limit and so as an

attribute of the surface of the body. Again, time and place are not real things; rather

something has a quality at some time at some place, so time and place connote attributes of

something real, but are not real separable entities themselves.

In ch. 49, Ockham proceeds to argue that (for Aristotle, at least) relations are not really

distinct from their relata. ‘Relation’ is, he says, a term of second intention, that is, relations

are terms, not things, for they are, Aristotle says, qualified by some expression in an oblique

case (genitive, dative or ablative): a father is father of someone, a cause is a cause of

6
something, something similar is similar to something, a slave is someone’s slave. Relations

are connotative names, naming one relatum and connoting the other(s). So this is not to deny

the division of the ten categories. There are indeed ten different types of terms, and types of

question one can ask. But underlying these linguistic categories there are only two types of

thing, substance and quality.

Why does Ockham maintain this dualism? He writes: “to determine when a quality should

be posited as a thing distinct from substance and when not, one can employ the following

test: predicables which, while incapable of being truly applied to one thing at the same time,

can successively hold true of an object merely as a result of a local motion [motum localem],

need not be construed as signifying distinct things.” (I 55: 180) For example, something

straight becomes curved simply by the movement of its parts, so curvature (curvitas) and

straightness (rectitudo) are not real qualities distinct from the curved and straight substances;

but this is not true of, for example, whiteness and blackness or heat and cold, so these are real

qualities.

This might seem to be an application of Ockham’s Razor, but a closer look shows matters

are more subtle. It’s well known that the famous phrase, “Entia non sunt multiplicanda

praeter necessitatem”, occurs in many other medieval authors besides Ockham. In fact, it is

not found in Ockham at all. The ontological principle which does guide Ockham is cited by

Adams (1987), 269: “It is impossible for contraries to be successively true about the same

thing unless because of the locomotion of something or because of the passage of time, or

because of the production or destruction of something.”vii The closest Ockham comes to the

Razor, she says, is: “No plurality should be assumed unless it can be proved by reason, or

experience, or by some infallible authority.”viii This hardly says that entities must not be

7
multiplied beyond necessity, if necessity means reason or experience: it defers to

revelation—the Bible and the sayings of the saints.ix

Despite these qualifications, however, Ockham’s approach is reductive, at least as far as

the denial of real universals outside the mind is concerned. This comes out strikingly in his

theory of truth, detailed in Part II of the Summa Logicae. In a notorious passage in ch. 2, he

says that a singular proposition like ‘Socrates is a man’ is not true because Socrates has

humanity, or because humanity is in Socrates, or man is in Socrates, or that man is part of the

quidditative concept of Socrates. Rather, it is true simply because ‘Socrates’ and ‘man’ are

both names of Socrates, the first a proper name, the second a common name. He generalizes

this to all atomic propositions using the technical notion of supposition. As he explains in I

63, strictly speaking supposition is the relation of the subject-term to what it stands for,

whereas appellation is the corresponding relation for predicates. But given that universals are

no more than names, predicates do not differ enough semantically from subjects to justify

two concepts, so broadly, he says, both subject and predicate have supposition. Taken

significatively (that is, in the jargon, “personally”), what terms in a proposition supposit for

depends on the tense and mood of the copula. With a present-tense copula, a term ‘ϕ’

supposits for just those things which it signifies, that is, of which it can be truly predicated in

a singular proposition, ‘This is ϕ’. Now take an indefinite or particular proposition of the

form ‘Some ϕ is ψ’. This is true just when ‘ϕ’ and ‘ψ’ supposit for the same, that is, are truly

predicable of the same thing. Its contradictory, the universal negative, ‘No ϕ is ψ’, is true if

‘ϕ’ and ‘ψ’ do not supposit for anything in common. Its contrary in turn, ‘Every ϕ is ψ’, is

true, following standard medieval practice in preserving the square of opposition, if ‘ϕ’

supposits for something and ‘ψ’ supposits for everything for which ‘ϕ’ supposits. Finally, the

contradictory of the universal affirmative, namely, the particular negative, ‘Some ϕ is not ψ’,

8
or perhaps better, ‘Not every ϕ is ψ’, is true if ‘ϕ’ does not supposit for something for which

‘ψ’ supposits—so in particular, it is true if ‘ϕ’ supposits for nothing.

Geach (1972) deplored Ockham’s introduction of this “two-name theory” (as Geach called

it) as compounding by a further “corruption of logic” Aristotle’s initial fall from grace in

introducing the “two-term theory” inherent in the theory of the syllogism. To read Geach, one

would think Ockham had jettisoned the linguistic dualism of subject and predicate to

proclaim a monism of substance and name. But that is not the doctrine. Terms name

individuals either by signifying their essential natures (substance) or connoting their

accidents (quality). Without the dualism of substance and quality, Ockham would find

himself drawn into a Leibnizian necessity where each predication was essential. Connotation

of accidents maintains the contingency of accidental predication. What he avoids in all this is

any regress of instantiation, as we saw in the passage from Summa Logicae II 2: “for all

propositions such as these are false: ‘Man is of the quiddity of Socrates’, ‘Man is of the

essence of Socrates’, ‘Humanity is in Socrates’, ‘Socrates has humanity’, ‘Socrates is a man

in virtue of humanity’,” and so on. All that is required is that there be Socrates, the

individual, and his individual qualities, whiteness, snub-nosedness and so on, what are

nowadays called “tropes”.x The world is a collocation of substance and quality.

This sounds very like Humean supervenience. To be sure, as stated by David Lewis, that

doctrine incorporates physicalism; he writes: “Humean supervenience … is the doctrine that

all there is to the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact … maybe point-

sized bits of matter … [a]nd at those points, we have local qualities.”xi But Lewis concedes

that materialism is included in the doctrine only to endorse “our best physics”. Indeed,

Ockham goes further: not only does everything supervene on local matters of fact; it is

reducible to them. At least, that is his project.

9
 At the heart of the theory is the singular predication, ‘This is ϕ’. It is also used to define

the modes of common personal supposition needed to frame the non-syllogistic modes of

inference. Take determinate supposition, for example, which some seventy years earlier,

Lambert of Lagny (1988, 111) had described vaguely as “what a common term has when it

can be taken equally well for one or for more than one, as when one says ‘A man is

running’.” Ockham makes this idea precise by the doctrine of ascent and descent, whereby he

can relate the modes of supposition of common terms to that of discrete terms like ‘this’.

“Determinate supposition occurs when it is possible to descend to singulars by way of a

disjunctive proposition. Thus, the following is a good inference: a man runs, therefore this

man runs or that man and so on for singulars.” (I 70: 210) Ockham is not the first to exploit

descent and ascent in the definition of the modes of common personal supposition. Walter

Burley did so twenty years earlier, at least if we correct the reading in Brown’s edition of

Burley’s early treatise De Suppositionibus (which otherwise is nonsense): “Determinate

supposition occurs when a common term supposits disjunctively [reading disiunctive for

Brown’s distributive] for supposita as here ‘Some man runs’. Whence by determinate

supposition and disjunctive [reading disiunctive with MS C] supposition I understand the

same.”xii Burley goes on to characterize merely confused supposition (e.g., in the predicate of

A-propositions) when one can ascend from any singular (‘Every ϕ is this ψ’) but cannot

descend conjunctively or disjunctively; confused and distributive supposition (e.g., the

subject of A-propositions) when one can descend conjunctively. Ockham follows him in this,

adding that in the case of merely confused supposition, one can descend by way of a disjunct

predicate: from ‘Every ϕ is ψ’ infer ‘Every ϕ is this ψ or that ψ and so on’. Though not

original to Ockham, the doctrine of ascent and descent suits his reductive purposes perfectly,

in taking every case back to the singular predication, ‘This is ϕ’. For example, from ‘Every ϕ

10
is ψ’ we can first infer ‘Every ϕ is this ψ or that ψ and so on’, then infer ‘This ϕ is this ψ or

that ψ … and that ϕ is this ψ or that ψ … and …’, and finally infer a conjunction of

disjunctions of the form ‘This ϕ is that ψ’, true just when subject and predicate co-supposit.

Thus the truth-conditions of non-modal present-tense propositions can be reduced to that

of singulars. What, however, of past-tense, future-tense, modal and intensional propositions?

Here Ockham is radical and original, but alone. Other authors deal with such cases by

invoking the doctrine of ampliation. Ampliation is that property of terms which extends

(“ampliates”) the supposition of terms to past, future and possible (or even impossible)

supposita. However, the way ampliation works on them is different. Moreover, there is a

significant difference between the treatment in Britain and in Paris. In Paris, past- and future-

tense propositions are given a disjunctive interpretation. For example, ‘Some ϕ was ψ’ is said

to be true if and only if something which either is or was ϕ (at some time) was ψ (at some

time—not necessarily the same time). Burley and Ockham, however, treat it as ambiguous,

either as saying that what is ϕ was ψ or as saying that what was ϕ was ψ. Even if something

that is ϕ was ψ, the proposition is accordingly false on one reading, whereas on the Parisian

account it will come out unequivocally true. For modal propositions, both groups treat them

as ambiguous, but differently from tensed propositions. ‘Some ϕ must be ψ’, for example,

has both a compounded sense, that ‘Some ϕ is ψ’ is necessarily true, and a divided sense,

saying of something which is ϕ that it must be ψ. It’s easy to miss this dissimilarity between

tensed and modal propositions, and indeed, Ockham’s remarks in Part III-4 encourage it,

where he sets out the analysis of tensed propositions side by side in a way that at first glance

looks analogous. But in fact it is not. He writes: a modal “proposition should be distinguished

because the subject-term can stand for those that are or for those that can be or for those that

can be and can not be.” (III-4 4: 763). It’s that final “can be and can not be” (contingit esse)

11
which shows up the difference. In the composite sense, ‘Some ϕ must be ψ’ is true if ‘Some

ϕ is ψ’ is necessarily true, i.e., true for all time and in all possibilities, and in those

possibilities, ‘This is ϕ and ψ’ can be true where ‘this’ refers to contingent existents which do

not actually exist. Nonetheless, the truth-condition is radically different in structure from that

of ‘Some ϕ were ψ’.

Although there is no unequivocal statement of his position, it seems clear that Ockham is

both a presentist and an actualist. What exists is what actually exists now. A presentist thinks

belief to the contrary arises only from sloppy use of tensed expressions. Neither the past nor

the future exists,xiii but are what did or will exist. Similarly, no mere possibilia exist—rather,

they might or might have existed. Thus the truth-condition of tensed and modal propositions

is repeatedly given in terms of the past, future or possible truth of present-tense propositions.

Take modal propositions in the divided sense, for example. Ockham reduces their truth to

that of “a non-modal proposition in which the very same predicate is predicated of a pronoun

indicating that for which the subject supposits” (II 10: 276), effecting a recursive reduction of

the truth-conditions of all propositions to that of singulars.

Much of Ockham’s account of consequence in Part III is framed in terms of the syllogism,

non-modal and modal. To a modern logician, the treatment is frustratingly particular and

unsystematic, treating every possible combination of premise-pair and conclusion in the three

figures separately. Once modal syllogisms are introduced, with mixed premises where the

mode of either can be ‘necessary’, ‘possible’, ‘contingent’ or ‘impossible’, or one can be non-

modal, or from another mode such as ‘known’ or ‘believed’, the sheer variety is

overwhelming. After sixty-eight chapters of Part III-1, and a further forty-one on the

demonstrative syllogism in III-2, treatise III-3 appears to promise some relief: a general

account of consequence. But what we find in fact is an addendum to the theory of two-

12
premise inference in the syllogism, namely, one-premise inference, again treated piecemeal

with little systematic generalization.

This is unfortunate, because there is an underlying systematization available. Aristotle

himself showed this for the non-modal syllogism: the dictum de omni et nullo grounds first-

figure syllogisms, and simple and per accidens conversion and reduction per impossibile

reduce validity in the second and third figures to the first. But such systematization was not

the medievals’ forte, and it has its costs, for it encourages concentration on cases that fit the

chosen Procrustean bed, overlooking others (e.g., first-order predicate logic is very powerful,

but it does not properly represent arguments containing demonstratives, common nouns, mass

terms and many others). The medievals revelled in diversity, and it is part of Ockham’s

contribution to the theory of the modal syllogism that he extends the treatment to cases

Aristotle had overlooked, resolving the so-called problem of the “two Barbaras”.xiv Aristotle

accepts modal Barbara where major premise and conclusion have the mode of necessity (and

the minor is non-modal) but not when the minor is a necessity proposition and the major is

non-modal. This suggests that he reads ‘ψ necessarily applies to all ϕ’ de re (or in the divided

sense). But so read, it does not convert per accidens, as Aristotle says it should (25a29), and

as it would if read de dicto.xv

Ockham diagnoses the ambiguity and works out the detail of what follows for each

combination of premises (III-1 31). In fact, there is a double ambiguity, for not only may the

modal premise be taken in a compounded or a divided sense, but the non-modal premise may

be true absolutely (simpliciter) or only as-of-now (ut nunc, at present but not always). Given

that all propositions true absolutely are necessarily true, then whether the modal minor is

taken in the divided or compounded senses, the syllogism is valid provided the non-modal

major premise is true absolutely. But if the major is only true at present, and not necessarily

13
or absolutely, the syllogism is invalid. Karger (1976, 185-90) infers that Ockham adopts the

Diodorean account of necessity and equates necessary truth with truth at all times, by

reference to Summa Logicae II 9: 275. But this passage merely claims that a necessarily true

proposition is only true when it exists. In fact, Ockham nowhere defines what it is for a

proposition to be true “simpliciter” or “ut nunc” as such. However, if we turn to Part III-3 ch.

1, where he defines inference ut nunc et simpliciter, we find him conclude in ch. 2: “for when

a predication of a superior of an inferior is necessary, then the inference is absolute; but when

the predication of a superior of an inferior is contingent, then the inference is only ut nunc.”

(III-3 2: 591) All becomes clear when we turn to the definitions in ch. 1: “Inference ut nunc is

when the premise can be true at some time without the conclusion but not at this time …

Absolute inference is when at no time could the premise be true without the conclusion.” (III-

3 1: 587-8) So rather than equate necessary truth with truth at all times, Ockham equates

absolute truth with necessary truth. Absolute truth is already a modal notion.

Ockham’s treatment of intensional propositions other than modals, e.g., ‘I promise you a

horse’ or ‘I know the one approaching’ is again reductionist. These propositions open the

door to sophistical reasoning: consider, for example, the crooked horse-dealer who points to

each horse in turn, asking rhetorically: ‘Did I promise you this horse?’ He claims there is no

(particular) horse he promised you, and so no particular horse he need give you. There’s

obviously a fallacy here, and in Part III-4 Ockham proceeds to discuss and illustrate

Aristotle’s thirteen types of misleading constructions. He diagnoses this example as falling

under the third type of equivocation, diversity of supposition (III-4 4): ‘horse’ doesn’t exhibit

a lexical ambiguity (the first type), where a word has different meanings; nor is there any

extended or metaphorical meaning (the second type) to ‘horse’ in this example. De Rijk

argued persuasively in the 1960s that the spur to the development of the medieval theory of

14
supposition was a desire to create a technical tool for diagnosing fallacies like this, and

Ockham applies it here in what seems a novel way. Burley argued that ‘horse’ in this

example had simple supposition, for the universal horse.xvi The promise is fulfilled by giving

the universal in the only way possible, in a particular horse. Ockham has to reject this: if

universals are just acts of mind, then what was promised was certainly not an act of mind.

Rather, what was promised was a horse. So how does ‘horse’ supposit in ‘I promise you a

horse’? It can supposit either determinately, or merely confusedly. Taken the first way, the

proposition is false—there was no particular horse he promised you; taken the second way, it

is true, for ‘horse’ is equivalent to ‘this horse or that horse and so on’, provided the

disjunction ranges over horses which may be given you, namely, present and future horses

(again, Ockham does not speak of ampliation). So ‘I promise you a horse’ is equivalent to ‘I

promise you this horse or that horse and so on’, but not to ‘I promise you this horse or I

promise you that horse and so on’, so ‘horse’ supposits merely confusedly and not

determinately. (See I 72: 219) Accordingly, the rule forbidding the move from merely

confused to determinate supposition explains the fallacy.

The puzzle of the hooded man cannot be solved in this way. If I know Coriscus and

Coriscus is the one approaching, then it seems I must know the one approaching. Ockham

agrees—that argument is valid. The puzzle arises, he says, because we confuse this argument

with a different one, for example, Coriscus is the man and Coriscus is the one approaching,

so the one approaching is the man—a valid expository syllogism. However, if we know the

major premise, it does not follow that we know the conclusion. It is a fallacy of accident, for

it does not always follow that “when some things are conjoined in predication with a third,

they are mutually conjoined in a valid conclusion.” (III-4 11: 819) To know the one

15
approaching I would have to know that Coriscus was the one approaching, that is, know both

premises and not just one of them.

To conclude: how does Ockham’s Summa Logicae fare as a classic? Can it still provide

inspiration for contemporary scholars, as a source of fresh ideas and insights? The opening

words of Adams (1987) are crucial to this evaluation; she writes: “Ockham’s philosophical

focus, whether he is doing logic, natural science, or theology, is on the branch of metaphysics

commonly called ‘ontology’.” (p. 3) The Summa Logicae is a classic of philosophy, more

narrowly of metaphysics, not of logic. Ockham uses the context of a work on logic, in the

broader sense of the philosophy of logic and language, to defend his central reductive

ontological theme. As a work of logic, it is embedded in its own cultural milieu; as a work of

reductionist metaphysics, it is timely and timeless. The Summa Logicae is a model of

analytical metaphysics whose reductive metaphysics is as arresting now as it was in 1324.

Dr Stephen Read

Department of Philosophy

University of St Andrews

Scotland, U.K.

References

Adams, M.M.: 1987, William Ockham, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Brown, S.F.: 1972, ‘Walter Burleigh’s treatise de suppositionibus and its influence on

William of Ockham’, Franciscan Studies 32, 15-64.

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Burley, W.: 2000, On the Purity of the Art of Logic, tr. P.V. Spade, New Haven and London:

Yale University Press.

Campbell, K.: 1990, Abstract Particulars, Oxford: Blackwell.

Geach, P.T.: 1972, ‘History of the corruptions of logic’, in his Logic Matters, Oxford:

Blackwell, pp. 44-61.

Hamilton, W.: 1846, ‘Of presentative and representative knowledge’, in W. Hamilton (ed.),

The Works of Thomas Reid D.D., Edinburgh: Maclachlan Stewart, 804-15.

Karger, E.: 1976, A Study in William of Ockham’s Modal Logic, Ph.D. thesis, University of

California, Berkeley.

Lambert of Lagny (Lambert of Auxerre): 1988, ‘Properties of terms’, in N. Kretzmann, E.

Stump (edd.), The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, vol. I,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 102-62.

Lewis, D.K.: 1986, ‘Introduction’, in his Philosophical Papers vol. II, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, pp. ix-xvii.

Spade, P.V.: 1999, ‘Introduction’, in P.V. Spade (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to

Ockham, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-16.

Ockham, William of (G. de Ockham): 1978, Expositio in Librum Praedicamentorum

Aristotelis, in Opera Philosophica, vol. II, ed. G. Gál, St Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute

Publications.

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Ockham, William of (G. de Ockham): 1979, Scriptum in Librum Primum Sententiarum

Ordinatio, distinctiones XIX-XLVIII (Opera Theologica, vol. IV), edd. G. Etzkorn, F.

Kelley, St Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications.

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Read, S.: 1977, ‘The objective being of Ockham’s ficta’, The Philosophical Quarterly 27,

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Thom, P.: 2003, Medieval Modal Systems, Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate.

i
See Ockham (1974) for the full critical edition of the Latin text. Parts I and II, and a small

part of Part III (which itself comprises more than half the work), have been translated into

English. For details, see Spade (1999), 8.

ii
Ockham (1974), I 1: 7. All references to the Summa Logicae will be to Ockham (1974),

citing Part, chapter and page number.

iii
On the origin of the notions of objective and subjective existence, and the almost total

switch in their usage during the eighteenth century, see Hamilton (1846), §I, especially the

footnote to Proposition 6, pp. 806-8.

iv
See, e.g., Adams (1987), 105 and Read (1977), 28.

v
Ockham (1974), I 10: 36.

vi
On the question whether Ockham’s ontological doctrines were indeed heretical, see e.g.,

Adams (1987), 979 ff.

vii
Cited from Ockham (1979), 369. See also Adams (1987), 155, 176, 251 and 279.

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 viii
Adams (1987), 1008, citing his Treatise on Quantity, which is probably a surviving

fragment of the Reportatio of Book I of his Sentences corresponding to the revised Ordinatio

at Ockham (1979), 290.

ix
Ockham did not believe the Pope or the Church were included among the infallible, as

dramatically demonstrated by the fact that, on examining the question of apostolic poverty,

Ockham accused Pope John XXII himself of heresy.

x
See, e.g., Campbell (1990).

xi
Lewis (1986), ix-x.

xii
Brown (1972), 38.

xiii
See, e.g., Ockham (1978) ch. 10, p. 211: “Moreover, no part of time exists because neither

the past nor the future do; so time is not something really existing totally distinct from other

things.”

xiv
See, e.g., Thom (2003), 27-30.

xv
Of course, the compounded/divided distinction is broader than, but includes the de dicto/de

re distinction. For example, any proposition of the form ‘You believe p and not-p’ has

compounded and divided senses, but is not ambiguous de dicto/de re.

xvi
Burley (2000), 96.

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