Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Prima Pars Artis Logicae

WE PRESUPPOSE what we said in book 2, chapter 6: in the usage of learned authors and in the common usage of logicians, enunciation and proposition are taken to mean the same thing, although they can connote different respects, as we explained there. To extricate ourselves from those distinctions, we have used the name “enunciation”; now we inquire into the common account of enunciation in which categorical propositions, which predicate a predicate of a subject, and hypothetical propositions, which join several categorical propositions and thus enounce and compose, agree.

Speaking, then, of enunciation in general, some think that it is not distinct from the act of judgment. They therefore say that a proposition is the intellect’s judgment itself, since judgment is properly capable of truth and falsity. They think that signifying truth or falsity belongs only to a spoken or written proposition. They add that when we form doubtful propositions, about which we make no judgment, such propositions consist only in unfinished concepts signifying the words themselves.

Others, distinguishing judgment, which is assent, from the enunciation or proposition upon which judgment falls and toward which it is directed, think that the essence of proposition as such consists in enunciating absolutely the connections or repugnances of things, from which it follows as a property that it signifies the true or the false.

Others think that the account of proposition as such is not to enounce just anything, absolutely, but to enounce one thing of another. Since this is not found in a hypothetical proposition, but only in a categorical one, they say that the essence of proposition in general consists precisely in enouncing—that is, signifying that something is or is not. It follows that the proposition is true or false, for by the force of its signification alone the proposition enounces. But it is true or false not by its signification, but because the thing signified or enounced is or is not as stated. They directly and simply exclude the hypothetical proposition from this account of enunciation.

Finally, others place the essence of a proposition in its being an affirmative or negative discourse.

I SAY, FIRST: Enunciation does not consist in judgment or assent. A judging proposition must be distinguished from an enunciating one, and judgment can in itself be subsequent to and follow upon enunciation.

This follows from St. Thomas, ST II-II, q. 173, a. 2, and De veritate, q. 12, a. 7,¹ where he says that sometimes a light is given to someone for judging, and sometimes for receiving and ordering, or composing, preexisting species. But this composition or ordering of preexisting species is the composition and ordering of an enunciation, because it is the composition of some signified complex truth, which is found only in an enunciation. Therefore enunciation is distinct from judgment.

And THE REASON IS CLEAR, because judgment is the intellect’s assent concerning something capable of such assent and judgment. Only a complex truth signified by an enunciation is capable of such assent. Therefore the act of judging is distinct from the formation of an enunciation.

The major premise is clear, because judgment is that by which the intellect is determined in assenting that something is or is not so. But it cannot pronounce that something is or is not so except concerning something complex, connected by a verb, as experience shows; this is an enunciation. Therefore the enunciation is formed and apprehended first, and then judged. Finally, it is clear that we sometimes apprehend an enunciation about doubtful things without any judgment, as when we say, “The stars are even in number,” “A treasure is in this place,” about which we do not know how to judge and determine assertorically. Therefore enunciation is one thing, judgment or assertion another.

Note that an enunciation, by reason of the verb of which it consists, both has the power to connect the extremes and has the power to express assertive judgment. Thus judgment and enunciation can sometimes be formed, as it were, by a single act, as when I say, “Man is an animal,” expressing in is both connection and assertion. At other times they are separated, because is is taken precisely with the force of connecting, not asserting.

I SAY, SECOND: The account of enunciation in general consists in this: it is a complete discourse expressing a complex object about which judgment can be made; from this it follows that it signifies the true or the false.

Thus, insofar as it is a complete discourse, enunciation is distinguished from incomplete discourse, which produces a suspended sense. By “expressing a complex object,” and so forth, it is distinguished from other complete discourses that cannot express an object of judgment, such as vocatives, interrogatives, and the like. This is St. Thomas’s opinion in On Interpretation I, lecture 7,² where he says that this is the definition of enunciation: “An enunciation is a discourse in which there is truth or falsity.” Truth or falsity is said to be in an enunciation as in a sign, but in the mind as in a subject; here “in the mind” means the same as in the mind’s judgment. For truth is not immediately in the faculty itself, but in an act of the faculty, and in no act other than judgment. Hence St. Thomas immediately distinguishes enunciation from other discourses, since they do not express a rational judgment, in which truth or falsity consists. Therefore enunciation, as common to categorical and hypothetical propositions, is best explained by saying that it signifies a complex object on which judgment can fall, in which truth and falsity are found. By “complex object” we mean both a complex object formed by the verbal copula joining predicate and subject, and a hypothetical copula joining categorical propositions; judgment is made about either complex, and can have truth or falsity. A discourse on which no judgment can fall, whether assent or dissent, is not an enunciation. On the same matter, see St. Thomas, Opusculum 48, Treatise on Enunciation, chapters 4 and 5.³

The reason is that this account explains the distinction between enunciation and other discourses, the common account of hypothetical and categorical propositions, and also the way they signify truth or falsity. That is the point.

This seems to be what the authors intended to express when they said that the essence of enunciation is a discourse enouncing connections or repugnances among things, or that it is an affirmative or negative discourse. In all these formulations they meant to suggest that enunciation must signify the complex object on which judgment can fall. It can likewise express that judgment when the verb is taken not only in the force of connecting but also in the force of assertion. Thus the signification of connection has as its object what assertion or judgment can fall upon.

I SAY, THIRD: Truth or falsity, as to the actual exercise of conformity or nonconformity, are accidents of a proposition and of a judgment.

And, as St. Thomas says in the cited Opusculum 48,⁴ they are relations of reason. Thus, signifying truly or falsely is not the essence of a proposition; the essence is only to signify an object on which a true or false judgment can fall. The conclusion’s first part is clear from what Aristotle says in the chapter on Substance,⁵ that “the same discourse, remaining unchanged, can change from true to false,” as when I say, “Peter is sitting”: while he is sitting, it is true; when he is not sitting, it is false. Yet the proposition is always the same, because it says and signifies the same thing. Therefore a change in truth or falsity does not change the substance of the enunciation, and truth and falsity are only accidents. Moreover, an enunciation is completed by complex signification, while truth is completed by conformity and adequation to being or nonbeing. This conformity and adequation differs from the adequation of signification and representation, which is found even in sense and simple apprehension, where formal truth is not found. The conformity and adequation of truth consists instead in the adequation and conformity of an affirmation, by which a thing’s being or nonbeing is affirmed or denied, not merely represented. Since an enunciation is completed by signifying a complex object on which assertion and the affirmation of judgment can fall, truth and falsity are consequently accidents of that signification, not the substance of enunciation.

I SAY, FINALLY: The truth of a proposition, formally, in the aspect of adequation or conformity to being or nonbeing, consists in an indivisible and admits of no more or less. Fundamentally, however, in the aspect of certainty and firmness—in which this conformity and adequation has immutability or mutability—it does admit of more and less: one truth is greater than another, and one proposition truer than another, that is, more certain and firm in not changing its truth.

The reason is that between being and nonbeing there is no middle or range, since they are contradictorily opposed. Therefore a proposition’s conformity to being and correspondence with it, insofar as it departs from nonbeing and does not conform to it, or conversely, has no range and admits neither more nor less. The same is true of any relation that consists in an indivisible, such as equality: however one departs from it, one falls away from equality or conformity. But certainty and firmness, which ground truth not as to conformity and correspondence, but as to mutability or immutability in possessing truth, admit of more and less, according as the connection is more or less necessary. In this sense God is supreme truth, because supremely firm, and created truths are firmer the more necessary they are.**

And if you say: even this indivisible adequation in created truths is caused and participated in from God; therefore such truth is greater in God than in creatures, even as to what is indivisible, and so one truth is formally greater than another in him.

It is answered that this conformity of truth in creatures is caused. When it is inferred, “Therefore it is greater in God than in creatures, even in the formality of truth,” the claim is distinguished: it is denied that it is greater on the side of the range of the object about which truth is concerned; let it pass that it is greater on the side of certainty and firmness, and on the side of the being, dependence, and participation of one thing from another. Thus participated truth is always less than unparticipated truth. But because both concern being or nonbeing, there is no range, more, or less in this respect; this pertains to the object and its correspondence in truth. That truth, in reaching being and departing from nonbeing, is more perfect, firm, immutable, and so forth, does admit of more and less. But there is never more or less between being and nonbeing, about which truth is concerned, whether in created or divine truth. Equality is likewise participated from the equality that is in God; created equality is less in its perfection and being, but not in its failure to depart from the point of equality and conformity to its term. If it departed from it in any way, there would be inequality.

OBJECTIONS ARE RESOLVED.

First it is objected to prove that there is no enunciating proposition distinct from a judging proposition. If an enunciation existed before judgment, it would be true or false in signifying, since its essence consists in signifying truth or falsity. Consequently, before judgment it could actually be true or false if the object is or is not as it is signified. But it is unacceptable for truth or falsity to exist before judgment, as St. Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 2, and De veritate, q. 1, a. 3,⁶ and at the end of Metaphysics VI.⁷ The reason is clear: by merely apprehending an enunciation no one is called mistaken or knowing. Otherwise, someone who apprehended something false without assenting to it would have a false intellect, which is absurd; for God apprehends many false things and is not deceived.

THE REPLY is that truth or falsity is found both in judgment and in enunciation: in judgment, as asserted and judged; in enunciation, as signified and apprehended. Thus formal truth is in judgment as in a subject, but in enunciation as in a sign, as St. Thomas says in On Interpretation I, lecture 7,⁸ and in Sentences I, distinction 19, question 5, article 1, reply to objection 7: “Truth,” he says, “is properly found in the second operation and in its sign, which is enunciation.”⁹ From truth merely apprehended or represented, the intellect is not called mistaken, knowing, deceived, or false; it is so called only from truth judged, namely, when it assents or consents to deception or truth. Nor does St. Thomas deny that truth is found in enunciation by way of representation; he denies that it is found there by way of assent.

Second, you argue: Signifying truth or falsity belongs to things other than enunciation; therefore it is not its definition.

The antecedent is proved. First, even judgment itself, which for us is an act distinct from enunciation, is capable of expressing and representing truth or falsity, as when we assent to a proposition by saying, “So it is.” Second, the words “true” and “false” express truth and falsity, yet they are not an enunciation.

This is confirmed because signifying truth or falsity is to signify indeterminately and under a distinction. It is determined when something signifies a particular truth or a particular falsity. Therefore this does not explain the definition of a proposition, which ought to indicate determinate signification. Moreover, some propositions are determinately true, such as those in natural subject matter.

Nor can one say that a proposition in general signifies truth or falsity, while in particular it signifies determinate truth or determinate falsity. For against this is that the essence of proposition in general would then be defined only by dividing its inferior kinds, just as if we said that animal is a living thing that is either a human being or a horse. Such a definition would be unsuitable, because it would be given through the opposing members that divide the common notion, confusing division with definition.

THE REPLY denies the antecedent. To the first proof we say that signifying truth or falsity is found differently in judgment and in enunciation. In judgment truth is expressed assertorically; in enunciation it is expressed only complexively, although the intellect sometimes exercises both together, signifying the connection of the extremes and at the same time asserting being or nonbeing, as when I say, “Man is an animal.” The word “is” signifies both the connection of the extremes and the intellect’s assertive assent. At other times the signification of assertion is separated from the signification of the connection of the extremes, as when judgment is suspended after an enunciation has been uttered. What we say about the connection of the extremes in a categorical proposition applies to the connection of categorical propositions in a hypothetical one. Signifying truth or falsity in this way—not assertorically, but as it were copulatively, by way of the copula and the union of extremes on which judgment can fall—belongs not to judgment itself but only to enunciation.

To the second proof we say that the words “true” and “false” signify truth or falsity nominally, as the same thing, not as a complex enunciable object on which judgment can fall.

To the confirmation we answer that an enunciation always has determinate signification on the side of the complex object it signifies. But the truth that follows from such signification, or from a judgment made about it, can vary while the enunciating discourse itself remains unchanged, as we said from Aristotle in the chapter on Substance. This truth or falsity does not belong to the essence of enunciation.

And as to what is added about propositions of determinate truth or falsity, we answer that they take their determinate essence not from determinate truth, but from the determinate object signified, whose connection is of such a nature that truth follows from it immutably. Therefore the stated definition, “to signify truth or falsity,” is not to be understood precisely, as if the disjunction between true and false had to be found in every proposition. It is to be understood accommodatively: by the force of the signified object, which is a certain complex, truth or falsity can result, sometimes determinately and immutably and sometimes not, according to the subject matter of the proposition. This is not to define proposition by its division, but by its object, which is capable of truth or falsity, either of both or only one. Nor is it unsuitable to define something by opposites, not as if they belonged to or constituted it simultaneously, but because it can receive them successively, just as substance is said to be capable of contraries.

Third it is argued: Signifying truth or falsity, even on the side of representing a complex object, cannot be the essence of enunciation; therefore the definition is unsuitable.

The antecedent is proved: the representation of a complex object in the mind is a natural representation; therefore it can never be false, but is always true, like simple apprehension. The consequence is clear, because St. Thomas says in Summa theologiae I, q. 17, a. 3, that in simple apprehension there can be truth but not falsity because it is a natural likeness, which can never be unlike its object, but always conforms to it. Therefore, in the same way, an enunciation cannot sometimes fail to conform to what it enounces, which it signifies naturally.

THE REPLY denies the antecedent. To the proof we say that there is a wide difference between the natural likeness of a simple object and of a complex object represented by way of composition. Since the likeness of an enunciation results and is formed by composition of several things, and not by the object’s natural impression, deception can result in the composition itself, insofar as one thing is attributed to another when it does not belong to it. For this reason St. Thomas also allows deception and falsity in the definition itself, Summa theologiae I, q. 17, a. 3.¹⁰ A simple object’s likeness, however, since it proceeds from the object’s own natural impression and not from any composition, is not capable of falsity but only of naturally representative adequation. Moreover, an enunciation can represent the very assent of judgment and not merely the connection of the extremes; in this respect it is capable of falsity if the assent itself is false.

Finally it is argued, because the definition given does not apply to every hypothetical proposition; therefore it has not been adequately given for proposition in general.

The antecedent is clear in this conditional: “If a man has wings, he flies.” It does not signify truth, but a consequence. Therefore not every proposition signifies truth or falsity.

This is confirmed because copulative propositions do not state a truth distinct from a categorical proposition, but an aggregation of truths. If that aggregation is a truth distinct from its constituent parts, it is not a hypothetical truth but a categorical one, since it is one truth arising from two things conjoined or aggregated. For example, if you say, “Peter runs and John reads,” what is signified is that both propositions are true; but to say that both are true is something categorical.

THE REPLY is that hypothetical propositions, insofar as they are such, can have their own truth and falsity distinct from categorical propositions. Their verification does not occur by predicating one thing of another, but by conjoining or disjoining several categorical propositions. Nevertheless, they do not always express truth itself, except when they proceed to assert and express some assent of judgment. A simple discourse likewise has no truth unless it is assertive and enunciative. Therefore, if that conditional or similar propositions are taken precisely with the force of consequence, they do not express truth but an inference; an inference is called good or bad, not true or false. But if they affirm or promise something under a condition, they then have hypothetical truth, and the definition of proposition applies to them. The reply to the confirmation will be given in article 3. For now, we say that the truth resulting conjointly from the parts is not categorical truth, although it depends on and results from categorical truths, because formally it does not consist in predicating one thing of another, but in joining several propositions, which calls for a different judgment and a different truth. That it can be designated by a single categorical proposition, signifying that both propositions are true, does not remove the hypothetical truth consisting in the conjunction of propositions, on which the reflexive proposition falls, by which that hypothetical copula is explained categorically—as if designating in a marked act what that hypothetical truth consists in. We will return to this in article 3.