Universa Philosophia

The first opinion teaches that the adequate object of logic is words. It is falsely imposed on the Nominalists.— THE first opinion teaches that the vocal mode of knowing is the adequate object of logic: which opinion gives to logic words alone. Many ascribe this opinion to the Nominalists: who for that reason incurred the odium of this name, because they referred all things to names and words. Yet they took this word, name, in a far different sense: namely for the mental concept or for cognition: because since words are substituted for the formal concept, they took the word by metonymy for the concept: whom I often defend in disp. 5. of the metaphysics against certain men who, I know not whether through an occasion for calumny or through contempt for reading their books, content with the first sound of syllables, impose many things on the Nominalists: by which they have brought most learned men, who brought light to the schools, into popular odium. Ockham in his logic proves at length that the object of logic is the concepts of the mind:¹ likewise in the first book dist. 2. quaest. 8. he calls the concept of the mind a word, just as also Blessed Thomas in opusc. 9. q. 1. and at the beginning of book 1. of the Perihermenias reduces all things to words substituted for concepts.² indeed the five predicables are called by Porphyry five words. In this sense and not in another did the Nominalists say that the vocal mode of knowing is the object of logic: that is, the formal mode of knowing which the vocal word signifies. With stronger right that opinion could have been ascribed to Aureolus in the prologue fol. 66. asserting that the word as expressive of concepts is the object of logic:³ yet he has the same explanation, namely the word taken formally for the concept which it expresses.

Yet that opinion could never be introduced into the schools, nor is it probable for any reason.¹ For the logician considers many things foreign to words. For when it is said that the first passion is demonstrated through its essence, that belongs to the object, not to the word. For the word first passion is not shown through this essence: although we might grant that the words themselves are that by which the demonstration is accomplished. Likewise when we say that demonstration generates science, that belongs to the objective demonstration and to the formal one: for the objective one in the character of object; but the formal one generates science as it were efficiently. Thirdly, because the logician deals with the formal sign, which is an act of the intellect: but words are an instrumental sign. Finally because the mode of knowing and its direction are formally acts of the intellect: and one who knows nothing of words or writings can by the light of reason alone know the syllogistic force and its attributes, and use logical precepts: which by no means depend on the Greek or Latin idiom. But all those acts are logical: therefore the logician considers many things besides words. Finally this conclusion will be clearer from §. 28., where I will reject words even from the partial object of logic.

You will first argue that logic is called from logos, that is speech: therefore logic deals with words.¹ First I answer that it is at most proved that words are the partial object of logic, from which it took its name; but it does not prove that they are its total object: for it deals with mental reasoning: whence it was called ratiocinative or rational science.² Second I answer that speech is used only for mental reasoning, or for vocal speech by metonymy, whereby the sign is taken for the thing signified:³ as when we say that lions were conquered by eagles, that is, men whose family crests are lions, conquered by those bearing eagles.

Second you will argue: because the mode of knowing is manifestative of the unknown; but words manifest unknown things; therefore words are the object of dialectic.¹ I answer first that even the formal mode of knowing is manifestative of the unknown, as will be established in disputation 10, section 1, and therefore the logician contemplates other things besides words.² Second I answer that there are two manifestations of the unknown: one when one act of intellect or two signify more clearly certain things which were signified more obscurely through another act: as the act concerning rational animal represents man more clearly than this act man. And this account is the perfect mode of knowing, which logic contemplates. The second manifestation is that by which we signify outwardly objects as they are conceived by us; or we signify directly the formal conceptions themselves: but this manifestation belongs to grammar, not to logic: for it is the grammarian's task to supply significant words for all things, and to arrange them so that they signify aptly.

The third argument: because the logician deals with subject and predicate. Porphyry likewise discoursed on the five voices.¹ I answer that for the same reason subject and predicate also belong to mental terms, not to spoken words alone: I would say the same of Porphyry's five voices.² Then, words are not properly subject or predicate, but only instrumentally: and the consideration of these instruments belongs to grammar and rhetoric, not to dialectic.