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ABSTRACT
Walter Burley (born c. 1275; died. c. 1344) claims throughout his career that the mind can make a statement (propositio) out of things. Since things include entities that exist outside of the mind, Burley appears to be claiming that the mind can form a statement out of things that exist outside of it. Most scholars of Burley offer a deflationary reading of this claim, arguing that it confuses two distinct but closely related philosophical issues: the nature of propositional content, on the one hand, and the role of facts in a compelling account of truth, on the other. But I argue that Burley means exactly what he says: that the mind can, quite literally, form statements out of things that exist outside of it. In Burley’s account, statements of this sort function as the propositional contents of our thoughts and written or uttered sentences. This account of propositional content is motivated by three more fundamental theses to which Burley is committed: referentialism, compositionality, and a claim about truth-conditionality I call intellectualism.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Susan Brower-Toland, Francesca Bruno, and Scott MacDonald, as well as the two referees for this journal, for their very helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.
Notes
1 ‘Quaecumque ergo intellectus potest componere adinvicem, aut dividere abinvicem, possunt esse partes orationis, et per consequens esse subiecta vel praedicata. Sed intellectus potest adinvicem componere res asserendo illas esse easdem, et potest dividere res abinvicem asserendo illas non esse easdem.’
2 Strictly speaking, ‘thing’ (‘res’) here picks out not a metaphysical kind but rather a cognitive and, by extension, semantic role. It is distinguished from the role that meaningful utterances in natural language (voces) and mental representations (conceptus) play in communication and thought. ‘Thing’, so understood, typically refers to objects which exist independently and outside of the mind (Socrates, for example) but can also include utterances and concepts insofar as they are objects of cognition or the significates of expressions, such as ‘concept of Socrates’ or ‘the expression, “Socrates”’. For a lengthier discussion of Burley’s notion of a thing, see Karger, ‘Mental Sentences According to Burley’, 196–9.
3 In other passages, Burley is even more explicit on this point, arguing that the mind can combine things outside the soul (res extra animam) to form a proposition. See, for example, Quaes.Perih, para. 3.55, 248; Exp.Praed, c4rb.
4 The only exception to this of which I am aware is Elizabeth Karger, who suggests a reading of the claim similar to the one I defend in this paper. See Karger, ‘Mental Sentences According to Burley’, 192–230.
5 Beyond this general understanding of Burley’s project, however, significant disagreements remain. For example, scholars disagree about whether Burley’s account evolves over the course of his career or remains relatively consistent. For a defence of the former, see especially Conti, ‘Walter Burley’. See also Biard, ‘Le Statut Des Enonces Dans Les Commentaires Du Peri Hermeneias de Gautier Burley’, 103–18; Muller, ‘Utrum propositio mentalis componitur ex rebus vel ex conceptibus’, 659–69; Rode, ‘Satze und Dinge’, 68–78. For a defence of the latter, see Cesalli, ‘Le réalisme propositionnel de Walter Burley’, 155–221; de Libera, La référence vide, 130–7. Likewise, scholars disagree about Burley’s primary project in the relevant texts: whether it is primarily a project concerned with propositional content, composed of concepts, or with facts, composed of things. For a defence of the former reading, see Cesalli, ‘Meaning and Truth’, 119–31. For a defence of the latter, see Biard, ‘Le Statut Des Enonces Dans Les Commentaires Du Peri Hermeneias de Gautier Burley’, 103–18; Conti, ‘Walter Burley’; de Libera, La référence vide, 130–7; Meier-Oeser, ‘Walter Burley’s Propositio in Re and the Systematization of the Ordo Significationis’, 483–506; Perler, Der Propositionale Wahrheitsbegriff Im 14. Jahrhundert, 93–6; Pinborg, ‘Walter Burleigh on the Meaning of Propositions’, 394–404; Rode, ‘Satze und Dinge’, 67. Gabriel Nuchelmans seems to endorse both positions, arguing that, with respect to true statements, Burley takes their content to be a fact, whereas, in regard to false statements, Burley takes their content to be non-factual and to exist in the mind as mere objective content. See Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition, 219–25.
6 On this interpretation, Burley’s account of the proposition is extremely similar to other views developed in the late thirteenth and fourteenth century, where a proposition is constituted by mental representations. Laurent Cesalli, for example, argues that Burley’s account contains a ‘remarkable series of parallels’ to the account defended by John Duns Scotus. See Cesalli, ‘Le signifié propositionnel selon Jean Duns Scot et Gauthier Burley’, 465–82.
7 Burley discusses the metaphysics of the proposition in five works. His earliest work on the topic, a questions commentary on the De Interpretatione (Quaes.Perih), was composed in 1301. There is some question about the precise date of his second work, a literal commentary on the De Interpretatione (Comm.Perih). The received view has been that it was composed between 1308 and 1310. But recent scholarship (with which I agree) has suggested that it was composed shortly after the questions commentary, likely in 1302 or 1303. For that recent scholarship, see Vittorini, ‘Life and Works’, 31–2. The third work – a questions commentary on the Posterior Analytics (Quaes.Post) – was written sometime between 1301 and 1307; I believe the date of composition must be near the end of that range, since the work develops a theory of mental language that is absent in both the Quaes.Perih and the Comm.Perih. The last two works – a literal commentary on the Categories (Exp.Praed) and a literal commentary on the De Interpretatione (Exp.Perih) – are part of a larger commentary project on the old logic, that is, on Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s Categories and De Intrepretatione, and a work by the pseudo-Gilbert of Poitiers on the last six Aristotelian categories. That project, a work titled Expositio super artem veterem, was composed in 1337.
8 In the early part of his career, Burley maintains that a proposition is really identical to a complex mental act, with the consequence that complex mental acts, while existing wholly within the mind as accidents of it, are often constituted by things that exist completely outside of the mind, such as Socrates and humanity. See Quaes.Perih, para. 3.622–6235, 251–2. Near the end of his career, Burley articulates the relationship of proposition to mental act in a slightly but significantly different way. According to that account, propositions are treated as similar to hylomorphic compounds, having both a ‘form’ (the complex mental act) and ‘matter’ (the things that that mental act uses). Consequently, mental acts are not identical to propositions but rather constitute only one part of them. Burley argues that intentio, a certain primitive awareness characteristic of all mental acts, binds a complex mental act to the things that it forms into a proposition. See Exp.Praed, c4rb–va.
9 I use ‘semantic content’ as a translation of Burley’s expression ‘significatum’. I assume a notion of semantic content according to which the semantic content of an expression is the denotation a hearer assigns to that expression, relative to any contextual factors salient to fixing that denotation (though, as it happens, the semantic content of most expressions will be context-invariant, on Burley’s account). (On this notion of semantic content, see Stanley, ‘Context and Logical Form’, 393–5.) There is some scholarly debate about whether the notion of a significatum has any contemporary correlate. That debate usually concerns whether there is any relationship between the medieval notion of signification and the contemporary notion of meaning. But neither ‘meaning’ nor ‘signification’ seem to me to enjoy the kind of technical precision in their respective philosophical communities to allow that debate to be very fruitful. At best, one needs to go by cases. For Burley, at least, I do think we can treat the notion of a significatum of an expression and the semantic content of that expression as equivalent, since semantic contents and (for Burley) significata play similar roles and bear similar relations to expressions in natural and mental language.
10 Part of this failure can be attributed to Burley’s inconsistent use of his own philosophical vocabulary. For example, Burley uses ‘propositio in re’ in early as well as late works in similar philosophical contexts, with the result that most scholars have naturally assumed that Burley uses the phrase to denote the same thing throughout his career. But I argue that that phrase is used to denote radically different sorts of things at different points in Burley’s career: a truthmaker in the first half of his career but a proposition in the second. In fact, what Burley calls a ‘propositio in re’ in his late works is called a ‘propositio (or enunciatio) in mente’ in earlier works, a phrase that itself is co-opted in the late logical commentaries to refer to statements in mental language. Similar shifts can be seen with much of the rest of Burley’s semantic and cognitive vocabulary. (For a scholar who has noticed some of these shifts, see Karger, ‘Mental Sentences According to Burley’, 193, n. 8.) To properly understand Burley’s programme, then, I suggest that it is best to ignore Burley’s vocabulary and focus instead on his descriptions (including descriptions of the semantic and/or cognitive roles) of various elements in his theory of mind and language. Those descriptions, I argue, articulate a motivated and coherent account of the proposition as I have defined it here, one that runs throughout Burley’s career.
11 While I restrict referentialism to categorematic expressions, it is, for Burley, generalizable to all signifying expressions, which include statements as well. On this interpretation, then, statements in natural and mental language refer to propositions, because they signify them.
12 For an account of Burley’s metaphysics of universals and its evolution, see Bulthuis, ‘Properties in Walter Burley’s Later Metaphysics’.
13 ‘Ipsa quidem secundum se dicta verba nomina sunt et significant aliquid (constituit enim qui dicit intellectum et qui audit quiescit) sed si est vel non est nondum significat.’
14 Even though most medieval philosophers adopted Aristotle’s analysis as their central account of signification, many also recognized that ‘signification’ is an ambiguous term, and that its other meanings are important in semantic theory as well. Burley, for example, writes in his later works that, while categorematic expressions in natural language primarily signify things, they secondarily signify the concepts in virtue of which they have the primary signification that they do. See Exp.Perih, k3va.
15 On this dispute, see Pini, ‘Signification of Names in Duns Scotus’, 20–51.
16 See Quaes.Perih, para. 1.1, 202; Comm.Perih, para. 1.1, p. 52; Exp.Perih, k3rb–va.
17 Scholars disagree about whether Burley is committed to a theory of direct reference. Alessandro Conti, for example, argues that Burley holds this view. See Conti, ‘Walter Burley’. But Laurent Cesalli argues that, on Burley’s account, expressions in natural language directly signify concepts, and only signify things in a transitive fashion, on account of the representational content of those concepts. See Cesalli, ‘Meaning and Truth’, 98–9.
18 ‘Ad quod dicunt aliqui quod passio non est species recepta in intellectu nec etiam actus intelligendi ipsius intellectus sed est terminus actus, sed est aliquid fabricatum ab intellectu veluti quoddam idolum in quo intellectus speculatur rem extra.’ See also Comm.Perih, para. 1.12, 53: ‘Some say that the affection which Aristotle speaks about in this passage is neither a thing outside [the soul] nor a species in the soul, but a certain image fabricated by the intellect, which image indeed is the terminus of an act of the intellect itself.’
19 It is curious that Burley never seriously tackles the most obvious challenge to direct realism, namely non-veridical perceptual experience. As far as I am aware, the only place Burley considers this objection is in his late commentary on the Categories, and in that work he suggests that the objects of experiences of that sort (his favoured example is a golden mountain) exist merely objectively in the mind. But this response seems to seriously undercut his direct realism as a general theory of cognition. See Exp.Praed, f. g7ra–b.
20 ‘Intellectus prius intelligit rem extra quam intelligit aliquid existens in eo, quia intellectus non intelligit aliquid existens in eo nisi per reflexionem.’
21 ‘Sed in actu intelligendi est considerare tria, scilicet rem intellectam et ipsum intellectum intelligentem et speciem mediante qua res intelligitur, sic quod illa species non est illud quod primo intelligitur sed res primo intelligitur mediante specie.’ See also Comm.Perih, para. 1.16, 56; Exp.Perih, k3va.
22 Burley sharply distinguishes concepts from mental acts, a significant departure from the standard medieval treatments of concepts as mental acts. For Burley, a mental act is the mind’s use of a concept, rather than the concept itself. On Burley’s distinction between concepts and mental acts, see especially Quaes.DA, para. 1.27–1.28, 83; 2.26, 95.
23 Radulphus Brito defends a similar account of mental content and the role of concepts in cognition. See Radulphus Brito, Quaestiones Super Universalia Porphyrii, 116.
24 ‘Et ex hoc patet quod per propositionem in voce et etiam in conceptu significatur aliqua res complexa quae non est proprie aliqua res precise significata per subiectum, nec res significata per praedicatum, sed aggregatum ex his, et illa res quae est ultimum et adequatum significatum propositionis in voce et in conceptu est quaedam ens copulatum, et propter hoc potest dici propositio in re, sicut declaratum est in principio huius libri.’
25 This is an application at the level of the proposition of what Paul Spade calls the ‘Additive Principle’: the principle that ‘a syntactically complex expression signifies the sum total of what its categorematic terms signify’ (Spade, ‘Walter Burley on the Simple Supposition of Singular Terms’, 9). Of course, that principle does not tell us how complex expressions signify: in the case of a statement, for example, that it signifies what its terms signify as a subject and a predicate relative to one another.
26 Burley’s commitment to sentential compositionality, then, need not be seen as primitive but can rather be regarded as a consequence of his commitment to intellectualism. Sub-sentential compositionality, however, would still require independent motivation.
27 For example, neo-Russellians such as Scott Soames, Jeffrey King, and Nathan Salmon.
28 A bit more has to be said here, of course, about how exactly grammatical structure should be conceived, such that it reflects logical structure. Burley’s account on this point depends centrally on the role of the copula. Burley argues that the copula, as a syncategorematic expression, does not itself refer to anything but rather ‘conveys’ (importat) to the mind that the things signified by its subject and predicate terms ought to be conceived of as, respectively, a subject and a predicate relative to one another. See De puritate, 54–5, 218–19, 220; Exp.Perih, k6rb–vb. But such a conception is, on Burley’s account, just the mind’s predicating one of the other. The role of the copula, then, is to convey to the mind that a certain truth-conditional structure be imposed on things.
29 For an account of this sort, see Conti, ‘Walter Burley’. Conti argues that Burley’s account evolves over the course of his career, due to a slow recognition on Burley’s part that one needs to distinguish between the content of a statement (which Conti argues is, in the analysis provided in the 1337 commentaries, a propositio whose terms exist merely objectively), and facts, correspondence to which makes that content, and so the statements that express that content, true.
30 ‘Oratio prolata dicitur vera ex hoc, quod est significativum veri, id est, ex hoc, quod est aptum natum significare verum.’
31 ‘[…] dicendum quod veritas et falsitas non sunt in oratio quae est enunciatio nisi sicut in signo, et ideo sequitur haec enunciatio significat falsum, igitur est falsa.’
32 He provides a similar account of truth in his late commentary on the De Interpretatione. See Exp.Perih, k4ra–b.
33 ‘Alio modo est veritas adaequatio intellectus ad rem, et hoc potest esse dupliciter: aut quia intellectus habet completam notitiam de re aut quia intellectus asserit ea esse eadem quae sunt eadem vel asserit es esse diversa quae sunt diversa.’ See also Exp.Perih, k4rb.
34 In his 1324 commentary on the Physics, Burley argues that we can distinguish two sorts of simple cognitive acts: those that are confused and those that are distinct. Confused cognitive acts, which are ‘imperfect’ and are ‘had through an effect, or sign, as through the senses,’ are acts in which we know some whole but not through its principles. For example, I may be able to think about humans such that I can (for the most part) successfully distinguish between humans and non-humans. But such a thought does not constitute understanding of what it is to be human if it is a thought in which humanity is understood merely as something underlying a bundle of perceived accidents, rather than a composite of certain substantial principles (rationality, animality, etc.). A cognitive act that is distinct, in contrast – an act which is ‘prefect’ and is ‘had through a cause’ – is one in which the principles of the thing thought are ‘prior to and more known than’ the thing itself, such that one understands something through its real definition. See In Physicam, 6vb–7ra.
35 See Comm.Perih, para. 1.24, 60. The claim that truth involves composition or division is, of course, found in Aristotle. See Aristotle, Categoriae et Liber de Interpretatione, 16a12–13.
36 ‘Et credo quod illud indubitanter sit verum quod in aliqua propositione praedicatur res de re, et in aliqua propositione conceptus de conceptu praedicatur et in aliqua propositione vox de voce praedicatur. Unde intellectus potest componere adinvicem omnia simplicia apprehensa per intellectum asserendo illa esse eadem vel non esse eadem.’
37 ‘Si enim intellectus asserit aliqua esse eadem, tunc componit illa adinvicem, sed si asserit aliqua esse diversa, tunc dividit ea abinvicem.’ See also Quaes.Perih, para. 3.553, 249; Exp.Praed, c3vb.
38 That is, utterances and written marks may have truth conditions, and those truth conditions are certainly due in part to the syntactic structure that those utterances or marks have. But that that structure is truth-conditional will be explained ultimately in terms of the representational capacities of cognitive agents to which those utterances and marks are related. The structure per se cannot explain the truth conditions of the utterance or written marks that it informs.
39 On diminished being, see Comm.Perih, para. 1.24, 60. In the same passage, Burley notes that propositions are fictive beings, writing that a diminished being ‘which is distinguished from a real being, about which Aristotle speaks in Metaphysics VI, is something produced (aliquid fictum) by the soul.’ Note that Burley distinguishes between fictive being and objective being, at least in his earlier works. In his questions commentary on the De Interpretatione, for example, Burley argues that a proposition is a fictum but not an obiectum, since a proposition exists subjectively but merely rationally in the mind, as an accident of it. See Quaes.Perih, para. 3.622, 251.
40 Burley draws the contrast between the being of a house, on the one hand, and that of a proposition, on the other, in many places. See, for example, Quaes.Perih, para. 3.554, 250; Exp.Praed, c4rb.
41 See Quaes.Perih, para. 3.62, 250–1.
42 See Exp.Praed, c4va: ‘To the copula existing in the intellect, combining together the extremes of a true [affirmative] proposition, there corresponds something in reality, namely the identity of the extremes, or the identity of those for which the extremes supposit. To a divisive or negative copula in a true negative proposition, there corresponds something, namely the diversity of the extremes, or of those for which the extremes supposit.’ I am inclined to read each ‘or’ epexegetically, since that seems to me to be the only way to make the passage cohere with Burley’s later metaphysical views, given his theory of the proposition.
43 See Bulthuis, ‘Properties in Walter Burley’s Later Metaphysics’, 148–51. See also Ockham, Ordinatio, distinctiones II-III, d. 2, qq. 4–6.
44 ‘Suppositio communiter accepta est proprietas termini ad alium in propositione comparati.’ See also De supp., para. 2.01, 34.
45 Susan Brower-Toland’s distinction between a content object and a referential object is useful here. On that distinction, Burley’s view entails that a propositional attitude (i.e. a complex mental act) has no content object, since it is not a relation to a proposition that exists independently of it. However, it does have referential objects, namely the things towards which it is directed, which it composes or divides to form a proposition. Brower-Toland argues that the late Ockham holds a similar sort of account about our propositional attitudes (though only for non-demonstrative contexts), according to which judgement, for example, is simply the mind’s assertively forming a mental proposition. Interestingly, then, Burley’s and the late Ockham’s respective accounts of our propositional attitudes turn out to be similar to one another, at least in some respects. See Brower-Toland, ‘Ockham on Judgment’, 97–9.
46 I do not think this was an oversight on Burley’s part, since the distinction between force and content was widely recognized at this point in philosophical history (see Pini, ‘Scotus on Assertion and the Copula’, 324–31). Rather, I take his position to be motivated by the view that cognition involves not two stages (content production, and then force, or attitude) but rather one stage, in which force is embedded within the structure of the proposition itself, on account of the mood of the relevant mental act. That view of cognition can be motivated by Burley’s concern that the real sciences (metaphysics, physics, etc.) must be world-, rather than mind-, directed. See Exp.Praed, c4ra. If thought did involve two stages, then it might seem that one’s judgements could be not of things in the world but rather must be of something mental, insofar as judgement would always be directed at a proposition, that is, a certain product of the mind.