5. DIFFICULTIES
15
But [the categories] are taken from diverse intentions, according to
which terms are connotative (or even non-connotative) in different
ways. From these diverse connotations, the diverse modes of pred-
icating terms of primary substances come about; hence [the cate-
gories] are immediately and directly distinguished according to the
different modes of predicating with regard to primary substances. If
terms are predicated in quid or essentially of them, then such terms
are in the category Substance; if they are predicated denominatively
in quale, they are in the category Quality; if in quantum, they are
in the category Quantity. . .
Buridan describes such ‘manners of adjoining’ further in QM 5.08. To re-
solve a version of Bradley’s Regress, he asserts that there is a special relation
he calls an “inseparable disposition” that is the inherence of an accident in
a subject.
24
To destroy the disposition is to destroy the inherence, and con-
versely; they are “accidents that are inseparably related to their subjects in
this manner.” Hence these inseparable dispositions are not a new kind of
entity; they are unusual entities of a familiar kind, namely qualities. There-
fore, when it is said that a concrete accidental term like ‘white’ appellates
whiteness qua inhering in its subject, the meaning must be that it appellates
the special disposition of inherence (SDD 4.1.4), itself a quality (in fact a
quality of a quality) that is inseparable from the white thing without the
destruction of the white thing. Of course, to signify the added disposition
is not to signify that the disposition is added, as Buridan points out. Hence
appellation appears to involve a kind of naming, or at least the denotation
of the inseparable disposition that is the appropriate manner of adjoining,
and hence to be absolute terms, or at least candidates for absolute terms.
But this undermines the Coordination Thesis.
On the semantic side, then, there are serious problems. Yet I think that
for all the semantic difficulties, worse problems are found in the psychology,
problems that conclusively show that Buridan could not have held the view
of Mental Language attributed to him.
24
The regress-argument is initially given in QM 5.06 fol. 30ra–b: “Si Socrates est di-
uersus a Platone per diuersitatem sibi additam, tunc illa diuersitas est < diuersus >*
a Socrate, et Socrates diuersus ab alia, et tunc: uel Socrates et illa diuersitas sunt
abinuicem diuersi seipsis, uel per aliam diuersitatem: si seipsis, pari ratione standum
erat in primus; et si hoc sit per aliam diuersitatem, procederetur de illa ut prius, et
sic in infinitum, quod est inconueniens.” [*Reading diuersus for diuersitas.] A similar
version is given in QM 5.08 fol. 31rb–va. Buridan’s solution is given in n.19 above.
Normore [1984] 194–200 discusses this text at length.
c Peter King, unpublished
16
BETWEEN LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY
5.2 Psychological Difficulties
We can make a start on seeing how this is so by asking what makes a
concept ‘simple’ in the first place. In QSP 1.04, Buridan puts forward the
thesis that we have a simple concept of substance, and defends it by means
of four arguments. In each argument Buridan takes the simplicity to be def-
initional: the question is whether a given concept can be further resolved
into other concepts. It’s rather obscure just what this amounts to—how can
we tell whether a concept is resolvable?—but let’s pursue the spirit of the
suggestion by following Buridan’s remark that “complexes are composed
of simples.” If he means to be speaking literally, then those concepts are
simple that are used to construct other concepts through combination by
simple complexive concepts. This is what we should expect given the Co-
ordination Thesis. It is this fact that allows us to treat thought not merely
as a language, but as a canonical language—as a logic, in a word. Simple
concepts are the building blocks of Mental Language, and the logical opera-
tions (the complexive concepts) are the mortar. His claim should therefore
be that the definitional priority of simple concepts is a matter of complex
concepts literally being constructed out of them.
Yet Buridan rejects this claim. In his extended ex professo examinations
of cognition in QSP 1.07, QDA (3) 3.08, and QM 7.20, he maintains instead
that the process of concept-acquisition begins with highly dense and compli-
cated concepts arriving in the intellect, out of which we gradually abstract
concepts that are definitionally simple. But that is enough to overturn the
Coordination Thesis. The building blocks of our actual psychology are rich
singular concepts that include a wealth of detail fused together, and these
are the first elements of our thought. Let’s take a closer look.
Buridan argues first that intellective cognition causally depends on sen-
sitive cognition: the intellect requires input from sense to function. (This
is not to spell out how it functions, of course.) Nihil in intellectu quod
non prius fuerit in sensu: there is nothing in the intellect not previously
in the senses, as the Aristotelian maxim has it. Buridan treats the claim
as sufficiently obvious to use as a minor premiss and not to need further
proof.
25
We can readily construct an argument for it. First, the analysis of
25
QSP 1.07 fol. 8va: “Et de hoc ponitur prima conclusio communiter concessa, scilicet
quod necesse est hominem cognoscere prius esse singulariter quam uniuersaliter, quia
necesse est hominem prius cognoscere aliquid cognitione sensitiua quam intellectiua;
et tamen nos supponimus quod cognitione sensitiua nihil cognoscatur nisi singulariter;
ergo etc.” See also fol. 9vb: “Cum ergo dictum sit quod cognitio intellectiua dependet
ex sensitiua. . . ”
c Peter King, unpublished