12
INTRODUCTION TO JEAN BURIDAN’S LOGIC
rules in special ways. Buridan draws the distinction in terms of significa-
tion. Purely syncategorematic terms lack an ultimate signification, but this
does not mean they lack all signification; every word which can be put into a
sentence is imposed for some signification (TS 2.3.7). Syncategoremata have
only an immediate signification, and have only an ultimate signification in
combination with categorematic terms (TS 2.3.6).
What do syncategoremata immediately signify? Purely syncategore-
matic terms signify simple concepts which are complexive: the semantic
functors described at the end of Section 3.3 (TS 2.3.11–143). Since the
ultimate signification of a sentence; “Some men are sexists” and “No men
are sexists” signify the same, as indeed do “God is God,” “God is not God’
and the term ‘God.’ The logical form of a sentence can be described as the
exact series of syncategoremata (TC 1.7.3–4).
Some syncategorematic terms operate on terms to produce terms;
others operate on sentences to produce sentences (TS 2.4.4). Whichever we
examine, at the heart of all logical constants is the notion of their scope,
that is, which terms in a sentence they affect. Buridan usually gives his
scope-rules syntactically, and often simply explains the action of a syncat-
egorematic term in a sentence by describing its effect of terms which come
before or after the syncategorematic term. Such relations will correspond
to order-relations in Mental, as we have seen.
18
There are two forms of the copula, each of which corresponds to a
complexive concept in Mental: ‘is’ and ‘is not’ (TS 2.3.12). Buridan flirts
with the suggestion that the Mental copula is tenseless (TS 3.4.8), but he
does not explore it in any detail. The copula produces sentences from terms
or expressions, according to very complicated rules about what can act as
a subject or predicate; a partial list of such rules is given in TS 2.6.1.
A negative particle (such as non) may act in two ways (TS 2.2.7). It
may be a sentential-functor taking sentences to sentences; Buridan calls such
a negation “negating” and it acts upon the copula. Or it may be a term-
functor taking terms to terms; Buridan calls such a negation “infinitizing,”
and it acts upon the individual term, producing what is called an “infinite”
term (TS 3.7.35). Buridan’s logic will therefore distinguish sentences not
only by their quantity but also by the character of the negation occurring
within them, their quality.
Signs of quantity, that is, quantifiers, are more complex. Buridan
18
I have translated Buridan’s examples so that these rules apply directly to the trans-
lated version; there are some awkward results, such as “Some B A not is” rendering
the uncommon idiom for negatives described in TC 1.8.70, or the rules describing
confused supposition; I beg the reader’s indulgence.
c Peter King, from Jean Buridan’s Logic (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1985) 3–82.
INTRODUCTION TO JEAN BURIDAN’S LOGIC
13
argues that such signs of quantity, no matter where they occur in the sen-
tence, not only affect the term immediately following them but also act as
“conditions of the whole sentence” (TS 2.2.15), a conclusion requiring care-
ful argument (TS 2.28–14). Buridan characterizes such signs of quantity as
either affirmative or negative, depending on whether they involve a nega-
tion, and as either distributive (that is, “universal”) or as particular (that
is, “existential”). There are several kinds of quantifiers, too; there is at least
one for each category (TS 3.7.4), and each has a corresponding identificatory
relative-term (TS 4.2.3, TC 3.7.19–2). For example, a universal affirmative
sign in the category of Quality is “however,” and it’s corresponding iden-
tificatory relative-term is “such,” as in the sentence “however Socrates is,
such is Plato,” i. e. every quality which Socrates has Plato also has (Rule
RT in TS 4.8.1, or TS 3.7.27). Moreover some signs distribute parts of an
integral whole; others a universal whole.
Conjunction and disjunction are both term-forming functors applied
to terms and sentence-forming functors applied to sentences (TS 2.3.13)
obeying the usual logical rules, except for certain uses such as forming ‘con-
junctive terms,’ e. g. the term ‘Peter and Paul’ in “Peter and Paul lifted
a table” (TS 3.2.3). Conjunctive terms are discussed in TS 2.6.64–67 and
2.6.77. Note that the conjunction of terms, their ‘collective’ sense, is distinct
from term-combination as in e. g. adjective-noun expressions.
Terms such as ‘if’ and illative particles such as ‘therefore’ and ‘hence’
are sentential functors, producing consequences, just as the copula produces
categorical sentences (TS 2.3.13, TC 1.3.2).
In addition to such typical syncategoremata, there are also exceptives
(terms such as ‘but’ or ‘except’); delimitives (‘only,’ ‘at most,’ ‘at least’);
and many others, causing Buridan to exclaim in the first treatise of the
Summulae de dialectica that syncategoremata “are the source of virtually
all the confusions which plague logic.” Such syncategoremata are often
mixed; in TS 2.4.4 Buridan suggests analyzing ‘only’ as it appears in “Only
a man is running” as “A man is running and nothing other than a man is
running,” so that the concept corresponding to ‘only’ includes an affirmative
copula and a negative distribution.
Buridan uses the analysis of syncategoremata to say what pertains
to the logical form of a given sentence (TS 1.7.3): the copula, negations,
signs of quantity, the relative-terms, the number of constituent elements,
connectives, and most of all, the order in which these occur. Examples of
each are given in TC 1.7.4.
Some terms are neither purely syncategorematic nor purely categore-
matic but are “mixed” or “mediate,” such as ‘somewhere,’ which involves
c Peter King, from Jean Buridan’s Logic (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1985) 3–82.