De Rijk (1982: 169) affirms that “Peter’s natural supposition is the exact denotative counterpart of signification.” To be sure, we may insist that homo signifies a certain universal nature and supposes all (possible) existing human beings or the class of humans. What Peter does not say, however, is that homo signifies all existing human beings or that it denotes them, though the entire question does not substantially change.
Up to this point, the terminological landscape that lies before us is still somewhat confused, considering that each of the technical terms considered so far covers at least two different domains (except for “denotation” and “designation,” which are still more indeterminate). This is illustrated by the diagram in Figure 9.5.
A significant change occurs with William of Sherwood, who “unlike Peter and the majority of 13th-century logicians … identifies the significative character of a term with its referring exclusively to actually existing things” (De Rijk 1982: 170–171).
Figure 9.5
This will be the position of Roger Bacon, for whom signification becomes denotative in the modern extensional use of the term—despite the fact that he never employs a term such as denotatio.
9.8. Bacon
In his De signis (Fredborg et al. 1978, hereinafter DS), Bacon sets up a relatively complex classification of signs (fundamentally confirmed in other works by the same author, such as the Compendium studii theologiae), which presents a number of elements of interest to the semiotician. This classification has already been discussed,10 and we saw that Bacon employs the terms significare, significatio, and significatum in a sense radically different from the traditional one.
In DS II, 2, he states that “signum autem est illud quod oblatum sensui vel intellectui aliquid designat ipsi intellectui.” A definition of this kind might appear similar to that of Augustine—but only if we understand Bacon’s “designat” as the equivalent of Augustine’s “faciens in cogitationem venire.” We must, however, point out two considerations that differentiate Bacon from Augustine. First of all, “oblatum sensui vel intellectui” implies that Bacon assumes a less radical stance than Augustine via-à-vis the sensible qualities of signs, given that he repeatedly admits that there may also be intellectual signs, in the sense that concepts too may be considered to be signs of things perceived. In the second place, for Augustine the sign produces something in the mind, while for Bacon a sign shows something (that exists outside of the mind) to the mind.
Therefore, for Bacon signs do not refer to their referent through the mediation of a mental species, but are directly indicated, or posited, to refer immediately to an object. It makes no difference whether this object is an individual (something concrete), a species, a sentiment or a passion of the soul. What matters is that between a sign and the object that it is supposed to name there is no preliminary mental mediation. The mind steps in, so to speak, after the fact, to register the designation that has already taken place. As a result, Bacon uses significare in an exclusively extensional sense.
It should be borne in mind, however, that Bacon distinguishes natural signs (physical symptoms and icons) from signs “ordinata ab anima et ex intentione animae,” in other words, signs produced by a human being with some purpose in mind.
Among the signs ordinata ab anima are words and other visible signs of a conventional nature, such as the circulus vini or barrel hoop that taverns displayed to identify themselves, and even the goods displayed outside shops, inasmuch as they signify that other members of the same class to which they belong are on sale within. In all of these cases Bacon speaks of impositio, that is, of a conventional act by means of which a given entity finds itself having to stand for something else. Clearly, for Bacon convention is not the same as arbitrariness: the merchandise on display is chosen conventionally but not arbitrarily (the objects act as a kind of metonymy, the member of the class for the class as a whole). The circulus vini too is designated as a sign in a conventional and nonarbitrary manner, inasmuch as it points to the hoops that hold the barrels together, and acts simultaneously as both synecdoche and metonymy, representing a part of the container that holds the wine ready to be sold.
But in DS most of the examples are taken from verbal language and hence, if we wish to follow Bacon’s line of thought, it would be better not to stray too far from what is probably the paramount example of a system of conventional and arbitrary signs.
Bacon, however, is not so naïve as to say that words signify exclusively individual and concrete things. He contends that they name objects, but these objects may also exist in a mental space. Signs in fact can also name nonentities, such as infinity, a vacuum, the chimera, and nonbeing itself (DS II, 2, 19; see also II, 3, 27, and V, 162).
This implies that, even when words signify species, this occurs because they point extensionally to a class of mental objects. The relationship is always extensional, and the correctness of the reference is guaranteed only by the actual presence of the object signified. A word is truly significant if, and only if, the object it signifies is the case—if nothing else if it is the case that it is thought.
Admittedly, Bacon says (DS I, 1) “non enim sequitur: ‘signum in actu est, ergo res significata est,’ quia non entia possunt significari per voces sicut et entia,” but this position cannot be equated to Abelard’s insistence that even an expression like nulla rosa est signifies something. In the case of Abelard rosa was significant insofar as significare was considered from an intensional point of view, and, within this framework, the name signified the concept of the thing, even if the thing did not exist or had ceased to exist. Bacon’s position is different: when one says “there is a rose” (and when there being a rose is the case), the meaning of the word is given by the actual concrete rose, but when one makes the same affirmation and no such rose exists, then the word rose does not refer to an actual rose, but to the image of the supposed rose that the speaker has in mind. There are two different referents, and in fact the sound rose itself is a token of two different lexical types.
Let us weigh carefully the following passage. Bacon states that “vox significativa ad placitum potest imponi … omnibus rebus extra animam et in anima,” and he admits that we may name conventionally both mental entities and nonentities, but he insists on the fact that it is impossible to signify with the same vox both the individual object and the species. If, to name a species (or any other mental passion), one intends to use the same word already used to name the corresponding object, we must set in motion a secunda impositio (DS V, 162).
What Bacon intends to clarify is that, when we say “homo currit” (“the man is running”) we do not use the word homo in the same sense as in the sentence “homo est animal” (“man is an animal”). In the first case the referent of the word is an individual, in the second a species. There are then two equivocal ways of using the same expression. When a potential customer sees the barrel hoop advertising wine in a wine shop, if there is wine, then the hoop signifies the actual wine. If there is no wine, and the customer is misled by a sign that refers to something that is not the case, then the referent of the sign is the idea or image of wine that has taken shape (erroneously) in the customer’s mind.
For the people who know there is no wine, the hoop has lost its ability to signify, in the same way in which, when we use the same words to refer to things in the past or the future, we do not use them in the same sense as we do when we refer to actual things that are present. When we speak of Socrates, referring, that is, to someone who is dead, and express our opinions about him, in reality we are using the expression Socrates with a new meaning. The word “recipit aliam significationem per transsumptionem,” it is used in an ambiguous way compared with the meaning it had when Socrates was alive. “Corrupta re cui facta est impositio, non remanebit vox significativa (DS IV, 2, 147). The linguistic term remains, but (as Bacon remarks at the beginning of DS I, 1) it remains only as a substance deprived of its ratio and of the semantic correlation that made its material occurrence a word.
In the same way, when a child dies, what is left of the father is the substantia, not the relatio paternitatis (DS I, 1, 38).
When we speak of individual things, “certum est inquirenti quod facta impositione soli rei extra animam, impossibile est (quod) vox significet speciem rei tamquam signum datum ab anima et significativum ad placitum, quia vox significativa ad placitum non significat nisi per impositionem et institutione,” while the relationship between the mental species and the thing (as the Aristotelian tradition was also aware) is psychological and not directly semiotic. Bacon does not deny that species can be the signs of things, but they are so in an iconic sense: they are natural signs, and not signs ordinata ab anima. The vox thus signifies only the individual thing and not the species (DS V, 163). As has already
