Medieval Philosophy

by Peter S. Adamson

They called its general meaning its “signification.”10 Following suggestive remarks in Aristotle, signification was defined with reference to communication between a speaker and a listener. The signification of the term “giraffe” is either the concept in my mind that I’m trying to convey to you when I say “giraffe” or the concept that arises in your mind when you hear me say it.11 The concepts in our minds in turn signify things out in the world, for instance Hiawatha in the giraffe enclosure. Yet as we’ve just seen, I don’t need to have any particular giraffe in mind when I say “Giraffe is animal.” So the terminists devised a theory about what they called “supposition.”12 A term “supposits” for whatever it stands for in a given proposition. So the term “giraffe” has only one signification, but many possible suppositions.