Peter’s treatise on syncategorematic words is part of a genre that developed in the early thirteenth century.
The term itself comes from Prician, and it is used to capture words that do not have a meaning, or signification, on their own, but only in combination with the so-called categorematic words. Peter’s treatise is divided into ten chapters. They are as follows:
1. On composition
2. On negation
3. On exclusive words
4. On exceptive words
5. On consecutive words
6. On the verbs ‘‘begins’’ and ‘‘ceases’’
7. On the words ‘‘necessary’’ and ‘‘contingent’’
8. On conjunction
9. On ‘‘how much,’’ ‘‘than,’’ and ‘‘whatever’’
10. On answers
Composition is about ‘‘is’’ and negation is about ‘‘not.’’ With exclusive words, Peter means words such as ‘‘only’’ and ‘‘alone.’’ Exceptive words are ‘‘except’’ and ‘‘unless.’’ Consecutive words are words such as ‘‘if’’ or ‘‘if not.’’ The conjunctive words he discusses are ‘‘or,’’ ‘‘and,’’ ‘‘unless,’’ ‘‘in that,’’ and ‘‘that not.’’
There are two kinds of compositions, Peter claims, namely (a) composition of things and (b) composition of modes of signification. He further divides (a) in five kinds. There are compositions of (1) form and matter, (2) accident with a subject, (3) power or faculties with that which they belong to, (4) integral parts with a whole, and (5) a difference with a genus to make a species. There are also two different compositions of modes of signifying. The first composition is a quality with a substance and the second is an act with a substance. The first composition is signified by a noun, Peter claims. For example, ‘‘human’’ signifies ‘‘a thing that has humanity,’’ and if you break this apart, then there is a thing, which is a substance, and humanity, which is a quality. He is careful to say that there really are only two things, a substance and a quality, but formally, he notes, there are three things, namely a composition of the two as well. The composition cannot be a real thing though because then there would need to be a composition of the substance with the composition and this would lead to an infinite regress. The second kind of composition is exemplified by a participle. It is interesting how he thinks word kinds can be shown to correspond to real things.
Modal propositions are treated a little differently in the Syncategoremata than in the Tractatus. The first distinction drawn is between the necessity of mode and the necessity of things. This is a rather uninteresting distinction simply noting that there is a difference between a proposition which explicitly includes a modal term and one which does not although it is necessary. The example he uses is ‘‘Socrates is necessarily running’’ and ‘‘A man is an animal.’’ The first is a modal proposition with the mode ‘‘necessarily’’ in it, although it is contingently true, and the second is an assertoric or de inesse proposition, although it is necessarily true. ‘‘Things’’ is ambiguous he also notes. It can cover intentions such as ‘‘genus’’ and ‘‘species,’’ and it can cover the things that the intentions concern. As we shall see, it is the necessity of things that is important.
The distinctions of contingency Peter presents are standard to the thirteenth century. First ofall, contingency is divided into that which can both be the case and not be the case, that is, traditional contingency, and into that which is predicated of both necessity and contin-gence, that is, traditional possibility. It always generated confusions calling both these contingency, but it was standard in the thirteenth century and ultimately derives from Aristotle.
Contingency in the first sense is also divided into three, namely contingency that naturally occurs (contingens natum), contingency that regards either of two outcomes (contingens ad utrumlibet), and contingency that rarely occurs (contingens in paucioribus). This notion is based on some kind of statistical view of contingency where the frequency of its occurrence is important for how to classify something as contingent. It is natural that men grow old and gray and hence although contingent it is close to a necessity. Other things may occur rarely and are hence closer to what is impossible. There is then also a space in between where there is a fifty-fifty chance of something occurring, and thus it is statistically indeterminate, hence the term ‘‘ad utrumlibet.’’
The notion of the necessity of things is greatly expanded under the question whether necessity and contingency determine the compositions of subject and predicate. Necessity and contingency is found in things, he emphasizes. He writes that ‘‘it is because a composition found in a proposition is necessary only because of the necessary relationship between the subject and the predicate, and therefore necessity primarily occurs in the thing that is the subject and the thing that is the predicate and secondarily in the composition.’’ The necessity expressed here is twofold he notes. It is the necessity of substances and the necessity of acts. He explicates it by saying that ‘‘one sign of necessity is that which signifies necessity as a disposition of a substance, that is, the name (noun) ‘necessary’. In another way a sign of necessity is that which signifies necessity as the disposition of an act, that is, the adverb ‘necessarily’.’’
He also develops a different view of ampliation in the Syncategoremata. Almost all logicians of the thirteenth century argued that necessity propositions do not ampliate their terms, but are only about actually existing things. Peter on the other hand argues that necessity propositions are ampliated. This might have had an influence on Buridan.
See also: > John Buridan > Modal Theories and Modal Logic > Supposition Theory > Terms, Properties of
World History
