(1) Personal supposition can be divided first into discrete and common supposition. Discrete supposition is [the kind] in which a proper name of something supposits, or a demonstrative pronoun taken significatively. This kind of supposition makes a proposition singular. For example, ‘Socrates is a man’, ‘This man is a man’, and so on.
(2) If it is said that ‘This herb grows in my garden’ is true, and yet the subject does not have discrete supposition, it must be said [in reply] that the proposition is literally false. But there is understood by it a proposition like ‘Such an herb grows in my garden’, where the subject supposits determinately. Thus, you must observe that when some proposition is literally false, but yet has some true sense, [then] when it is taken in that [true] sense, [its] subject and predicate should be have the same supposition they have in the [proposition] that is literally true.
(3) Common personal supposition occurs when a common term supposits, as in ‘A man runs’, ‘Every man is an animal’.
(4) Common personal supposition is divided into confused supposition and determinate [supposition]. Determinate supposition occurs when one can descend to singulars by some disjunctive [proposition]. For example, it correctly follows: “A man runs; therefore, this man runs, or that [man runs]”, and so on. Therefore, supposition is called “determinate” because by such supposition it is denoted that the proposition is true for some determinate singular. This determinate singular all by itself, without the truth of another singular, is enough to verify the proposition. For example, for the truth of ‘A man runs’ it is required that some definite singular be true. Any one suffices, even assuming that every other one would be false. Yet often many or even all [of them] are true.
(5) Therefore, there is a fixed rule that when one can descend to singulars under a common term by a disjunctive proposition, and from each singular the [original] proposition is inferred, then the term has determinate personal supposition. Therefore, in the proposition ‘A man is an animal’, both extremes have determinate supposition. For it follows: “A man is an animal; therefore, this man is an animal, or that [man is an animal”, and so on. Likewise it follows: “This man is an animal” — pointing to any [man] whatever — “therefore, a man is an animal.” Likewise, it follows: “A man is an animal; therefore, a man is this animal or [a man is] that animal or [a man is]1 that one”, and so on. And it correctly follows: “A man is this animal” — pointing to any animal — “therefore, a man is an animal.” Therefore, both ‘man’ and ‘animal’ have determinate supposition.
(6) Confused personal supposition is every personal supposition of a common term that is not determinate [supposition]. It is divided, because one kind is merely confused supposition, and another kind is confused and distributive supposition.
(7) Merely confused personal supposition occurs when a common term supposits personally and one cannot descend to singulars by a disjunctive [proposition] without making a change on the part of the other extreme, but [one can descend to singulars] by a proposition with a disjoint predicate, and one can infer [the original proposition] from any singular. For example, in ‘Every man is an animal’, ‘animal’ supposits merely confusedly, because one cannot descend under ‘animal’ to its contents by a disjunctive [proposition]. For it does not follow: “Every man is an animal; therefore, every man is this animal, or every man is that animal, or every man is [that] other animal”, and so on. But one is quite able to descend to a proposition with a disjoint predicate [made up] of singular [terms]. For it correctly follows: “Every man is an animal; therefore, every man is this animal or that one or that one”, and so on. And it is plain that this predicate is truly predicated of every man. Therefore, the universal [proposition] is simply true. Likewise, the [original proposition] is inferred from any content under ‘animal’. For it correctly follows: “Every man is this animal” — pointing to any animal whatever — “therefore, every man is an animal.”
(8) Confused and distributive supposition occurs when one can descend in some way copulatively, if [the term] has many contents, and from no one [of them] is [the original proposition] formally inferred. For example, in ‘Every man is an animal’, the subject supposits confusedly and distributively. For it follows: “Every man is an animal; therefore, this man is an animal and that man is an animal,” and so on. And it does not formally follow: “This man is an animal” — pointing to any [man] whatever — “therefore, every man is an animal.”
(9) I said “one can descend in some way copulatively”.2 I said this because one cannot always descend in the same way. For sometimes one can descend without making any changes in the propositions except that in the first one3 a common term is in subject or predicate position, and afterwards4 singulars [of that common term] are taken, as is clear in the above example. But sometimes one can descend [only] after making some change — in fact, [sometimes only] after removing something in the one proposition that occurs in the other [and] that is neither a common term nor contained under a common term. For example, in saying ‘Every man besides Socrates runs’, one can correctly descend copulatively in some way to some singulars. For it correctly follows: “Every man besides Socrates runs; therefore, Plato runs, and Cicero runs,” and so on for [men] other than Socrates. But in these singulars something is omitted that occurred in the universal [proposition and] that was neither a common term nor a sign5 distributing it, namely, the exceptive word together with the part taken out.6 So one cannot descend in the same way under ‘Every man besides Socrates runs’ and under ‘Every man runs’, and one cannot descend to all the same [things] either.
(10) The first kind of confused and distributive supposition7 is called “confused and distributive mobile supposition”. The second kind8 is called “confused and distributive immobile [supposition]”.
Translation by Paul Vincent Spade, CC BY 4.0. Source: Indiana University ScholarWorks. Changes: format conversion only (PDF to Markdown; footnotes, italics and paragraph numbers kept; margin line numbers and page headers dropped).
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Footnotes
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The insertions in square brackets are absolutely essential here. Ockham is being compressed to the point of being misleading. Without the insertions, the inference as it stands would characterize merely confused supposition, not determinate supposition. See para. 7, below. ↩
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See the preceding paragraph. ↩
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That is, the one from which one is descending. ↩
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That is, in the proposition to which one descends. ↩
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That is, a quantifier. ↩
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This is a bit of technical jargon. The “exceptive word” is of course the syncategorema ‘besides’. The “part taken out” (= pars extra capta) is the object of the preposition ‘besides’. Here it is ‘Socrates’. It is “taken out” in the sense that it is excluded from the claim in the rest of the proposition. ↩
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That is, the kind in ‘Every man runs’. ↩
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That is, the kind in ‘Every man besides Socrates runs’. ↩