The bearing of this truth on Logic is to make us treat it in two parts and not in three. We do not treat of Name, Proposition, Syllogism, or of Concept, Judgment, Inference, but only of the two latter parts. The name or concept has no reality in living language or living thought, except when referred to its place in a proposition or judgment. We ought not to think of propositions as built up by putting words or names together, but of words or names as distinguished though not separable elements in propositions. Aristotle takes the simple and straightforward view. “A term is the element into which a proposition is broken up, such as subject and predicate.” [1] Of course different languages separate the parts of the proposition very differently, {88} and uneducated people hardly separate them at all. Formal Logic breaks down the grammatical meaning of “name,” so far as to treat as a “logical name” any complex words that can stand as Subject or Predicate in a Proposition (e.g. a relative clause).
[1] Anal. prior., 24b, 16. The opposite view seems to be expressed in the beginning of the περὶ Ἑρμενείας [= peri Hermeneias, de Interpretatione], that the separate word corresponds to the separate idea. I have attempted to explain this as an illusion, p. 73, above.
Denotation and Connotation
5. The doctrine of the meaning of names has suffered from their relation to propositions not being borne in mind. Mill’s discussion [1] is very sensible, but, as always, very careless of strict system. More especially it seems a pity to state the question as if it concerned a division of names into Connotative and Non-connotative; because in this way we from the first let go of the idea that the meaning of a name has necessarily two aspects, [2] and we almost bind ourselves to make out that there are some non-connotative names. It is better to consider this latter subject on its merits. Mill says that an ordinary significant name such as “man” “signifies the subjects directly, the attributes indirectly; it denotes the subjects, and implies or involves or indicates, or, as we shall say henceforth, connotes, the attributes.” In short, the denotation of a name consists of the things to which it _ap_plies, the connotation consists of the properties which it _im_plies. The denotation is made up of individuals and the connotation of attributes. Denotation is also called Extension, especially if we are speaking of Concepts rather than of names. Connotation is then called Intension. In the German writers it is more usual to say that the Extension or Area (Umfang) consists not of the individuals, but of the species that are contained in {89} the meaning of a general name. They oppose it to Content (Inhalt) corresponding to our “Connotation.” Thus the “Area” of “rose” would not be the individual roses in the world, but rather all the species of rose in the world (Rosa Canina, Rosa Rubiginosa, etc.). This raises a difficulty as to the denotation of a specific name, but perhaps represents the actual process of thought, in the case of a generic name, better than that which Mill adopts. The difference is not important.
[1] Logic, Bk. I. c. ii. § 5. Cf. Venn, 174 and 183, and Bain, 48.
[2] See Bradley, p. 155.
Well, then, according to Mill, when we say, “The Marshal Niel is a yellow rose,” we refer directly to a group of real or possible objects, and we mean that all these individual objects are yellow roses. The attributes are only mentioned by the way, or implied. So Dr. Venn says that the denotation is real, and the connotation is notional.
But there is another side to this question. The objects may be what you mean but the attributes seem to be the meaning, for how can you (especially on Mill’s theory of the proposition) refer to any objects except through these attributes, unless indeed you can point to them with your finger? And so again it seems, especially if we consider Mill’s account of predication, as if the Connotation were the primary meaning and the Denotation the secondary meaning. The Connotation determines the Denotation; and if we “define” the meaning of the name it is the Connotation that we state. And so Mill tells us two or three pages further on, that whenever the names given to objects have properly any meaning, the meaning resides not in what they denote, but in what they connote. In short, {90} the denotation of a general name is simply the meaning of its plural, or of its singular, in that sense in which it implies a plural, while the connotation is the meaning per se, not considered in its instances.
It is clear then that every name has these two kinds of meaning—first, a content, and then instances, whether possible or actual, of the content; and the two are obviously inseparable, although they are distinguishable. Ultimately, indeed, the denotation itself is an attribute, and so part of the connotation. It is one of the attributes of man to be a unit in the plurality men, i.e. to be “a man.” It may be said that some names have no plural. If so, these would be non-denotative rather than non-connotative, but in fact this is not true. The content of a significant name can always, unless hindered by a special convention (see below on proper names), be prima facie regarded, in respect of its actual embodiment, as a unit against other possible units. Granting that there may be an object, which according to our knowledge can only be real as an isolated case, the very consideration of it as such a case is enough to distinguish its existence, whether real or possible, from its content. Thus, as a real or possible existence, the object is ipso facto considered in the light of a particular, and as capable of entering into a plurality. But its nature or content, the meaning of its name, cannot enter into a plurality. Two meanings, two connotations, are alternative and irreconcilable. Denotation and connotation are thus simply the particular, or particulars, which embody or are thought of as embodying a content, and the single or universal content itself.
{91} Have Proper Names Connotation?