Deductive Logic - St. George William Joseph Stock

§ 160. Are there then any terms which possess no intension? To ask this, is to ask—Are there any terms which have absolutely no meaning? It is often said that proper names are devoid of meaning, and the remark is, in a certain sense, true. When we call a being by the name 'man,' we do so because that being possesses human attributes, but when we call the same being by the name, 'John,' we do not mean to indicate the presence of any Johannine attributes. We simply wish to distinguish that being, in thought and language, from other beings of the same kind. Roughly speaking, therefore, proper names are devoid of meaning or intension. But no name can be entirely devoid of meaning. For, even setting aside the fact, which is not universally true, that proper names indicate the sex of the owner, the mere act of giving a name to a thing implies at least that the thing exists, whether in fact or thought; it implies what we may call 'thinghood': so that every term must carry with it some small amount of intension.

§ 161. From another point of view, however, proper names possess more intension than any other terms. For when we know a person, his name calls up to our minds all the individual attributes with which we are familiar, and these must be far more numerous than the attributes which are conveyed by any common term which can be applied to him. Thus the name 'John' means more to a person who knows him than 'attorney,' 'conservative,' 'scamp,' of 'vestry-man,' or any other term which may happen to apply to him. This, however, is the acquired intension of a term, and must be distinguished from the original intension. The name 'John' was never meant to indicate the attributes which its owner has, as a matter of fact, developed. He would be John all the same, if he were none of these.

§ 162. Hitherto we have been speaking only of christening-names, but it is evident that family names have a certain amount of connotation from the first. For when we dub John with the additional appellation of Smith, we do not give this second name as a mere individual mark, but intend thereby to indicate a relationship to other persons. The amount of connotation that can be conveyed by proper names is very noticeable in the Latin language. Let us take for an example the full name of a distinguished Roman—Publius Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus Africanus minor. Here it is only the prænomen, Publius, that can be said to be a mere individual mark, and even this distinctly indicates the sex of the owner. The nomen proper, Cornelius, declares the wearer of it to belong to the illustrious gens Cornelia. The cognomen, Scipio, further specifies him as a member of a distinguished family in that gens. The agnomen adoptivum indicates his transference by adoption from one gens to another. The second agnomen recalls the fact of his victory over the Carthaginians, while the addition of the word 'minor' distinguishes him from the former wearer of the same title. The name, instead of being devoid of meaning, is a chapter of history in itself. Homeric epithets, such as 'The Cloud-compeller,' 'The Earth-shaker' are instances of intensive proper names. Many of our own family names are obviously connotative in their origin, implying either some personal peculiarity, e.g. Armstrong, Cruikshank, Courteney; or the employment, trade or calling of the original bearer of the name, Smith, Carpenter, Baker, Clark, Leach, Archer, and so on; or else his abode, domain or nationality, as De Caen, De Montmorency, French, Langley; or simply the fact of descent from some presumably more noteworthy parent, as Jackson, Thomson, Fitzgerald, O'Connor, Macdonald, Apjohn, Price, Davids, etc. The question, however, whether a term is connotative or not, has to be decided, not by its origin, but by its use. We have seen that there are some proper names which, in a rough sense, may be said to possess no intension.

§ 163. The other kind of singular terms, namely, designations (§ 113) are obviously connotative. We cannot employ even the simplest of them without conveying more or less information about the qualities of the thing which they are used to denote. When, for instance, we say 'this table,' 'this book,' we indicate the proximity to the speaker of the object in question. Other designations have a higher degree of intension, as when we say 'the present prime minister of England,' 'the honourable member who brought forward this motion to-night.' Such terms have a good deal of significance in themselves, apart from any knowledge we may happen to possess of the individuals they denote.

§ 164. We have seen that, speaking quite strictly, there are no terms which are non-connotative: but, for practical purposes, we may apply the expression to proper names, on the ground that they possess no intension, and to singular abstract terms on the ground that their extension and intension coincide. In the latter case it is indifferent whether we call the quantity extension or intension. Only we cannot call it 'connotation,' because that implies two quantities distinct from one another. A term must already denote a subject before it can be said to connote its attributes.

§ 165. The division of terms into connotative and non-connotative is based on their possession of one quantity or two.

CHAPTER IV.

Of the Law of Inverse Variation of Extension and Intension.

§ 166. In a series of terms which fall under one another, as the extension decreases, the intension increases, and vice versâ. Take for instance the following series—