From the Tree to the Labyrinth (64 page)

33
. See, for example, on p. 508, apropos of the sentiment of the beautiful: “It is not until the 13th century that the problem of distinguishing between the higher and the lower senses is posited in an explicit fashion” [“Ce n’est qu’au XIIIe siècle que le problème de la distinction des sens supérieurs et inférieurs se pose de manière explicite”].

34
. See Deely (1985: 29), where, however, it seems fairly clear that for John (Poinsot) the
notitia intuitiva
is that of things present to the senses and therefore is to be identified with sensation.

35
. Which goes to show once again that De Bruyne had a keen awareness of a diachronic development in medieval aesthetic themes. And it was in an implied polemic vis-à-vis his professed conclusions,
but using the same texts that he had made available,
that I originally entitled my 1959 survey
Sviluppo dell’estetica medievale
(“The
Development
of Medieval Aesthetics”). The English translation, by Hugh Bredin, is entitled
Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages
(Eco 1986).

36
. The idea was already formulated in Augustine,
De vera religione
32, 19.

37
. The quotations from Maritain refer to the 1927 edition of
Art et scolastique,
pp. 257, 259, n. 1.

38
. “mens singulare cognoscit per quandam reflexionem, prout, scilicet, mens cognoscendo objectum suum, quod est aliqua natura universalis, redit in cognitionem sui actus, et ulterius in specimen quae est actus sui principium, et ulterius in phantasma a quo species est abstracta; et sic aliquam cognitionem de singulari accipit” (
Quaestiones disputatae de veritate
X, 5 co., trans. James V. McGlynn, S.J.
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/QDdeVer10.htm
.

9

Toward a History of Denotation

Denotation (along with its counterpart,
connotation
) is considered, depending on the context, as either a characteristic or a function (i) of individual terms (what does the word “dog” denote?); (ii) of declarative propositions (the sentence “the dog barks” may denote a state of the world, that there is a dog barking—but, if “the dog” is taken as denoting a species—all dogs, that is—then it could denote a characteristic common to the entire canine race); (iii) of nominal phrases and definite descriptions (the phrase “the President of the Republic” may denote, depending on the context and the circumstances of its utterance, either the actual president currently in power or the role provided for in a constitution). In each of these cases we must decide whether the denotation has to do with the meaning, the referent, or the act of reference. To sum up, by
denotation
do we mean what
is signified
by the term,
the thing named,
or, in the case of propositions,
what is the case
or
what is believed to be the case,
inasmuch as it forms the content of a proposition?

For structural linguists, “denotation” is concerned with meaning. For Hjelmslev (1943) the difference between a denotative semiotic and a connotative semiotic lies in the fact that the former is a semiotic whose expression plane is not a semiotic, whereas the latter is a semiotic whose expression plane is a semiotic. Barthes (1964) too formulates his position basing himself on Hjelmslev and develops a fully intensional idea of denotation, according to which, between a signifier and a first (or zero) degree signified, there is always a denotative relationship.

In componential analysis, the term has been used to indicate the sense-relationship expressed by a lexical term—such as the term “uncle,” which expresses the relationship “father’s brother” (see, for instance, Leech 1974: 238). In other words, in structuralist circles, denotation, referring back to Frege’s (1892) distinction, is closer to
Sinn
than to
Bedeutung,
closer to meaning than to reference, and in Carnap’s (1955) terms has more to do with intension than with extension.

It is, however, Frege’s term
Bedeutung
that is ambiguous, and it should be replaced with
Bezeichnung
(which we may translate as “designation”), given that, in the vocabulary of philosophy,
Bedeutung
usually stands for “meaning,” whereas
Bezeichnung
stands for “reference, designation” and for denotation in the extensional sense. Husserl (1970), for instance, says that a sign signifies or means
(bedeutet)
a signified and designates
(bezeichnet)
a thing. This is why, in the most recent tradition of Anglo-Saxon semantics inspired by Frege,
Bedeutung
is often rendered with “reference” or “denotation” (see, for example, Dummett 1973). And so the usage of the structuralists is completely turned on its head.

In the field of analytic philosophy, the whole picture underwent a radical change with Russell’s essay “On Denoting” (1905), in which denotation is presented as different from meaning; and this is the direction followed by the entire Anglo-Saxon philosophical tradition. See, for instance, Ogden and Richards (1923) and Morris (1946), where it is said that when, for example, in Pavlov’s experiment, a dog reacts to the bell, food is the
denotatum
of the bell, while the condition of being edible is its
significatum.

In this sense, an expression denotes either the individuals or the class of individuals of which it is the name, whereas it connotes the characteristics on the basis of which such individuals are recognized as members of the class in question. If we go on to substitute (see Carnap 1955) the pairing
extension/intension
for the pairing
denotation/connotation,
then denotation becomes a function of connotation.

But even if we establish that denotation stands for extension, it may refer (i) to a class of individuals, (ii) to an actually existing individual (as in the case of the rigid designation of proper names), (iii) to each member of a class of individuals, (iv) to the truth value contained in an assertive proposition (with the consequence that, in each of these fields, the
denotatum
of a proposition is what is the case, or the fact that
p
is the case).

Very reasonably, Lyons (1977: 2:208) proposed using the term
designation
in place of
denotation,
and using
denotation
in a neutral fashion, between extension and intension: in this sense “dog” would denote the class of dogs (or perhaps some typical member, or exemplar, of the class), while “canine” would denote the characteristic whereby we recognize that it is correct to apply the expression. His proposal did not meet with much favor, however, at least in the analytical
koinè,
and therefore the polysemous nature of the term persists.

The term
denotation
was used in an explicitly extensional sense by John Stuart Mill in his
System of Logic
(1843, I, 2, 5): “the word white, denotes all white things, as snow, paper, the foam of the sea, etc., and implies, or in the language of the schoolmen,
connotes,
the attribute
whiteness
” (emphasis in original).

Peirce was probably the first to realize that there was something that did not jibe in this solution, despite the fact that he himself always used denotation in this extensional sense. Let us see how he uses the term on various occasions:

the direct reference of a symbol to its objects, or its denotation (CP 1.559)
¹

a Rhematic Indexical Sinsign [is] really affected by the real camel it denotes (CP 2.261)

a symbol … must denote an individual and must signify a character (CP 2.293)

every assertion contains such a denotative or pointing-out function (CP 5.429)

signs are designative or denotative or indicative, in so far as they, like a demonstrative pronoun, or a pointing finger, “brutally direct the mental eyeballs of the interpreter to the object in question” (8.350)

Peirce was well aware that, as far as connotation went, Mill was not in fact following, as he claimed to be, traditional Scholastic usage. The Schoolmen (at least up until the fourteenth century) distinguished between
significare
(meaning) and
appellare
(naming), and did not use
connotation
in opposition to
denotation,
but as an added form of signification:

It has been, indeed, the opinion of all the students of the logic of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that connotation was in those ages used exclusively for the reference to a second significate, that is (nearly), for a reference to a relative sense (such as father, brighter, etc.) to the correlate of the object it primarily denotes.… Mr. Mill has, however, considered himself entitled to deny this upon his simple authority, without the citation of a single passage from any writer of that time. (CP 2.393)

Peirce develops the same argument in
CP
2.431, and he later points out that in the Middle Ages the most common opposition was between
significare
(to mean) and
nominare
(to refer to). He further observes how Mill uses—in place of the term
significare—connotare,
implicitly reserving
denotare
for designating, naming, or referring. Furthermore, he recalls a passage from John of Salisbury (
Metalogicus
II, 20), according to whom “nominantur singularia sed universalia significantur,” concluding that unfortunately “the precise meaning recognized as proper to the word ‘signify’ at the time of John of Salisbury … was never strictly observed, either before and since; and on the contrary the meaning tended to slip towards that of ‘denote’ ” (
CP
2.434).

However, although Peirce lucidly realizes that at a certain point
significare
partially shifted from an intensional paradigm to an extensional one, he nevertheless fails to recognize that in ensuing centuries the term retains for the most part its intensional meaning. Thus, he accepts the fact that denotation is an extensional category (and took issue with Mill’s work only with respect to connotation), whereas it is precisely the term
denotare
that, initially used halfway between extension and intension, finally (and the terminus ad quem is in fact Mill) took over as an extensional category. Peirce does not indicate when this happened for the first time, and he fails to do so because the question was far from lending itself to a simple solution.

Plato had already made it clear that by pronouncing a single term (say, “dog”) we can certainly signify a given idea, but only when we enunciate a proposition (such as “that dog barks”) can we say that something
is the case,
and hence
say something is true or false.

As for Aristotle, in the famous passage in
De interpretatione
(16a et seq.), he outlines a semiotic triangle in which words are on the one hand linked to concepts (or to the passions of the soul) and on the other to things. Aristotle says that words are “symbols” of the passions, and by “symbol” he means a conventional and arbitrary expedient. It is also true, however, as we will see in what follows, that he claims that words may be considered as symptoms
(semeia)
of the passions, but he says so in the same sense that any and every verbal utterance may first of all be a symptom of the fact that its speakers have something on their minds. The passions of the soul, on the other hand, are likenesses or icons of things. But, according to Aristotelian theory, things are known through the passions of the soul, without there being a direct connection between symbols and things. We name things and we mean their icons, that is, the corresponding ideas that the things arouse in our minds.
²
To indicate this symbolic relationship, Aristotle does not employ the word
semainein
(which could almost be translated as “to signify”), though in many other circumstances he uses this verb to indicate the relationship between words and concepts (see
Figure 9.1
).

Figure 9.1

For Aristotle too, as for Plato, single terms taken in isolation do not make any statement about what is the case. They merely “mean” a thought. Sentences or complex expressions on the other hand also mean a thought; but only a particular kind of sentence (a statement or a proposition) asserts a state of affairs that is true or false. Aristotle does not say that statements “signify” what is true or false, only that they “say” (the Greek verb is
legein
) that something given A “belongs” (the verb is
uparkein
) to something given B.

Thus, from Aristotle on, we find ourselves faced with three questions that will be amply debated throughout the entire Middle Ages: (i) Do signs mean primarily concepts (and can refer to things only through the mediation of concepts), or do they can signify directly, designate, or denote things? (ii) What is the difference between referring to a class of individuals and referring to a concrete individual? (iii) Wherein lies the difference between the correlation
signs-concepts-individual things
and the correlation
sentences-propositional content-extralinguistic state of affairs?