I. INTRODuCTION
This paper deals with the ontology of social realities as found in William of Ock-ham’s academic writings. It focuses on only one kind of social reality, namely, those that are called “voluntary signs” by the Franciscan theologians who de-fend a pragmatic approach to the origin of signification, such as Roger Bacon or Peter John Olivi. Voluntary signs are those signs that depend on human conven-tion to have any significaconven-tion or social funcconven-tion, i.e., for medieval authors, to be efficacious.1 In the Franciscan tradition, and in Ockham, paradigmatic examples of voluntary signs are monetary price or value (pretium), spoken words, and also the sacraments.
In his academic writings, Ockham restricts himself to the question of what sort of ontology is needed to account for how a social function (e.g., economic exchange) can be imposed on a material thing (e.g., a coin). This question will have a long-lasting appeal, and early modern authors such as Pufendorf will con-tinue to ask whether social entities, usually called entia moralia, have a being that is irreducible or not to that of physical things (e.g., Lutterbeck 2009).
Ockham’s ontology of social entities in his academic writings is almost com-pletely unexplored, with the exception of Jenny Pelletier’s seminal studies (2020; forthcoming).2 The main reason for this is that the textual basis is
tenu-* I am deeply indebted to careful readers who helped me to substantially improve this pa-per, especially Joël Biard, Nicolas Faucher, Roberto Lambertini, Roberto Limonta, Costan-tino Marmo, Claude Panaccio, Sonja Schierbaum, Juhana Toivanen, Jenny Pelletier, and Christian Rode. I would also like to thank the participants to the conference Contemporary and Medieval Social Ontologies, 14–16 March 2019, organized by C. Rode and J. Pelletier, (Bonn university) for their remarks, as well as the participants to the virtual conference Intersections of Theology, Language and Cognition in the Medieval Tradition and Beyond, May 12–13, 2020, or-ganized by M. Michalowska, R. Fedriga, and C. Marmo (the Alma Mater Studiorum, univer-sità di Bologna) and the participants to the Cornell Summer Colloquium in Medieval Philosophy, June 3–5, 2020, organized by S. MacDonald (Cornell university).
1 Among many other publications on late medieval pragmatic views, see the recent volume by Beriou et al. 2014.
2 Ockham’s writings are usually divided into two parts. The first part comprises the works that Ockham wrote during his academic career in England. The second part comprises the
ous, and Ockham’s view on social entities needs some reconstruction in order to be presented as an articulated whole. However, such a reconstruction is far from impossible, especially since his ontology of social realities is part of the Franciscan tradition that investigates the grounds for social and economic rela-tions. As with earlier Franciscan theologians such as Peter John Olivi, Ockham’s thought on this topic is included within broader considerations about other so-cial relationships that ground ownership or property right (dominium), meaning (significatio), and the sacraments (defined as efficacious signs).3 This comes as no surprise, since for Franciscan theologians property rights and the sacraments are both voluntary signs: by definition, they are assigned a social or soteriological function on the basis of a voluntary agreement between social agents.
To be more precise, the question is not on which basis the value of a coin is determined, i.e., the intrinsic properties of the coin or exchange and need. This question is dealt with in treatises on money or contracts, the most famous be-ing those of Peter John Olivi and Nicole Oresme.4 In theological writings from the 13th and 14th centuries, the question is rather how something material can have any social function at all. This leads to a broader issue, that of the inter-action between social philosophy, economics, and theology in the late Middle Ages. In one of the few papers on this issue, William Courtenay asks the seminal question: is the covenant between God and human beings, which makes the sacraments a sine qua non condition for receiving grace, the model for the cove-nant between human beings that grounds social exchanges, including economic exchanges?
Courtenay argues that in the nominalist tradition of the late Middle Ages, and in Ockham especially, the order of priority is the reverse: the covenant between God and human beings, which makes the sacraments efficacious, is conceived on the model of the covenant between human beings grounding economic ex-polemical works that Ockham wrote at the court of Ludwig of Bavaria, after he flew from Avignon in 1324. The relation between the two parts of Ockham’s writings is much debated in the literature. In this paper, my intention is not to take a stance on this issue, but to explore the theological and social consequences of Ockham’s ontology of relations (of reason). This is the reason why I restrict the focus of this paper to Ockham’s academic writings.
3 For Peter John Olivi, see Toivanen 2016a. For the thirteenth-century Franciscan tradi-tion as a whole, see Rosier-Catach 2004.
4 See Petrus Johannis Olivi 2012; and Nicole Oresme 1990. In the theological context that is of interest to me in this paper, money is identified, following Gratian, as “the numerable physical coin of specified and unchanging weight and value. This identification is under-scored through the linking of the coin to fixed and quantifiable measures of wheat, wine, and oil” (Kaye 2005. 28). Schematically, two positions on the nature of money are represented in the medieval period. Theologians like Thomas Aquinas claim that the value of money is determined by means of social exchanges. Philosophers like Oresme claim that the value of money also depends on the nature of the metal used as the standard. For a presenta-tion of these different posipresenta-tions, see Langholm 1983. For an overview of medieval economic thought, see Wood 2002; and Lambertini 2019. For a more specific study of the Franciscan contribution to medieval economic thought, see Todeschini 2009. 92–129.
changes (Courtenay 1972). In claiming this, he gives some textual basis for Max Weber’s idea that there are “affinities” between Protestant religious ethics and the “spirit of capitalism,” since Courtenay relates morality and economy to the nominalist theology of salvation, often considered a forerunner of Protestant covenantal theologies.5
According to Courtenay, then, the question of what there is in our social on-tology is not merely descriptive. It is also an explanation of what social exchang-es are grounded in. I fully agree with Courtenay on this point. As will appear be-low, Ockham defends the reductionist view that a social object such as monetary value or a sacrament is nothing more than the (ordered) collection of a material object and a shared intention. But Ockham’s analysis of this shared intention is not only descriptive. It also amounts to an explanation of why the covenant that underlies any kind of social exchange has to be conceived on the model of the covenant between God and human beings that originally concerned the efficacy of the sacraments. As we shall see, the core of the explanation is the structure of the voluntary mental act, which is common to God and creatures. So, although I am deeply indebted to Courtenay for identifying the philosophical issue un-derlying Ockham’s social philosophy in his academic writings, I believe that the texts investigated here do not confirm his interpretation. On my reading, theology is prior to economics in explaining why voluntary signs are socially efficacious.
To defend this claim, I will proceed in three steps. In the first part, I will pres-ent the principle that underlies Ockham’s reductionist view of the ontology of social objects. The second part will be dedicated to an analysis of the metaphys-ical structure of social objects, which Ockham conceives as an ordered collection of a physical object and a shared intention. Lastly, I will investigate the working and ground of the analogy between human voluntary signs and the sacraments.
II. THE GOLDEN RuLE IN ONTOLOGy: THE EXTENDED TRuTH-MAKER PRINCIPLE
At the end of the 13th century, the ontology of relations gave rise to a sustained discussion on the correct formulation of a rule that spells out the ontological import of relational terms such as ‘father’ and ‘motion.’ The basic question is whether some propositions can become true or false without any change in the
5 More precisely, Weber posits an “elective affinity” between Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism, an affinity that in principle could work in both ways. However, Weber has often been understood as giving the priority to economy over ethics. I thank Roberto Lam-bertini for his help on this point. For a genealogy of the various historiographical schemata that have dominated the writing of the history of medieval economic thought since the 19th century, see Todeschini 1994. 39–113.
ontology, following the intuition that relations have less ontological weight than the core elements of ontology such as substances. Although the question is raised in the context of the ontology of relations, an adequate answer will have a more general scope. This kind of answer can be seen as providing a kind of
“Golden Rule of Ontology,” which goes well beyond the problem of universals and encompasses the ontological status of any conceivable thing, be it singular, universal, or otherwise. It has an analogous status to that of the Truthmaker Principle, according to which “necessarily, if p is true, then there is some entity in virtue of which it is true” (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2005. 18).6
The most interesting texts dealing with this Golden Rule are theological in nature and investigate the nature of what were called “voluntary signs” (signa voluntaria). A paradigmatic example of voluntary signs is the sacraments. As it has been shown by Irène Rosier-Catach, the Augustinian definition of a sac-rament as an efficacious sign gave rise to intense debates on the nature of the sacraments.7 Questions were raised about what kind of causation is at work in a sacrament. In Ockham’s time, two main theories were in competition. The defenders of “physical causality” claim that there is a power (virtus) in the sac-rament that is a real quality that acts on the soul so that it can receive grace.8 By contrast, the defenders of “covenantal theology” argue that a sacrament is not a cause properly speaking, but a relation to God, who is the sole cause of grace.
Defenders of covenantal theology appeal to analogies between the sacraments and the voluntary signs by means of which human beings enter into covenants, thereby reinforcing the aged-old inclination to see in the sacraments part of what Saint Paul called the “economy of grace” (Eph 1:10).9
The defenders of covenantal theology, following William of Auvergne, in-clude general accounts of relations in their theology of the sacraments. Their aim is to prove that some real relations do not add anything to the ontology, although they exist in some sense, since they have effects on social exchang-es (Rosier-Catach 2004. 160). For instance, in the short quexchang-estion “Quid ponat ius?”, which opens his theology of the sacraments, Peter John Olivi deals with the ontology of relations in order to answer questions about the ontological im-port of words expressing social obligations. He claims that social relations are real but do not add anything to the ontology, if “ontology” is understood in the
6 Recent studies have shown that the Truth-maker Principle can be traced back to chapter 12 of the Categories 14b16–22. The reception of Aristotle’s principle in early modern scholas-ticism has been studied by Brian Embry 2015, but the medieval background remains under-investigated.
7 My summary here is based on Rosier-Catach’s seminal research on this topic. See esp.
Rosier-Catach 2004.
8 For a presentation of this theory, see Rosier-Catach 2004. 125.
9 For this influential metaphor, see Todeschini 1994. For canonical texts, see John Duns Scotus, Rep. Par. IV, d. 1, q. 2, §2 (1639. 564). See also John Duns Scotus, Ord. IV, d. 1, pars 2, q. 1, nn. 189–192 (2008. 65–67).
Quinean sense – which is the one that I adopt in this paper – i.e., as the set of all existing things, that is, of our ontological commitments (cf. Quine 1948).10
By contrast, John Duns Scotus defends an extreme realist position on all kinds of relations. To defend his account, he appeals to a principle that is quite close to the Truth-maker Principle as it is used today:
There is never a passage (transitus) from one contradictory to the other without a change (mutatio): for if there were no change in something, there would be no reason why one contradictory can be true now rather than the other.11
In other words, there is no change in truth value without a change in the ontol-ogy. For example, if I am on the left of a column, I am the bearer of a relation that accounts for this fact and is really distinct from me. If I change my position and go to the right of the column, then the former relation is destroyed and a new one is produced, which accounts for the fact that I am now on the right of the column.
Ockham’s famous criticism of Scotus’s theory of relations includes a new for-mulation of the Golden Rule of Ontology. It is the following:
It is impossible that contradictories be successively true about the same thing unless [1] because of the locomotion of something, or [2] because of the passage of time, or [3] because of the production or destruction of something.12
The rule is divided into three different cases. I will present them in a different order than Ockham, from the more ontologically loaded to the less ontological-ly loaded. First, a change in truth value can be accounted for by means of the production or the destruction of something, i.e., by the addition or the removal of a thing in the ontology. For instance, a white thing can become similar to another white thing that is newly produced. Similarity does not add anything to the ontology, but the production of a second thing similar to the first does (Rep. II, q. 2; 1981. 38–39). Second, a change in the truth value of a proposition about a local motion – for example, “This mobile thing is moved by that mov-er,” a mobile thing being designated – does not presuppose that local motion is a thing really distinct from the mobile thing: a mere change in spatial relations
10 For Olivi’s text, see note 20.
11 John Duns Scotus, Ord. I, d. 30, qq. 1–2, n. 41 (1963. 186–187). For Ockham’s version of Scotus’s rule, see William of Ockham, Ord., d. 30, q. 1 (2000. 282. ll. 6–7).
12 William of Ockham, Ord. I, d. 30, q. 4 (2000. 369. ll. 7–9), trans. Henninger 1989. 128–
129 (with a commentary on this text). For an even more complete formulation, see Ord., d.
30, q. 2 (2000. 328).
is enough (Quodl. I, q. 5; 1980. 33. ll. 107–110).13 In this case, there is no change in the ontology.
What interests me in this paper is the third case, which deals with the passage of time. Following Ockham’s reductionist move, it can only be analogous to the second case, that of local motion, rather than to the first case. The mere passage of time does not imply any change in the ontology. But, to my knowledge, Ock-ham does not spend much time explaining the function of the passage of time in his version of the Golden Rule of Ontology, while he takes great care, in his various commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics, to explain his reductionist analysis of the ontological status of local motion. The hypothesis that I want to defend is that the clause of the passage of time accounts for the ontology of social objects, which are relational in nature. I base my reading on an understudied aspect of the famous debate between Ockham and Walter Chatton on Ockham’s princi-ple of parsimony.
Chatton is famous for his formulation of an opposite principle, which has of-ten been called the “anti-razor.”14 The anti-razor is a methodological precept that Chatton uses against Ockham in order to defend anti-reductionist theses on the ontological status of motion and more generally of relations. It is the following:
An affirmative proposition, when it is made true [verificatur], is made true only by things: if three things do not suffice to make it true, a fourth has to be posited, and so on.15
Scholars have remarked that Chatton’s principle is a typical example of a princi-ple of explanatory sufficiency.16 Indeed, it is first and foremost a rule that helps to determine the conditions necessary for the truth of singular affirmative prop-ositions in the present tense. It is a general answer to the question: How is one to decide the number of things to be stipulated in order to account for the truth of an affirmative proposition in the present tense? According to Chatton’s prin-ciple, one has to determine how many things are required case by case. It is thus an inductive rule of reasoning concerning the ontological commitment of our propositions.17
13 See also Ord. I, d. 30, q. 1 (2000. 313).
14 Ockham gives several formulations of the principle of parsimony. The most famous is
“Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora.” For an analysis of these different formu-lations, see Roques 2014. Part of this section is a summary of the second part of this paper, which also includes the relevant texts and literature. For Chatton’s use of the anti-razor in his defence of his realist view on the categories, see Pelletier 2016.
15 Walter Chatton, Rep. I, d. 30, q. 1, a. 4 (2002. 237. ll. 57–59). For a more detailed formu-lation, see Lect. I, d. 3, q. 1, a. 1 (2008. 2. ll. 14–20).
16 As argued by Maurer. See Maurer 1990. 432–434.
17 For an extensive study on Chatton’s anti-razor, see Keele 2002.
Ockham responds that Chatton’s principle is not necessarily false but is at least poorly interpreted, because what suffices to make a proposition true can be different at different times (Quodl. I, q. 5; 1980. 32. ll. 71–74). Ockham proposes a new formulation of the principle of parsimony that complements his reply. It is the following:
When a proposition is made true by things, if two things are sufficient for its truth, then it is superfluous to posit a third.18
When looking for the truth conditions of a proposition, one has to look for suffi-cient, not necessary conditions, because the truth conditions of propositions can change with time. What Ockham means by this cryptic answer becomes clearer when one examines the case from which he draws his reply. The question is about the ontological status of local motion: in order to account for local motion, is it necessary to posit as an entity the motion itself, in addition to the places in which the thing in motion is successively located and the moving thing itself?
Chatton takes the example of the proposition “This – a thing that moves being designated – is moved by this agent.” He explains that the agent that causes the motion and the mobile thing are not sufficient to account for the truth of this proposition, since it might happen that God acts in place of the agent when the mobile thing is moving. Consequently, a third thing has to be posited, namely, the ontological trace of the causal process at the origin of the motion in the mobile, which in Chatton’s view is a relational thing which he calls “passive motion” (Rep. II, d. 2, q. 1; 2004. 87. l. 26–88, l. 4).
Ockham disagrees with Chatton’s analysis. He does not believe that a rela-tional thing has to be posited in order to account for the truth conditions of the
Ockham disagrees with Chatton’s analysis. He does not believe that a rela-tional thing has to be posited in order to account for the truth conditions of the