This essay considers Duns Scotus’s arguments against the so-called semantic analogy—the view according to which a term can signify two or more things according to relations of priority and posteriority. It argues that this view was commonly adopted in Paris but was rejected by a group of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century English thinkers, which included Duns Scotus. Since supporters of semantic analogy held that ‘being’ was the foremost example of a term signifying according to priority and posteriority, the implications of this debate on metaphysics are profound. This essay's conclusion is that Duns Scotus’s rejection of semantic analogy should be considered as preliminary to his famous claim that being is a univocal concept.

This chapter studies Locke’s critique of scholastic language, but since this “learned gibberish” is, for Locke, only one form of insignificant speech, the chapter then proceeds to discuss his views about the requirements for significant speech and the remedies proposed in case these requirements are not met. Locke’s answer contains elements that, at first sight, cannot be reconciled with each other so easily: his linguistic thesis according to which words as arbitrary signs are imposed by the mind on its ideas has a mentalistic and even solipsistic ring to it, yet communication is a social activity, governed by rules, customs, and conventions. The chapter therefore ends by looking in more detail at the social dimension of language to see how the social world shapes our apparently private minds. It concludes that for Locke the mind is a social entity, embedded in social and linguistic practices that shape our views of the world and give expression to them. The social world is built on the ideas we receive and construct, and common linguistic usage, for all its imperfections, is essential in framing and conveying these ideas.

This chapter examines Cassirer's view on contemporary science. It revisits Cassirer's lesser-known work Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics and argues that it harbors a significantly new stage of his philosophy of physical science. On the one hand, this work presents the quantum formalism as a limiting pole of the Bedeutungsfunktion, the highest mode of symbolic formation according to Cassirer’s “phenomenology of cognition.” Inspired by Paul Dirac, Cassirer understands quantum mechanics as a symbolic calculus for deriving probabilistic predictions of measurement outcomes without regard to underlying wave or particle “images” – or, as an exemplar of abstract symbolic thought. On the other hand, Cassirer recognizes the philosophical significance of the use of group theory in quantum mechanics as advancing a purely structural concept of object in physics. Hence, Ryckman reveals that Cassirer drew epistemological consequences from the symbolic character of contemporary physical theory that retain relevance for philosophy of science today.

Jean’s Roman de la Rose is characterised by its intense interest in language, signification, and representation. Several elements of Jean’s linguistic speculation resonate with academic debates among contemporary grammarians and logicians at the University of Paris. The following developments appear to have had a particularly important impact upon Jean’s poem: the rapid rise of modistic grammar in the late 1260s; theories of “improper” expression; debates over the nature and stability of imposition; and the related debate over the problem of “empty reference”. Jean’s reflection on language, metaphor, and reference bears a striking affinity to the theories of signification formulated by intentionalist grammarians, particularly the controversial Roger Bacon. Following Bacon, Jean directly critiques a number of arguments advanced by the first-generation modistae or speculative grammarians, and finally reveals the basic premises of modistic grammar as a whole to be untenable. Elaborating the suggestions of intentionalist grammarians, Jean emphasises the contextual, fluctuating nature of language: signification itself is revealed to be a fundamentally interpretive, inferential process that eludes regulation. I suggest that rather than simply adopting Baconian ideas about language and signification, Jean employs the Rose as a testing ground to explore the extreme consequences and implications of Bacon’s unusual language theory.