ABSTRACT
This chapter elucidates Ockham's notion of subordination. It requires a resolutely externalistic conception of the meanings of words, of the sort Hilary Putnam's name has been associated with in contemporary philosophy. The chapter considers how subordination understood fits with Ockham's nominalism, and argues that Ockham's best theory on this matter opens the way for the acceptance of 'reverse subordination': a direct semantical dependency of certain mental units upon their linguistic counterparts. It then presents the case of singular terms. Having decided to count concepts as signs, Ockham clearly realized that it was preferable for him to use some other verb than 'to signify' for the connection of words to concepts. If reverse subordination is possible and fruitful in the case of proper names, so will it be for general terms, whether absolute or connotative. Reverse subordination is added to the picture, as Ockham had once proposed, externalism extends to thought itself, at least partially.
