ABSTRACT
Nominal definitions, contrary to what Paul Spade and others had thought, are not meant by Ockham to reveal in general how connotative terms are mentally constructed out of more basic conceptual units. They are tools, instead, for the elucidation of the ontological import of such terms, and this role can be fulfilled quite independently of how the connotative names are acquired. The starting point will be provided by Paul Spade's stimulating formulation of the problem. The basic idea for sorting out the Ockhamistic answers to Spade's questions is that the Venerabilis Inceptor accepts, in a variety of cases, an intuitive apprehension of ordered n-tuples, which, given the way our mind is built, triggers the formation of simple connotative concepts. The chapter explores whether Ockham's theory of concepts remains or not, in the end, a variety of the so-called Classical View, according to which the vast majority of concepts are present in the mind in the guise of complex definitions.
