ABSTRACT
Generality for Ockham is but a matter of signification, and concepts are the prime bearers of it. In his 1994 book, Nominalisme, the French scholar Cyrille Michon has forcefully argued that Ockham's position on this point is ultimately unintelligible. This chapter explains what the problem is with concepts being labelled as signs in the Ockhamistic framework. It examines Ockham's definition of a sign in the Sum of Logic, and shows how it applies to concepts. The chapter explores the consistency of taking concepts to be signs in this precise sense with two central Ockhamistic tenets: conceptual atomism and nominalism itself. A number of interesting problems still remain about Ockham's treatment of concepts as signs. One of them is whether Ockham's semantical theory is best labelled as 'atomistic' or 'propositionalistic', given his technical definition of signum, a debate that went on not too long ago in the literature.
