UNIVOCAL

 Dictionary entry overview: What does univocal mean? 

• UNIVOCAL (adjective)
  The adjective UNIVOCAL has 1 sense:

1. admitting of no doubt or misunderstanding; having only one meaning or interpretation and

leading to only one conclusion

  Familiarity information: UNIVOCAL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNIVOCAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Admitting of no doubt or misunderstanding; having only one meaning or interpretation and

leading to only one conclusion

Synonyms:

unequivocal; univocal; unambiguous

Context examples:

unequivocal evidence / took an unequivocal position / an unequivocal success / an unequivocal

promise / an unequivocal (or univocal) statement

Similar:

absolute; conclusive (expressing finality with no implication of possible change)

straightforward (free from ambiguity)

unquestionable (not open to question)

Also:

unambiguous (having or exhibiting a single clearly defined meaning)

Universal statements

Categorical statements are statements that talk about whole categories of objects or people.
Furniture, chairs, birds, trees, red things, and cities that begin with the letter T are all examples of
categories.

There are two types of categorical statements:

 Universal statements: These are statements that tell you something about an entire
category. Here’s an example of a universal statement:

All dogs are loyal

This statement relates two categories and tells you that everything in the category of dogs
is also in the category of loyal things. You can consider this a universal statement
because it tells you that loyalty is a universal quality of dogs.

 Particular statements: These are statements that tell you about the existence of at least
one example within a category. Here’s an example of a particular statement:

Some bears are dangerous

This statement tells you that at least one item in the category of bears is also in the
category of dangerous things. This statement is considered a particular statement because
it tells you that at least one particular bear is dangerous.

Singular terms

For Aristotle, the distinction between singular and universal is a fundamental metaphysical one,
and not merely grammatical. A singular term for Aristotle is that which is of such a nature as to
be predicated of only one thing, thus "Callias". (De Int. 7). It is not predicable of more than one
thing: "Socrates is not predicable of more than one subject, and therefore we do not say every
Socrates as we say every man". (Metaphysics D 9, 1018 a4). It may feature as a grammatical
predicate, as in the sentence "the person coming this way is Callias". But it is still a logical
subject.

He contrasts it with "universal" (katholou - "of a whole"). Universal terms are the basic materials
of Aristotle's logic, propositions containing singular terms do not form part of it at all. They are
mentioned briefly in the De Interpretatione. Afterwards, in the chapters of the Prior Analytics
where Aristotle methodically sets out his theory of the syllogism, they are entirely ignored.

The reason for this omission is clear. The essential feature of term logic is that, of the four terms
in the two premises, one must occur twice. Thus

All Greeks are men

All men are mortal.

What is subject in one premise, must be predicate in the other, and so it is necessary to eliminate
from the logic any terms which cannot function both as subject and predicate. Singular terms do
not function this way, so they are omitted from Aristotle's syllogistic.

In later versions of the syllogistic, singular terms were treated as universals. See for example
(where it is clearly stated as received opinion) Part 2, chapter 3, of the Port-Royal Logic. Thus

All men are mortals

All Socrates are men

All Socrates are mortals

This is clearly awkward, and is a weakness exploited by Frege in his devastating attack on the
system (from which, ultimately, it never recovered). See concept and object.

A singular statement is any simple statement with a singular term as the subject, and which
ascribes some property to the referent of the singular term. The following statements are all
singular statements:

 The tallest man in the world is over two meters tall.

 That insect on the window is a grasshoper.
 Tom Cruise is an actor.
 2 is my lucky number.

Names in PL are used to symbolize singular terms. A name is any non-italized letter such as "a",
"b", "c". A name is said to refer to some particular object, and the object to which the name
refers is called its referent (sometimes also called the extension of the name). For example, the
name "Albert Einstein" refers to a famous scientist.

In PL we assume that every name succeeds in referring to some existing object. This is certainly
not true in natural languages. For example, the singular term "Santa Claus" presumably does not
refer to any actual person. Such singular terms which fail to refer to anything real are said to be
empty. In the branch of formal logic known as free logic, there is no assumption that all names
refer, but we shall not discuss that approach here.