disjunction of these analogue instances would. For example, consider that the salient
relation between the kind of healthiness enjoyed by an animal and the kind of
healthiness enjoyed by that animal’s heart is not identical with the salient relation
between the kind of healthiness enjoyed by an animal and the kind of healthiness
enjoyed by that animal’s urine. Menn (2005: 165–6), from whom these examples are
drawn, follows Suárez in calling the former relation“an analogy of intrinsic denom-
ination”and the latter relation“an analogy of extrinsic denomination.”Perhaps
analogous properties whose analogue instances are related wholly via analogies of
intrinsic denomination enjoy more naturalness than properties whose analogue
instances are related via both analogies of intrinsic and extrinsic denomination, at
least on the assumption that there is a one–one function between the analogue
instances of each analogous property that preserves degrees of naturalness. This is
a hypothesis I am open to since the former properties are plausibly more unified than
the latter. In general, it would be profitable to recapitulate the various forms of
analogy recognized in the medieval tradition in terms of the naturalness framework
articulated here.
My notion of an analogous property is metaphysical rather than semantic.
A property can be analogous and yet be the sole semantic value of a predicate—
and so in no semantic sense is that predicate less than univocal. Moreover, an
analogous property might be the sole semantic value of a predicate in a language
in which no terms have as their semantic values the analogue instances of this
property.^9 The relation between an analogous property and its analogue instances
is not mediated by semantic considerations. Similarly, there needn’t be any articulate
structure in a mental state that represents an analogous property. From the perspec-
tive of the cognitive economy of the agent, a concept standing for an analogous
property could be a conceptual primitive. Even if there is only one concept of being,
rather than many closely related concepts, that which the concept is about might
be analogical.^10
For this reason, the friend of modes of being has nothing to fear from what we can
callthe neo-Quinean thesis, according to which (i) the meaning of“existence”in
ordinary English is fully captured by the existential quantifier offirst-order formal
logic and (ii) this meaning can be completely specified by saying which inferences
containing the quantifier are valid. Those inferences are the ones validated by
(^9) Compare with Vallicella (2002: 19–22), who also carefully distinguishes the metaphysical thesis that
there are modes of being from any semantic thesis about the linguistic vehicles that represent (or fail to
represent) them. 10
According to Amerini (2014: 328), Alexander of Alessandria held that that the concept of being
functions as a univocal concept although being is analogous, and that, although there are different ways of
existing, this doesn’t mean that there are different senses of“existing.”Schwartz (2012b: 8–9) notes that
Suárez distinguishes between a“formal concept”of being that is a unity from the“objective concept of
being,”which is that which the formal concept is about, and this objective concept is analogical; see also
Pereira (2007: 73–7, 118).