A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the principles and aims of language through univocal and analogical predication.
What is the meaning or the significance of a word? This question may operate on two levels: first, concerning a specific word’s meaning—“tree” or “justice”, “fruit” or “truth”; or, second, concerning the relationship between meaning in general and words in general. For answers to both questions, the notion of convention seems rather important. Why does English have “tree” and not “arbre” (French) or “drzewo” (Polish)? Why “fruit” and not “Obst” (German) or “frutta” (Italian)?
There are issues of words’ history, here—different people having developed their languages in geographical and social isolation from one another, and having both different customs and making different choices about how to signify this or that thing or idea—but also this points to something deeper and more fundamental about human language: the acts by which we come to accept and use words, which acts are universal and transhistorical. Your parents taught you the word “tree” in likely the same manner as your great-great-great-ancestors taught their children the word “tréu”. First by pointing at trees and saying the word. Second, by distinguishing the parts—branches, leaves, trunk. Third, by talking about the tree; putting that word together with many others.
It can seem, therefore, that we learn the meanings of words through a process of making them ever-more-precise. When we look at a dictionary, this seems to be the aim of its definitions. That is, although there may be multiple definitions—sometimes quite different from another—we see an effort to distinguish clearly and to prioritize those definitions. No doubt, this provides a certain clarity…
…but does that clarity come at a cost?
The Act of Univocal Predication
While we learn the meanings of words often primarily through ostensive demonstrations—pointing at things or their representations while the word is repeated—we also learn that such demonstrations are not very definitive. In other words, we might mean something rather different by the same word. “Fruit” said of an orange and of a person does not signify the same thing. A class in geometry and being humiliated in a sport may both comprise “lessons”, but in rather different ways. “I caught a bug” might refer to a voluntary act of trapping an insect or an involuntary condition of becoming ill.
Why these ambiguities? In every use of language—every application of a word—we are saying something of another. In some contexts, we aim (for good reason) at applying those words with the utmost precision. If a doctor is treating a patient for epilepsy and prescribes “Lamisil” (an antifungal) rather than “Lamictal” (an anticonvulsant), the consequences may be dire. If I say that we need to shore up our crossbeams in a building with some metal, but do not specify which kind—steel—it may be done with aluminum; and the structure fails. Precision here—using terms to refer with great specificity—is needed. So too in many, many other cases, and not all directly immediately to the practical. Imprecision in translation has rendered philosophy, for instance, greatly muddled. Religious doctrine aims at clear and precise definitions, and its failure to render these has led to schisms and revolts.
Put otherwise, saying one thing of another—the act of predication—though a simple task to perform is often a difficult one to perform well. Imprecise use of words can have many negative consequences. Precise usage—what we call univocal predication—aims to avoid these consequences. Little wonder that we should see it as an ideal. But an ideal for what, exactly?
Analogical Relations
Where univocity applies a word with a specific, determinate, delineated, and precise meaning, equivocation applies a word to multiple meanings. The bark of the dog is fierce and the bark of the tree is rough. Sometimes, equivocations are not recognized for what they are: as when ChatGPT says that it is “thinking”, and someone believes this no different than his own thinking.
But between such equivocal predications and the strictly univocal lies a third manner of predication: what Aristotle called equivocation by design, or what is more commonly today called analogy. Here we find two meanings nevertheless related to one another, and not by mere stipulation or imposition on the part of the one naming the objects. The most commonly used examples are terms like “good”, which no doubt means something the same, and also something very different, when I say it of a human person and of a New York style pizza. We might say “hero” of someone who saved two children from drowning and again of someone who scores the gold-medal-winning goal in overtime. The same; but different.
So too, metaphors seem to be a kind of analogical predication. We might literally throw a book at someone—but when a judge does it to a defendant, he hurls no paper. Yet there remains something similar in the metaphorical application of all the punitive statutes and the chucking of a physical book—even if similar only in an indirect fashion. A face may not actually “beam”; but seeing it may nevertheless “illumine” our lives.
But is this metaphorical predication of use for anything other than poetic expression? Does it—or does analogical predication in general—have any place in political or scientific discourse? Is it mere linguistic decoration?
Or… if we think about it in terms of learning meanings of words—and of the things they signify—could it turn out that analogy and metaphor are the very sustenance of our minds?
Seeking (New) Understanding
What is language? How do we acquire it, use it, develop it, perfect it?
Join us this Wednesday (25 February 2026, from 5:45-7:15+ pm ET) for a rich philosophical inquiry into the nature of language, as we ask these and similar questions:
- Is univocity universally desirable? Is it the ideal of language?
- Or is univocal language only an ideal abstraction, suited to logical but not discourse as we actually live it?
- Does analogical signification or predication undermine clarity—or prevent it altogether? Does it seem too “loosey-goosey” to be of any use in structured conversations?