Suppositio personalis
Suppositio personalis
The use of a common noun, or class name, to stand for a particular member of the class — “Homo currit.” Contemporary logical usage would supply, in such a case, either a description (corresponding in English to the definite article the) or an existential quantifier (corresponding to the indefinite article a).
Suppositio personalis confusa (opposed to the preceding as suppositio personalis determinata) was further ascribed to a common noun used for the subject or predicate of a universal affirmative proposition. The relation of this to suppositio naturalis and suppositio simplex is not clear, and not uniform among different writers. — A.C.