In his commentary on the Categories, Paul explains that the direct and adequate objects of propositions, which make them true, are molecular things (res complexae) existing outside the soul.
But an adequate understanding of a proposition does not make that proposition more probable, so is not evidence for it.
An adequate understanding of a proposition is neither of these things.
Thus it is incorrect that, according to Paul, the significate with which the adequate significate of a proposition can be in fact identified is the one thing that, by being in a certain state, renders the propositio true.
As a consequence, the chief feature of Paul's theory of the complexe significabile is his claim that the adequate significate of a proposition is really identical-to and somehow (and more precisely, formally) distinct-from what is signifiable by the subject-term and/or the predicate-term alone (ibidem, p. 156).
The essence of this argument and many of Locke's other arguments against dispositional accounts of innate propositions is that such dispositional accounts do not provide an adequate criterion for distinguishing innate propositions from other propositions that the mind may come to discover.
Can a morally and intellectually responsible person ever have a moral duty to believe a proposition that lacks adequate evidence, a duty that outweighs the alleged Cliffordian duty of believing only those propositions that enjoy adequate support?
Suppose Clifford is abducted by very powerful and very smart extraterrestrials, which offer him a single chance of salvation for humankind that he acquire and maintain belief in a proposition that lacks adequate evidential support, otherwise the destruction of humankind will result.
Defining what size margin is adequate, however, is a thorny proposition and requires a case-by-case determination, admits van Belzen.
And from Clifford's Rule flows our duty to believe only those propositions that enjoy adequate evidential support.
