Domingo de Soto remarked that in the case where there are several people called Peter in the room, and we want to distinguish this Peter from that Peter we may speak of this or that Peter, but in the mind, where there are no equivocal concepts, the singular concept corresponding to a proper name cannot properly be further singularized, any more than it can be universalized.
Second, there are those analogical terms such as 'being' (ens) which are not equivocal, because only one concept or nature (ratio) seems to be involved, and which are not univocal either, because things participate this one ratio unequally, in a prior and a posterior way.
As they reflect concepts that change between individuals and over time, names may refer to many different concepts, making them equivocal identifiers.
Most insights which result from this first national test stress the need of more widely shared basic concepts and less equivocal results, thus asking for a closer interaction between experts, citizens and stakeholders and for a more context-based approach to objectives, indicators and data.
The nominalists held that so-called analogical terms were either metaphorical or were straightforwardly equivocal terms subordinated to two distinct concepts, but the Thomists were split.
We conjecture that this inconclusiveness of findings is due to an equivocal conceptualization and operationalization of the key concepts – product difficulty and product difficulty incongruity.
For instance, under the conceptual addition interpretation, 'water' in Oscar's mouth becomes equivocal: On some occasions it expresses the water concept, e.g., when Oscar expresses childhood memories.
According to the common interpretation of the opening passage of the Categories, equivocal terms are correlated with more than one concept and refer to a multiplicity of things sharing different natures, whereas univocal terms are correlated with only one concept and refer to a multiplicity of things sharing one and the same nature.
In turn, mental concepts are common in four ways only, corresponding to the first four ways of universality peculiar to spoken (and written) terms, since there are no universal concepts that correspond to demonstrative pronouns or equivocal terms as such (ibidem).
It is radically equivocal, since at every moment it is subordinated to a different concept.
