 Simple and personal supposition are sometimes grouped together as “formal supposition” (in contrast to material). Simple supposition is harder to characterize generally. A common description is to say it occurs when a term supposits for the universal or form which it signifies. However, not everyone believed that terms signified universals. (See the entry on the  Medieval Problem of Universals.)  So whereas William of Sherwood wrote “It is simple when a word supposits what it signifies for what it signifies” (tr. Kretzmann p.  107),[16]  and Walter Burley likewise: “supposition is simple when a common term or an aggregated singular term supposits for what it signifies” (tr. Spade p.  82),[17]  William of Ockham appears to characterize simple supposition quite differently: “Simple supposition occurs when a term supposits for an intention of the soul and is not functioning significatively” (tr. Loux p.  190).[18]  But in fact, the difference between them is not in their theories of supposition, but rather of signification. As we noted earlier, Ockham believes that a general term like ‘man’ signifies individual men like Plato and Socrates; Burley that it signifies a second substance (the universal), man. Burley appeals to the authority of Aristotle: “‘man’ is the name of a second substance; therefore, the term ‘man’ signifies a second substance. And it does not signify a second substance that is a genus. Therefore, it signifies a species” (tr. Spade p.  87).[19]  Ockham, however, dismissed real universals, and (at least in his later theory represented in Summa Logicae) believed the only universals were words, including words of the inner mental language, mental acts. So for him, a spoken or written term has simple supposition when it stands non-significatively for the mental act to which it is subordinated by the conventions of signification, that is, the mental act abstracted from those things which the word conventionally signifies.