HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION Although many of the details of the development of logic in the Middle Ages remain to be filled in, it is well known that between ...

"For riding is required a horse"--"I promise you a horse"--Chimeras and imaginary objects--Theories of the proposition--The structure of mental language--Mental language and the unity of propositions--"Do words signify ideas or things?"--Locke on language--The doctrine of exponibilia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--Multiple quantification and the use of special quantifiers in early sixteenth century logic--Thomas Bricot(d. 1516) and the Liar paradox--Will Socrates cross the bridge?

J'examine plusieurs sources selon lesquelles Swyneshed (malgré les prétentions d'Angel D'Ors dans ses articles récents) donne une nova responsio en partie sous forme de la règle « On peut nier une proposition conjonctive après avoir concédé ses deux parties. » Je montre que cette nova responsio est liée à un rejet de la règle « Chaque proposition qui suit de l'ensemble de propositions déjà concédées doit être concédée », et j'attribue ce rejet à une théorie selon laquelle une inférence se (...) base sur le rapport logique entre seulement deux propositions. I examine a number of sources according to which Swyneshed (despite the claims made by Angel D'Ors in his recent articles) does give a nova responsio partly in the form of the rule « One can deny a conjunction whose conjuncts have already been granted. » I show that this nova responsio is linked to a rejection of the rule « Every proposition following from a set of propositions which have already been granted must be granted », and I attribute this rejection to a theory whereby an inference is based on the logical relations between just two propositions. (shrink)

British logic teaching in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was provided in England by Oxford and Cambridge, both medieval foundations, and in Scotland by the universities of St Andrews and A...

Quand on parle d'une substance et de ses accidents, peut-on dire que tous deux sont des etants au meme sens? Quand on parle de Dieu et de ses creatures, peut-on dire que tous les deux sont bons ou justes au meme sens? Quand on parle d'une potion et d'un animal, peut-on dire que tous les deux sont sains au meme sens? Telles sont les problematiques metaphysiques, theologiques et semantiques que la notion d'analogie developpee par les penseurs du Moyen Age cherche (...) a affronter. Les quatre etudes, issues des Conferences Pierre Abelard presentees a l'Universite de Paris-IV Sorbonne en 2004, examinent les modes complexes selon lesquels ces trois problematiques se sont croisees et les questionnements nouveaux auxquels elles ont donne lieu pendant plus de quatre siecles. L'auteur interprete la pensee de Thomas d'Aquin dans le contexte qui en a permis l'emergence, et analyse les critiques qui ont suivi, ainsi que les reponses nouvelles qui ont ete avancees. Ce faisant, elle jette une lumiere nouvelle sur les rapports entre l'Aquinate et le Cardinal Cajetan, et sur l'importance de la semantique durant la periode medievale. (shrink)

I examine the treatment of metaphor by medieval logicians and how it stemmed from their reception of classical texts in logic, grammar, and rhetoric. I consider the relation of the word 'metaphor' to the notions of translatio and transumptio, and show that it is not always synonymous with these. I also show that in the context of commentaries on the Sophistical Refutations metaphor was subsumed under equivocation. In turn, it was linked with the notion of analogy not so much in (...) the Greek sense of a similarity between two proportions or relations as in the new medieval sense of being said secundum prius et posterius. Whether or not analogy could be reduced to metaphor, or the reverse, depended on the controversial issue of the number of acts of imposition needed to produce an equivocal term. A spectrum of views is canvassed, including those found in the logic commentaries of John Duns Scotus. (shrink)

This paper considers the nature of the changes that took place in logic teaching at the University of Oxford from the beginning of the sixteenth century, when students attended university lectures on Aristotle’s texts as well as studying short works dealing with specifically medieval developments, to the beginning of the eighteenth century when teaching was centred in the colleges, the medieval developments had largely disappeared, and manuals summarizing Aristotelian logic were used. The paper also considers the reasons for these changes, (...) including changes in English society, and the effect of humanism and the more scholarly Aristotelianism that it produced. (shrink)

An awareness of the wide scope of medieval logic and the role it played in university education at all levels, together with the way it was used in writings on both science and theology, is crucial for the historian of medieval thought. The growth of this awareness since the mid-twentieth century is shown by the ongoing expansion of editorial work, together with the discussion of the logic actually found in such prominent authors as Aquinas and Scotus. It has gone hand (...) in hand with the use of developments in modern logic. First came the realization that medieval logic extended beyond basic Aristotelian syllogistic, and could be related to modern developments in propositional and quantificational logic in... (shrink)

L'ed. delle Obligationes si basa su quattro mss.: Praha, Knihovni Metropolitni Kapituly, M.CXLV ; Oxford, New College, E 289 ; Praha, Státní Knihóvna CSR, VIII E 11 ; Salamanca, Biblioteca de la Universidad, 2358 . Nell'introduzione l'A. prende in esame la tradizione manoscritta delle opere di Giovanni Tarteys, fornendo anche una breve notizia biografica di questo magister artium attivo ad Oxford tra la fine del Trecento e gli inizi del Quattrocento. Segue un'analisi comparata del De Obligationibus di Giovanni con le (...) trattazioni analoghe di altri maestri, tra i quali Rodolfo Strode, Gualterio Burley, Paolo da Venezia e Giovanni Wyclif. Discussi infine i criteri di edizione. (shrink)

Paul Spade has attacked the theory of the modes of personal supposition as found in Ockham and Buridan, partly on the grounds that the details of the theory are incompatible with the equivalence between propositions and their descended forms which is implied by the appeal to suppositional descent and ascent. I trace the development of the doctrines of ascent and descent from the mid-fourteenth century to the early sixteenth century, and I investigate Domingo de Soto’s elaborate account of how descent (...) and ascent actually worked. I show that although Soto himself shared some of Spade’s doubts, including those about the use of merely confused supposition, he had a way of reducing at least some propositions containing terms with such supposition to equivalent disjunctions and conjunctions of singular propositions. Moreover, he gave explicit instructions on how to avoid the supposed problem of O-propositions. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 372 - 390 This paper investigates a series of Oxford _Obligationes_ texts, all of which can be associated with Richard Billingham. My study is based on eleven of the surviving manuscripts and two early printed texts. I focus on one aspect of their discussion, namely the rule for granting the initial _positum_ of an obligational disputation of the type called _positio_, and the six restrictions that could be placed on that rule. I explain (...) these restrictions with reference to several sophismata that were meant to illustrate the problems that the restrictions were intended to solve, and in particular, I discuss the fifth restriction ‘not inconsistent with the _positum_’. I also shed light on the final restriction, which has not always been well understood, namely the restriction ‘wherever there is no _obligatio_ relevant to the _positum_’. (shrink)

This paper is a case study of how a few short lines in two of Aristotle’s logical works were read in the thirteenth century. I shall begin with a quick look at Aristotle’s own remarks about equivocation in the Categories and the Sophistical Refutations, as they were transmitted to the West by Boethius’s translations. I shall continue with an analysis of the divisions of equivocation and analogy to be found in an anonymous commentary, on the Sophistical Refutations written in Paris (...) between 1270 and 1280. I have chosen this author’s work to focus on, because it offers a remarkably full account which brings together the elements found in many other logical works from the second half of the thirteenth century. In the course of my analysis I shall attempt to show the part played by four different sources: the Greek commentators of late antiquity; the new translations of Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics; the reception of Arabic works, particularly the commentaries of Averroes; and new grammatical doctrines, notably that of modi significandi. At the same time, I hope to throw some light on the development of the doctrine of analogy as it was understood by late thirteenth-century logicians. (shrink)

Geoffrey of Aspall, who died in 1287 and was master of Arts by 1262, was active at Oxford in the years 1255 to1265. He wrote commentaries on several Aristotelian works, and was certainly a major protagonist of the introduction of Aristotelian learning to Oxford. In particular, he produced a very extensive question-style commentary on Aristotle's Physics, which contains important discussions of the fundamental topics of Aristotle's natural philosophy, like matter, form, natural agency, causes, change, the infinite and the continuum, time, (...) the eternity of the world, self-movers. Aspall's Physics commentary shows the influence of Grosseteste's metaphysics of light and of Roger Bacon's view on the physical role of intentional species, as well as a strong inclination to ontological realism.Aspall's commentary on Aristotle's Physics is edited here in two volumes, which together form the first critical edition of this work. The Latin text is accompanied by a facing English translation, and the text is extensively cross-referenced and provided with scholarly apparatus. The detailed introduction guides the reader through the intricacies of the textual transmission of Aspall's commentary, and also presents the main topics discussed in this commentary. The appendix to the edition makes available alternative versions of some sections of Aspall's commentary. (shrink)

Peter Abelard is one of the best-known figures of mediæval intellectual history, if only because of the disastrous love affair with Heloise which ended in his castration by thugs in the pay of Heloise’s outraged uncle. He is also one of the most accessible, by virtue of his letters to Heloise and his lively account of his own life in the Historia calamitatum. However, while specialists have paid detailed attention to his ethics and to his logic, including his discussion of (...) the problem of universals, little has been written that presents an overview of his thought to a wider audience. In this book, John Marenbon sets out to do two things: to give us a general view of Abelard’s life and writings, and to present analyses of Abelard’s ontology, epistemology, and semantics, and of his ethical theory, particularly as it grows out of his theology. Marenbon hopes to show that Abelard was not merely a gifted logician and critic of poor arguments wherever they may be found, but a constructive philosopher in his own right. (shrink)

Theiones is a work in medieval logic from the second half of the 13th century. Clearly a product of the British university culture and much cited, quoted and imitated, it is attributed in two manuscripts to 'Master Richard the Sophist'. This Richard is referred to by other philosophers and logicians as 'The Master of Abstractions' - an honorific title which indicates that his work was a standard textbook. The Abstractiones is a collection of sophismata, or logical puzzles of increasing complexity (...) and difficulty which have been gathered under logical operators like 'all'. Each sophisma is introduced by a proposition that appears to be both provably true and provably false, like 'God knows whatever he knew'. The Master determines the truth or falsity of the proposition and analyses the defects of the arguments that have been offered by detecting logical fallacies, equivocal expressions and the like. The work as we have it is clearly the result of a process of development, modification, and interpolation, probably extending over at least a generation. Although there came to be works that imitated the Abstractions and followed some of its plan and style, these are 'descendants,' rather than variations.The Abstractions gives us a better sense than does an independent and original work of medieval logic like William of Ockham's Summa Totius Logicae of how instruction in techniques of argumentation and reasoning, often of a fairly sophisticated sort, was carried on in British universities in the latter part of the 13th century and well into the 14th century. (shrink)

Testimony is an invaluable source of knowledge. We rely on the reports of those around us for everything from the ingredients in our food and medicine to the identity of our family members. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the epistemology of testimony. Despite the multitude of views offered, a single thesis is nearly universally accepted: testimonial knowledge is acquired through the process of transmission from speaker to hearer. In this book, Jennifer Lackey shows that this (...) thesis is false and, hence, that the literature on testimony has been shaped at its core by a view that is fundamentally misguided. She then defends a detailed alternative to this conception of testimony: whereas the views currently dominant focus on the epistemic status of what speakers believe, Lackey advances a theory that instead centers on what speakers say. The upshot is that, strictly speaking, we do not learn from one another's beliefs - we learn from one another's words. Once this shift in focus is in place, Lackey goes on to argue that, though positive reasons are necessary for testimonial knowledge, testimony itself is an irreducible epistemic source. This leads to the development of a theory that gives proper credence to testimony's epistemologically dual nature: both the speaker and the hearer must make a positive epistemic contribution to testimonial knowledge. The resulting view not only reveals that testimony has the capacity to generate knowledge, but it also gives appropriate weight to our nature as both socially indebted and individually rational creatures. The approach found in this book will, then, represent a radical departure from the views currently dominating the epistemology of testimony, and thus is intended to reshape our understanding of the deep and ubiquitous reliance we have on the testimony of those around us. (shrink)

How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old. These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. (...) Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today. This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world. (shrink)

The principle that a sentence should be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence remains at the centre of penal practice and scholarly debate. This volume explores highly topical aspects of proportionality theory that require examination and further analysis. von Hirsch and Ashworth explore the relevance of the principle of proportionality to the sentencing of young offenders, the possible reasons for departing from the principle when sentencing dangerous offenders, and the application of the principle to socially deprived offenders. They (...) examine the claim that the principle tends to be associated with greater severity in sentencing, and explore the relevance of penance and of restorative justice to proportionality theory. Their examination of arguments and counter-arguments culminates in a re-statement of the main criteria for proportionate sentencing.The authors are well known for their previous writings on proportionality theory, and this volume broadens the theory to deal with important contemporary issues in crime and punishment. (shrink)

Why do we find agents less blameworthy when they face mitigating circumstances, and what does this show about philosophical theories of moral responsibility? We present novel evidence that the tendency to mitigate the blameworthiness of agents is driven both by the perception that they are less normatively competent—in particular, less able to know that what they are doing is wrong—and by the perception that their behavior is less attributable to their deep selves. Consequently, we argue that philosophers cannot rely on (...) the case strategy to support the Normative Competence theory of moral responsibility over the Deep Self theory. However, we also outline ways in which further empirical and philosophical work would shift the debate, by showing that there is a significant departure between ordinary concepts and corresponding philosophical concepts, or by focusing on a different type of coherence with ordinary judgments. (shrink)

Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. Devitt ([2010]) replies that, in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability and grammaticality, we misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, and fail to see how our empirical results can be squared with his position. We reply in this note. Inter alia we argue that Devitt's focus (...) on grammaticality intuitions, rather than acceptability intuitions, distances his discussion from actual linguistic practice. We close by questioning a demand that drives his discussion—viz., that, for linguistic intuitions to supply evidence for linguistic theorizing, a better account of why they are evidence is required. (shrink)