Jean Buridan

Scholastic philosophers sometimes told jokes. Some of these have been preserved in the texts. (And some are even funny!). -/- But beyond the general human interest in having fun, these thinkers had good theoretical reasons to value humor as well. This is because Aristotle himself claims that ready wit (eutrapelia) is a virtue. I published a paper on this in 2022 (“Scholastic Humor”), and since then colleagues have brought further examples to my attention. (Thanks, everyone!) -/- Here, I aim to (...) do three things: (i) catalog and present these jokes in Latin and facing English translation, (ii) give credit where it’s due, and (iii) expand the collection by encouraging researchers on Scholastic philosophy to find and submit examples of jokes from the texts. -/- The text is open access, and will be updated on a rolling basis. -/- So if you do find any such jokes, please email me at boaz [dot] schuman [at] kuleuven [dot] be. (shrink)

If an argument is valid, it is impossible for its premises to be true, and its conclusion false. But how should we understand these notions of truth and impossibility? Here, I present the answers given by John Buridan (ca. 1300-60), showing (i) how he understands truth in his anti-realist metaphysics, and (ii) how he understands modality in connection with causal powers. In short: if an argument exists and is valid, there does not exist a power capable of making the premises (...) true and, at the same time, making the conclusion false. (shrink)

Many things can be other than they are. Many other things cannot. But what are statements like these about? One answer to this question is that we are speaking of possible worlds: if something can be other than it is, then it actually is that way in some possible world. If something cannot be otherwise, it is not otherwise in any world. This answer is presently dominant in analytical philosophy of language and logic. What are these worlds? David Lewis famously (...) claimed that every world exists, just like ours does: there is no difference between the other worlds and ours. In contrast, the medieval thinker John Buridan understands modal logic in terms of objects and causal powers in this world: if something can be other than it is, then there is a causal power that can make it that way. If it cannot, then no causal power—not even God—can alter it, at least without destroying its nature. As we’ll see, the Lewisian plurality is not possible on Buridan’s account; accordingly, a basic tenet of classical theism is untenable on Lewis’s metaphysics. In short, either the Lewisian plurality is incoherent, or a core monotheistic tenet is impossible. (shrink)

Question 11 in Book 2 of John Buridan’s Questions on the Ten Books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, concerns whether the good can be well divided into the honorable, the useful, and the pleasurable. Aristotle, according to Buridan, claims that it can. But should we follow Aristotle in this respect? Buridan argues that we should not. In his view, it is rather the case that the good is extensionally equivalent with the honorable, as well as with the useful and with the (...) pleasurable. According to Buridan, however, the relevant division is still important for our understanding of goodness. Several centuries before Franz Brentano, A. C. Ewing, and others, Buridan proposes a fitting attitude account of goodness. In its most general sense, he says, the good refers to the desirable, that is, to that which is (or would be) a fitting object of desire. However, we can distinguish between three different ways in which things may be desirable: in themselves (in which case they are honorable), as means to some other good (in which case they are useful) and for ourselves (in which case they are pleasurable). On the substantive level, these always coincide. But that does not follow from the more fundamental account of the nature of the good, according to Buridan. -/- In this paper, we will critically examine both Buridan’s case for thinking that the good is extensionally equivalent with the honorable, the useful, and the pleasurable, as well as his fitting attitude account of goodness. (shrink)

A collection of new essays on the influential medieval philosopher John Buridan, written by leading Buridan scholars. The volume places Buridan in his philosophical context and examines his writings on topics including logic, modal logic, paradoxes, metaphysics, epistemology, theory of knowledge, moral philosophy, and natural philosophy.

The theory of modality Buridan develops is linked to different propositions. This paper addresses one of those propositions. The aim is to show that, if the operator of necessity included in it is ignored, the proposition allows deriving, within first-order predicate logic, a reduction sentence with the characteristics required in Carnap’s framework. Besides, the paper tries to argue that the mentioned operator of necessity can be understood not only in a technical sense (as modal logic does), but also in the (...) way a naïve individual (without modal logical training) could interpret it. These latter arguments are given from the theory of mental models. (shrink)

This paper studies the theories defended by John Buridan and Nicole Oresme on the presence of the soul in the body, with a special focus on the interpretation of the Augustinian principle – or ‘holenmeric’ principle – according to which the soul is in the whole body and is wholly present in every part of it. The first part of the paper introduces the different types of composition involved in the medieval discussions over the soul and its parts and shows (...) how different psychological theories prior to 1350 employed this typology of part/whole relations to clarify the soul’s presence in the body. The next part of the paper presents how the theories designed by John Buridan and Nicole Oresme were motivated by problems raised by these earlier accounts of the soul’s presence and undertook to solve them from the perspective of a reductionist conception of parthood. It is argued that, despite their common commitment to a reductionist stance, the solutions endorsed by Buridan and Oresme represent two opposite ways of applying a nominalist metaphysics of parts to psychological matters. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study of John Buridan's (c.1300-c.1361) conception of modalities. Modal concepts - concepts of necessity, possibility, impossibility, and contingency - describe the ways in which things could and could not be otherwise. These concepts became notoriously central for philosophical discourse in the late Middle Ages. In recent years, Buridan's philosophy and modal theory have received sophisticated scholarly attention. The main contribution of the dissertation is to show new ways in which Buridan's modal theory is embedded in its (...) contextual practical aims, as providing methods for argumentation schemes and analysis used in his natural philosophy and metaphysics. The dissertation is divided into two parts. In Part I, I conduct a detailed analysis of Buridan's account of varieties of modality in logical contexts. In Chapter 2, I show that Buridan distinguishes between broad and restricted forms of necessity in his treatment of logical consequence. Moreover, I show how the distinction between these forms of necessity underpins his modal syllogistics. I argue in Chapter 3 that Buridan acknowledged a variety of modal concepts that are distinguished as a matter of degree. I identify the main modal concepts Buridan's theory reckons with, show how he motivates the distinctions among them, and clarify how they are logically related. Part II turns to applications of Buridan's modal analyses to natural philosophy. In Chapter 4, I address the relationship between necessity with sempiternal truth in Buridan's commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo and compare Buridan's treatment of a key passage in that commentary with the treatment by John of Jandun (c. 1285-1328), a near-contemporary master of arts at Paris. Chapter 5 focuses on Buridan's account of the relationship between power-based concepts of modality and his modal semantics. Chapter 6 describes Buridan's account of contingency in the Physics, and sets Buridan's account of the relationship between forms of contingency and chance against the background of a received debate between Avicenna's and Averroes' views on the subject. Finally, in Chapter 7, I analyse some important applications of Buridan's distinction between logical and metaphysical possibility in physical contexts. I conclude this section by showing how Buridan considered merely conceivable possibilities useful in natural philosophy, and draw further conclusions for investigating the connections between logic and natural philosophy in the later Middle Ages. (shrink)

The resemblance of the theory of formal consequence first offered by the fourteenth-century logician John Buridan to that later offered by Alfred Tarski has long been remarked upon. But it has not yet been subjected to sustained analysis. In this paper, I provide just such an analysis. I begin by reviewing today’s classical understanding of formal consequence, then highlighting its differences from Tarski’s 1936 account. Following this, I introduce Buridan’s account, detailing its philosophical underpinnings, then its content. This then allows (...) us to separate those aspects of Tarski’s account representing genuine historical advances, unavailable to Buridan, from others merely differing from—and occasionally explicitly rejected by—Buridan’s account. (shrink)

This article revisits the manuscript tradition and the different redactions of John Buridan’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics. The aim of the article is threefold. First, it makes some corrections to the lists of manuscripts containing the third redaction and the final redaction of Buridan’s questions commentary on the Physics. Second, it argues that manuscript Zaragoza, Biblioteca Capitular de la Seo, cod. 15-61, ff. 1r-62v, contains a previously unknown version of the final redaction (together with the standard version from f. 62v (...) onwards). Third, to facilitate further study of the manuscripts of Buridan’s questions on the Physics and their mutual relations, appendices at the end of the article provide detailed tables of contents for the third redaction and the final redaction, as well as editions of selected questions from the Zaragoza manuscript, the third redaction of Buridan’s questions on the Physics, and the so-called Quaestiones breves. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between John Buridan’s natural philosophy and medicine. By examining some aspects of Buridan’s description of the human body related to sensation, nutrition, and generation—especially as they were framed in the so-called “controversy between philosophers and physicians”—this article shows that, though mostly faithful to Aristotelian doctrine, Buridan’s theoretical biology relies to a large extent on medical ideas.

Cet article propose la première édition critique complète des Questions de Jean Buridan sur la Physiognomonie pseudo-aristotélicienne. L’introduction situe le texte dans la tradition physiognomonique médiévale, tout en indiquant les relations de la physiognomonie à la sémiologie, à l’astrologie et à la philosophie morale. L’édition se fonde sur trois manuscrits principaux, et un quatrième pour l’une des deux versions de la première question. Suit l’édition d’une version d’authenticité douteuse, qui recoupe en partie la version éditée, et de trois questions sur (...) la physiognomonie extraites d’un texte qui semble composite, formé de questions de Buridan ou d’esprit buridanien. (shrink)

What is an occurrent mental state? According to a common scholastic answer such a state is at least in part a quality of the mind. When I newly think about a machiatto, say, my mind acquires a new quality. However, according to a view discussed by John Buridan (who rejects it) and John of Mirecourt (who is condemned in 1347 for considering it “plausible”), an occurrent mental state is not even in part a quality. After sketching some of the history (...) of this position, I will present two common arguments against it—the argument from change and the argument from agency. I will then turn to Mirecourt’s own position on the matter. Mirecourt, I show, in fact offers us two different theories about occurrent mental states. The first, which I call the conservation theory, accepts that mental states are in part qualities. However, a mental state is a quality together with an action on the side of the mind, namely, its conservation of a quality within itself. The second position, which I will call the pure-action theory, holds that an occurrent mental state is not even in part a quality; instead, it is an action the mind performs which is neither the production nor the conservation of a quality within itself. Mirecourt characterizes such pure actions as “modes” of the mind, and it is this position which is condemned in 1347. In the final section, I turn to an objection that both Buridan and Mirecourt raise against the pure-action theory: if accidental states of the mind are mere modes of the mind, then why not suppose that all accidents are mere modes of the subjects which they qualify? (shrink)

This book provides the Latin text and its annotated English translation of the question-commentary of John Buridan (ca. 1300-1360) on Aristotle’s “On the Soul”. Buridan was the most influential Parisian nominalist philosopher of his time. His work speaks across centuries to our modern concerns in the philosophy of mind. This volume completes the project of a volume published earlier in the same series: “Questions on the Soul by John Buridan and Others”. An appealing book for scholars of Aristotle and those (...) who are in the field of Medieval philosophy. (shrink)

Over the last several years, democratic citizens and theorists have been grappling with an upsurge in political commentary on the crisis and decline of democratic legitimacy around the world. Increasingly, theoretical attention is turning from the philosophical justification of ambitious moral ideals of democracy, to the interpretation of potentials within existing political practice for democratic renewal and repair. This review article examines three new books at the forefront of this theoretical turn towards engagement with the real-world political dynamics of democratic (...) crisis and revival: Open Democracy by Hélène Landemore; Hope for Democracy by John Gastil and Katherine Knobloch; and Mending Democracy by Carolyn Hendriks, Selen Ercan and John Boswell. It begins by surveying the new contributions of these books – highlighting the importance all attribute to creative political agency as a source of revival in democratic practice. It then discusses several questions left unresolved by these books – concerning the problem of democratic legitimacy, the normativity of democratic standards and the power dynamics undergirding democratic agency – which jointly mark out an important agenda for future theoretical work on pathways out of democratic crisis. (shrink)

It may come as a surprise to readers familiar with the life and work of the Arts Master that he discusses the Eucharist at all. As he likes to remind us, theological topics are generally out of his wheelhouse. Even so, in his Questions on the “Metaphysics” of Aristotle (QM) 4.6, Buridan takes the sacrament of the Eucharist as a key data point in his discussion of Aristotle’s Categories. In the Eucharist, the accidents of the bread and wine—their color, texture, (...) and so on—remain intact, but the underlying substance is transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. Accordingly, God can preserve accidents independent of their underlying substance. Therefore, for our part we can use accidental terms, like whiteness, without connoting any substances, like communion bread. Moreover, it follows that, contrary to Aristotle, substance and the accidental categories are not the most general genera. Instead, being (ens) is, as Buridan concludes. Here, I trace Buridan’s thought on the metaphysical and semantic matters of substance in light of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is for him not only a theological truth, but a metaphysical and semantic datum as well. I conclude by asking why Buridan did not take any and all questions about the Eucharist to be out of his ken. What does this tell us about his attitude toward theology? This paper also includes, as an appendix, the first ever English translation of the question under discussion (QM 4.6): “Does the term being (ens) signify substances and accidents by one single concept or notion?”. (shrink)

It may come as a surprise to readers familiar with the life and work of the Arts Master that he discusses the Eucharist at all. As he likes to remind us, theological topics are generally out of his wheelhouse. Even so, in his Questions on the “Metaphysics” of Aristotle (QM) 4.6, Buridan takes the sacrament of the Eucharist as a key data point in his discussion of Aristotle’s categories. In the Eucharist, the accidents of the bread and wine—their color, texture, (...) and so on—remain intact, but the underlying substance is transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. Accordingly, God can preserve accidents independent of their underlying substance. Therefore, for our part we can use abstract accidental terms, like whiteness, without connoting any substances, like communion bread. Moreover, it follows that, contrary to Aristotle, substance and the accidental categories are not the most general genera. Instead, being (ens) is, as Buridan concludes. Here, I trace Buridan’s thought on the metaphysical and semantic matters of substance in light of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is for him not only a theological truth, but a metaphysical and semantic datum as well. I conclude by asking why Buridan did not take any and all questions about the Eucharist to be out of his ken. What does this tell us about his attitude toward theology?This paper also includes, as an appendix, the first ever English translation of the question under discussion (QM 4.6): “Does the term being [ens] signify substances and accidents by one single concept or notion?”. (shrink)

The problem known as Buridan’s Ass says that a hungry donkey equipoised between two identical bales of hay will starve to death. Indecision kills the ass. Some philosophers worry about human analogs. Computer scientists since the 1960s have known about the computer versions of such cases. From what Leslie Lamport calls ‘Buridan’s Principle’—a discrete decision based on a continuous range of input-values cannot be made in a bounded time—it follows that the possibilities for human analogs of Buridan’s Ass are far (...) more wide-ranging and securely provable than has been acknowledged in philosophy. We are never necessarily decisive. This is mathematically provable. I explore four consequences: first, increased interest of the literature’s solutions to Buridan’s Ass; second, a new asymmetry between responsibility for omissions and responsibility for actions; third, clarification of the standard account of akrasia; and, fourth, clarification of the role of credences in normative decision-theory. (shrink)

In recent years modal syllogistic provided by 14th century logician John Buridan has attracted increasing attention of historians of medieval logic. The widespread use of quantified modal logic with the apparatus of possible worlds semantics in current analytic philosophy has encouraged the investigation of the relation of Buridan’s theory of modality with the modern developments of symbolic modal logic. We focus on the semantics of and the inferential relations among the propositions that underlie Buridan’s theory of modal syllogism. First, we (...) review all inferences between propositions of necessity, possibility, contingency, and non-contingency, with or without quod est locution, that are valid in Buridan’s semantics, and offer a comprehensive diagrammatic representation that includes them all. We then ask the question if there is a way to model those results in first order modal logic. Three ways of formalizing Buridan’s propositions in quantified modal logic are considered. Comparison of inferences between the quantified formulas and Buridan’s propositions reveals that, when supplied with a suitable formalization, Buridan’s semantics of categorical statements and immediate inferences among them can be fully captured by the quantified modal system T. (shrink)

The paper delves into manuscript sources connected with various disputations held at Prague University from around 1390 to 1420 and singles out a set of hitherto unknown quaestiones dealing with the nature of the human intellect and its relation to the body. Prague disputations from around 1400 arguably offer a unique vantage point on late medieval anthropological issues, since they encompass an entanglement of numerous doctrinal influences from Buridanian De anima commentaries to John Wyclif’s theories. The paper delineates several conceptual (...) tensions regarding the nature of the intellect, e.g., between materialism (entailed by the emphasis on the intellect’s inherence in the body) and personal immortality. It presents several strategies Prague masters employed to overcome these tensions. For example, an anonymous participant of the 1409 quodlibet develops the Buridanian distinction between the rationally demonstrable materialist tendency and the indemonstrable “catholic truth” about the intellect both inhering in and separable from the body. On the other hand, Wyclif’s adherents (Jacob of Mies and another anonymous master) postulate an immortal spirit hypostatically united to each human being beside the human soul educed from the potency of the matter. Yet, the boundaries between the doctrinal standpoints in question seem permeable, whereby a rigid definition of antagonistic groups in late medieval Prague intellectual milieu (e.g., Buridanians vs Wycliffites) is rendered ineffective. (shrink)

Scholastic philosophers can be quite funny. What’s more, they have good reason to be: Aristotle himself lists ready wit (eutrapelia) among the virtues, as a mean between excessive humor and its defect. Here, I assess Scholastic discussions of humor in theory, before turning to examples of it in practice. The last and finest of these is a joke, hitherto unacknowledged, which Aquinas makes in his famous Five Ways. Along the way, we’ll see (i) that the history of philosophy is not (...) so hostile to humor as is commonly supposed; and (ii) that the competing theories of humor like the Incongruity Theory and the Release Theory are not altogether incompatible. We’ll also see at least one example of an apparent attempt by modern translators to excise humor from a medieval text. Our considerations will open a window into what oral discussion and debate at medieval universities was actually like, and how we should understand the relationship between the texts we have now and the exchanges that actually occurred then. (shrink)

Aristotle normally used historical notations to support his arguments. This is somewhat true for all the works of the corpus, but above all for Politics: the nature, objectives, and methodology of the investigations in this treatise present the strongest links with actual and concrete data, and therefore with historia. Obviously even the Aristotle of Politics is not a historian who wants to report known historiographical traditions; however, regardless of his intentions, there is no doubt that the work in question contains (...) precious ‘fragments’ of history which, in general, confirm or supplement our knowledge. There are, however, cases in which the Aristotelian exempla end up filling in the omissions and gaps of the available sources, such as the cursory reference to the nomos of the Aphytaians, which appears in the section of book 6 dedicated to the so-called agricultural democracy. (shrink)

Formalizing categorical propositions of traditional logic in the language of quantifiers and propositional functions is no straightforward matter, especially when modalities get involved. Starting...

Jean Buridan developed his theory of consequence within a semantical framework compatible with what we now call token-based semantics. In his Treatise on Consequences and Sophismata, Buridan showed...

This book offers a critical analysis of the European colonial heritage in the Arab countries and highlights the way this legacy is still with us today, informing the current state of relations between Europe and the formerly colonized states. The work analyses the fraught relationship between the Western powers and the Arab countries that have been subject to their colonial rule. It does so by looking at this relationship from two vantage points. On the one hand is that of humanitarian (...) intervention--a paradigm under which colonial rule coexisted alongside "humanitarian" policies pursued on the dual assumption that the colonized were "barbarous" peoples who wanted to be civilized and that the West could lay a claim of superiority over an inferior humanity. On the other hand is the Arab view, from which the humanitarian paradigm does not hold up, and which accordingly offers its own insights into the processes through which the Arab countries have sought to wrest themselves from colonial rule. In unpacking this analysis the book traces a history of international and colonial law, to this end also using the tools offered by the history of political thought. The book will be of interest to students, academics, and researchers working in legal history, international law, international relations, the history of political thought, and colonial studies. (shrink)

Introduction. The actuality of the topic is determined by the emergence of a new institution for Russia – the all-Russian voting, regarding which there is no single interpretation of the scientific community. The reform of the Constitution – amendments in 2020 – solved the urgent questions concerning the value-ideological sphere and also the socio-economic and political ones. The purpose of the article is to determine the justification, effects and perspectives of all-Russian voting as an institution of democracy and a legal (...) institution. We made an attempt to systematically analyze the phenomenon of all-Russian voting and determine its meaning and prospects on the basis of existing regulatory legal acts, scientific developments of sociologists and lawyers. It provides the novelty of the work presented.Methodology and sources. The empirical base of the study is the data of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center poll on the awareness of Russians about the nationwide voting on amendments to the Constitution, as well as the results of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center electoral forecast on 06.23.2020, materials of the official website of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation on the results of the all-Russian vote in 2020. In our work we used the concepts and developments of Russian scientists: Dzidoev R. M., Ilyin V. A., Morev M. V., Khorunzhiy S. N., Khristoforova E. I., Sokolova E. A., Chebotarev G. N. and others. We also used M. Weber’s theory of plebiscite democracy and the theory of social institution. The study used the method of systems analysis and general logical methods.Results and discussion. In connection with the conduct of the all-Russian vote on the approval of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020, new regulatory legal acts were adopted. The emergence of the phenomenon of all-Russian voting has caused discussions in the scientific community and in society about the legitimacy and consequences of this political and legal phenomenon. In the article the author examines the sociological aspects of the all-Russian vote as an institution of democracy regarding the validity, nature, causes, consequences and perspectives. Namely, the forecasts of the institutionalization of the all-Russian vote, the features of this manifestation of democracy in relation to other forms of democracy in Russia, its significance for society are touched upon.Conclusion. Russia is a democratic state, and the forms of manifestation of democracy are enshrined in legislation. The all-Russian voting was held in accordance with the regulatory legal acts specially created for its implementation. A new institution of democracy has been formed. The result of voting for amendments to the Constitution showed the level and dynamics of interaction between the state and society, the timeliness of the questions put to the voting. Withal, the introduction of the all-Russian voting in the legal system of Russia and the question of the final institutionalization of the relevant relationship seems unlikely. (shrink)

Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism. Discussing Avicenna, Aquinas, and Buridan, as well as Renaissance psychology, I instead suggest that teleology went through a slow and uneven process of rationalization. As Neoplatonic theology gained influence over Aristotelian natural philosophy, the meaning of animism likewise grew obscure. Boyle, as some historians have shown, exemplifies (...) this uneven process. There is an unresolved tension between his religious convictions and the implicit animism of his empirical practice. (shrink)

Scholarship on the philosophy of the Late Middle Ages has tended to overlook certain subject matters, especially some pertaining to ethics and political philosophy. My object of study in this paper is one of these overlooked notions, the idea of craft as an intellectual virtue. While recent publications have focused on sapientia, and scientia, this paper aims to rehabilitate ars as a virtue, in particular John Buridan’s understanding of craft as an intellectual virtue in his Quaestiones super decem libros Ethicorum (...) Aristotelis ad Nicomachum. My goal is to examine Buridan’s analysis of craft as expounded in this commentary. Once the Picardian master’s theses have been presented, and the objections he raises have been reviewed along with the solutions proposed to those objections, I briefly suggest why craft might have been overlooked as a virtue. (shrink)

O filósofo medieval João Buridan (século XIV) desenvolve uma semântica complexa, baseada na distinção entre contexto de enunciação e contexto de avaliação, para determinar as condições de verdade de uma proposição. O objetivo do presente artigo é analisar essa semântica e, mais precisamente, compreender suas implicações relativas às proposições de futuro contingente. Propõe-se aqui que a distinção entre contexto de enunciação e contexto de avaliação permite uma abordagem satisfatória das condições de verdade de proposições de futuro contingente. Defende-se que essa (...) abordagem é satisfatória porque ela evita tanto as consequências desagradáveis advindas da negação do Princípio da Bivalência quanto a adesão ao determinismo.. (shrink)

Scholarship on the philosophy of the Late Middle Ages has tended to overlook certain subject matters, especially some pertaining to ethics and political philosophy. My object of study in this paper is one of these overlooked notions, the idea of craft (ars) as an intellectual virtue. While recent publications have focused on sapientia and scientia, this paper aims to rehabilitate ars as a virtue, in particular John Buridan’s understanding of craft as an intellectual virtue in his Quaestiones super decem libros (...) Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum. My goal is to examine Buridan’s analysis of craft as expounded in this commentary. Once the Picardian master’s theses have been presented, and the objections he raises have been reviewed along with the solutions proposed to those objections, I briefly suggest why craft might have been overlooked as a virtue. (shrink)

What makes a valid argument valid? Generally speaking, in a valid argument, if the premisses are true, then the conclusion must necessarily also be true. But on its own, this doesn’t tell us all that much. What is truth? And what is necessity? In what follows, I consider answers to these questions proposed by the fourteenth century logician John Buridan († ca. 1358). My central claim is that Buridan’s logic is downstream from his metaphysics. Accordingly, I treat his metaphysical discussions (...) as the key to his logic. As has been often noted, Buridan’s metaphysics are radically anti-realist about universals, though I think the depth and scope of his anti-realism has at times been papered over. Buridan constructs his logic on an amazingly spartan ontology, and this accomplishment is overdue for reconsideration. To the foregoing questions: truth is a feature of propositions, and of propositions only—not of proposition-like states of affairs, or anything like that. It is a function of the reference or supposition (suppositio) of their terms, which depends on predication in a propositional context. And necessary truth is grounded in causation: a predication is necessary if it cannot be falsified by any power, natural or supernatural, without ii annihilating what its terms stand for. “Socrates is a human”, for instance, can only be falsified by annihilating Socrates, and so it is a necessary truth. -/- These considerations provide an ample theoretical basis for a thorough examination of Buridan’s modal logic. This is what the thesis culminates with. In the final chapter, I set forth some novel and surprising findings, chief of which is this: Buridan’s modal syntax and semantics are nothing like Kripke’s—and indeed are incompatible with them. This has significant implications not only for modal logic and metaphysics, but for how we think about medieval logic and philosophy more generally. -/- Throughout the thesis, I advocate a methodology of emphasising the differences, rather than the similarities, between past and present thought. Buridan is wildly unlike what we’re used to, and we should let him speak for himself. (shrink)

This Commentary investigates ethical issues surrounding the US government’s attempt to partner with a private company to produce a new low-cost ventilator as part of its pandemic preparation plans. I argue that firms have distinct duties with respect to such public-private partnerships. In contrast to approaches that analyze these duties in terms of an “implicit morality” of the market, I analyze them in terms of democratically authorized plans regarding how to structure the market.

The premise of Darkened Enlightenment is to highlight the fact that there currently exist a number of socio-political forces that have the design, or ultimate consequence, of trying to extinguish the light of reason and rationality. The book presents a critique of modernity and provides a socio-political and cultural analysis of world society in the early twenty-first century. Specifically, this analysis examines the deterioration of democracy, human rights, and rational thought. Key features include a combination of academic analysis that draws (...) on numerous and specific examples of the growing darkness that surrounds us along with a balanced practical, everyday-life approach to the study of the socio-political world we live in through the use of popular culture references and featured boxes. The general audience will also be intrigued by these same topics that concern academics including: a discussion on the meaning of "fake news;" attacks on the media and a declaration of the news media as the "enemy of the people;" the rise of populism and nationalism around the world; the deterioration of freedom and human rights globally; the growing economic disparity between the rich and the poor; attempts to devalue education; a growing disbelief in science; attacks on the environment; pseudoscience as a by-product of unreasoned and irrational thinking; the political sw& the power elites and the deep state; and the variations of Big Business that impact our daily lives. This book will make a great contribution to such fields as sociology, philosophy, political science, environmental science, public administration, economics, psychology, and cultural studies. (shrink)

The United States is ‘the first modern democracy.’ Unfortunately, Trumpism has increasingly become an imminent threat to democracy, national unity, security and sovereignty. For years, the American exceptionalism has allowed U.S. presidents to be leaders of the free world. Unfortunately and sadly, through southern strategy, abuse of power, and isolationism, President Trump has proven that he is “unfit to lead” domestically and globally, especially during the current coronavirus pandemic crisis. The general elections 2020 are about keeping the U.S. as a (...) republic by rescuing its democracy from 'Trumpocracy' and 'tweetocracy,' protecting and defending its national security and sovereignty. Unfortunately, Congressional ‘Trumpublicans’ have put party before country and failed to patriotically carry out their oversight duty. Consequently, it is imperative that Democrats understand and use the power of demographics in the 21st-century USA, transform the midterms 2018 ‘blue wave’ into a ‘blue tsunami.’ That is the best possible way to restore sanity, decency, law and order in Washington. (shrink)

A number of devastating disasters have occurred in Japan since 2017, including heavy rains, wide ranging floods, a large typhoon, earthquakes, and landslides. Such disasters are beyond our imagination and our scientific assumptions. All of these come from global warming, which comes from human economic activities with CO2 emissions. There are interdependencies around the globe, between sea and land, ocean and air currents, and so on. In the twentieth century, we pushed technological innovation to conquer nature, but it only partly (...) succeeded—and was actually almost in vain. We must recognize that human beings are a part of nature and must rethink our attitude towards nature. As citizens of the world, human beings must have a keen sensibility to find new virtue, “living together on the same globe.” It is the new ideal beyond boundaries and beyond differences between the rich and the poor, looking for the possibility of democracy. (shrink)

"This book examines in detail some of John Dewey's most influential writings by connecting them with contemporary issues, perspectives, controversies and debates. Bringing together scholars from the US and Germany, this volume offers an international perspective on current implications, challenges, and risks of democracy and education in the contemporary world. Written for students and scholars in the fields of education and philosophy, New Studies in Deweyan Education, represents a new, unique and innovative way to of approaching the problems and opportunities (...) of democracy and education then and now"--. (shrink)

Is democracy, in its neoliberalized form, responsible in part for bringing us to the brink of self-destruction and the policy inertia that is doing away with our chances of survival? Surviving Democracy probes the way democracy became neoliberalized and the role neoliberalized democracy plays in our dealings with--causing, understanding, denying, and mitigating--climate change. Defining neoliberalism as the art of exclusion through inclusion, Chien-Yi Lu treats climate change as collateral damage of the neoliberal order established to ensure upward power and wealth (...) redistribution. Highlighting the role money played in the "free" competition of ideas between Keynes and Hayek, she investigates the resulting global structure, wherein the wealthy and powerful sit above the market and democracy, and the way this structure fundamentally contradicts with honest climate mitigation. Central to the structure is neoliberal elites' leveraging of the fluid relationship between the market and the state. Merging citizen power with consumer and investor powers is therefore imperative to the success of climate action. While expediting the bursting of the carbon bubble is an obvious answer, it is the discussion of the meat bubble that brings the book full circle, linking our survival to neoliberalism, inclusion, and democracy. Surviving Democracy probes the role democracy plays in our dealings with--causing, understanding, denying, and hopefully, mitigating--climate change. (shrink)

When money equates to power and the system is rigged in favor of wealthy elites, why do we still pretend we are living in a democracy? In Living under Post-Democracy, Caleb R. Miller challenges us to admit what we already know: that most of us are effectively powerless over the political decisions that govern our lives. Instead, we should embrace a 'post-democratic' view of politics, one which recognizes the way in which our political institutions fail--both systematically and historically--to live up (...) to our democratic ideals, while also acknowledging our tragic, yet enduring attachment to them both. Offering a new framework for conceptualizing contemporary citizenship, Miller explores how a post-democratic perspective can help us begin to reorient ourselves in our paradoxical, fractured political landscape. This model of citizenship opens the possibility for a distinctly post-democratic approach to both political participation and political philosophy, treating them not as ways of affecting politics, but as opportunities for therapeutically engaging with the ongoing challenges and inevitable frustrations of post-democratic life. This book is an excellent addition to courses on democratic theory, as well as introductory courses to political theory. (shrink)

Democracy is often used as shorthand for liberal democracy. Despite such casual conflation, the two concepts remain importantly distinct. I argue that democracy unfettered by the constraints of liberal institutions and commitments gives rise to the proliferation of disinformation and to xenophobic populism. I draw upon Plato and the democracy of ancient Athens to illustrate the history of association between disinformation and democracy. Moving on to our more contemporary treatments of liberalism, specifically to the ideal theory of John Rawls, I (...) show that in order to address disinformation and the reactionary politics in which it thrives, we must attend to a robust defense of liberalism against non-liberal and illiberal democracy. (shrink)

The 26 essays collected in this volume explore some crucial aspects of the philosophical and scientific traditions of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Using a historical-philological approach, the volume brings to light unpublished documents and offers new reconstructions of the intellectual paths of authors such as Meister Eckhart, Nicole Oresme, John Buridan, Siger of Brabant, William of Ockham, Peter Pomponazzi, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

This volume purports to explore the legal and political issues triggered by the new wave of secessionism. More specifically, those issues concern the interplay between notions of democracy and law. Against this background, the editors use amorality in order to escape the terrain of the justification of secession by making a distinction between the democratic theory of secession and the theory of democratic secession. In the first section, the theoretical nexus democracy-secession has been approached both from a legal and political (...) theory perspective. The second section of the book examines the instruments that the theory of democratic secession invokes in order to justify secession and presents both legal and political science contributions. The third section focuses on social movements and political actors. The fourth section focuses on two case studies due to the awareness of the importance of the difference between secession in a democratic occidental context and separations in a non-democratic context. (shrink)

Ist der menschliche Intellekt materiell? Oder können wir mit Verweis auf seine intentionalen Tätigkeiten wie allgemeine Erkenntnis oder Selbsterkenntnis zeigen, dass er immateriell ist? Besteht also ein Zusammenhang zwischen Intentionalität und Immaterialität? Mit Philosophie des Geistes im Spätmittelalter bietet Martin Klein eine umfassende Darstellung der Philosophie des Geistes von Johannes Buridan im Zusammenhang seiner Erkenntnistheorie, Metaphysik und Naturphilosophie. Vor dem Hintergrund neuester Editionen wird Buridan im Kontext der spätmittelalterlichen Debatte über die Natur des menschlichen Intellekts und seine kognitiven Vermögen prätsentiert. (...) In this volume, Martin Klein offers a comprehensive account of John Buridan's philosophy of mind in the context of the late medieval debate about the nature of the human intellect and how this influences its cognitive functioning. (shrink)

Discussions about singular cognition, and its linguistic counterpart, are by no means exclusive to contemporary philosophy. In fact, a strikingly similar discussion, to which several medieval texts bear witness, took place in the late Middle Ages. The aim of this article is to partly reconstruct this medieval discussion, as it took place in Parisian question-commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, so as to show the progression from the rejection of singular intellection in Siger of Brabant to the descriptivist positions of John (...) Duns Scotus and John of Jandun, and finally to the singularism of John Buridan. All these authors accept some kind of intellectual access to individuals. Therefore, the conundrum is not whether we have some kind of intellectual knowledge of individuals, but rather whether we can know them singularly. This article begins by presenting the crucial obstacle to singular intellection in Siger. Thereafter, the author shows that Jandun and Scotus depart in fundamental ways from Siger’s account, but that for them the intellection of individuals is of a general character. Finally, she proposes that Buridan is a genuine singularist. (shrink)