Medieval Philosophy of Language

A lo largo de la obra de Tomás de Aquino es posible encontrar cierta tensión textual en torno a la posibilidad de conocer de manera natural la esencia divina. Por un lado el teólogo parece afirmar que, precisamente, no podemos conocer acerca de Dios qué es, sino solo qué no es. Pero, por otra parte, existe evidencia textual de que habría sostenido la posibilidad de un conocimiento quiditativo imperfecto. En tanto y en cuanto el matiz más positivo suele aparecer con (...) mayor énfasis en el tratamiento de los problemas relativos al lenguaje, un gran número de comentadores (desde E. Gilson hasta, más recientemente, D. Burrell, G. Rocca y R. Accar) ha expresado una tentencia a circunscribir la tensión al ámbito linguistico o judicativo. Tomás, de acuerdo a estos autores, nunca habría sostenido que es posible tener un conocimiento quiditativo natural de la esencia divina. En palabras de E. Gilson: -/- “Hacer decir a Santo Tomás que tenemos un conocimiento por lo menos imperfecto de lo que Dios es, significa traicionar su pensamiento, tal como él lo ha formulado repetidas veces” 1 -/- El énfasis de estos autores, bien considerado, esta puesto en la tesis ciertamente defendida por Tomás de que la esencia divina es naturalmente incomprehensible. Los autores reaccionan específicamente contra la teoría del concepto análogo desarrollada originalmente por el cardenal Cayetano. Según interpretan, el concepto análogo se reduciría, en última instancia, precisamente, a un concepto comprehensivo. En este trabajo intentaremos volver a revisar la posición de Tomás sobre el conocimiento quiditativo natural desde sus bases. A nuestro entender el teólogo medieval ha sostenido desde sus obras más tempranas que es posible un conocimiento natural quiditativo -si bien imperfecto. Interpretamos que ese conocimiento incluye la posibilidad de representarnos, aunque de manera deficiente, la esencia divina. Defendemos, consecuentemente, la posibilidad de formarnos conceptos, siempre deficientes, claro, de la misma, distintos, por supuesto, de los conceptos análogos. Y sostenemos que la tesis de que la interpretación de la teoría epistemológica tomista en la que el sentido precede a la verdad judicativa no atenta contra la tesis de que Dios es, finalmente incomprehensible. (shrink)

En la teoría epistémica de Tomás de Aquino la lumen rationis desempeña la función de causa última del inventario completo del conocimiento humano natural. La tesis de acuerdo a la cual esa luz es puesta en nosotros por Dios justifica, de acuerdo al autor, la aserción de que la divinidad es el único y auténtico maestro interior del hombre. Ahora bien, en la visión beatífica la lumen naturale es perfeccionada por una luz sobrenatural, y la unión cognitiva con lo conocido (...) tiene lugar por la presencia real de Dios mismo en el entendimiento humano, única instancia en la que resulta conocido tal como es. Restringidos, en cambio, al modus intelligendi natural, la presencia cognitiva de la realidad divina solo puede ser representacional y, por lo tanto, según el autor, limitada, lo que repugna esencialmente a la divinidad. La esencia divina, en este caso, solo puede ser concebida de manera deficiente: por espejo y en enigma. En este trabajo intentamos explorar las diferencias entre ambos tipos de cogniciones tomando en cuenta los dos modos correlativos en que Dios nos enseñaría acerca de sí: ya de manera perfecta, como en la visión beatífica, ya de manera obscura, es decir, en enigma. (shrink)

This paper makes two main arguments. First, that to understand analogy in St. Thomas Aquinas, one must distinguish two logically distinct concepts he inherited from Aristotle: one a kind of likeness between things, the other a kind of relation between linguistic functions. Second, that analogy (in both of these senses) plays a relatively small role in Aquinas's treatment of divine naming, compared to the realist semantic framework in which questions about divine naming are formulated and resolved, and on which the (...) coherence of the doctrine of divine simplicity—which is what gives rise to the questions of divine naming in the first place—depends. ***E-mail author for off-print.***. (shrink)

Complexe significabilia are the significate of whole sentences, irreducible to what is signified by categorematic sub-sentential components. It has been propounded firstly by Adam Wodeham. Wodeham construes his argument for the postulation of complexe significabilia as a middle way between William of Ockham and Walter Chatton. According to Wodeham, Ockham’s view implies a reflexive theory of mental acts, which goes against the phenomenology of the act of assent. Moreover, it leads to an anti-realist epistemology. We need therefore things outside the (...) mind to be object of the act of assent, which is also the conclusion reached by Chatton. However, against Chatton, Wodeham argues that things signified by the categorematic component of sentences cannot be the object of assent. In effect, sentences with different syncategorematic structures, but with the same categorematic components, would correspond to the same propositional attitude in Chatton’s framework, which is an unwelcome consequence. The result is that we need to postulate that the objects of assent are outside the mind, contra Ockham, that are not signified by sentential categorematic components, contra Chatton, but are irreducibly signified by the whole sentences. (shrink)

Relatively recent literature on supposition theory seems to use different modern logical tools of interpretation that can be generally described as formalizations. Since the act of formalizing may be understood as a process of changing its object in the sense of making it more formal, an assessment of this kind of approaches is necessary. Accordingly, our main goal in this paper is to analyze the formality of Peter of Spain’s theory of supposition and to evaluate its interpretation as a quantification (...) theory. Our main thesis is that although Peter’s theory presents certain weak notions of formality, the formality presupposed by the quantificational interpretation is nowhere to be found in his considerations. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 21 Ian Rumfitt has recently drawn our attention to a couple of paradoxes of signification, claiming that although Thomas Bradwardine’s “multiple-meanings” account of truth and signification can solve the first of them, it cannot solve the second. The paradoxes of signification were in fact much discussed by Bradwardine’s successors in the fourteenth century. Bradwardine’s solution appears to turn on a distinction between the principal and the consequential signification of an utterance. However, although such a distinction played (...) an important role in his successors’ theories, it is shown that Bradwardine’s account of signification does not admit any such distinction, no part being prior to the others. Accordingly his solution, unlike those of his successors, does not fall prey to Rumfitt’s paradoxes. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a categorial theory of meaning which asserts that the meaning of a sentence is the function from the actualization of some potentiality or the potentiality of some actuality to the truth of the sentence. I argue that it builds on the virtues of David Lewis’s Possible World Semantics but advances beyond problems that Lewis’s theory faces with its distinctly Aristotelian turn toward actuality and potentiality.

Drawing primarily upon Dante’s three major philosophical treatises (De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, and Monarchia), this essay explores how Dante’s ethico-political philosophy operates within the crucial tension between the phenomenology of time as the condition for the possibility of human moral development and yet also as, metaphysically speaking, the privation and imitation of eternity. I begin by showing that, in the De vulgari eloquentia, Dante’s understanding of the poetic and rhetorical function of the illustrious vernacular is tied to his political philosophy (...) in a way that depends upon a rich but ultimately unresolved tension between (a) the demand that only an atemporal, unchanging vernacular would be suitable for the tasks of universal monarchy and (b) the recognition that only a temporal, localized, and changing illustrious vernacular could possibly bring about the existence of the universal monarchy. In the second half of the essay, I will turn to Dante’s treatment of the providential grounding for the independence of spiritual and temporal authority in Convivio and Monarchia. I will argue that Dante’s understanding of divine providence provides common justification for the temporal and spiritual authorities whose independence he otherwise insists upon. Finally, drawing on the letter to Cangrande della Scala (the authorship of which is disputed), I will discuss how, for Dante, the providential ground for the legitimacy of temporal authority can only be discerned through the allegorical interpretation of history itself. In light of my discussion of these themes in Dante’s political philosophy and its dependence on his understanding of divine providence, I will conclude with a brief reflection on how Dante’s understanding of divine providence might help us better appreciate important aspects of the neglected legacy of Renaissance humanism in the history of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

This volume, the first dedicated and comprehensive companion to medieval logic, covers both the Latin and the Arabic traditions, and shows that they were in fact sister traditions, which both arose against the background of a Hellenistic heritage and which influenced one another over the centuries. A series of chapters by both established and younger scholars covers the whole period including early and late developments, and offers new insights into this extremely rich period in the history of logic. The volume (...) is divided into two parts, 'Periods and Traditions' and 'Themes', allowing readers to engage with the subject from both historical and more systematic perspectives. It will be a must-read for students and scholars of medieval philosophy, the history of logic, and the history of ideas. (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)

Aristotle's discussion of relatives in the Categories presented its eleventh- and twelfth-century readers with many puzzles. Their attempt to solve these puzzles and to develop a coherent account of the category led around the beginning of the twelfth century to the invention of relations as items which stand to relatives as qualities stand to qualified substances. In this paper, I first discuss the details of Aristotle's accounts of relatives and the related category of ‘situation’ and Boethius' commentary on them. I (...) then examine some of the earliest mediaeval commentaries on the Categories showing how the notion of relation, and in particular of individual relations, was developed. I conclude by showing how Peter Abaelard's treatment of relations in his Dialectica was part of an ongoing and sophisticated debate over the nature of relations. (shrink)

John Buridan was the greatest of the medieval logicians. His massive logical text, the Summulae de Dialectica, has been available in a first rate English translation for well over a decade. Now it is joined by his other major logical work, the Treatise on Consequences. The translation provided here runs about a hundred pages. Chapters 1 and 3 concern consequences involving non-modal propositions, and chapters 2 and 4 concern modals. Buridan is a very clear writer, and Read has provided a (...) translation that is both accurate and readable. The book has a helpful introduction.A consequence is a proposition in conditional form such that things cannot be as its antecedent signifies without also being as its.. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 54, Issue 4, pp 335 - 355 Ian Rumfitt has recently drawn our attention to a couple of paradoxes of signification, claiming that although Thomas Bradwardine’s “multiple-meanings” account of truth and signification can solve the first of them, it cannot solve the second. The paradoxes of signification were in fact much discussed by Bradwardine’s successors in the fourteenth century. Bradwardine’s solution appears to turn on a distinction between the principal and the consequential signification of an utterance. However, (...) although such a distinction played an important role in his successors’ theories, it is shown that Bradwardine’s account of signification does not admit any such distinction, no part being prior to the others. Accordingly his solution, unlike those of his successors, does not fall prey to Rumfitt’s paradoxes. (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)

Jean Buridan has offered a solution to the Liar Paradox, i.e. to the problem of assigning a truth-value to the sentence ‘What I am saying is false’. It has been argued that either this solution is ad hoc since it would only apply to self-referencing sentences [Read, S. 2002. ‘The Liar Paradox from John Buridan back to Thomas Bradwardine’, Vivarium, 40 , 189–218] or else it weakens his theory of truth, making his ‘a logic without truth’ [Klima, G. 2008. ‘Logic (...) without truth: Buridan on the Liar’, in S. Rahman, T. Tulenheimo and E. Genot, Unity, Truth and the Liar: The Modern Relevance of Medieval Solutions to the Liar Paradox, Berlin: Springer, 87–112 ; Dutilh Novaes, C. 2011. ‘Lessons on truth from mediaeval solutions to the Liar Paradox’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 61 , 58–78]. Against , I will argue that Buridan's solution by means of truth by supposition does not involve new principles. Self-referential sentences force us to handle supposition more carefully, which does not warrant the accusation of adhoccery. I will also argue, against (2), that it is exaggerated to assert that this solution leads to a ‘weakened’ theory of truth, since it is consistent with other passages of the Sophismata, which only gives necessary conditions for the truth of affirmative propositions, but sufficient conditions for falsity. (shrink)

The rediscovery of Aristotle’s works on syllogisms in the Latin world, especially the Sophistici Elenchi and then the Prior Analytics, gave rise to sophisticated views on the nature of syllogistic form and syllogistic matter in the thirteenth century. It led to debates on the ontology of the syllogism as studied in the Prior Analytics, i.e. the syllogism made of letters and the four logical constants a/e/i/o, with deep consequences on the definition of logic as a universal method for all sciences (...) and as a science itself. (shrink)

The rediscovery of Aristotle’s works on syllogisms in the Latin world, especially the Sophistici Elenchi and then the Prior Analytics, gave rise to sophisticated views on the nature of syllogistic form and syllogistic matter in the thirteenth century. It led to debates on the ontology of the syllogism as studied in the Prior Analytics, i.e. the syllogism made of letters and the four logical constants a/e/i/o, with deep consequences on the definition of logic as a universal method for all sciences (...) and as a science itself. (shrink)

This volume explores the rich history of philosophy of language in the Western tradition, from Plato and Aristotle to the twentieth century. A team of leading experts focus in particular on key metaphysical debates about linguistic content, including questions of ontological status and metaphysical grounding.

According to several late medieval logicians, the use the universal quantifier ‘omnis’ creates the requirement that the sentence refers to at least three items—the principle of sufficientia appellatorum. The commitment is such that, when the quota is not fulfilled, one has to import the missing items from the realm of the nonexistent. While the central argument for this principle, whose origin is Aristotle’s De Caelo, stems from the contrast between unrestricted universal quantifiers and binary quantifiers, the discussion is often mixed (...) with another issue, concerning the requirement of a plurality of referents for universals. In this paper, we try to distinguish those different issues and map the reactions of xiii th authors to the principle of sufficientia appellatorum. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a historical exposition of John Buridan's theory of divided modal propositions. We then develop a semantic interpretation of Buridan's theory which pays particular attention to Buridan's ampliation of modal terms. We show that these semantics correctly capture his syllogistic reasoning.

This paper analyses the import of three claims extracted from Geach's works concerning theories of predication and the reference of common terms, the notions of being or existence, and the force/content distinction and theories of valid inference, respectively. The paper highlights the theoretical and historical errors involved in these claims as well as their enormous influence and inspiration in the field of the philosophical study of medieval logic and metaphysics.

A questão "se uma elocução perde seu significado com a destruição das coisas "surge como uma questão sobre o valor-verdade de declarações com um termo vazio como sujeito, a saber, como um subproblema do sofisma "Se 'omnis homo de necessitate est animal' é verdade quando não há homem algum ". Neste trabalho, trarei as discussões conforme elas se apresentam em "De signis" IV.2 de Roger Bacon, em "Quaestiones logicales", q. 2–3 de Peter John Olivi, no OHNEA de Boethius of Dacia, (...) e no OHNEA de Anonymus Alani. Tais textos nos apresentam quatro modos diversos de nos relacionarmos com a questão sobre significação para OHNEA e, assim, com quatro posições diferentes sobre a relação entre significação e referência vazia. Usarei Anonymus Alani como o fio conductor de minha análise, inserindo outras posições onde tal se fizer relevante.The question 'whether an utterance loses its signification with the destruction of things ' is raised as a question about the truth-value of assertions with an empty term as a subject, namely as a sub-problem of the sophism 'Whether "omnis homo de necessitate est animal" is true when no man exists '. In this paper, I shall introduce the discussions as they are present in Roger Bacon's "De signis" IV.2, Peter John Olivi's "Quaestiones logicales", q. 2–3, Boethius of Dacia's OHNEA, and Anonymus Alani's OHNEA. These texts present us with four different ways of relating the question about signification to OHNEA, and therefore with four different positions regarding the relation between signification and empty reference. I shall use Anonymus Alani as the guiding thread of my analysis, inserting other positions where it is relevant. (shrink)

This book presents an exhaustive study of the three 13-century discussions explicitly dealing with the notion of Significatio. The study aims to show that the three discussions emerge because of apparently opposite claims about the signification of words in the authoritative literature of the period. It also shows that the three discussions develop in the same direction - towards a unified use of the notion of signification, which keeps its explanatory role in semiotics, but loses its role in grammar and (...) logic. (shrink)

In this article I present the analysis of the syncategorematic term ‘omnis’ in the commentaries on the Topics by the Parisian masters of Arts Boethius of Dacia and Radulphus Brito. I shall focus on the different relations between subject, predicate and particular instances that obtain in universally quantified statements, and in particular on the relations that obtain in universally quantified statements with an empty subject. I also attempt to highlight some continuities and ruptures with respect to this problem in its (...) 13th-century treatments, by comparing Boethius and Brito’s analyses with the earlier analyses put forth by Peter of Spain and William of Sherwood. (shrink)

As a discipline, logic is arguably constituted of two main sub-projects: formal theories of argument validity on the basis of a small number of patterns, and theories of how to reduce the multiplicity of arguments in non-logical, informal contexts to the small number of patterns whose validity is systematically studied . Regrettably, we now tend to view logic 'proper' exclusively as what falls under the first sub-project, to the neglect of the second, equally important sub-project. In this paper, I discuss (...) two historical theories of argument formalization: Aristotle's syllogistic theory as presented in the "Prior Analytics", and medieval theories of supposition. They both illustrate this two-fold nature of logic, containing in particular illuminating reflections on how to formalize arguments . In both cases, the formal methods employed differ from the usual modern technique of translating an argument in ordinary language into a specially designed symbolism, a formal language. The upshot is thus a plea for a broader conceptualization of what it means to formalize. Pode-se dizer que, enquanto disciplina, a lógica é caracterizada por dois subprojetos: teorias formais da validade de argumentos, baseadas em um número reduzido de esquemas e padrões formais, e teorias de como reduzir a multiplicidade de argumentos em contextos informais, não lógicos, ao pequeno número de padrões formais cuja validade é estudada de maneira sistemática no âmbito do primeiro subprojeto. O segundo subprojeto corresponde à noção de formalização de argumentos. Infelizmente, a tendência atual é de considerar como sendo a lógica propriamente dita exclusivamente o que se encaixa no primeiro subprojeto, em detrimento do segundo subprojeto, igualmente importante. Neste artigo, duas teorias históricas sobre a formalização de argumentos são analisadas: a teoria da silogística apresentada por Aristóteles nos "Primeiros Analíticos" e teorias medievais da suposição. Ambas ilustram o caráter duplo da lógica, que envolve dois subprojetos distintos, e contêm reflexões sofisticadas sobre como formalizar argumentos. Em ambos os casos, os métodos formais utilizados se diferenciam dos métodos atuais de tradução de um argumento em linguagem vernacular para um simbolismo especialmente formulado, ou seja, uma linguagem formal. Em conclusão, o artigo pode ser visto como a defesa de uma conceitualização mais abrangente do que significa 'formalizar' um argumento. (shrink)

Bradwardine’s solution to the the logical paradoxes depends on the idea that every sentence signifies many things, and its truth depends on things’ being wholly as it signifies. This idea is underpinned by his claim that a sentence signifies everything that follows from what it signifies. But the idea that signification is closed under entailment appears too strong, just as logical omniscience is unacceptable in the logic of knowledge. What is needed is a more restricted closure principle. A clue can (...) be found in speech act pluralism, whereby indirect speech reports are closed under intersubstitutivity of co-referential terms. The conclusion is that solving the semantic paradoxes does not require revision of logic, thus saving logic from paradox. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the important semantic components involved in analogy in hopes of providing an epistemic ground for predicating names of God analogously. To this task, I address a semantic/epistemic problem, which concludes that the doctrine of analogy lacks epistemological grounding insofar as it presupposes a prior understanding of God in order to sufficiently alter a given concept to be proportionate to God. In hopes of avoiding this conclusion, I introduce Aquinas’s specifically semantic aspects that follow after (...) the real distinction between a thing’s esse and its essence or form in the context of analogy and show that the ratio of a term can be altered in a way proportionate to a consideration of the mode of being of God. (shrink)

In the article are discussed the semantic theories of Dietrich of Freiberg and Meister Eckhart in the comparative way. The both Dominicans are known through their theory of intellect, but for declamation of this theory they are choosing the certain model of language and of predication. The aim of the article is to outline the specific aspect of their semantic theories that are influenced by the modi significanditheory on the one hand and by the causa-essentialis-theory on the other hand. The (...) causa-essentialis-theory becomes a part of their philosophy of language in the sense, that both Dominicans are thinking the parts of the sentence – subject and predicate – in the ontological terms: both of them are considering the predicate as a cause, and subject as a caused one. Therefore they understand the semantical and the ontological entities in the reciprocity. Such an ontologization of semantic results from the inherence-model of language that is the basis for understanding of sentences expressing the definition according to Dietrich von Freiberg as well as Meister Eckhart. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 221 - 248 One of the peculiarities of Peter Abelard’s analysis of incomplete and non-assertive sentences is his use of the notion of desire: in both _Dialectica_ and _Glosses on Peri hermeneias_ the terms _desiderium_ and _desidero_ move to the foreground side by side with _optatio, expectatio, suspensio_ and the related verbs. Desire plays a structural role in Abelard’s descriptions of the compositional way in which the linguistic message is received, changing step by (...) step from incomplete to complete: the person who receives the incomplete message desires to get further information through other words since he knows that the purpose of such words or sequences of words is to combine with other words in order to form a complete sentence. On the other hand, the expression of the speaker’s attention to his inner affections renders the same semantic content a different complete sentence. (shrink)

This volume, surveying a narrow topic over a long expanse of time, is comprised of selections from a trio of international conferences on the title theme. It is an expensive book, but even its most valuable articles are marred by slovenly editing.Börje Bydén’s contribution begins the survey in Byzantium. By linking Photios’s (apparently) original criticism of Aristotle to Plotinus, Bydén gives an interesting hint of how neo-Platonism came to permeate Christianity. But Photios seems to have been “ignored by posterity” (31). (...) Bydén’s commendable remedy: more and updated critical editions of texts from Greek scholasticism. (The Hadot reference on 25n44, missing in the bibliography, is to Hadot’s 1990 French edition of .. (shrink)

“Austrian” philosophy of language is characterized, among other things, by the following two features: Problems of language are considered within the broader framework of an intentionality-based philosophy of mind—or, to put it more precisely, questions of meaning are considered as involving a quite articulated theory of intentions; several aspects of such an account are explicitly presented as inspired by or somehow already at work in the Medieval Scholastic tradition. In this study we follow the track indicated by these two features (...) and use some “Austrian” reflections on the articulation between meanings and intentions as a “heuristic filter”, as it were, to shed a new and different light on some Medieval debates in philosophy of language on the relationship between significare and intendere. It will be roughly divided into three parts. We begin by singling out some distinctive tenets of the “Austrian” strategy aimed at describing the relationship between meaning and intentions , and then turn to various Medieval texts from the 13th and 14th century dealing with the two related notions of significatio and intentio . The upshot of our investigation is to show how, for both “Austrian” and Medieval philosophers of language , a proper understanding of linguistic meaning—in the twofold sense of words or sentences having a lexical content and utterances having a determinate pragmatic function—presupposes an account of what one could call the “agentive intentionality”, i.e. the complex intentionality proper to practical goal-directed human behaviours. Some final remarks about outcomes, meaning, scope and perspectives opened by the method applied will conclude the study. (shrink)

Paul Spade argues that there is a tension between Ockham’s descriptions of the various types of supposition at Summa Logicae I.64 and a rule he provides at sl I.65. In later papers, Spade proposes a solution: a term supposits significatively just in case it supposits for everything it signifies. I evaluate Spade’s proposal and explore some of its implications. I show that it successfully resolves the tension and that it suggests a way to more precisely describe material and simple supposition. (...) I argue furthermore that Ockham is committed to the proposal by showing that uncontroversial features of his theory imply it. In doing so, I raise and refute three potential objections. Finally, I highlight and discuss a controversial result: self-signifying conventional terms can supposit materially. I argue that this result makes for a more satisfying theory. (shrink)

La philosophie médiévale du langage présente deux séries d’affinités remarquables avec les approches contemporaines. L’une se situe du côté des sémantiques formelles et, plus généralement, des analyses logiques des conditions de vérité des énoncés. L’autre relève plutôt de la pragmatique, notamment des perspectives contextuelles sur les actes de langage. Les logiciens, grammairiens et théologiens du Moyen Âge étaient, de fait, pleinement conscients qu’ils avaient à leur disposition deux types d’approche des énoncés, selon qu’ils prenaient en compte les seules propriétés sémantiques (...) de leurs composants ou qu’ils intégraient des considérations extralinguistiques allant de l’intention des auteurs / locuteurs à leur statut, en passant par le contexte d’énonciation. Chacune de ces perspectives a bénéficié d’un certain nombre d’études récentes ; la question que je voudrais aborder est plutôt celle de leur frontière en logique, de son emplacement, ses déplacements, sa porosité éventuelle. La complexité des matériaux en jeu ne permettra pas de proposer plus que quelques points de repères, qui peuvent toutefois aider à évaluer l’hypothèse d’un « projet formel » en sémantique médiévale. (shrink)

Argues that traditional Catholic understanding of transubstantiation is obscured by modern metaphysics' neglect of the category of substance, and by modern semantic assumptions about how words signify.

The article intends to show: a) that the modist Martin of Dacia sides with the traditional reading of the first chapter of Aristotle’s De interpretatione that we find in masters of arts from the first half of the thirteenth century; and b) that the modist Boethius of Dacia is one of the first thirteenth-century scholars to depart from this reading. In fact, Boethius presents us with an account of propositional verification where the terms’ signification is not operational and where the (...) immediate truth-maker of statements like ‘homo est animal’ is an external state of affairs. In Martin’s case, to the contrary, the terms’ signification is operational in his account of propositional verification and the immediate truth-bearer of such statements is a mental composition or division. (shrink)