Locke's main semantic thesis is that words stand for, or signify, ideas. He says this over and over again, though the phraseology he employs varies. In Book III chapter 2 alone we find the following statements of the thesis: ‘ … Words … come to be made use of by Men, as the Signs of their Ideas’ [III.2.1; 405:10-11); The use then of Words, is to be sensible Marks of Ideas; and the Ideas they stand for, are their proper and (...) immediate Signification’ [III.2.1; 405:15-17]; ‘Words in their primary or immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them’ [III.2.2; 405:21-2]; That then which Words are the Marks of, are the Ideas of the Speaker’ [III.2.2; 405:27-8]; ‘ …. (shrink)

This is the first full-length translation of a work by the influential medieval logician Walter Burley. As such, it is an important addition to our knowledge of medieval logic, and will undoubtedly spur further research.

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...

This chapter focuses on John Locke's relation to scholasticism. It explores who the schoolmen referred to by Locke were, and what he might have learned from them, particularly with respect to topics in metaphysics, logic, and language. The chapter considers the Oxford curriculum which provided the framework for Locke's years of study and teaching there, as there is little reason to believe that he enriched his acquaintance with the schoolmen in his later career. The topic of substance was raised both (...) in metaphysics textbooks and in logic textbooks, but the material in both was largely similar. The chapter considers some of Locke's remarks and focuses on what the scholastics had to say. Locke goes on to claim that the very use of syllogistic depends on the prior ability to see the connections between ideas. The area in which Locke showed the most obvious influence of scholasticism is that of language. (shrink)

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)

The work of joachim jungius on the logic of relations was not as original as some authors have thought, But he did make it clear that relational inferences should be distinguished from categorical inferences; and he was the first to recognize the argument 'a rectis ad obliqua', An example of which is 'all circles are figures, Therefore whoever draws a circle draws a figure'.

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)

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)

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)

Josse Clichtove represents a turning point in the history of disputation, for he combines one of the earliest accounts of the doctrinal disputation with one of the latest accounts of the obligational disputation. This paper describes the nature and significance of the theories that he offered. Particular attention is paid to the doctrines of truth, necessity and possibility which lie behind his doctrines; and also to the light which his work throws on the aims and nature of an obligational disputation.

In 1498 Cajetan published a short book, On the Analogy of Names, which is often regarded as a masterly summary of Aquinas's doctrine of analogy. It opens in the very first paragraph with an attack on three views of the concept of being (ens): first, that it is a disjunction of concepts; second, that it is an ordered group of concepts; and third, that it is a single, separate concept which is unequally participated by substances and accidents. A number of (...) questions immediately spring to mind. Why are concepts being discussed when analogy is said by Cajetan to be a theory of language? What is meant by ‘concept’? Who held the views under attack and why? So far as I can tell, the extensive literature on both Aquinas and Cajetan offers no satisfactory answers to these questions. (shrink)

This book examines John Locke’s claims about the nature and work- ings of language.WalterOtt proposes a new interpretation of Locke’s thesis that words signify ideas in the mind of the speaker, and argues that rather than employing such notions as sense or reference, Locke relies on an ancient tradition that understands signification as reliable indication.He then uses this interpretation to explain crucial areas of Locke’s metaphysics and epistemology, including essence, abstraction, knowledge, and mental representation. His discussion, which is the first (...) book-length treatment of its topic, challenges many of the current orthodox readings of Locke, and will be of interest to historians of philosophy and philosophers of language alike. (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)