After presenting the ordinary and the Fregean formulations of the ancestral, I raise the question of what is their relationship, the natural candidate being that the Fregean version is an analysans intended to improve upon, and replace, the common notion of ancestral (the analysandum). Next, two types of circles that arise in connection with the Fregean ancestral are presented, and it is claimed that one of the circles makes it impossible to maintain the just described (“replacement”) interpretation. A reference is (...) made to Kerry, who was the first to point out a circularity in Frege’s ancestral. Some of Frege’s remarks are examined in order to tentatively sketch, an answer to the issue of the relationship between ordinary and Fregean ancestral; the latter, if not as an analysans replacing the common notion, can still be seen as a profound enrichment of the former. (shrink)

This volume contains a critical edition and English translation of the Latin text of the twenty-second treatise of part 1 of Paul of Venice's Logica Magna, De Scire et dubitare, "On Knowing and Being Uncertain." The issue of the treatise is "whether something known by someone is uncertain to him or not known to him". Paul of Venice presents about thirty arguments aimed at showing that indeed there are propositions that one both knows and is uncertain about. Let us take (...) a look at the first three arguments. (shrink)

The author distinguishes three views of negation: 1) term-negation ; 2) predicate-negation ; 3) sentence-negation. Strictly, however, he thinks there is no genuine sentential negation; sentential negation is reducible to the denial of a predicate. The author claims to have shown this in the present book. If sentential negation is regarded as "external" and predicate negation as "internal" to sentences, the reduction of sentential negation to predicate negation is an "internalization" of negation. The author envisages a more general reductionism for (...) logical symbols: "the internalization of negation seems to be the first and most important step [in Englebretsen's program of viewing all sentences as logically categorical]. The internalization of other operations, including modality, should follow". (shrink)