For centuries abstraction was understood as an operation according to which, from a given phenomenon, something is kept, but something else is not paid attention to, is ”abstracted from”. This notion of abstraction not only has been rejected by the mainstream of analytic philosophy and logic as worthless psychologism but, moreover, largely replaced by a new conception of abstraction in which the allegedly ”psychological” feature of ”not paying attention to”, or ”abstracting from”, is no longer visible. Psychologism has been overcome, (...) of course, but at the expense of removing any genuine abstraction from the new notion. This is the ”trouble” in the history of abstraction. (shrink)

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)

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)

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)

This is a doctoral dissertation submitted in Utrecht in 1991. The four main parts of the text are preceded by a substantial introduction, and followed by a very important bibliography. In spite of classifying his work as belonging in the type of research called Begriffsgeschichte, the author tells us that he has done a history of the term "phenomenology" rather than of the concept of phenomenology. To justify this, Bokhove quotes Rothacker: "Terms and problems have a history. Not properly the (...) concept as such". (shrink)

The author distinguishes a "term logic," where terms are the fundamental units, and a "sentential logic," where sentences are the fundamental units. Although this technical distinction is presented by Englebretsen as a war-like opposition throughout the entire history of logic, he reassures us that "no blood has been spilled". In recent times, the term-logic party has been eclipsed by the sentential-logic band; term logic is nowadays "almost mute". Only F. Sommers appears to proclaim the truth of term logic in the (...) twentieth century. The author's main goal is to "recount the history" of term logic through an examination of its three champions: Aristotle, Leibniz, and Sommers. The chronological sequence of these three logicians is a sequence towards perfection as well. The shortcomings of Aristotle's achievement are partially corrected by Leibniz and then fully repaired by Sommers, who finally extends the Aristotelian syllogistic into a "universal logic". Englebretsen himself has added "certain emendations and extensions in a modest way". (shrink)