Thoughts Words And Things An Introduction To Late Medieval Philosophy And Semantich Theory Pv Spade, E-book, do ...
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Thoughts, Words and
Things: An Introduction to
Late Mediaeval Logic and
Semantic Theory
Paul Vincent Spade
Version 1.1: August 9, 2002
Copyright 2002 by Paul Vincent Spade
Permission is hereby granted to copy this document in whole or in part for any
purpose whatever, provided only that acknowledgment of copyright is given.
The “dragon” that graces the cover of this volume has a story that goes with it. In the summer of 1980, I was on
the teaching staff of the Summer Institute on Medieval Philosophy held at Cornell University under the direction of Nor-
man Kretzmann and the auspices of the Council for Philosophical Studies and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
While I was giving a series of lectures there (lectures that contribute to this volume, as it turns out), I went to my office one
morning, and there under the door some anonymous wag from the Institute had slid the pen and ink drawing you see in the
picture. It represents “Supposition” as a dragon, making a rude face at the viewer. The tail of the dragon is divided — not
entirely accurately, as it turns out — into the various branches and subbranches of supposition. If the details are not alto-
gether correct, the spirit is certainly understandable.
A few years ago, I discovered that the anonymous artist was not altogether as original as I had at first supposed.
While glancing one day — don’t ask why — through the charming
A Coloring Book of the Middle Ages
(San Francisco,
Cal.: Bellerophon Books, 1969), I turned a page and was startled to find this very creature leering out at me! The inscrip-
tions in the tail and at the bottom were not there, but otherwise it was the same creature! A note at the top of the page said
“From the Treatise of Walter de Milemete,
De Nobilitatibus Sapientiis et prudentiis Regum,
Oxford, Christ Church Library,
MS. E. 11 about 1326–27.”
I confess I had never heard of Walter or his book, but of course I couldn’t leave it at that. After some detective
work in the library, I found a very informative description of the manuscript in Lucy Freeman Sandler,
Gothic Manuscripts
1285–1385,
(“A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles”; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), volume
II:
Catalogue,
pp. 91–93. It turns out that the manuscript is now identified as: Oxford, Christ Church MS 92. Master Walter
of Milemete (fl. 1326–73), it seems, was King’s Clerk and afterwards Fellow of King’s Hall, Cambridge. His book, of
which this manuscript is the unique copy, was designed to instruct “the soverign on his varied responsibilities in relation to
religion, government, learning, administration, entertainment, financing of armies, and on the moral virtues appropriate to
his kind” (Sandler, p. 91). Here is some more of Sandler’s discussion (pp. 91–92):
Milemete wrote his book as an offering to Edward III at the end of 1326, after the deposition but be-
fore the murder of Edward II in 1327. It was intended as a companion volume to the copy of Pseudo-Aristotle's
De secretis secretorum
…, which Milemete had also prepared for Edward III. [Note: Sandler also describes this
manuscript in her immediately following entry. It survives as London, British Library MS Add. 476].
An ambitious project, the text … is dominated by the decorative borders, crammed with heraldry,
contorted hybrids, … combats between man and man, man and best, half-man and half-beast, human monstrosi-
ties,
e.g.
the courting wildman and wildwoman …, the axe-bearing dwarf …, hunting scenes, and tournaments.
By a stroke of good fortune, it happens that the manuscript was actually published in 1913 in a limited-edition
monochrome reproduction by Montague Rhodes James (well known to all searchers of manuscript catalogues). Here are
the particulars:
The Treatise of Walter de Milemete De nobilitatibus, sapientiis, et prudentiis regum Reproduced in Facsim-
ile from the Unique Manuscript Preserved at Christ Church, Oxford, together with a Selection of Pages from the Compan-
ion Manuscript of the Treatise De secretis secretorum Aristotelis, Preserved in the Library of the Earl of Leicester at
Holkham Hall,
[Oxford:] Printed for the Roxburghe Club [at the University Press, by H. Hart], 1913. M. R. James included
a long and detailed description in an introduction to the volume.
Apparently this limited edition was distributed only to then members of the Roxburghe Club. There is list of
members included in the preliminary matter in the volume, and each member’s copy has his name printed in red in that list.
It turns out that the Lilly Library at Indiana University (our rare-book library) has the copy produced for a certain Michael
Tomkinson, Esq. And, sure enough, there on fol. 31
v
(p. 62), in the lower left corner, is our grinning monster. It appears in
Ch. 7 (
De regis gratitudine
) of the treatise.
Just to head off potentially awkward legal questions of copyright, I hasten to add that the “supposition dragon”
that was slipped under my door and that graces th volume is
not
simply a marked-up xerographic copy of the sketch that
appears in
A Coloring Book of the Middle Ages.
The latter’s jaws are slightly open, for instance, so that the upper teeth do
not quite meet the lower ones; my dragon has his teeth clenched. No, although my dragon was obviously inspired by the
Coloring Book,
it was drawn separately. Again, there are veins in the tail of the
Coloring Book’
s sketch, whereas my
dragon lacks them (to make room for the writing). Again, neither sketch shows the shadings and the backgroun pattern
visible in the Roxburghe Club’s printed volume.
I have absolutely no idea about the identity of the anonymous artist who was inspired to apply this drawing to
supposition theory, but I have the original framed on the wall in my office.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction ...........................................................................................1
A. Scope of This Book..................................................................................1
B. The Intended Audience ............................................................................2
C. What Mediaeval Logic Is Not..................................................................2
D. The Future of This Book..........................................................................3
E. Translations..............................................................................................3
Chapter 2: Thumbnail Sketch of the History of Logic to the End of the
Middle Ages.............................................................................................................5
A. The Early Ancient Period ........................................................................7
B. Aristotelian Logic ..................................................................................10
1. Important Characteristics of Aristotelian Logic ............................12
2. Opposition, Conversion, and the Categorical Syllogism...............13
a. Kinds of Categorical Propositions .................................................14
b. The Square of Opposition and the Laws of Opposition.................15
c. Conversion .....................................................................................18
d. Categorical Syllogisms ..................................................................19
i. Major, Middle and Minor Terms ...............................................19
ii. Syllogistic Figures .....................................................................20
iii. Syllogistic Moods and the Theory of Reduction .......................21
3. Last Words About Aristotle and a Few About Theophrastus ........25
C. Stoic Logic .............................................................................................25
1. General Characteristics of Stoic Logic ..........................................28
2. Particular Doctrines .......................................................................28
a. Diodorus Cronus ............................................................................28
b. Philo of Megara .............................................................................30
c. Chrysippus .....................................................................................30
D. Late Antiquity ........................................................................................31
E. Boethius .................................................................................................35
F. The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries .....................................................37
G. The Sophistic Refutations......................................................................38
H. The Thirteenth Century..........................................................................40
I. The Fourteenth Century and Thereafter ................................................43
J. Additional Reading ................................................................................51
Chapter 3: The Threefold Division of Language..................................................53
A. Some Remarks on John Buridan............................................................53
1. Buridan’s Writings.........................................................................55
B. The
Quaestio-
Form................................................................................57
C. What Is A “Sophism”?...........................................................................60
D. The Relation of Writing to Speech ........................................................61
E. What Is “Signification”? ........................................................................63
F. Three “Levels” of Language..................................................................66
G. Variations of Terminology.....................................................................71
H. More about Relations
R
1
through
R
6
...................................................72
I. The Primitive Relations .........................................................................72
J. The Sources of the Doctrine ..................................................................74
K. Natural vs. Conventional Signification..................................................77
L. Subordination.........................................................................................79
M. Evaluation and Comparison of These Views.........................................80
1. The Position of Written Language.................................................80
2. The Position of Spoken Language .................................................83
a. The Transitivity of Signification....................................................84
3. More on the Position of Spoken Language....................................86
4. Unanswered Questions ..................................................................87
N. Postscript................................................................................................88
O. Additional Reading ................................................................................88
Chapter 4: Mental Language.................................................................................89
A. Major Contributors to the Theory..........................................................89
B. The Conventionality of Spoken and Written Language ........................90
1. Robert Fland’s Extreme View .......................................................90
2. William Heytesbury’s Odd Restriction..........................................93
C. Natural Signification..............................................................................95
D. Mental Language as the Explanation for Synonymy and
Equivocation ......................................................................................................97
E. Synonymy and Equivocation in Mental Language..............................101
1. Mental Language and Fregean Senses.........................................104
F. The Ingredients of Mental Language...................................................105
G. Common and Proper Grammatical Accidents .....................................107
1. Geach’s Criticisms of Ockham’s Theory.....................................109
H. The Structure of Mental Propositions..................................................113
1. Proper and Improper Mental Language .......................................118
2. The Problem of Word-Order in Proper Mental Language...........123
a. Gregory of Rimini’s and Peter of Ailly’s Theory of Mental
Propositions as Structureless Acts ...........................................................125
b. God is a True Mental Proposition Properly So Called ................127
c. The Difference Between Gregory’s Theory and Peter’s .............128
d. A Way Out of the Word-Order Argument ...................................130
3.
The Problem of the Unity of Proper Mental Propositions ...........134
a.
Reply to This Problem .................................................................136
I.
Summary of the Two Preceding Problems ..........................................137
J.
Additional Reading ..............................................................................137
ii
Chapter 5: The Signification of Terms ...............................................................139
A. A Dispute Between Ockham and Burley .............................................140
1. Ockham’s Theory.........................................................................140
2. Burley’s Theory ...........................................................................142
3. Historical Antecedents of Burley’s Theory .................................144
B. Ockham’s Nominalism and Some of Its Consequences ......................146
C. The Pros and Cons of Realism and Nominalism .................................148
D. Burley’s Arguments Against Ockham .................................................148
1. First Argument .............................................................................149
a. Ockham’s Reply...........................................................................150
b. Difficulties ...................................................................................151
2. Another Objection........................................................................153
a. Ockham’s Reply...........................................................................154
i. Concepts as Natural Likenesses...............................................155
ii. Ockham’s Two Main Theories of Concepts ............................156
iii. Why Did Ockham Abandon the
Fictum
-Theory?....................158
b. Concluding Remarks on This Objection......................................160
3. Still Other Objections ..................................................................160
E. Epistemological Factors in the Dispute ...............................................161
F. Additional Reading ..............................................................................163
Chapter 6: The Signification of Propositions .....................................................165
A. The Additive Principle.........................................................................165
B.
Complexe significabilia
.......................................................................168
1. Authoritative Sources for the Theory ..........................................169
a. Boethius .......................................................................................169
b. Aristotle .......................................................................................170
2. Arguments for the Theory............................................................170
3. Terminological Variations ...........................................................172
4. The Ontological Status of
Complexe significabilia
.....................173
a. The Problem.................................................................................173
b. Gregory of Rimini’s Three Kinds of Beings................................174
C. Buridan’s Theory .................................................................................175
1. Problems for Buridan’s Theory ...................................................177
a. One Problem ................................................................................177
b. A Possible Second Problem .........................................................177
D. Digression on the Bearers of Truth Value ...........................................178
E. The Adverbial Theory of Signification................................................180
1. Questions and Problems...............................................................181
F. Adverbial Signification as the Basis for A Theory of Truth ...............182
G. Direct and Consecutive Signification ..................................................184
1. Some Implications of This Distinction ........................................185
H. Additional Reading ..............................................................................187
Chapter 7: Connotation-Theory ..........................................................................189
A. The Theory of Paronymy .....................................................................189
1.
iii
Augustine .....................................................................................191
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