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Logica modernorum. A critical note on Habermas’s portrait of medieval philosophy In his monumental history of philosophy, the eminent scholar Jurgen Habermas has managed to provide us with a thorough and very nuanced overview of thousands of years of western thought. The famous philosopher paints an impressive picture of the vicissitudes of the modernisation processes featuring in the history of western philosophy. The Leitmotiv of Habermas’s narrative is the way in which throughout history philosophy dealt with the question concerning the relationship between faith and reason. When it comes to the Middle Ages, it is not surprising that Habermas should focus on the opposition between Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham. However, by confining himself to the concepts of fides and ratio, he completely overlooks thirteenth-century developments in the domain of logic. To take note of these developments is fundamental to understand the process of modernisation in philosophy. The aim of this paper is to fill in the gap, by concentrating on thirteenth-century discussions of necessity and (logical) consequences.

Thirteenth-century views on consequences have not yet received much attention. Authors of this period deserve closer scrutiny, because of their profound interest in the nature of consequence. The fundamental feature of a consequence was captured in the claim that its antecedent is the cause of its consequent. At the same time authors systematically discussed consequences in terms of truth-preservation. This paper considers the requirements of syllogistic argument and consequences in general, including the role of ‘cause’ in the identification of syllogisms proper, looks at different descriptions of consequence, moves on to discussions of the syncategorema ‘si’ – in syncategoremata treatises by Peter of Spain, Henry of Ghent, Nicholas of Paris and William of Sherwood, as well as some sophismata tracts – and explores what thirteenth-century authors make of the truth-functional characterisation of consequence, showing how it clashes with the authors’ insistence on a causal connection between antecedent and consequent.

The tract on logic that has now become known as the Introductiones Montanae maiores provides us with useful evidence of the kind of education that was on offer in the Parisian schools of the 12th century. In this contribution, I will go through a number of arguments brought up in connection with the definitions of basic logical concepts. By doing so I aim to provide more details about some of the most important theoretical positions of the tract.

Peter of Spain's Tractatus, which appeared in a first critical edition by L.M. de Rijk (1972), is a handbook on logic; it is now estimated that it dates from the second quarter of the thirteenth ce...

Abstract Gerald Odonis' logic is generous in its acceptance of ontological counterparts of linguistic expressions. He claims that universals have an objective status and are independent of our mental operations. This article takes a closer look at his views on the meaning of what he calls esse tertio adiacens, i.e., the type of being expressed in propositions of the form 'S is P'. To a certain extent Odonis' analysis resembles Peter of Spain's account of compositio. Unlike his predecessor, however, Odonis thinks that the 'being' used in any true statement, regardless of whether the subject exists or not, is univocal. It turns out that Odonis' account is more in line with John Duns Scotus' intensionalist theory of propositional composition.

ion' which only disregards the particular materiality of the thing leaving the composite of matter and form as such untouched, but considering it in such a way that it applies to all members of the same class.4 In the Middle Ages, the distinction between form and matter came to be used in the domain of linguistic and logical analysis as well. In itself this is not surprising, as the Aristotelian way of dealing with the world was to carefully analyse the modes in which we conceptualise it, and the many ways in which we can talk about its inhabitants. Our way of conceptualising the world is indeed reflected by the ways in which we can 3 See de Riik 2002 (op. cit. above, n. 2), 207-10; 236-40. 4 De Rijk 2002 (op. cit. above, n. 2), 285-6. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.85 on Sat, 28 May 2016 06:39:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE FORMA-MATERIA DEVICE 3 bring it up for discussion, and it is of paramount importance to study these ways of bringing things up.5 Many of us are already familiar with the medieval study of grammar, particularly the 'speculative grammars' by late thirteenth-century authors who came to be known as the Modistae .6 Furthermore, in works of logic as well we come across the distinction between significatimi formale and signification materiale , as applied to connotative terms. But the distinction was already in use earlier in the thirteenth century. Let me give an account of the different domains of logico-linguistic analyses it featured in, starting off with descriptions of metalanguage. 2. Forma and materia in Metalanguage 2.1 Multiplicity in Propositions A first way in which the distinction is used in metalanguage is as a means to describe the syntactico-semantic functions of word-classes. In a commentary on Priscian (dating from middle of the twelfth century), we find the following description of the plural form in words: "'number' is the form of a word in its written (or spoken) form and the discrimination of quantity in its signification; so by the ending of the word and by the discrimination of quantity one is able to know which word is singular and which one plural".7 In this account the forma dictionis is identified as the ending of the word in question, which is said to be one of the two distinctive features of a word by which you can recognise it as being a singular or a plural. A slightly different use of forma is found in the Fallacie Londinenses (presumably dating from the second half of the twelfth century); as to the question how multiplicity in propositions can occur, it is explained that 5 For this particular feature see L.M. de Rijk, Categorization as a key Notion in Ancient and Medieval Semantics , in: Vivarium, 26 (1988), 1-18. 6 See G. Bursill-Hall, Speculative Grammars of the Middle Ages, Den Haag, 1971, and his edition Grammatica Speculativa of Thomas Erfuhrt, London, 1972. 7 Commentary on Priscian, Vienna V.P.L. 2486, in: L.M. de Rijk, Logica Modernorum. A Contribution to the Early History of Terminist Logic , Vol. I, On the Twelfth Century Theory of Fallacies , Vol. II, Part 1, The Origin and Early Development of the Theory of Supposition , Vol. II, Part II, Texts and Indices, Assen, 1962-1967; Vol. II, Part 1, 247: "(. . .) numerus est forma dictionis in voce et discretio quantitatis in significatione, idest per terminationem dictionis et per discretionem significationis cognoscitur que dictio sit singularis et que pluralis." This content downloaded from 207.46.13.85 on Sat, 28 May 2016 06:39:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Presentation, introduction et publication de la section «De consequenciis», consacree aux regles de la consequence, extraite des deux copies de la «Summa logica» trouvees par le professeur De Rijk a la Bibliotheque de Seville (Biblioteca Capitular Colombina, Ms 7-3-13) et a la Bibliotheque de Saragosse (Biblioteca del Cabildo Metropolitano) en 1971. S'interessant a la theorie des consequences qui constitue une des plus importantes sections de la logique medievale, l'A. identifie les differentes influences repreables dans le texte, que sont la semantique des propositions de Paul de Venise et le type de semantique de Buridan

L'A. etudie les traites syncategorematiques du XIII e siecle interpretant les notions modales de necessite et contingence heritees des «Premiers Analytiques» d'Aristote. Les differentes approches semantique ou syntaxique, logique ou ontologique, separent les auteurs sur la question de la validite des regles d'inference. Ainsi Pierre d'Espagne associe-t-il clairement la necessite logique a la necessite ontologique, alors que Jean le Page et Nicolas de Paris en font une affaire de metaphysique

This paper aims to explain Henry of Ghent’s views on what kind of language is appropriate in theology, and why. It concentrates on a number of questions of the Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, which are devoted to his take on how theologians should explain their discipline to students, and to the meaningfulness in general of theological language. The paper delves into the technical terms sensus and insinuare, and compares Henry’s account with H.P. Grice’s views on (speaker-)meaning and his notion of ‘conversational implicatures’, thus showing that Henry emphasises the performative features of linguistic use.

Supposition theory is one of the most important later medieval semantic theories (in the Latin tradition). Supposition is the property of terms (occurring in propositions) of standing for things, so that these things can be talked about by means of propositions, and supposition theory (in its different versions) is a theory codifying the different uses of terms in propositions, based on the idea that one and the same term can stand for different things when occurring in different propositional contexts. The different kinds of supposition are attempts to capture the phenomenon of semantic variation prompted by different propositional contexts. The theory emerged in the twelfth century, and the two main traditions contributing to its development were the tradition of commentaries on Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations and the tradition commenting on the fourth-century grammarian Priscian. Supposition theory acquired its first mature form in the thirteenth century, with the terminist/summulist tradition (in the works of William of Sherwood, Peter of Spain, Roger Bacon, and Lambert of Lagny/Auxerre), and was further developed in the fourteenth century by authors such as Walter Burley, William of Ockham, and John Buridan.

This paper deals with John Wyclif 's account of the fallacia accidentis. To a certain extent Wyclif 's explanations fit in with Aristotle's understanding of language. Aristotle recognises that we can talk about substances in many different ways; we can introduce them by using 'substantial' names, but also by using names derived from the substances' accidental features. The substances are the ultimate foundation of all these expressions. This idea in itself is not opposed to a conceptualist account of language. John Buridan uses Aristotle's principle of categorisation to show how language works, but for him the activity of categorising things is to be explained in terms of our mental activities only. Wyclif, on the other hand, reads much into the requirement that all our linguistic distinctions should have their basis in extramental reality: our conceptualisations not only pertain to individual substances, but also parallel their distinct ontic layers.