Bibliography on the Problem of Universals in the Middle Ages
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Medieval Western Philosophy: the European Emergence
Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series I, Culture and Values, Volume 9 History of Western Philosophy by George F. McLean and Patrick J. Aspell Medieval Western Philosophy: The European Emergence By Patrick J. Aspell The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy 1 Copyright © 1999 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Aspell, Patrick, J. Medieval western philosophy: the European emergence / Patrick J. Aspell. p.cm. — (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series I. Culture and values ; vol. 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Philosophy, Medieval. I. Title. III. Series. B721.A87 1997 97-20069 320.9171’7’090495—dc21 CIP ISBN 1-56518-094-1 (pbk.) 2 Table of Contents Chronology of Events and Persons Significant in and beyond the History of Medieval Europe Preface xiii Part One: The Origins of Medieval Philosophy 1 Chapter I. Augustine: The Lover of Truth 5 Chapter II. Universals According to Boethius, Peter Abelard, and Other Dialecticians 57 Chapter III. Christian Neoplatoists: John Scotus Erigena and Anselm of Canterbury 73 Part Two: The Maturity of Medieval Philosophy Chronology 97 Chapter IV. Bonaventure: Philosopher of the Exemplar 101 Chapter V. Thomas Aquinas: Philosopher of the Existential Act 155 Part Three: Critical Reflection And Reconstruction 237 Chapter VI. John Duns Scotus: Metaphysician of Essence 243 Chapter -
Aristotle's Assertoric Syllogistic and Modern Relevance Logic*
Aristotle’s assertoric syllogistic and modern relevance logic* Abstract: This paper sets out to evaluate the claim that Aristotle’s Assertoric Syllogistic is a relevance logic or shows significant similarities with it. I prepare the grounds for a meaningful comparison by extracting the notion of relevance employed in the most influential work on modern relevance logic, Anderson and Belnap’s Entailment. This notion is characterized by two conditions imposed on the concept of validity: first, that some meaning content is shared between the premises and the conclusion, and second, that the premises of a proof are actually used to derive the conclusion. Turning to Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, I argue that there is evidence that Aristotle’s Assertoric Syllogistic satisfies both conditions. Moreover, Aristotle at one point explicitly addresses the potential harmfulness of syllogisms with unused premises. Here, I argue that Aristotle’s analysis allows for a rejection of such syllogisms on formal grounds established in the foregoing parts of the Prior Analytics. In a final section I consider the view that Aristotle distinguished between validity on the one hand and syllogistic validity on the other. Following this line of reasoning, Aristotle’s logic might not be a relevance logic, since relevance is part of syllogistic validity and not, as modern relevance logic demands, of general validity. I argue that the reasons to reject this view are more compelling than the reasons to accept it and that we can, cautiously, uphold the result that Aristotle’s logic is a relevance logic. Keywords: Aristotle, Syllogism, Relevance Logic, History of Logic, Logic, Relevance 1. -
Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife Hyde Dawn Krista University of Missouri-St
University of Missouri, St. Louis IRL @ UMSL Theses Graduate Works 4-16-2012 Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife Hyde Dawn Krista University of Missouri-St. Louis, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://irl.umsl.edu/thesis Recommended Citation Krista, Hyde Dawn, "Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife" (2012). Theses. 261. http://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/261 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Works at IRL @ UMSL. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of IRL @ UMSL. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife Krista Hyde M.L.A., Washington University in St. Louis, 2010 B.A., Philosophy, Southeast Missouri State University – Cape Girardeau, 2003 A Thesis Submitted to The Graduate School at the University of Missouri – St. Louis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Philosophy April 2012 Advisory Committee Gualtiero Piccinini, Ph.D. Chair Jon McGinnis, Ph.D. John Brunero, Ph.D. Copyright, Krista Hyde, 2012 Abstract Thomas Aquinas nearly succeeds in addressing the persistent problem of the mind-body relationship by redefining the human being as a body-soul (matter-form) composite. This redefinition makes the interaction problem of substance dualism inapplicable, because there is no soul “in” a body. However, he works around the mind- body problem only by sacrificing an immaterial afterlife, as well as the identity and separability of the soul after death. Additionally, Thomistic psychology has difficulty accounting for the transmission of universals, nor does it seem able to overcome the arguments for causal closure. -
Medieval Philosophy
| 1 Course Syllabus Medieval Philosophy INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION Dr. Wm Mark Smillie, Professor, Philosophy Department 142 St Charles Hall Email: [email protected]; Ph: 447 - 5416 Office Hours Spring 2017 : MW, 3:30 - 4:30; Th, 2:30 - 4:30; Fri, 2:00 - 3:30; & by appointment. For issues about this course, students can contact me before/after class, at my office hours (posted above), by phone or email (either Carroll email or through moodle email). I will respond to email and phone inquiries within one busine ss day (Saturdays and Sundays are not business days). I will post notifications about the course in the Moodle News Forum. Students should also be aware of the Moodle Calendar that announces assignment deadlines. COURSE INFORMATION PHIL202, Medieval Phil osophy Meets: Tuesday and Thursdays, 9:30 - 10:45, 102 O’Connell; 3 credit hours Course Description This course is an introductory survey of medieval philosophical thought. We will consider some philosophical questions and issues that were central to medieval discussion, including the relationship between faith and reason, the problem of evil, our abili ty to know God’s nature and describe it in human language, the implications of believing in God as a creator, and the famous “problem of universals.” Significant medieval philosophers studied in this course include St. Augustine, Boethius, Peter Abelard, St. Anselm, Avicenna, St. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. An effort will be made to convey general medieval life and values and their connection to medieval philosophy, as well as to relate the thought of the middle Ages to the philosophy of other historic al periods. -
The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy∗ Scuola Normale Superiore [Pisa - July 5, 2010]
93 Reportage 7 novembre 2010 International conference on Ontology The problem of universals in contemporary philosophy∗ Scuola Normale Superiore [Pisa - July 5, 2010] Gianmarco Brunialti Masera Overview The three-day conference opened in the afternoon of July, 5 and, after taking a quick look at the programme and the names of the important thinkers standing out on it, one could have expected to find a crowded audience room. Actually that was not quite the case. What I could afford to follow and am going to write about here is only the first day of the conference. The debate started right on time, after a short introduction given by Gabriele Galluzzo, both organizer of the conference and member of the scientific board. I would ac- tually like to underline the word debate: each speech (about 40 minutes) was immediately followed by a short discussion of the issues introduced by the proponent. Unfortunately, de- spite of the accurate and punctual speeches, the little time dedicated to each is what most penalized the conference, in my opinion: this inevitably obliged both the speakers and the audience to be plunged in medias res, without standing too much on ceremonies. I take this to be ‘penalizing’, considering the debate on universals is a very wide one and composed by an incredibly great number of positions which can sometimes start from oppo- site sides and some other times depart at some specific middle point of one single theory of properties and relations. Moreover, most (if not all) of them entail a certain number of other metaphysical themes from which the specific problematics of universals cannot be cut off. -
Philosophy.Pdf
Philosophy 1 PHIL:1401 Matters of Life and Death 3 s.h. Contemporary ethical controversies with life and death Philosophy implications; topics may include famine, brain death, animal ethics, abortion, torture, terrorism, capital punishment. GE: Chair Values and Culture. • David Cunning PHIL:1636 Principles of Reasoning: Argument and Undergraduate major: philosophy (B.A.) Debate 3 s.h. Undergraduate minor: philosophy Critical thinking and its application to arguments and debates. Graduate degrees: M.A. in philosophy; Ph.D. in philosophy GE: Quantitative or Formal Reasoning. Faculty: https://clas.uiowa.edu/philosophy/people/faculty PHIL:1861 Introduction to Philosophy 3 s.h. Website: https://clas.uiowa.edu/philosophy/ Varied topics; may include personal identity, existence of The Department of Philosophy offers programs of study for God, philosophical skepticism, nature of mind and reality, undergraduate and graduate students. A major in philosophy time travel, and the good life; readings, films. GE: Values and develops abilities useful for careers in many fields and for any Culture. situation requiring clear, systematic thinking. PHIL:1902 Philosophy Lab: The Meaning of Life 1 s.h. Further exploration of PHIL:1033 course material with the The department also administers the interdisciplinary professor in a smaller group. undergraduate major in ethics and public policy, which it offers jointly with the Department of Economics and the PHIL:1904 Philosophy Lab: Liberty and the Pursuit of Department of Sociology and Criminology; see Ethics and Happiness 1 s.h. Public Policy in the Catalog. Further exploration of PHIL:1034 course material with the professor in a smaller group. Programs PHIL:1950 Philosophy Club 1-3 s.h. -
The Peripatetic Program in Categorical Logic: Leibniz on Propositional Terms
THE REVIEW OF SYMBOLIC LOGIC, Page 1 of 65 THE PERIPATETIC PROGRAM IN CATEGORICAL LOGIC: LEIBNIZ ON PROPOSITIONAL TERMS MARKO MALINK Department of Philosophy, New York University and ANUBAV VASUDEVAN Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago Abstract. Greek antiquity saw the development of two distinct systems of logic: Aristotle’s theory of the categorical syllogism and the Stoic theory of the hypothetical syllogism. Some ancient logicians argued that hypothetical syllogistic is more fundamental than categorical syllogistic on the grounds that the latter relies on modes of propositional reasoning such as reductio ad absurdum. Peripatetic logicians, by contrast, sought to establish the priority of categorical over hypothetical syllogistic by reducing various modes of propositional reasoning to categorical form. In the 17th century, this Peripatetic program of reducing hypothetical to categorical logic was championed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In an essay titled Specimina calculi rationalis, Leibniz develops a theory of propositional terms that allows him to derive the rule of reductio ad absurdum in a purely categor- ical calculus in which every proposition is of the form AisB. We reconstruct Leibniz’s categorical calculus and show that it is strong enough to establish not only the rule of reductio ad absurdum,but all the laws of classical propositional logic. Moreover, we show that the propositional logic generated by the nonmonotonic variant of Leibniz’s categorical calculus is a natural system of relevance logic ¬ known as RMI→ . From its beginnings in antiquity up until the late 19th century, the study of formal logic was shaped by two distinct approaches to the subject. The first approach was primarily concerned with simple propositions expressing predicative relations between terms. -
Philosophy 305 a Early Medieval Philosophy (4Th to the 12Th Century CE)
1 Philosophy 305 A Early Medieval Philosophy (4th to the 12th Century CE) This course begins with a brief presentation of the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus insofar as these were influential on medieval philosophical thought. It then considers major thinkers in the Christian traditions from the 4th to the 12th century CE, and includes a brief introduction to major Islamic and Jewish philosophers within that time period insofar as their speculations were influential on medieval Christian philosophy. Instructor: E-H. W. Kluge Office: CLE B313 Phone: (250)721-7519 e-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: Mondays and Thursdays 10:00am - 11:20am Text: Arthur Hyman, James J. Walsh, & Thomas Williams, eds. Philosophy in the Middle Ages (3rd ed.) Cambridge, MA: Hackett. Formal Course Requirements and Grading Procedures Grades will be based on two mid-terms and a final examination. The mid-term examinations are fifty minutes long and the final examination is three hours in length. The mid-term examinations are each worth 20% of the course grade; the final examination is worth 60%. Students who have taken (and received a grade for) both mid-term examinations have the option of having the final examination count for 100% of their course grade. The mid-term examinations cover only the material that has not been tested before in the semester; the final examination is cumulative and covers all of the material dealt with in the course. Students are encouraged to discuss their mid- term examination with the instructor. Significant dates: - Mid-term examination #1: app. October 1 - Mid-term examination #2: app. -
Logic: a Brief Introduction Ronald L
Logic: A Brief Introduction Ronald L. Hall, Stetson University Chapter 1 - Basic Training 1.1 Introduction In this logic course, we are going to be relying on some “mental muscles” that may need some toning up. But don‟t worry, we recognize that it may take some time to get these muscles strengthened; so we are going to take it slow before we get up and start running. Are you ready? Well, let‟s begin our basic training with some preliminary conceptual stretching. Certainly all of us recognize that activities like riding a bicycle, balancing a checkbook, or playing chess are acquired skills. Further, we know that in order to acquire these skills, training and study are important, but practice is essential. It is also commonplace to acknowledge that these acquired skills can be exercised at various levels of mastery. Those who have studied the piano and who have practiced diligently certainly are able to play better than those of us who have not. The plain fact is that some people play the piano better than others. And the same is true of riding a bicycle, playing chess, and so forth. Now let‟s stretch this agreement about such skills a little further. Consider the activity of thinking. Obviously, we all think, but it is seldom that we think about thinking. So let's try to stretch our thinking to include thinking about thinking. As we do, and if this does not cause too much of a cramp, we will see that thinking is indeed an activity that has much in common with other acquired skills. -
Aristotle on Predication
DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12054 Aristotle on Predication Phil Corkum Abstract: A predicate logic typically has a heterogeneous semantic theory. Sub- jects and predicates have distinct semantic roles: subjects refer; predicates char- acterize. A sentence expresses a truth if the object to which the subject refers is correctly characterized by the predicate. Traditional term logic, by contrast, has a homogeneous theory: both subjects and predicates refer; and a sentence is true if the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. In this paper, I will examine evidence for ascribing to Aristotle the view that subjects and predicates refer. If this is correct, then it seems that Aristotle, like the traditional term logician, problematically conflates predication and identity claims. I will argue that we can ascribe to Aristotle the view that both subjects and predicates refer, while holding that he would deny that a sentence is true just in case the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. In particular, I will argue that Aristotle’s core semantic notion is not identity but the weaker relation of consti- tution. For example, the predication ‘All men are mortal’ expresses a true thought, in Aristotle’s view, just in case the mereological sum of humans is a part of the mereological sum of mortals. A predicate logic typically has a heterogeneous semantic theory. Subjects and predicates have distinct semantic roles: subjects refer; predicates characterize. A sentence expresses a truth if the object to which the subject refers is correctly characterized by the predicate. Traditional term logic, by contrast, has a homo- geneous theory: both subjects and predicates refer; and a sentence is true if the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. -
The History of Logic
c Peter King & Stewart Shapiro, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (OUP 1995), 496–500. THE HISTORY OF LOGIC Aristotle was the first thinker to devise a logical system. He drew upon the emphasis on universal definition found in Socrates, the use of reductio ad absurdum in Zeno of Elea, claims about propositional structure and nega- tion in Parmenides and Plato, and the body of argumentative techniques found in legal reasoning and geometrical proof. Yet the theory presented in Aristotle’s five treatises known as the Organon—the Categories, the De interpretatione, the Prior Analytics, the Posterior Analytics, and the Sophistical Refutations—goes far beyond any of these. Aristotle holds that a proposition is a complex involving two terms, a subject and a predicate, each of which is represented grammatically with a noun. The logical form of a proposition is determined by its quantity (uni- versal or particular) and by its quality (affirmative or negative). Aristotle investigates the relation between two propositions containing the same terms in his theories of opposition and conversion. The former describes relations of contradictoriness and contrariety, the latter equipollences and entailments. The analysis of logical form, opposition, and conversion are combined in syllogistic, Aristotle’s greatest invention in logic. A syllogism consists of three propositions. The first two, the premisses, share exactly one term, and they logically entail the third proposition, the conclusion, which contains the two non-shared terms of the premisses. The term common to the two premisses may occur as subject in one and predicate in the other (called the ‘first figure’), predicate in both (‘second figure’), or subject in both (‘third figure’). -
Predication and the Problem of Universals Catherine Legg
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Commons@Waikato Philosophical Papers Vol. 30, No. 2 (July 2001): 117-143 Predication and the Problem of Universals Catherine Legg Abstract: This paper contrasts the scholastic realists of David Armstrong and Charles Peirce. It is argued that the so-called 'problem of universals' is not a problem in pure ontology (concerning whether universals exist) as Armstrong construes it to be. Rather, it extends to issues concerning which predicates should be applied where, issues which Armstrong sets aside under the label of 'semantics', and which from a Peircean perspective encompass even the fundamentals of scientific methodology. It is argued that Peir ce's scholastic realism not only presents a more nuanced ontology (distinguishing the existent front the real) but also provides more of a sense of why realism should be a position worth fighting for. ... a realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality than that which is represented in a true representation. C.S. Peirce Like many other philosophical problems, the grandly-named 'Problem of Universals' is difficult to define without begging the question that it raises. Laurence Goldstein, however, provides a helpful hands-off denotation of the problem by noting that it proceeds from what he calls The Trivial Obseruation:2 The observation is the seemingly incontrovertible claim that, 'sometimes some things have something in common'. The 1 Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. Justus Buehler (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), 248. 2 Laurence Goldstein, 'Scientific Scotism – The Emperor's New Trousers or Has Armstrong Made Some Real Strides?', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol 61, No.