Acta Philosophica Fennica Research Articles

The Logic of " Sit Verum " in Richard Brinkley and William of Ockham

The Logic of «SIT VERUM" in RICHARD BRINKLEY and WILLIAM OF OCKHAM Introduction In 1980, Gedeon Gal and Rega Wood first called scholars' attention to Richard Brinkley, the author of a Summa logicae written perhaps sometime between 1360 and 1373.1 Recently, Gordon A. Wilson and I published an edition of the final treatise from this Summa logicae, Brinkley's Obligationes (see n. 1). The present paper will explore one strand of this treatise, Brinkley's treatment of the 'Gedeon Gal and Rega Wood, "Richard Brinkley and His Summa Logicae," Franciscan Studies 40 (1980): 59-101. The date has been contested in Michael J. Fitzgerald, ed. & trans., Richard Brinkley's Theory of Sentential Reference: "De significato propositionis" from Part Vofhis Summa nova de lógica, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, Bd. 18 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987): 3-12; Fitzgerald suggests 1356-63. See the discussion in Paul Vincent Spade and Gordon A. Wilson, Richard Brinkley's Obligationes: A Late Fourteenth Century Treatise on the Logic of Disputation, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, neue Folge, Bd. 43 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1995): 1-2. (Cited hereafter as 'Brinkley,' with references to paragraph and line numbers.) Gal and Wood's paper includes five chapters from three different tracts of the Summa logicae; Fitzgerald's book is an edition and translation of part of Tract 5, De propositionibus in genere. In addition, in 19691 prepared a transcription of Tract 6, De insolubilibus, from a single anonymous copy found apart from the two manuscripts containing the whole of the Summa. See Paul Vincent Spade, "An Anonymous Fourteenth-Century Treatise on Insolubles: Text and Study" (M. S. L. diesis; Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1969). For a discussion of some of Brinkley's other writings, see Zenon Kaluza, "L'oeuvre théologique de Richard Brinkley," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen-âge 56 (1989): 169-273. The present paper presupposes some knowledge of the obligationes-hterature. For background, see Eleonore Stump, "Obligations: From the Beginning to the Early Fourteenth Century," in Norman Kretzmann et al., eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (New York: Cambridge, 1982), Ch. 16A (315-34); Paul Vincent Spade, "Obligations: Developments in the Fourteenth Century," ibid., Ch. 16B (335-41); Paul Vincent Spade, "Three Theories of Obligationes: Burley, Kilvington and Swyneshed on Counterfactual Reasoning," History and Philosophy of Logic 3 (1982): 1-32; and Mikko Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes: 14th Century Logic of Disputational Duties, Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 55 (Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica, 1994). 227 Franciscan Studies (54) 1994-1997 228PAUL VINCENT SPADE kind ofobligatio known as "sit verum" or "sit rei Veritas."2 For context and comparison, we shall look at Ockham's treatment of the same issue. Several earlier treatises on obligationes distinguish a relatively large number of kinds or "species." Thus, the Obligationes Parisienses, from no later than the mid-thirteenth century, distinguishes six: positio, depositio, dubitetur, institutio, rei Veritas, and petitio) Walter Burley's treatise from 1302 lists the same six species,4 as does William of Ockham's account in his Summa logicae.5 Later treatises, however, generally tend to reduce the number of species to three or even fewer.6 Brinkley's is one of them; he lists only impositio (=institutio), positio, and depositio.1 What has 2Like other authors, Brinkley treats the phrases 'sit rei Veritas' (='Let the truth of the matter be') and 'sit verum' (='Let it be true') as interchangeable. See, for example, Text [8] below. In addition, phrases such as 'rei Veritas' (='the truth of the matter') and 'sit . . . in rei veritate' (='Let it be as the truth of the matter') are often used as mere stylistic variations on this vocabulary. In this paper, I shall use the phrase 'sit verum' as a blanket expression for all these terminological variants. 3L. M. De Rijk, "Some Thirteenth Century Tracts on the Game of Obligation, II," Vtvarium 13 (1975): 22-54 at 27-28. De Rijk dates this work from the early thirteenth century, but a somewhat later date is also possible. See Paul Vincent Spade and Eleonore Stump, "Walter Burley and the Obligationes Attributed to William of Sherwood," History and Philosophy of...

Review

Book reviewed in this article:DUGALD MURDOCH, Niels Bohr's Philosophy of PhysicsVEIKKO RANTALA, LEWIS ROWELL and EERO TARASTI (ed.), Essays on the Philosophy of Music. Acta Philosophica Fennica

Esa Saarinen. Introduction. Game-theoretical semantics, Essays on semantics by Hintikka, Carlson, Peacocke, Rantala, and Saarinen, edited by Esa Saarinen, Synthese language library, vol. 5, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Boston, and London, 1979, pp. vii–xii. - Jaakko Hintikka. Language-games. Game-theoretical semantics, Essays on semantics by Hintikka, Carlson, Peacocke, Rantala, and Saarinen, edited by Esa Saarinen, Synthese language library, vol. 5,

Esa Saarinen. Introduction. Game-theoretical semantics, Essays on semantics by Hintikka, Carlson, Peacocke, Rantala, and Saarinen, edited by Esa Saarinen, Synthese language library, vol. 5, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Boston, and London, 1979, pp. vii–xii. - Jaakko Hintikka. Language-games. Game-theoretical semantics, Essays on semantics by Hintikka, Carlson, Peacocke, Rantala, and Saarinen, edited by Esa Saarinen, Synthese language library, vol. 5,

Review

Book reviewed in this article:Tooley, MichaelAbortion and infanticide, Oxford: ClarendonSintonen, MattiThe pragmatics of scientific explanation, Acta Philosophica Fennica

Propositional Attitudes in the Logic of Walter Burley and William Ockham

PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES IN THE LOGIC OF WALTER BURLEY AND WILLIAM OCKHAM [1] While there is no separate treatise in either Burley or Ockham dealing with propositional attitudes, there are a considerable number ofpassages in the logical writings ofeach ofthe two authors which do in fact deal with propositional attitudes. As may be expected, many of these passages are found in the discussions of modal logic in general , while some appear in other contexts, in particular in those places in which the question of supposition of terms is raised, or in the context ofdiscussion of general inferential relations involving the so-called non-standard (i.e. epistemic and doxastic) modes, or in the theory of formal disputation. [2] By 'propositional attitude' I mean locutions such as 'a knows that p,' 'a believes that p,' 'a doubts that p,' and so on, and their counterparts in the passive voice, presumably equivalent in their logical force to those in the active voice; e.g., 'p is known,' 'p is believed,' 'p is doubted,' and so on. [3] These latter ways offorming such attitudinal claims are much more frequent in both Burley and Ockham than their counterparts in the active voice. Both authors, at least occasionally formulate such claims in an expanded form, e.g., 'p is known by you' or 'p is known by me,' and I shall understand this to be a sufficent indication that Burley and Ockham at least half-consciously assumed an epistemic subject , even though their tendency to use an impersonal passive mode may have prevented them from fully realizing the sui generis character of the epistemic/doxastic logic which they were in fact helping to develop. [4] The study of propositional attitudes constitutes what has be- 32IVAN ??? come known as epistemic or epistemic/doxastic logic.1 In order to be logic, such an enterprise must consider relations among propositions such as compatibility or consistency, inconsistency, implication or entailment , and the like; in order for it to be epistemic/doxastic logic, such an enterprise must consider the logical relations precisely as these are present in virtue of propositional-attitude-functors such as 'is known by a,' 'is believed by a,' etc. [5] Although nowadays epistemic/doxastic logics are sometimes presented as deductive calculi, the late-medievals (as well as the rediscoverers of the discipline in our own century, e.g., J. Hintikka, R. Chisholm and a great many philosophers of recent decades), thought of this enterprise primarily as a critical examination of our ordinary, natural-language uses.2 Thus, if there are cases of natural uses wherein we seem to allow locutions such as 'p, but I don't believe it,' we have to take such cases seriously and then decide whether our current statements of necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge should continue to include the claim that if I know that p, then I must believe that p. [6] The full-fledged developments of epistemic logic seem to have taken place in England during the second quarter of the fourteenth century. As far as we know at this stage of research, the leaders in those development appear to have been William Heytesbury (d.1372/3) [and other Oxford Fellows Richard Kilvington (d. 1361), John Dumbleton (fl. 1340s), Richard Swineshead (fl.1340-55), Ralph Strode (d.1387)] and the distinguished "followers" of the English tradition in 1 In our own century, epistemic/doxastic logic was rediscovered and systematically investigated by Jaakko Hintikka in his Knowledge and Belief (Ithaca &t London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1962). Within the framework of this logic, an especially influential article was that by Edmund L.Gettier, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis, 23 (1963): 121-23. 2 Cf. Wolfgang Lenzen, Recent Work in Epistemic Logic, Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 30, issue 1 (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1978). In this comprehensive study Professor Lenzen examines many arguments the structure and components of which amply illustrate the reliance of the proponents on our natural language uses. For medievals, the Latin language was of course not natural in exactly the same sense, but even though it was a learnt "scientific" language, it was not an artificial language in the sense in which our schematic and axiomatic languages...

Richard Montague. Syntactical treatments of modality, with corollaries on reflexion principles and finite axiomatizability. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23-26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki 1963, pp. 153–167.

Richard Montague. Syntactical treatments of modality, with corollaries on reflexion principles and finite axiomatizability. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23-26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki 1963, pp. 153–167. - Volume 40 Issue 4

Sören Halldén. A pragmatic approach to modal theory. A reprint, with minor changes, of XXXIII 137. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23-26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki 1963, pp. 53–64.

Sören Halldén. A pragmatic approach to modal theory. A reprint, with minor changes, of XXXIII 137. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23-26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki 1963, pp. 53–64.

Atwell R. Turquette. Modality, minimality, and many-valuedness. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki 1963, pp. 261–276.

Atwell R. Turquette. Modality, minimality, and many-valuedness. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki 1963, pp. 261–276.

E. J. Lemmon. A theory of attributes based on modal logic. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 95–122. - Ruth Barcan Marcus. Classes and attributes in extended modal systems. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no.

E. J. Lemmon. A theory of attributes based on modal logic. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 95–122. - Ruth Barcan Marcus. Classes and attributes in extended modal systems. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no.

Erik Stenius. The principles of a logic of normative systems. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 247–260.

Erik Stenius. The principles of a logic of normative systems. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 247–260. - Volume 36 Issue 3

C. C. Chang. Logic with positive and negative truth values. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 19–39.

C. C. Chang. Logic with positive and negative truth values. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 19–39.

"Studies in the Styles of Plato," Acta Philosophica Fennica, Fasc. XX (review)

Book Reviews "Studies in the Styles of Plato," Acta Philosophica Fennica, Fasc. XX. By Holger Thesleft . (I967. Pp. 192) Thesleff's monograph will introduce a novel clarity and conservatism into the modern discussion of Plato's uses of styles. Although Thesleff respects stylometry and hopes for results in "problems of chronology" from stylistic analysis of the dialogues, his results for chronology are negative (pp. 8, I1, 172-173), and his work represents a turn away from the textual atomism of the nineteenth century in its worst excesses and from the programmatic claims of the stylometrists. His primary aim is to provide, through analyses of stylistic patterns in the dialogues which Thesleff judges authentic (including a detailed analysis of the Republic), a philological theory of the /unction of style in forming the mysterious edifice of the Platonic dialogue. Some of his ancillary aims are to assert his own views about the "order" of the dialogues and about the "'spurious" dialogues (those not rejected by the ancients which Thesleff rejects are: Hippias M., Hipparch., Theages, Alc. I, Alc. 2, Amatores, Cleitopho, and Minos). Since his general views of spuriousness and order of composition relatively agree with the current consensus, it is 0nly necessary to note that he uncritically continues to label Plato's late dialogues "critical," a term derived from philosophic not philological interpretation . It is perhaps time to forewarn the philosopher that in these and other matters (e.g., assigning dates to dialogues when all that we know with certainty are a few post quem's) philological objectivity is equivalent to philological intuition. The constructive restdts of Thesleff's study are in his theory of style classes, in his analyses of dialogues, and in his observations about the role of style in structuring a dialogue. (I will return to the problem of style classes below.) Thesleff claims that the structure of many, not all, "authentic" dialogues follows a "compositional rhythm" BABAB, where B denotes roughly conversation and A argument or elenchus. He emphasizes that the central B passage, frequently broadened into dialogue approaching monologue (D) or monologue (LD, is the peak of the dialogue or its true culmination: to this basic structure he gives the label "pedimental" (34). In emphasizing the centres of dialogues Thesleff is correct, although it is surprising that Thesleff can quote the "simile" of the living being in Phaedrus 264c (33) without seeing that Plato likened his dialogues not to the setting up of structural members as in architecture, but to the imbuing of material with the shape and soul of a living being as in sculpture. The architectonic in the dialogues lies in the whole family of dialogues and the order or kosmos which they form. This seeming quibble over similes has serious consequences for Thesleff's view of structure as sequential; the simile at Phaedrus 264c is no merely vague likeness, but a determining principle at the foundations of Plato's art. In assessing Thesleff's philological results, it is always necessary to set aside unconscious philosophic importations. When he writes that the "function of the E passages is on the whole not to carry the main argument" (57), he assumes certain things about the nature of a philosophic argument with which not every philosopher would agree. When he says the questioning of the Elean Guest in the Sophist and Statesman "is BOOK REVIEWS 203 nowhere very strict," he imports some idea of his of the nature of strictness in argument and seems simply wrong to boot. He wishes to deny strictness to the argument of the Laws, noting the rigorously strict A dialogue at X 900c-903a as an exception, but his own analysis shows that Laws I-II itself contains A dialogue (151: ADE) and hence an argument. He asserts that in late dialogues replies of the interlocutor "tend to lose much of the factual importance which the replies have in elenctic" (51); he thus implies that interlocutionary utterances effectively carry on the argument only if they possess factual content, which is simply false? He also reiterates the worn and incorrect view that the interlocutors in the Sophist and Statesman have no important philosophic role in the argument. Thesleff's work abounds in...

The Authenticity of the Eighth Platonic Epistle Reconsidered

A vast amount of literature has been written on the authorship of the Platonic Epistles, especially of the very important and interesting Letters VII and VIII. During the last decennia the opinion that these two Letters were written by Plato himself prevailed, though it won by no means general acceptance. Recently, however, the late L. Edelstein in a thorough investigation*?) contested the genuineness of either. Two years later K. von Fritz 2) vigorously defended the Platonic authorship of Ep. VII, but threw serious doubt on the genuineness of Ep. VIII3). Because their arguments do not seem wholly convincing to me, I venture to reconsider the authorship of the Eighth Letter. As a rule the genuineness of Ep. VIII has been considered by reference to that of Ep. VII, and also in the studies of Edelstein and von Fritz comparison of the eighth with the seventh Epistles plays an important part in contesting the authenticity of Ep. VIII. However, it seems a sound procedure to reconsider first the Eighth Epistle as a document by itself, as G. Pasquali has done 4), and only after that to direct our attention to the relation of Ep. VIII to Ep. VII. Hitherto there seems no convincing stylistic evidence available for considering Ep. VIII spurious5). Though H. Thesleff in his recent investigation into the style of Plato's writings 6) on general ?) Plato's Seventh Letter (Philosophia Antiqua, 14, Leiden 1966). See for the 8th letter p. 145 ff. 2) Platon in Sizilien und das Problem der Philosophenherrschaft (Berlin 1968). See on this book my forthcoming article De wijsgeer en de praktische politiek, Ts. v. Gesch. 83 (1970). 3) Op. cit., no ff. 4) Le Lettere di Platone (2 Firenze 1967), 1 ff. 5) Cp. v. Fritz, op. cit., io about the analysis of the style of Ep. VII with the help of a computer. 6) Studies in the Style q/P/a/oj(Acta philosophica Fennica, 20, Helsinki 1967).

The Substitution Interpretation of the Quantifiers

I The basic formal ideas of this interpretation were in a certain sense anticipated by E. W. Beth with his reduced logic in [3]. We are grateful to Professor Bas C. van Fraassen for bringing this to our attention. The idea has also been employed by P. T. Geach in his Quantification theory and the problem of identifying objects of reference in Acta Philosophica Fennica, 1963, and by Henry S. Leonard in his Essences, attributes, and predicates in the Proceedings of the American Philisophical Association, 1963-64. Further, H. Leblanc has studied the interpretation in a pair of forthcoming papers, A simplified strong completeness proof for QC=, and A simplified account of validity and implication for quantification logic.

Andrzej Mostowski. Thirty years of foundational studies. Lectures on the development of mathematical logic and the study of the foundations of mathematics in 1930–1964. Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 17, Helsinki 1965, and Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York1966, 180 pp.; second printing, Helsinki 1967, 180 pp.

Andrzej Mostowski. Thirty years of foundational studies. Lectures on the development of mathematical logic and the study of the foundations of mathematics in 1930–1964. Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 17, Helsinki 1965, and Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York1966, 180 pp.; second printing, Helsinki 1967, 180 pp.

Timothy Smiley. Relative necessity. The journal of symbolic logic, vol. 28 no. 2 (for 1963, pub. 1964), pp. 113–134. - T. J. Smiley. The logical basis of ethics. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta Philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 237–246.

Timothy Smiley. Relative necessity. The journal of symbolic logic, vol. 28 no. 2 (for 1963, pub. 1964), pp. 113–134. - T. J. Smiley. The logical basis of ethics. Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta Philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 237–246. - Volume 32 Issue 3

Sören Halldén. On the logic of ‘better.’ Library of Theoria, no. 2. C. W. K. Gleerup, Lund, and Ejnar Munksgaard, Copenhagen, 1957, 112 pp. - Lennart Åqvist. Deontic logic based on a logic of ‘better.’Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 285–290. - Mark Fisher. A three-valued

Sören Halldén. On the logic of ‘better.’ Library of Theoria, no. 2. C. W. K. Gleerup, Lund, and Ejnar Munksgaard, Copenhagen, 1957, 112 pp. - Lennart Åqvist. Deontic logic based on a logic of ‘better.’Proceedings of a Colloquium on Modal and Many-valued Logics, Helsinki, 23–26 August, 1962, Acta philosophica Fennica, no. 16, Helsinki1963, pp. 285–290. - Mark Fisher. A three-valued calculus for deontic logic. Theoria (Lund), vol. 27 (1961), pp. 107–118. - Lennart Åqvist. Postulate sets and decision procedures for some systems of deontic logic. Theoria (Lund), vol. 29 (1963), pp. 154–175. - Volume 31 Issue 2

ACTA PHILOSOPHICA FENNICA

Philosophical BooksVolume 5, Issue 2 p. 31-32 ACTA PHILOSOPHICA FENNICA G. B. KEENE, G. B. KEENESearch for more papers by this author G. B. KEENE, G. B. KEENESearch for more papers by this author First published: May 1964 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0149.1964.tb00868.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume5, Issue2May 1964Pages 31-32 RelatedInformation

On the Interpretation of Aristotle, De Interpretations 12–13

Chapters 12 and 13 of the De Interpretations present some puzzles, which it is my purpose to try to solve. The latest commentator, Professor Jaakke Hintikka, attempts in Acta Philosophica Fennica xiv (1962), 5–22, to abolish the difficulties by taking certain verbs in an unusual way. He suggests that in these chapters , which is usually taken to denote logical consequence, sometimes expresses simply compatibility (21b35–22a1, 22b11–14, 22b17–22), sometimes equivalence (22a14 and 33, 22b22ff., 23a18ff.), and that at 22a38ff., 22b3O, and 23a17 , which again is usually taken to denote consequence, in fact expresses compatibility. I propose to counter Hintikka's arguments and to maintain that both verbs express consequence; but as my main purpose is to give my own explanation of the general trend of Aristotle's remarks, I shall take the passages discussed by Hintikka in the order in which they occur in Aristotle's text.

ACTA PHILOSOPHICA FENNICA

Philosophical BooksVolume 4, Issue 2 p. 31-32 ACTA PHILOSOPHICA FENNICA E. J. LEMMON, E. J. LEMMONSearch for more papers by this author E. J. LEMMON, E. J. LEMMONSearch for more papers by this author First published: May 1963 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0149.1963.tb00803.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume4, Issue2May 1963Pages 31-32 RelatedInformation