Logic, medieval

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.J. Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Aristotelian Logic ◽  
Medieval Logic ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Quantificational Logic ◽  
Sense And Reference ◽  
Educated Person

Medieval logic is crucial to the understanding of medieval philosophy, for every educated person was trained in logic, as well as in grammar, and these disciplines provided techniques of analysis and a technical vocabulary that permeate philosophical, scientific and theological writing. At the practical level, logic provided the training necessary for participation in the disputations that were a central feature of medieval instruction, and whose structure – with arguments for and against a thesis, followed by a resolution – is reflected in many written works. At the theoretical level, logic, like other subjects, involved the study of written texts through lectures and written commentaries. The core of the logic curriculum from the twelfth century onwards was provided by the logical works of Aristotle. These provided the material for the study of types of predication, the analysis of simple propositions and their relations of inference and equivalence, the analysis of modal propositions, categorical and modal syllogisms, fallacies, dialectical Topics, and scientific reasoning as captured in the demonstrative syllogism. Comprehensive as this list might seem, medieval logicians realized that other logical subjects needed to be investigated, and, again from the twelfth century onward, new techniques and new genres of writing appeared. The main new technique involved the use of ‘sophismata’, or puzzling cases intended to draw attention to weaknesses and difficulties in logical definitions and rules. The new genres of writing especially included works on ‘supposition theory’, which concerned the types of reference that the subjects and predicates of propositions have in different contexts, and works on ‘syncategoremata’, which concerned the effect on sense and reference produced by the presence and placing of such logical terms as ‘all’, ‘some’, ‘not’, ‘if…then’, ‘except’, and so on. Other important topics for investigation include ‘insolubles’, or semantic paradoxes, and ‘consequences’, or valid inference forms. These new developments were seen as providing a supplement to Aristotelian logic, rather than an alternative. The only context in which people occasionally suggested that Aristotelian logic was inapplicable was that of Trinitarian theology, and the only logician who deliberately set out to reform logic as a whole was Ramon Llull. The study of medieval logic involves two kinds of difficulty. In the first place, few texts are available in translation, and indeed, many are not even available in printed form. In the second place, there is a problem of interpretation. For a very long time, the specifically medieval contributions to logic were ignored or despised, and when people began to take them more seriously, there was a strong tendency to look at them through the spectacles of modern formal logic. More recently, scholars have come to realize that medieval interests cannot be mapped precisely onto modern interests, and that any attempt, for example, to make a sharp distinction between propositional and quantificational logic is misleading. The first task of the modern reader is to try to understand what the medieval logician was really concerned with.

Roscelin of Compiègne (c.1050–after 1120)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin M. Tweedale
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Aristotelian Logic

Roscelin of Compiègne was one of a group of logicians in late eleventh and early twelfth-century Europe who, in defiance of most of their predecessors in the field, treated logic as dealing with the concrete physical things that serve as verbal signs of realities rather than the realities those signs signified. This meant that although the things logic talks about are part of the physical world, it talks about them not as things referred to by language but as parts of language itself. All the technical notions of Aristotelian logic, for example ‘universal’, ‘individual’, ‘category’, ‘genus’ and ‘species’, apply only to those linguistic signs themselves qua signs.

Chaucer’s “Summoner’s Tale” and the Logic of Literature

Poetics Today ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-57
Author(s):  
R. D. Perry
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Logical Thinking ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Medieval Logic ◽  
The Way

This essay discusses the fart joke that ends Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Summoner’s Tale.” It argues that the joke uses the language of medieval philosophy to satirize the work of medieval Scholastic philosophers. The essay begins by examining Chaucer’s relationship to philosophy more broadly and the scholarly controversies over Chaucer’s familiarity with this field of knowledge. It focuses on the way Chaucer uses disciplinary-specific jargon from philosophy, and from medieval logic more particularly, in “The Summoner’s Tale.” The language and content of the joke in “The Summoner’s Tale” are a burlesque play on the interests of the Merton Calculators, who used the logical thinking Scholasticism had developed in response to theological problems to investigate problems associated with natural philosophy. Chaucer’s joke reveals the way that the logical work of philosophers like Thomas Aquinas and the Merton Calculators relies on formal qualities more closely associated with literature, namely, character and narrative. In making a case that literature and logic rely on these same formal structures, Chaucer affirms literature’s capacity to present examples, concrete manifestations of philosophical or logical problems. He suggests that logic is attempting to make stories to work out problems, something that literature can do more effectively.

William of Auvergne (c.1180–1249)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven P. Marrone
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
The Third ◽  
Western European

Active in Paris during the third and fourth decades of the thirteenth century, when universities were emerging as centres of Western European intellectual life, William played a decisive role in the early development of high medieval philosophy. His writing reveals a familiarity with Aristotle, all of whose major works except the Metaphysics were readily available in Latin translation, and with the Islamic philosophers, most especially Avicenna but also Averroes, whose commentaries on Aristotle were just beginning to circulate. William looked back to the Neoplatonic traditions of the twelfth century, but he also looked ahead to the late-thirteenth-century Aristotelianizing that he and his contemporary, Robert Grosseteste, did so much to promote.

New Light on Medieval Philosophy: The Sophismata of Richard Kilvington

Dialogue ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. J. Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Philosophical Logic ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Medieval Logic ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The One ◽  
Domain I ◽  
Mathematics And Physics ◽  
Analysis Of Motion

The fourteenth-century English philosopher and theologian Richard Kilvington (1302/5–61) presents a useful correction to popular views of medieval philosophy in two ways. On the one hand, he reminds us that to think of medieval philosophy in terms of Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham, or to think of medieval logic in terms of Aristotelian syllogistic, is to overlook vast areas of intellectual endeavour. Kilvington, like many before and after him, was deeply concerned with problems that would now be assigned to philosophy of language; philosophical logic and philosophy of science. He discussed topics in epistemic logic, semantic paradoxes, problems of reference, particularly those connected with the interplay between quantifiers and modal or temporal operators, and problems arising from the use of infinite series in the analysis of motion and change. On the other hand, this very account of his work raises the important issue of conceptual domain. I have spoken as if Kilvington's work can be neatly classified in terms of contemporary interests; and the temptation to read medieval philosophy in modern terms is only strengthened when one recognizes Kilvington as the first member of the group of Oxford calculatores, men such as William Heytesbury and Richard Swineshead, whose discussions of mathematics and physics have caused them to be hailed as forerunners of modern science.

THE ARGUMENT FROM IGNORANCE AND ITS CRITICS IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC THOUGHT

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayman Shihadeh
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Distinct Type ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Aristotelian Logic ◽  
Rational Theology ◽  
Epistemological Principle

AbstractThe earliest debate on the argument from ignorance emerged in Islamic rational theology around the fourth/tenth century, approximately seven centuries before John Locke identified it as a distinct type of argument. The most influential defences of the epistemological principle that ‘that for which there is no evidence must be negated’ are encountered in Muʿtazilī sources, particularly ʿAbd al-Jabbār and al-Malāḥimī who argue that without this principle scepticism will follow. The principle was defended on different grounds by some earlier Ashʿarīs, but was then rejected by al-Juwaynī, and was eventually classed as a fallacy by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī whoseNihāyat al-ʿuqūlcontains the most definitive and comprehensive refutation of classical kalām epistemology and the first ever defence of Aristotelian logic in a kalām summa. According to the eighth/fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldūn, this debate provided the main impetus for the philosophical turn that Ashʿarism took during the sixth/twelfth century.

scholarly journals Point cloud vs drawing on archaeological site

2015 ◽  
Vol XL-5/W7 ◽  
pp. 7-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Alby
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Laser Scanning ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Gaza Strip ◽  
Excavation Site

Archaeology is a discipline closely related to the representation of objects that are at the center of its concerns. At different times of the archaeological method, representation approach takes different forms. It takes place on the archaeological excavation, during the exploration, or in a second time in the warehouse, object after object. It occurs also in different drawing scales. The use of topographical positioning techniques has found its place for decades in the stratigraphic process. Plans and sections are thus readjusted to each other, on the excavation site. These techniques are available to the archaeologist since a long time. The most of the time, a qualified member of the team performs himself these simple topographical operations. The two issues raised in this article are: three-dimensional acquisition techniques can they, first find their place in the same way on the excavation site, and is it conceivable that it could serve to support the representation? The drawing during the excavations is a very time-consuming phase; has it still its place on site? Currently, the drawing is part of the archaeological stratigraphy method. It helps documenting the different layers, which are gradually destroyed during the exploration. Without systematic documentation, any scientific reasoning cannot be done retrospectively and the conclusions would not be any evidence. Is it possible to imagine another way to document these phases without loss compared to the drawing? Laser scanning and photogrammetry are approved as acquisition techniques. What can they bring more to what is already done for archaeologists? Archaeological practice can be seen as divided into two parts: preventive archeology and classical archeology. The first has largely adopted the techniques that provide point clouds to save valuable time on site. Everything that is not destroyed by the archaeological approach will be destroyed by the building construction that triggered the excavations. The practice of classical archeology by academics is less governed by the on-site timesaving. The excavation is also the place of the transmission of knowledge and the time spent is beneficial to students. But experimenting with the production of point clouds by archaeologists of emergency can influence the practices of archeology as a whole. An experiment is ongoing on the Saint-Hilarion Monastery site in the Gaza Strip. Each layer of a stratigraphic excavation area was documented by photogrammetry. This project was the means to transfer knowledge related to photogrammetry to allow the archaeologist to document the stratigraphic layers one after the other. Indeed it is essential that this documentation is systematic and not dependent on the availability of specialist in photogrammetry. The risks related to possible wrong practices of photogrammetry by archaeologist are identified, and solutions are proposed. Monitoring means of photogrammetric missions must be established to allow complete and usable documentation. The methods implemented are already applied on other archaeological sites and help save precious time on site.

Language, Renaissance philosophy of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.J. Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Formal Concept ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Mental Language ◽  
Sense And Reference

Renaissance philosophy of language is in its essentials a continuation of medieval philosophy of language as it developed in the fourteenth century. However, there were three big changes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. First, humanism led to a much greater interest in the practical study of languages, including Greek, Hebrew and vernacular languages, as well as classical Latin. Literary analysis and eloquent discourse were emphasized. Second, there was a loss of interest in such medieval developments as supposition theory, which meant that there was little discussion in logic texts of how words relate to each other in propositional contexts, and how sense and reference are affected by the presence of such logical terms as ‘all’, ‘none’, ‘only’, ‘except’ and so on. Only in early sixteenth-century Paris were these issues pursued with any enthusiasm. Third, the fourteenth-century insistence that both words and concepts were signs had several effects. There was a new interest in the classification of different sorts of signs, both linguistic and non-linguistic, particularly in the work of some early sixteenth-century Spaniards. Naturally significant mental language was emphasized in a way that diverted the attention of logicians from spoken languages and their imperfections. Finally, concepts themselves came in for more attention, so that many of the topics discussed by logicians overlapped with what would now count as philosophy of mind, as well as with metaphysics. For instance, philosophers in the late scholastic tradition made much use of an early fourteenth-century distinction between the formal concept, which is a representative act of mind, and the so-called objective concept, which is whatever it is that is represented by a formal concept. The discussion of these issues by such writers as Pedro da Fonseca and Francisco Suárez has an obvious bearing on developments in early modern philosophy.

John of Salisbury (1115/20–1180)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rhetorical Education ◽  
Moral Formation ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
Traditional Arts

John of Salisbury is one of the most learned and penetrating of twelfth-century Latin writers on moral and political matters. In his style as in his teaching, John represents a style of medieval philosophy heavily indebted to Roman models of rhetorical education. His interests in grammar, dialectic, politics and ethics are subordinated to an over-arching concern for moral formation. Three of John’s works stand out. The Entheticus de dogmate philosophorum (Entheticus of the Teaching of the Philosophers) is a satire on the pretensions and immoralities of those who divorce eloquence from philosophy in order to pursue power. The Metalogicon defends the traditional arts of the trivium and asserts the unity of eloquence and the other verbal arts with philosophy. By far the most important is the Policraticus, a sustained argument for philosophic wisdom against the vanities of worldly success, especially in politics.

scholarly journals The Ratirahasya—Kukkoka: Secrets of Love

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 283-285
Author(s):  
O Somasundaram ◽  
Vijaya Raghavan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Kama Sutra

The literary treatises on sexuality have existed in India for a long time and the most important work so far is Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra. Kukkoka also contributed to this area, but much later in the twelfth century ce. His work had been translated by the Tamil king-poet Ativira Rama Pandian of the sixteenth century ce—some excerpts from which have been described in this article.

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