The Cartesian Semantics of the Port Royal Logic

The Cartesian Semantics of the Port Royal Logic
Author: John N. Martin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2019-11-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351249177

This book sets out for the first time in English and in the terms of modern logic the semantics of the Port Royal Logic (La Logique ou l’Art de penser, 1662-1685) of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, perhaps the most influential logic book in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its goal is to explain how the Logic reworks the foundation of pre-Cartesian logic so as to make it compatible with Descartes’ metaphysics. The Logic’s authors forged a new theory of reference based on the medieval notion of objective being, which is essentially the modern notion of intentional content. Indeed, the book’s central aim is to detail how the Logic reoriented semantics so that it centered on the notion of intentional content. This content, which the Logic calls comprehension, consists of an idea’s defining modes. Mechanisms are defined in terms of comprehension that rework earlier explanations of central notions like conceptual inclusion, signification, abstraction, idea restriction, sensation, and most importantly within the Logic’s metatheory, the concept of idea-extension, which is a new technical concept coined by the Logic. Although Descartes is famous for rejecting "Aristotelianism," he says virtually nothing about technical concepts in logic. His followers fill the gap. By putting to use the doctrine of objective being, which had been a relatively minor part of medieval logic, they preserve more central semantic doctrines, especially a correspondence theory of truth. A recurring theme of the book is the degree to which the Logic hews to medieval theory. This interpretation is at odds with what has become a standard reading among French scholars according to which this 16th-century work should be understood as rejecting earlier logic along with Aristotelian metaphysics, and as putting in its place structures more like those of 19th-century class theory.

Cartesian Linguistics

Cartesian Linguistics
Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2009-02-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0521881765

Tracing the development of linguistic theory from Descartes to Wilhelm von Humboldt, Chomsky's book is one of the most original and profound studies of language and mind ever written. This third edition includes a new and specially written introduction by James McGilvray, contextualising the work for the twenty-first century.

Concept and Judgment in Brentano's Logic Lectures

Concept and Judgment in Brentano's Logic Lectures
Author: Robin D. Rollinger
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2020-11-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004443037

Concept and Judgment in Brentano's Logic Lectures provides an analysis of an important feature of Brentano's philosophy in the 19th century. Relevant materials in both German and English are also included in the volume.