Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages

Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages
Author: Robert Pasnau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 1997-05-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521583688

A major contribution to the history of philosophy in the later medieval period (1250-1350).

Logic and Language in the Middle Ages

Logic and Language in the Middle Ages
Author: Jakob Leth Fink
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2012-10-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004235922

This volume honours Sten Ebbesen with a series of essays on logical and linguistic analysis in the Middle Ages. Included are studies focusing on textual criticism, new finds of logical texts, and philosophical analysis and interpretation.

The Language of Thought in Late Medieval Philosophy

The Language of Thought in Late Medieval Philosophy
Author: Jenny Pelletier
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2018-01-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319666347

This edited volume presents new lines of research dealing with the language of thought and its philosophical implications in the time of Ockham. It features more than 20 essays that also serve as a tribute to the ground-breaking work of a leading expert in late medieval philosophy: Claude Panaccio. Coverage addresses topics in the philosophy of mind and cognition (externalism, mental causation, resemblance, habits, sensory awareness, the psychology, illusion, representationalism), concepts (universal, transcendental, identity, syncategorematic), logic and language (definitions, syllogisms, modality, supposition, obligationes, etc.), action theory (belief, will, action), and more. A distinctive feature of this work is that it brings together contributions in both French and English, the two major research languages today on the main theme in question. It unites the most renowned specialists in the field as well as many of Claude Panaccio’s former students who have engaged with his work over the years. In furthering this dialogue, the essays render key topics in fourteenth-century thought accessible to the contemporary philosophical community without being anachronistic or insensitive to the particularities of the medieval context. As a result, this book will appeal to a general population of philosophers and historians of philosophy with an interest in logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics.

Medieval Allegory as Epistemology

Medieval Allegory as Epistemology
Author: Marco Nievergelt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2023-03-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192665839

In Medieval Allegory as Epistemology, Marco Nievergelt argues that late medieval dream-poetry was able to use the tools of allegorical fiction to explore a set of complex philosophical questions regarding the nature of human knowledge. The focus is on three of the most widely read and influential poems of the later Middle Ages: Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose; the Pélerinages trilogy of Guillaume de Deguileville; and William Langland's vision of Piers Plowman in its various versions. All three poets grapple with a collection of shared, closely related epistemological problems that emerged in Western Europe during the thirteenth century, in the wake of the reception of the complete body of Aristotle's works on logic and the natural sciences. This study therefore not only examines the intertextual and literary-historical relations linking the work of the three poets, but takes their shared interest in cognition and epistemology as a starting point to assess their wider cultural and intellectual significance in the context of broader developments in late medieval philosophy of mind, knowledge, and language. Vernacular literature more broadly played an extremely important role in lending an enlarged cultural resonance to philosophical ideas developed by scholastic thinkers, but it is also shown that allegorical narrative could prompt philosophical speculation on its own terms, deliberately interrogating the dominance and authority of scholastic discourses and institutions by using first-person fictional narrative as a tool for intellectual speculation.

Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy

Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy
Author: Henrik Lagerlund
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 1448
Release: 2010-12-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 140209728X

This is the first reference ever devoted to medieval philosophy. It covers all areas of the field from 500-1500 including philosophers, philosophies, key terms and concepts. It also provides analyses of particular theories plus cultural and social contexts.

The Many Roots of Medieval Logic

The Many Roots of Medieval Logic
Author: John Marenbon
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2007-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047422945

Medieval logic is usually divided into the branches that derived from Aristotle's organon - the 'logica vetus' and 'logica nova', and those invented in the Middle Ages, the 'logica modernorum'. In this volume, a group of distinguished specialists asks whether the ancient roots of medieval logic were not in fact more varied. Stoic logic was mostly lost, but were some of its themes transmitted, even in distorted form, through Boethius and through the grammatical tradition? And did other schools, such as the sceptics and the Platonists, contribute in their own ways to medieval logic?

Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories
Author: Lloyd Newton
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2008-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047442075

Medieval commentary writing has often been described as a way of "doing philosophy," and not without reason. The various commentaries on Aristotle's Categories we have from this period did not simply elaborate a dialectical exercise for training students; rather, they provided their authors with an unparalleled opportunity to work through crucial philosophical problems, many of which remain with us today. As such, this unique commentary tradition is important not only in its own right, but also to the history and development of philosophy as a whole. The contributors to this volume take a fresh look at it, examining a wide range of medieval commentators, from Simplicius to John Wyclif, and discussing such issues as the compatibility of Platonism with Aristotelianism; the influence of Avicenna; the relationship between grammar, logic, and metaphysics; the number of the categories; the status of the categories as a science realism vs. nominalism; and the relationship between categories.

Medieval Supposition Theory Revisited

Medieval Supposition Theory Revisited
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2013-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004260234

In 1962–1967 Professor L.M. de Rijk published his Logica Modernorum – A Contribution to the History of Early Terminist Logic. The first part (1962) has the title: On the Twelfth Century Theories of Fallacy. The second part (two volumes, 1967) has as title: The Origin and the Early Development of the Theory of Supposition. De Rijk’s Logica Modernorum provides the basis for the modern study of medieval theories of supposition. Now, nearly 50 years later, scholars have made great progress in the study of the properties of terms. De Rijk’s study was primarily about the early development of terminist logic, i.e. during the 12th and 13th centuries. Scholars have also investigated later developments well into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Not only logical texts, but also texts on grammar have been published. Many of the scholars who have contributed to this development, present papers in this volume. Contributors are Fabrizio Amerini, Jenny Ashworth, Allan Bäck, Bert Bos, Julie Brumberg-Chaumont, Laurent Cesalli, Lambert Marie de Rijk, Sten Ebbesen, Alessandro Conti, Catarina Dutilh-Novaes, Onno Kneepkens, Costantino Marmo, Dafne Mure, Claude Panaccio, Ernesto Perini Santos, Joel Lonfat, Angel d’Ors, Göran Sundholm and Luisa Valente.

John Buridan

John Buridan
Author: Gyula Klima
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0195176227

John Buridan (ca. 1300-1362) has worked out perhaps the most comprehensive account of nominalism in the history of Western thought, the philosophical doctrine according to which the only universals in reality are "names": the common terms of our language and the common concepts of our minds. But these items are universal only in their signification; they are singular entities like any other in reality. This book examines what is most intriguing to contemporary readers in Buridan's medieval philosophical system: his nominalist account of the relationship between language, thought and reality. The main focus of the discussion is Buridan's deployment of the Ockhamist conception of a "mental language" for mapping the complex structures of written and spoken human languages onto a parsimoniously construed reality. Concerning these linguistic structures, this book carefully analyzes Buridan's conception of the radical conventionality of written and spoken languages, in contrast to the natural semantic features of concepts. The discussion pays special attention to Buridan's token-based semantics of terms and propositions, his conception of existential import, ontological commitment, truth, and logical validity. Finally, the book presents a detailed discussion of how these logical devices allow Buridan to maintain his nominalist position without giving up Aristotelian essentialism or yielding to skepticism, and pays special attention to contemporary concerns with these issues.

Mind and Modality

Mind and Modality
Author: Vesa Hirvonen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2006-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047409671

This volume offers a wide-ranging and profound collection of essays on philosophical psychology and conceptions of modality from antiquity to the present day, with some essays on the philosophy of religion as well.