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John Buridan (Great Medieval Thinkers)

✍ Scribed by Gyula Klima


Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Year
2008
Tongue
English
Leaves
367
Series
Great Medieval Thinkers
Category
Library

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✦ Synopsis


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.

✦ Table of Contents


Contents......Page 14
1. Buridan’s Life, Works, and Influence......Page 18
2. Buridan’s Logic and the Medieval Logical Tradition......Page 23
3. The Primacy of Mental Language......Page 42
4. The Various Kinds of Concepts and the Idea of a Mental Language......Page 52
5. Natural Language and the Idea of a β€œFormal Syntax” in Buridan......Page 136
6. Existential Import and the Square of Opposition......Page 158
7. Ontological Commitment......Page 177
8. The Properties of Terms (Proprietates Terminorum)......Page 190
9. The Semantics of Propositions......Page 218
10. Logical Validity in a Token-based, Semantically Closed Logic......Page 225
11. The Possibility of Scientific Knowledge......Page 249
12. Buridan’s Antiskepticism......Page 267
13. Buridan’s Essentialist Nominalism......Page 274
Notes......Page 284
Bibliography......Page 344
A......Page 360
C......Page 361
E......Page 362
L......Page 363
P......Page 364
S......Page 365
T......Page 366
Z......Page 367


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