Having seen the limitations of a reconstruction of Buridan’s semantics in terms of a modified quantification theory, this chapter begins engaging Buridan’s theory in its own terms, starting with a detailed discussion of the semantic properties of terms. The discussion moves from a brief discussion of Buridan’s distinction between immediate and ultimate signification, to Buridan’s theory of reference, namely, supposition, and oblique reference, namely, appellation. The chapter discusses suppositional descents as distinguishing quantifier-scopes, numerical quantification, and appellation in temporal and modal (...) contexts, as well as Buridan’s peculiar theory of appellatio rationis, the theory of oblique reference to concepts in intentional contexts. (shrink)

This paper argues that three characteristic modern positions concerning intentionality – namely, (1) that intentionality is ‘the mark of the mental’; (2) that intentionality concerns a specific type of objects having intentional inexistence; and (3) that intentionality somehow defies logic – are just three ‘modern myths’ that medieval philosophers, from whom the modern notion supposedly originated, would definitely reject.

The Jesuit Faculty of Philosophy in Cracow has existed since 1934, when it was erected by the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities. For the first 55 years it educated only the Jesuits, but since 1989 it has been opened to the laity as well. A memorial book Philosophia Rationis Magistra Vitae was published to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Faculty of Philosophy with special dedication to its Professors: Fr. Roman Darowski SJ, Fr. Piotr Lenartowicz SJ, and Fr. Stanislaw (...) Ziemiański SJ. All of them have worked at the former Faculty of Philosophy which is now the Faculty of Philosophy of Ignatianum. In these past few years, Fr. Ziemiański and Fr. Lenartowicz have celebrated their 70th birthday, during this year Fr. Darowski will celebrate such jubilee. The book consists of two volumes. The first contains congratulatory letters from Provincials of the Polish Jesuits to the Jubilarians. It also contains a short history of the Jesuit Faculty of Philosophy in Cracow, and provides presentations of the professors celebrating their anniversaries. (shrink)

Summary The way patrimonial procuratorships (of the patrimonium, ratio privata, and res privata) functioned at the beginning of the 3rd century CE remains controversial. A recently published inscription from Proconsular Africa featuring a new equestrian procurator rationis patrimonii of ducenarius rank, combined with re-interpreting the patrimonial procuratorships held by M. Aquilius Felix, argues convincingly that the reform of the administration of imperial property carried out at the beginning of Septimius Severus’ reign may have been more comprehensive than previously believed.

The present essay explores the sources and the scope of a major feature of the scholastic logic and metaphysics: the 16th-century distinction of the reasoning reason in contradistinction to the distinction of reasoned reason. Depending on whether the non-identity was meant to refer to first-order or second-order intentions, the distinctio rationis ratiocinantis intervened either between a definition and the term defined or between the two terms of identical propositions: »A = A«. How to save this elusive kind of distinction (...) was a common concern of Thomists, Scotists and early modern Jesuits. Special attention is paid to the logician and metaphysician Bartholomew Mastri. German philosophy up to Frege will be considered. Quite contrary to a time-honoured prejudice, the ancient metaphysics turns out to have been furnished with a powerful device in order to avoid the traps of reification. (shrink)

Baumgarten's Enlightenment Aesthetica provides an important philosophical analogon to Deleuze's alignment of the ‘logic of sense’ and the ‘logic of sensation’. By linking serious reason with its ‘other’, frivolous feeling, the book greatly influenced Herder and the Romantic movement. Baumgarten called aesthetics ‘logic's younger sister’. Like Deleuze he propagates nothing less than the ‘becoming-girl’ of philosophy.

Edited book containing the following essays: 1 Getting over Gettier, Alan Musgrave.- 2 Justified Believing: Avoiding the Paradox Gregory W. Dawes.- 3 Literature and Truthfulness,Gregory Currie.- 4 Where the Buck-passing Stops, Andrew Moore.- 5 Universal Darwinism: Its Scope and Limits, James Maclaurin, - 6 The Future of Utilitarianism,Tim Mulgan. 7 Kant on Experiment, Alberto Vanzo.- 8 Did Newton ʻFeignʼ the Corpuscular Hypothesis? Kirsten Walsh.- 9 The Progress of Scotland: The Edinburgh Philosophical Societies and the Experimental Method, Juan Gomez.- 10 Propositions: (...) Truth vs. Existence, Heather Dyke.- 11 Against Advanced Modalizing, Josh Parsons.- 12 Spread Worlds, Plenitude and Modal Realism: A Problem for DavidLewis, Charles R. Pigden and Rebecca E. B. Entwisle.- 13 Defending Quine on Ontological Commitment. 14. The Scandal of Platonism, Vladimír Svoboda.- 15 A Neglected Reply to Prior's Dilemma J. C. Beall. 16 Mathematical and Empirical Concepts, Pavel Materna.- 17 Post-Fregean Thoughts on Propositional Unity, Bjørn Jespersen.- 18 Best-path Theorem Proving: Compiling Derivations, Martin Frické.- 19 Is Imperative Inference Impossible?, Hannah Clark-Younger. ​. (shrink)

This journey shall provide the reader with a simple, though complete, guide to Leibniz’s metaphysics, incidentally preventing him or her from common errors. I will start with unfolding Leibniz’s definition of a simple substance as a free acting individual substance, which, in doing so, constitutes its complete concept. This latter contains everything that happens to the individual substance, a process taking place in God’s mind by forming the possibilities as combinations of his attributes before his decision to create the best (...) world. The totality of possibilities is divided through the compatibility relation into possible worlds. A world is a collection of all compatible individual substances. God creates the best among all possible worlds. The journey will enlighten the reader on Leibniz’s technical distinction between “possible” and “contingent”. In short, “possible” is defined by Leibniz in logical terms, as what is contradiction-free. “Contingent” is something that is, but might have been not. Just the fact that the non-being of contingent things remains possible saves Leibniz from Descartes’ and Spinoza’s determinism. (shrink)

O presente artigo divide-se em duas partes. Na primeira, analisa-se a noção de um ser mental como sujeito da lógica. O principal objetivo dessa parte é fornecer algumas notas históricas sobre a origem e a importância de uma noção bastante difundida nos séculos XIII e XIV. A segunda parte concentra-se na filosofia de Avicena e procura mostrar como esse autor opõe-se à existência de um ser mental como sujeito da lógica.

In this groundbreaking book, Daniel D. Novotny explores one of the most controversial topics of Suarez's philosophy: "beings of reason." Beings of reason are impossible intentional objects, such as blindness and square-circle.

This review-article examines Daniel Novotny’s new book on entia rationis in Baroque-Age scholasticism. Novotný’s presentation of Francisco Suárez’, Pedro Hurtado’s, Bartolomeo Mastri’s and Bonaventura Belluto’s as well as Juan Caramuel’s theories of beings of reason is discussed. Beyond Novotný’s results, it is pointed out 1) that Suárez’ theory of the causation of beings of reason is anticipated by his explanation of the relationship between formal and objective concepts, and 2) that the traditional division of distinctions of reason lies in (...) the background of some scholastic authors’ differentiation between entia rationis ratiocinatae and entia rationis ratiocinantis; this latter motif is echoed in German Enlightenment metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper is consecrated to the problems of the semantics in the Anselm’s philosophy of language – one of the most important parts of his philosophical inquiry. The main care is focused to the analysis of terms veritas and rectitudo, mainly because of significatio and the semantics – e.g. significatio with respect to names (proper and common; infinite, privative and empty). Special passage refers to denominative names, because in their case Anselm of Canterbury makes differences between significatio ( per se, (...) per aliud and ut unum) and appellatio in his semantic analysis. (shrink)

The ontological status of esse cognitum was at the center of complex debates throughout the Scotist tradition (Alnwick vs. Aesculo, Mastri vs. Punch). This article investigates the Scotist Angelo Volpe’s discussion of esse cognitum enjoyed by possible creatures in the divine intellect. Volpe responds to two religious warnings, one against assuming any eternal real being for merely possible creatures, and a second against depriving God’s eternal knowledge of a corresponding object, since that would endanger this knowledge itself. Volpe opts for (...) a solution that allows possible creatures the status of beings of reason (entia rationis) due to their own ontological merit, and the status of real beings (entia realia) due to God’s knowing that they as possibles are not in opposition to real existence. He rejects the view that esse cognitum is a kind of being that holds a middle position between real being and being of reason. Volpe’s historical significance is emphasized. (shrink)

Hervaeus Natalis distinguishes two types of items that can have esse obiective in the intellect: objects of acts of intellection (man, this cat, etc.) and properties unapprehended by these acts, or background properties (being a species, being a particular, etc.), that are beings of reason. Yet, his conception of the esse obiective of objects evolved. First, he had a neutral conception of esse obiective: items presenting themselves to the intellect are cognized, transparently, without being altered in the process. Later, he (...) developed an ontologically committing conception of the objective being of objects: items presenting themselves to the intellect take on rational being (esse rationis) as such. This evolution transpires because Hervaeus introduces intentional relations as what makes the cognized item be objectively in the intellect and includes them within the class of background properties (being of reason). Both these conceptions manage to account for our access to extra-mental things. -/- . (shrink)

This article tries to show that the ens rationis is nothing else but one of the most relevant cases of the pure object. To reach this conclusión, the different position regarding the pure object as those of Meinong, Hartmann Millán-Puelles and the Schoolmen are examined.

Ronald J. Butler; IX*—Distinctiones rationis, or the Cheshire Cat which Left its Smile Behind it, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1.

This paper focuses on the formulation of the concept of ‘reality’ between the XV and the XVI centuries by investigating the classification of being of reason and its distinction from real being in...

The book under review is devoted to īśvaravāda – Indian philosophical theism in the con­text of the polemics between theists and antitheists. The author traces the history of the con­cepts of “theism” and “philosophical theism” in European philosophy and provides a jus­tification for the possibility of applying these concepts to medieval India. The publication examines three versions of īśvaravāda (in classical Yoga, Advaita-Vedānta, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and bhakti-schools of Vedānta), accompanied by translations from Sanskrit sec­tions of texts that present the arguments of (...) Indian theists. The author of the review em­phasizes the relevance of the book for modern philosophical discussions. At the same time, the unjustified limitation of V.K. Shokhin’s use of the astika-nāstika juxtaposition in the context of pan-Indian polemics and some negligence in the use of diacritics in transliterating Sanskrit terms is discussed. (shrink)

Suárez, talvez o principal expoente da Escolástica do século XVI, em suas Disputationes metaphysicae, trabalha, entre outros temas, o do conceito objetivo. Atendo-se principalmente à disputação 2, secção n• 1, procura-se mostrar a fecundidade de tal noção, desenvolvendo, para tanto, os temas: o conceito formal enquanto ato mental e enquanto imago, a doutrina da denominação extrínseca: a denominação extrínseca e os entia rationis, a denominação extrínseca e os possíveis.

La distinction entre la distinctio rationis ratiocinatae et la distinctio rationis ratiocinantis n’est aucunement une spécialité scotiste, mais bien un héritage scolastique commun depuis le XVIe. La controverse portait sur la manière dont la distinctio rationis ratiocinantis s’appliquait à la proposition « A=A ». Sur ce point, la pensée de Mastri constitue un tournant dans l’histoire du scotisme, dans la mesure où il n’instrumentalise plus la distinctio rationis ratiocinantis pour la logique mentaliste, mais au contraire la (...) transforme en une doctrine ontologique qui permet au conceptualisme d’Auriol de se faire une place au sein du scotisme.In the scholastic way of spelling out « A=A », some sort of distinction intervened between the relata, viz. the distinctio rationis ratiocinantis. To distinguish between the distinctio rationis ratiocinatae and ratiocinantis was commonplace from the sixteenth up to the eighteenth centuries. But how to make sense of a distinction that is without any foundation in the object itself ? Mastri’s account marks a crisis within Scotism, since his reception of Peter Aureol’s conceptualism made it possible to give the distinctio rationis ratiocinantis a metaphysical rather than a logical interpretation. (shrink)

In this paper I make four claims. First, there is an apparent contradiction in Spinoza’s theory of justice. On the one hand, in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), he argues that justice is entirely conventional and depends on the ruler’s decision. On the other hand, in the later and unpublished Tractatus Politicus (1677), he claims that man really is a social animal and that we can articulate ideal forms of justice on that basis. Second, to address this apparent inconsistency, we need (...) to look at Spinoza’s use of early modern scholastic metaphysics. Although he rejects scholastic natural law theory, he has adopted another concept from the scholastics that is crucial for his theory: the notion of a ‘being of reason’ (ens rationis). Third, if we consider justice as a kind of being of reason, then we can resolve the apparent contradiction in Spinoza’s approach. I shall argue that concepts of justice are imaginative ‘beings of reason.’ They are products of convention that are not derived from general features of the world but from a particular set of circumstances. Fourth, Spinoza’s social ontology of political concepts like justice has some distinct advantages for contemporary theory. This approach shows how we might be able to provide a framework to integrate politics and natural science without reducing one to the other. (shrink)