Abstract

During a short-lived renaissance of medieval Nominalism lasting from approximately 1480 to 1530, many Renaissance Nominalist logicians devoted a great deal of attention to the task of developing an account of the truth and falsity of modal propositions. A modal proposition is any proposition containing one or more occurrences of the four modal terms: possible, necessary, impossible, and contingent. The Nominalist account follows the general procedure outlined in William of Ockham's Summa totius logicae, the goal of which is to translate modal propositions into one or more non-modal propositions, each proposition the subject of a "metalinguistic" modal predicate. For example, the modal proposition 'George possibly is running' would be translated to: " thinspace'George is running' is possible." ;Renaissance Nominalists follow the practice of medieval logicians in distinguishing two types of modal propositions: the "composed" and the "divided". They differ from the medievals in how they define these. Composed modal propositions contain a "second intention" modal term; divided modal propositions contain "syncategorematic" modal terms. Second intention modes appear in either the subject or predicate positions in propositions, and refer to presently existing sentence tokens. Syncategorematic modes do not alone refer to anything, and extend or "ampliate" the reference of other terms in the proposition from presently existing actual entities to non-actual possible beings. ;Determining the truth value of a composed modal proposition was considered an easy task since the non-modal proposition into which the modal proposition is translated preserves the logical form of the original. However, the truth value of a divided modal propositions depends upon the modality belonging to the atomic propositions implied by it. ;A theory of modal truth is not complete unless it develops an account of the metaphysical nature of modality as the basis for ascribing truth values to modal propositions. The Nominalist logicians of the time offer only fragments of such a theory. Some suggested that modalities only exist in the mind; others believed that modalities are real, extramental relations holding between individuals. Such remarks were never fully reconciled with other modal notions found in these texts, particularly notions defined in terms of God's potencies.