Abstract

This paper studies John Buridan's octagons of opposition for the de re modal propositions and the propositions of unusual construction. Both Buridan himself and the secondary literature have emphasized the strong similarities between these two octagons (as well as a third one, for propositions with oblique terms). In this paper, I argue that the interconnection between both octagons is more subtle than has previously been thought: if we move beyond the Aristotelian relations, and also take Boolean considerations into account, then the strong analogy between Buridan's octagons starts to break down. These differences in Boolean structure can already be discerned within the octagons themselves; on a more abstract level, they lead to these two octagons having different degrees of Boolean complexity (i.e. Boolean closures of different sizes). These results are obtained by means of bitstring analysis, which is one of the key tools from contemporary logical geometry. Finally, I argue that this historical investigation is directly relevant for the theoretical framework of logical geometry, and discuss how it helps us to address certain open questions in this framework.