Aristotle's modal syllogistic has been an object of study ever since the time of Theophrastus; but these studies have been somewhat desultory. Remarkably, in the 1990s several new lines of research have appeared, with series of original publications by Fred Johnson, Richard Patterson and Ulrich Nortmann. Johnson presented for the first time a formal semantics adequate to a de re reading of the apodeictic syllogistic; this was based on a simple intuition linking the modal syllogistic to Aristotelian metaphysics. Nortmann developed (...) an ingenious de dicto analysis. Patterson articulated the links between the modal syllogistic and the metaphysics, using an analysis which strictly speaking is neither de re nor de dicto. My own studies in this field date from 1976, when my colleague Peter Roeper and I jointly wrote a paper "Aristotle's apodeictic syllogisms" for the XXIInd History of Logic Conference in Krakow. This paper contained the disjunctive reading of particular affirmative apodeictic propositions, which I still favour. Nonetheless, I did not consider that paper's results decisive or comprehensive enough to publish, and my 1981 book The Syllogism contained no treatment of the modal syllogism. The paper's ideas lay dormant till 1989, when I read Johnson's and Patterson's initial articles. I began publishing on the topic in 1991. Gradually my thoughts acquired a certain comprehensiveness and systematicity, till in 1993 I was able to take a semester's sabbatical to write up a draft of this book. (shrink)
This book explores noteworthy approaches to modal syllogistic adopted by medieval logicians including Abélard, Albert the Great, Avicenna, Averröes, Jean Buridan, Richard Campsall, Robert Kilwardby, and William of Ockham. The book situates these approaches in relation to Aristotle's discussion in the Prior and Posterior Analytics, and other parts of the Organon, but also in relation to the thought of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Boethius on the one hand, and to modern interpretations of the modal syllogistic on the other. Problems explored (...) include: Aristotle's doctrine of modal conversion, the pure and mixed necessity-moods, modal ecthesis, the pure and mixed contingency-moods, and Aristotle's use of counter-examples. Medieval logicians brought various concepts to bear on these problems, including the distinction between per se and per accidens terms, the notion of essential predication, the distinction between ut nunc and simpliciter propositions, the distinction between de dicto and de re modals, and the notion of ampliation. All these are examined in this book. (shrink)
This is an examination of the criteria for identifying, evaluating, and appreciating art forms that require performance for their full realization. Unlike his contemporaries, Paul Thom concentrates on an analytical approach to evaluating music, drama, and dance. Separating performance art into its various elements enables Thom to study its nature and determine essential features and their relationships. Throughout the book, he debates traditional thought in numerous areas of the performing arts. He argues, for example, against the invisibility of the performer (...) - "the vehicle of representation in performance" - then critiques Diderot's Paradox of Performance, calling it "the most extreme formulation of the traditional valorization," and declaring that such thinking must be abandoned. Developing several lines of reasoning regarding music, Thom considers questions of incompleteness and authenticity in relation to the score, the score's function, and the sense in which musical performances are interpreted, or are open to interpretation. It is this audience interpretation that is the final ingredient in the blending and interrelating of the performers, the performance, and the audience. Thom discusses the impact of music, drama, and dance performances on audiences, and evaluates their expectations, reception, and interpretations. He contends that audiences play an active role as interpreters, without becoming performers themselves. Author note: Paul Thom is head of the Philosophy Department, The Faculties, Australian National University. (shrink)
This paper examines three recent discussions of Aristotle's system of syllogisms with apodeictic and assertoric premisses. Though they contain no cross-references, and though they arrive at disparate interpretations, all three pieces share a common aim. That aim is to construct an intuitively graspable interpretation of Aristotle's modal syllogistic which is based on metaphysical considerations. I argue that none of these authors has succeeded in this; nevertheless, I share their broad aim, and attempt to show that a more satisfactory interpretation can (...) be formulated by combining and developing elements drawn from all three. (shrink)
Critics and artists claim the title of 'interpreter' for themselves. Scientists do not so readily describe themselves in this way. But is the formulation of explanatory hypotheses in science so different from the interpretive work of artists? Making Sense recognizes that whenever interpretation occurs there may be a plurality of competing successful interpretations. It offers a philosophical theory that views the interpretive enterprise as an attempt to make sense of things by representing them in ways that can be accommodated within (...) various significance-systems. (shrink)
In his Short Treatise and his Commentary on the Peri hermeneias, al-Fbī offers two different but related accounts of indefinite terms and the propositions that contain them. In both works he presents a series of different senses that an indefinite term may have, commencing with a sense in which such a term would be equivalent to a privative term, and concluding with a sense in which it would determine the logical complement of the corresponding definite term. I offer an interpretation (...) of this series according to which they reveal the workings of a fine analytical mind and a subtle teacher. (shrink)
A formal analysis is offered of Pseudo-Scotus's theory of the conversion of (i) propositions containing singular terms (including propositions with a singular term as predicate): and (ii) propositions with a quantified predicate. An attempt is made to steer a middle course between using the Aristotelian logic as a framework for the analysis, and using a Fregean framework.
In this book we present the first study of all of his philosophical works from logic and grammar to metaphysics and ethics. It contains a substantial introduction about Kilwardby's life and work as well as a comprehensive bibliography.
The present paper describes an ”ontological square’ mapping possible ways of combining the domains and converse domains of the relations of inherence and denomination. In the context of expounding and extending medieval appropriations of elements drawn from Aristotle’s Categories for theological purposes, the paper uses this square to examine different ways of defining Substance-terms and Accident-terms by reference to inherence and denomination within the constraints imposed by the doctrine of the Trinity. These different approaches are related to particular texts of (...) thinkers including Bonaventure and Gilbert of Poitiers. (shrink)
Musical performance, as an interpretive activity, has to be understood as relative to the material that is being interpreted. This material may or may not have the determinacy, fixity, and definitiveness of a work. Performative interpretation cannot be identified simply with what performers add to the material being performed. However, if interpretation is the assigning of significance, then in applying certain (theatrical, rhetorical, and biological) significance-endowing metaphors to integrated elements of a musical performance we commit ourselves to thinking of that (...) performance as interpretive. (shrink)
Essentialist theories are based on notions of necessity and essentiality. Kinds and Quasi-Kinds can be defined in terms of these notions. Aristotle's essentialism asserts that Kinds are unions of Quasi-Kinds, Kinds that can overlap are necessarily included in a common Kind, and Kinds partition into sub-Kinds. Truth-conditions for the apodeictic propositions of Aristotle's modal syllogistic are stated in terms of necessity and essentiality, but independent of theses -. While the basic insights motivating Patterson's and Nortmann's interpretations of modal syllogistic are (...) sound, nonetheless there are significant mistakes in the detail. Given -, truth-conditions for apodeictic propositions can be stated in terms of essentiality, but independently of the notion of necessity, thus confirming Johnson's interpretation. (shrink)
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity requires the joint truth of the statements that there is a unique and simple God, and that there are three distinct Persons each of which is God. Saint Augustine posed the question what entities would have to exist, and how would they have to be related, in order for this doctrine to be internally consistent. The present book examines the attempts by ten leading philosophers (Augustine himself, Boethius, Abelard, Gilbert, Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert, Aquinas, Scotus (...) and Ockham) to answer Augustine's question. Subsidiary questions include the nature of divine simplicity, the divine perfections, the personal relations and their associated properties, and the interrelation between the abstract and the concrete within the Godhead. Each one of the historical theories of the Trinity is presented as a semantic model postulating a domain that, as needed, comprises a number of substances and non-substances. In each case, the theory's terms (e.g. the names of the Persons, and of the divine perfections, etc.) are assigned to elements in the domain. The elements to which the names apply essentially are designated as such. As needed, the abstracts of the names are also assigned elements in the domain. Various pairs of elements in the domain are connected as correlatives, or as abstract and concrete, or by way of substantial predication. These models allow for comparisons between different theories, and provide a means of checking a theory's consistency. (shrink)
In his book The Philosophy of Nature, Ellis presents "the new essentialism" as resting on the notions of a property, an intrinsic property, an essential property, natural necessity and possibility, a natural kind, a fixed natural kind, and a natural law. The present paper argues that the central notions in this group are susceptible of a logical analysis, Ellis's notion of natural possibility has a historical precedent in the work of Abéelard, the notion of natural possibility contains both de re (...) and de dicto elements, and Ellis's essentialist claims, when joined to any plausible definition of natural possibility, lead to inconsistency. (shrink)
When someone makes music, the content of their music-making is the song they sing, or the piece they play. The idea of musical content is sometimes analyzed in terms of the notion of a type whose tokens occur when that content is played or sung. Such an analysis can be associated with different assumptions about the ontology of types. I consider four such assumptions; and I argue they give rise to four different conceptions of musical content. Finally, I consider the (...) question what kind of unity is possessed by musical content on these four different conceptions. (shrink)
Every educated person in the Middle Ages learned logic, which was then always some version of the theory of the syllogism. But until the rise of the universities in the thirteenth century no scholar in Christendom had written a comprehensive commentary on the work of Aristotle's that contains that theory, namely the Prior Analytics. Robert Kilwardby was an English scholar who lectured on logic and grammar at the University of Paris in the 1230s. His lectures earned him widespread fame in (...) Europe. Throughout the thirteenth century and up to the sixteenth,Kilwardby's lectures on Aristotle's Prior Analytics were considered to contain the authoritative exposition of Aristotle's syllogistic logic. They were published at Venice in 1499. (shrink)
Every educated person in the Middle Ages learned logic, which was then always some version of the theory of the syllogism. But until the rise of the universities in the thirteenth century no scholar in Christendom had written a comprehensive commentary on the work of Aristotle's that contains that theory, namely the Prior Analytics. Robert Kilwardby was an English scholar who lectured on logic and grammar at the University of Paris in the 1230s. His lectures earned him widespread fame in (...) Europe. Throughout the thirteenth century and up to the sixteenth,Kilwardby's lectures on Aristotle's Prior Analytics were considered to contain the authoritative exposition of Aristotle's syllogistic logic. They were published at Venice in 1499. (shrink)
Peter Kivy has developed a general philosophical account of musical expressiveness based on baroque writings. But he omitted the association which baroque accounts make between the arts of music and rhetoric. It will be argued that one cannot capture the specifics of baroque musical expressiveness without taking account of baroque rhetorical theory. The detailed analysis of an example will demonstrate how rhetorical analysis of baroque music can fill in the details of Kivy's schematic account of musical expressiveness.
The article is concerned with the account of Aristotle's theory of disputation given by Robert Kilwardby in his commentary, composed in Paris during the 1240s, on Aristotle's Prior Analytics. Specifically, I show that Kilwardby covers demonstrative as well as dialectical disputations, and gives an elementary account of the rules governing such disputations, in their adversarial forms as well as in an idealized form where the interlocutors engage in a cooperative activity. I describe the resemblances and the differences between disputations as (...) theorized by Kilwardby and the game of obligationes as understood by some of his contemporaries. (shrink)
The paper criticizes Platonistic accounts of musical works as sound-structures. It rejects their view that the authoring of such works is a kind of 'discovery' (Kivy) or 'selection' (Wolterstorff) or 'indication' (Levinson). Instead, the paper proposes that the authoring of any work for performance consists in the production of a token performance-directive. Works for performance are then defined as the contents of such directives.
This volume should be warmly welcomed as the first critical edition of a major work by Radulphus Brito, one of the most important logicians of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, who lectured at the University of Paris between 1296 and 1306. The questions edited here cover most of Aristotle's Prior Analytics, with 75 questions on the first book and 22 on the second. There are no questions specifically on book 1, chapters 17–22, and none on book 2, chapters (...) 22–27. Two Appendixes supply some extra questions, including three doubtful questions. The edition is preceded by a critical study describing the manuscripts, Brito's sources, and the editorial principles. Regrettably, there is no index... (shrink)
An inclusive sense of ‘opera’ is distinguished from the Western high‐art sense. The problem of aesthetic unity in opera is discussed in relation to hybrid art forms ; specific operatic styles ; individual operatic productions and performances . The article includes links to video clips from operatic performances.
