Synonymy and Equivocation in Ockham's Mental Language

In I957 Peter Geach argued that Ockham's theory of mental language was too facile, that it made the grammar of mental language look too suspiciously like that of Latin: "He merely transfers features of Latin grammar to Mental, and then regards this as explaining why such features occur in Latin -- they are needed there if what we say inwardly in Mental is to be outwardly got across to others in Latin. But clearly nothing is explained at all.'' In 1970 John Trentman responded to this charge in a short article that has since become very influential. In that article Trentman makes three claims among others: (1) Ockham thought of mental language as a kind of stripped-down, "ideal" language, containing just those grammatical features that affect the truth conditions of mental sentences. (2) There can be no synonymy in mental language. (3) There can be no equivocation in mental language. This paper examines these three claims in turn. Each of them is "correct" in the sense that Ockham either explicitly holds it or else seems committed to holding it on the basis of other features of his thought. Nevertheless, I maintain, each of these claims also leads to difficulties for Ockham, either (with respect to the first claim) because there are certain empirical, linguistic reasons of a sort Ockham would accept for rejecting the claim as it stands, or else (with respect to the second and third claims) because it conflicts with things Ockham says elsewhere

Søren Kierkegaard

A complete course, last taught in the Spring of 2011, devoted entirely to the thought of Søren Kierkegaard. The course is structured to present a common, "standard" picture of Kierkegaard's philosophy, and then to examine that picture more closely to see what needs to be adjusted. The course consists of two files: a complete set of lecture notes, and an accompanying set of class handouts

The Warp and Woof of Metaphysics: How to Get Started on Some Big Themes

Students — graduate as well as even the best undergraduates — often find a broadly “Aristotelian” approach to metaphysical issues utterly baffling to them, even after they learn to “make the moves.” That is, even after they get to the point of being able to predict with some accuracy what various authors were likely to say on a given issue, they often don’t really see what motivates such views and why anyone would take them seriously. This paper attempts to help students get past this problem and to supply the missing motivation and orientation. Fair warning: A lot of the picture developed in this paper is painted in very broad strokes. Specialists will find much to cavil over: Important qualifications are glossed over, quite disparate things are lumped together under a common heading, certain controversial points in the literature are ignorred, and so on. But the paper is not addressed primarily to specialists (although it is hoped that even the most hardened scholar can find something useful here). It’s addressed to two kinds of people: (a) those who need to be shown why and how the issues discussed here are really interesting and even fun, and (b) those who already know that but just want to be reminded wh

Three Questions by John of Wesel on Obligationes and Insolubilia

A Latin edition of three questions on "obligationes" and "insolubilia" from the (probably) fourteenth-century Parisian logician John of Wesel, on the basis of the MS Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Class XI n. 12, Zanetti Latini 301 (= 1576), together with a discussion of the author's identity and comments on the theory contained in the edited questions. Because of difficulties with the manuscript, only questions 1 and 3 on "obligationes," and question 1 on "insolubilia" are edited here

Søren Kierkegaard, "The Foreword to Either/Or" (translation)

An annotated English translation of the "Foreword" to Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonymous work "Either/Or.

For Sapphire Needle: An Essay on Suffering in Rhythm

A brief article on the significance of the blues record that is mentioned several times in Sartre's first novel, Nausea

History of the Problem of Universals in the Middle Ages

A complete set of lecture notes for an advanced course on the metaphysical problem of universals in the Middle Ages. The lecture notes come with supplementary volume of additional notes and texts, and a complete collection of handouts distributed during the course. The course was last taught Fall 2009; these materials are from that semester

Jon Stewart. A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark. Tome I, The Heiberg Period: 1824–1836. København: Søren Kierkegaard Research Center—C. A. Reitzel, 2007. (Review)

A review of Jon Stewart. A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark. Tome I, The Heiberg Period: 1824–1836. København: Søren Kierkegaard Research Center—C. A. Reitzel, 2007

Boehner's Text of Walter Burley’s De puritate artis logicae: Some Corrections and Queries

A study done in conjunction with the author's translation: Walter Burley: On the Purity of the Art of Logic. The Shorter and the Longer Treatises ("Yale Library of Medieval Philosophy"; New Haven, Conn. Yale University Press, 2000). In preparing that translation, the author checked Philotheus Boehner's Latin edition against the manuscript Vat. lat. 3066, which contains both versions and was used by Boehner in his edition. It was found that the edition needs to be corrected or reconsidered in several places. This paper presents the findings

Thomas Aquinas On the Mixture of the Elements, to Master Philip of Castrocaeli

Translated from Sancti Thomae de Aquino opera omnia (the “Leonine” edition), vol. 43 (Rome: Editori di San Tomasso, 1976), pp. 155–157. This translation is a revised version of the one deposited in 1982 with the Translation Clearing House, Department of Philosophy, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078. That earlier version was based not on the Leonine text, but on the edition in Divi Thomae Aquinatis doctoris angelici Opuscula philosophica, Raymund M. Spiazzi, ed., (Torino: Marietti, 1954), pp. 153–156.An English translation of the short work by Thomas Aquinas, "On the Mixture of the Elements, to Master Philip of Castrocaeli," Aquinas first explains the theories of Avicenna and Averroes, and then presents his own view