Simo Knuuttila

(? - 2022)

Hugh of Novocastro, Landolfo Caracciolo, John Baconthorpe, and some other medieval authors argued that there are real contradictions in nature. The background of this early fourteenth-century theory was the Aristotelian question of how to determine the instant of change between p and ~p. The argument was that these are simultaneously true at the temporal instant of change if it is an instant of changing. The author’s aim is to discuss the background of this view in Henry of Ghent’s theory of instantaneous change from potentiality to actuality at that very instant.

An evening discussion between professors Jaakko Hintikka and Simo Knuuttila on September 2, 2007, at the Helsinki conference: Knuuttila: Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting us to this event and for this opportunity to discuss the latest volume of the Library of Living Philosophers, which was published last spring. The title of the volume is “The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka”. Probably most people here know this series, which was founded in 1939 by P. A. Schilpp. The idea of the volumes is to invite some prominent philosophers to describe their lives and ideas and then ask other philosophers to write and comment on topics which the first author has written about. Then the philosopher to whom the book is dedicated answers and discusses these other people’s papers about his or her philosophy. These volumes gradually became a very popular series which most philosophical libraries wanted to have. It was considered such a good idea, giving rise to one of the most prestigious series in philosophy. It is also considered as a kind of philosophical honor for the philosopher to be chosen to be among these living philosophers. The books always have the same structure; first, an intellectual autobiography, pretty extensive, then the papers on the basic author’s philosophy and, last, the papers are answered separately. So there is a kind of discussion going on. The book on Jaakko Hintikka’s philosophy consists of almost 1000 pages. It is also available as a paperback. Now, I have prepared some questions

This article considers three medieval approaches to the problem of future contingent propositions in chapter 9 of Aristotle’s De Interpretatione. While Boethius assumed that God’s atemporal knowledge infallibly pertains to historical events, he was inclined to believe that Aristotle correctly taught that future contingent propositions are not antecedently true or false, even though they may be characterized as true-or-false. Aquinas also tried to combine the allegedly Aristotelian view of the disjunctive truth-value of future contingent propositions with the conception of all things being timelessly present to God’s knowledge. The second approach was formulated by Peter Abelard who argued that in Aristotle’s view future contingent propositions are true or false, not merely true-or-false, and that the antecedent truth of future propositions does not necessitate things in the world. After Duns Scotus, many late medieval thinkers thought like Abelard, particularly because of their new interpretation of contingency, but they did not believe, with the exception of John Buridan, that this was an Aristotelian view.

The word "modem" in the title of this book refers primarily to post-medieval discussions, but it also hints at those medieval mo dal theories which were considered modem in contradistinction to ancient conceptions and which in different ways influenced philosophical discussions during the early modem period. The me dieval developments are investigated in the opening paper, 'The Foundations of Modality and Conceivability in Descartes and His Predecessors', by Lilli Alanen and Simo Knuuttila. Boethius's works from the early sixth century belonged to the sources from which early medieval thinkers obtained their knowledge of ancient thought. They offered extensive discus sions of traditional modal conceptions the basic forms of which were: (1) the paradigm of possibility as a potency striving to realize itself; (2) the "statistical" interpretation of modal no tions where necessity means actuality in all relevant cases or omnitemporal actuality, possibility means actuality in some rel evant cases or sometimes, and impossibility means omnitemporal non-actuality; and (3) the "logical" definition of possibility as something which, being assumed, results in nothing contradic tory. Boethius accepted the Aristotelian view according to which total possibilities in the first sense must prove their met tle through actualization and possibilities in the third sense are assumed to be realized in our actual history. On these presump tions, all of the above-mentioned ancient paradigms imply the Principle of Plenitude according to which no genuine possibility remains unrealized.