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Buridan’s Essentialist NominalismIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.The final chapter provides a summary account of Buridan’s essentialist nominalism, showing how Buridan can successfully claim to be both a nominalist denying the existence of real shared essences and an essentialist endorsing the possibility of discovering truly essential attributes of things, which allows valid scientific generalizations. The concluding critical part of the chapter, however, points out a fundamental conflict between Buridan’s abstractionist cognitive psychology of absolute conc…Read more
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Buridan’s AntiskepticismIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.This chapter compares the modern reliabilist strategies, including Buridan’s antiskepticism, considered in the previous chapter with a premodern form of antiskepticism, exemplified by Aquinas’s doctrine of “the formal unity of the knower and the known”, which, as the chapter argues, simply does not allow the emergence of “Demon-skepticism.” In fact, the chapter further argues that the emergence of “Demon-skepticism“ in its most extreme form, allowing an impossibility to appear as a possibility, …Read more
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55Aquinas’s Real Distinction and Its Role in a Causal Proof of God’s ExistenceRoczniki Filozoficzne 67 (4): 7-26. 2019.This paper is not going to offer any criticism of the way Gaven Kerr treats Aquinas’ argument. Instead, it offers an alternative way of reconstructing Aquinas’ argument, intending to strengthen especially those controversial aspects of it that Kerr’s reconstruction left untreated or in relative obscurity. Accordingly, although the paper’s treatment will have to have some overlaps with Kerr’s, it will deal with issues essential to adequate replies to certain competent criticisms of his argument u…Read more
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15Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy (edited book)Fordham University. 2015.
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18The Metaphysics of Personal Identity: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Volume 13 (edited book)Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2016.
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Hylomorphism and Mereology: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Volume 15 (edited book)Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2018.
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33Aquinas’ Balancing ActBochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch Fur Antike Und Mittelalter 21 (1): 29-48. 2018.In this paper, I will primarily argue for the consistency of Aquinas’ conception, according to which the human soul, uniquely in God’s creation, is both the inherent, material, substantial form of the human body, and the subsistent immaterial substance underlying the immaterial operations of its immaterial, rational powers, namely, intellect and will. In this discussion, I will point out that typical challenges to Aquinas’ conception usually rely on semantic or ontological assumptions that can p…Read more
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6Questions on the soul by John Buridan and others (edited book)Springer. 2017.This volume features essays that explore the insights of the 14th-century Parisian nominalist philosopher, John Buridan. It serves as a companion to the Latin text edition and annotated English translation of his question-commentary on Aristotle's On the Soul. The contributors survey Buridan's work both in its own historical-theoretical context and in relation to contemporary issues. The essays come in three main sections, which correspond to the three books of Buridan's Questions. Coverage firs…Read more
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217Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy (edited book)Fordham University Press. 2015.It is supposed to be common knowledge about the history of ideas that one of the few medieval philosophical contributions preserved in modern philosophical thought is the idea that mental phenomena are distinguished from physical phenomena by their intentionality, their directedness toward some object. As is usually the case with such commonplaces about the history of ideas, this claim is not quite true. Medieval philosophers routinely described ordinary physical phenomena, such as reflections i…Read more
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Consequences of a Closed, Token-Based Semantics: The Case of John BuridanBulletin of Symbolic Logic 10 (4): 592-593. 2004.
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163Latin as a Formal LanguageCahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec Et Latin 61 78-106. 1991.An attempt at a Montague-style reconstruction of the semantics of Buridan's logic on a regimented fragment of Latin.
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27Ontological Reduction by Logical Analysis and the Primitive Vocabulary of MentaleseAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86 (3): 403-414. 2012.This paper confronts a certain modern view of the relation between semantics and ontology with that of the late-medieval nominalist philosophers, William Ockham and John Buridan. The modern view in question is characterized in terms of what is called here “the thesis of onto-semantic parallelism,” which states that the primitive (indefinable) categorematic concepts of our semantics mark out the primary entities in reality. The paper argues that, despite some apparently plausible misinterpretatio…Read more
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11The lectures presented here are the by-product of my teaching in Yale's Directed Studies program from 1991 through 1993 (hence the title, for want of a better). In fact, being what they are, lecture notes for an introductory philosophy course, they present rather elementary material. Yet, I flatter myself, they do not lack certain originality in the treatment of some of the basic questions of traditional metaphysics and epistemology. In any case, over the past couple of years they proved to be q…Read more
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54Is there a grammar of the name ‘God’? In an obvious and trivial sense there certainly is. This term, being a part of the English language, has to obey the grammatical rules of that language. So, for example, by consulting the relevant textbooks and dictionaries we can establish that ‘God’ is a noun, so it can function as the subject or predicate of simple categorical sentences, but it cannot, for example, function as a verb or a preposition.
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79Logic without Truth: Buridan on the LiarIn Shahid Rahman, Tero Tulenheimo & Emmanuel Genot (eds.), Unity, truth and the liar: the modern relevance of medieval solutions to the liar paradox, Springer. pp. 87-112. 2008.
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William OckhamIn Graham Oppy & Nick Trakakis (eds.), Medieval Philosophy of Religion: The History of Western Philosophy of Religion, Volume 2, Routledge. pp. 3--195. 2009.
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35Robert Pasnau’s paper presents a strong thesis, which it does not manage to substantiate. The thesis in question is that the Aristotelian doctrine of the identity of the knower and the known, as interpreted by St. Thomas, cannot possibly be used to fend off skepticism.
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Theory of languageIn Brian Davies & Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Aquinas, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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39Buridan's logic and the ontology of modesIn Sten Ebbesen & Russsell L. Friedman (eds.), Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition, Royal Danish Academy. pp. 473-496. 1999.Summary: The aim of this paper is to explore the relationships between Buridan’s logic and the ontology of modes modi). Modes, not considered to be really distinct from absolute entities, could serve to reduce the ontological commitment of the theory of the categories, and thus they were to become ubiquitous in this role in late medieval and early modern philosophy. After a brief analysis of the most basic argument for the real distinction between entities of several categories (“the argument fr…Read more
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66The changing role of entia rationis in mediaeval semantics and ontologySynthese 98 (1): 187-187. 1994.
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98Aquinas on One and ManyDocumenti E Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 11 195-215. 2000.Lo studio intende mettere in evidenza l'ambiguità della nozione di unità, intesa come entità numerica, con la nozione di unità quale sinonimo di essere. Sul primo concetto verte la parte iniziale dello studio, alla quale segue l'esame del significato ontologico di «uno». Le considerazioni fatte guidano l'A. a valutare i rapporti di relazione fra le nozioni di essere e uno, e quelle di sostanzialità, identità e semplicità in Tommaso. La gerarchia ontologica che ha al vertice l'essere assoluto e l…Read more
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9"This question, and others, asking about the number of predicates, or of the predicables, or of the categories, or of natural principles, or the elements, etc. are rather difficult and tedious, especially for youngsters, for whom one should explain the logical and sophistic cavils which the more advanced students [need] no longer care about. Therefore, for the sake of freshmen, I posit some easy and [somewhat] facetious conclusions". (p. 183, ll. 2203-2209.).
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42`Realism', `conceptualism' and `nominalism' are terms that one is most likely to come across in history of philosophy textbooks, presented as ones labeling three major ontological alternatives provided by mediaeval philosophy. The general inadequacy of these labels is perhaps best shown by the desperate efforts to provide further, modified labels , the well-known `moderate' and `extreme' or `exaggerated' versions of the above, in hopes of implying at least a lesser amount of falsehood in hanging…Read more
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66John BuridanOxford University Press. 2009.Buridan's life, works, and influence -- Buridan's logic and the medieval logical tradition -- The primacy of mental language -- The various kinds of concepts and the idea of a mental language -- Natural language and the idea of a formal syntax in Buridan -- Existential import and the square of opposition -- Ontological commitment -- The properties of terms (proprietates terminorum) -- The semantics of propositions -- Logical validity in a token-based, semantically closed logic -- The possibility…Read more
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40The Semantic Principles Underlying St. Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics of BeingMedieval Philosophy & Theology 5 (1): 87-141. 1996.
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Areas of Specialization
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Intentionality |
Semantic Theories |