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1Buridan’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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2Buridan’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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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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34Aquinas’ 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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7Questions 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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79Geach's Three Most Inspiring Errors Concerning Medieval LogicPhilosophical Investigations 38 (1-2): 34-51. 2014.This paper analyses the import of three claims extracted from Geach's works concerning theories of predication and the reference of common terms, the notions of being or existence, and the force/content distinction and theories of valid inference, respectively. The paper highlights the theoretical and historical errors involved in these claims as well as their enormous influence and inspiration in the field of the philosophical study of medieval logic and metaphysics
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38Thomas of Sutton was one of the earliest, and by all measures one of the most astute defenders of St. Thomas Aquinas’ characteristic theological and philosophical doctrines. As usual with medieval thinkers, we have little information regarding Sutton’s life..
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87Of those that exist, some are said of a subject, but are in no subject: as man is said of some subject, namely of some man, but is in no subject. Others, however, are in a subject, but are said of no subject. And I say that to be in a subject which, while it is in something not as a part, cannot exist apart from the thing in which it is. For example, some particular literacy is in a subject, namely in the soul, but is not said of any subject, and this whiteness is in a body as in its subject, fo…Read more
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77Saint Anselm’s proof for God’s existence in his Proslogion, as the label “ontological” retrospectively hung on it indicates, is usually treated as involving some sophisticated problem of, or a much less sophisticated tampering with, the concept of existence. In this paper I intend to approach Saint Anselm’s reasoning from a somewhat different angle.
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300Aquinas on the materiality of the human soul and the immateriality of the human intellectPhilosophical Investigations 32 (2): 163-182. 2009.This paper argues that Aquinas's conception of the human soul and intellect offers a consistent alternative to the dilemma of materialism and post-Cartesian dualism. It also argues that in their own theoretical context, Aquinas' arguments for the materiality of the human soul and immateriality of the intellect provide a strong justification of his position. However, that theoretical context is rather "alien" to ours in contemporary philosophy. The conclusion of the paper will point in the direct…Read more
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75On Kenny on Aquinas on Being (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (4): 567-580. 2004.
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16Summulae de Dialectica (edited book)Yale University Press. 2001.This volume is the first annotated translation in any language of the entire text of the Summulae de dialectica, by the Parisian master of arts John Buridan (1300-1358). One of the most influential works in the history of late medieval philosophy, the Summulae is Buridan's systematic exposition of his nominalist philosophy of logic. Buridan's doctrine spread rapidly and for some two hundred years was dominant at many European universities. His work is of increasing interest today not only to his…Read more
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17John BuridanIn H. Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, Springer. pp. 597--603. 2001.This is a brief, accessible introduction to the thought of the philosopher John Buridan (ca. 1295-1361). Little is known about Buridan's life, most of which was spent studying and then teaching at the University of Paris. Buridan's works are mostly by-products of his teaching. They consist mainly of commentaries on Aristotle, covering the whole extent of Aristotelian philosophy, ranging from logic to metaphysics, to natural science, to ethics and politics. Gyula Klima argues that many of Buridan…Read more
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1271st GPMR Workshop on Logic and Semantics: Medieval Logic and Modern Applied Logic, Reinische Friedrich Wilhelms Universität Bonn, Germany, 2007.
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106This paper examines the multiple semantic functions Aquinas attributes to the verb ‘est’, ranging from signifying the essence of God to acting as a copula of categorical propositions to expressing identity. A case will be made that all these apparently radically diverse functions are unified under Aquinas’s conception of the analogy of being, treating all predications as predications of being with or without some qualification (secundum quid or simpliciter). This understanding of the multiplicit…Read more
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Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Intentionality |
Semantic Theories |