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4Aquinas’ Solution of the Problem of the Persistence of Accidents in the Eucharist and Its Impact on Later Developments in the European History of IdeasIn The Metaphysics and Theology of the Eucharist: A Historical-Analytical Survey of the Problems of the Sacrament, Springer Verlag. pp. 199-212. 2023.This chapter focuses on how Aquinas’ solution of the problem of the persistence of eucharistic species and other scholastics’ reactions to it opened up certain conceptual possibilities in the Scholastic Aristotelian tradition that would not have been there without it, and which, therefore, were pointing the way toward later conceptual developments in the post-medieval and early modern philosophical traditions in logic, and metaphysics.
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25The Metaphysics and Theology of the Eucharist: A Historical-Analytical Survey of the Problems of the Sacrament (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2023.This volume is about the most mind-boggling sacrament of the Christian faith, also referred to as the Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist: in its Roman Catholic interpretation, the conversion of the substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ for Holy Communion. The challenge of providing a rational interpretation of this doctrine of faith proved to be one of the most contentious issues in the Western history of ideas, apparently going against self-evident metaphysical pr…Read more
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25This book provides the Latin text and its annotated English translation of the question-commentary of John Buridan (ca. 1300-1360) on Aristotle’s “On the Soul”. Buridan was the most influential Parisian nominalist philosopher of his time. His work speaks across centuries to our modern concerns in the philosophy of mind. This volume completes the project of a volume published earlier in the same series: “Questions on the Soul by John Buridan and Others”. An appealing book for scholars of Aristotl…Read more
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10Thomas of Sutton on the Nature of the Intellective Soul and the Thomistic Theory of BeingIn Jan A. Aertsen, Kent Emery & Andreas Speer (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277 / After the Condemnation of 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte / Philosophy and Theology at the University of Paris in the Last Quarter of, De Gruyter. pp. 436-455. 2001.
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3Thomas of SuttonIn Jorge J. E. Gracia & Timothy B. Noone (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Wiley-blackwell. 2003.
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3John BuridanIn Jorge J. E. Gracia & Timothy B. Noone (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Wiley-blackwell. 2003.This chapter contains sections titled: Logic Metaphysics and physics Ethics.
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4Peter of SpainIn Jorge J. E. Gracia & Timothy B. Noone (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Wiley-blackwell. 2003.This chapter contains sections titled: The author of the Summulae The Summulae and the realism of Peter of Spain.
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8Aquinas vs. Buridan on Essence and Existence, and the Commensurability of ParadigmsIn Lukás Novák, Daniel D. Novotný, Prokop Sousedík & David Svoboda (eds.), Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic, Ontos Verlag. pp. 169-182. 2012.
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4Ancilla theologiae vs. domina philosophorum. Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism and the Autonomy of PhilosophyIn Jan Aertsen & Andreas Speer (eds.), Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter? Qu'est-ce que la philosophie au moyen âge? What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages?: Akten des X. Internationalen Kongresses für Mittelalterliche Philosophie der Société Internationale pour l'Etude de la Philosophie Médié, De Gruyter. pp. 393-402. 1997.
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16Aquinas vs. Buridan on the Universality of Human Concepts and the Immateriality of the Human IntellectPhilosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy 30 (1): 33-47. 2022.Under the traditional classification of medieval positions on the issue of universals, both Aquinas and Buridan would have to be deemed to be “conceptualists”: they both deny the existence of mind-independent, Platonic universals (against “realists”), and they both attribute universality primarily to the representative function of our universal concepts, and thus only secondarily to universal names of human languages (against “nominalists”). Yet, Aquinas is quite appropriately classified as a “m…Read more
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1Form, intention, information : from scholastic logic to artificial intelligenceIn Ludger Jansen & Petter Sandstad (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, Routledge. 2021.
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10IntroductionIn Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy, Fordham University. pp. 1-8. 2015.
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5The Metaphysics of Habits in BuridanIn Nicolas Faucher & Magali Roques (eds.), The Ontology, Psychology and Axiology of Habits (Habitus) in Medieval Philosophy, Springer. pp. 321-331. 2018.This paper presents John Buridan’s nominalist ontology of habits, as the acquired qualities of innate powers aiding or hampering their operations, against the background of a more traditional interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine to be found in Boethius, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Cajetan. The paper argues that considerations of his late question commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics may have forced Buridan to rethink some of his earlier arguments for his parsimonious nominali…Read more
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242Artificial intelligence and its natural limitsAI and Society (1): 9-18. 2021.An argument with roots in ancient Greek philosophy claims that only humans are capable of a certain class of thought termed conceptual, as opposed to perceptual thought, which is common to humans, the higher animals, and some machines. We outline the most detailed modern version of this argument due to Mortimer Adler, who in the 1960s argued for the uniqueness of the human power of conceptual thought. He also admitted that if conceptual thought were ever manifested by machines, such an achieveme…Read more
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19Thomistic “Monism” vs. Cartesian “Dualism”History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 10 (1): 92-112. 2007.
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25Aquinas’ Theory of the Copula and the Analogy of BeingHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 5 (1): 159-176. 2002.
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1The Various Kinds of Concepts and the Idea of a Mental LanguageIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.Common representational content allows the Buridanian classification of human concepts discussed in the fourth chapter, which provides the first thoroughgoing, systematic survey of Buridan’s conception of a mental language. The chapter discusses the divisions of concepts into syncategorematic and categorematic, simple and complex, absolute and connotative, and singular and common concepts. Besides presenting these classifications, the chapter provides a detailed discussion of the idea of concept…Read more
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2The Semantics of PropositionsIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.This chapter provides a systematic discussion of Buridan’s nominalist semantics of propositions and sentential nominalizations. The chapter argues that despite its incompleteness, Buridan’s theory is still “nominalism’s best shot” at a semantics of propositions without buying into a philosophically and theologically dubious ontology of dicta, enuntiabilia, complexe significabilia, real propositions, or states of affairs.
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1The Possibility of Scientific KnowledgeIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.This chapter provides a brief survey of Buridan’s reliabilist epistemology, contrasting it with skeptical challenges of his time, and comparing it with modern responses to similar skeptical challenges in modern philosophy, arguably stemming from the controversies of Buridan’s time. In particular, the chapter argues that the sort of “Demon-skepticism” modern readers are familiar with from Descartes was made conceptually possible precisely by the emergence of late-medieval nominalist semantics, an…Read more
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2The Primacy of Mental LanguageIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.The third chapter discusses how Buridan’s conception of mental language provides the grounding for the objectivity and universality of logic despite the radical conventionality of written and spoken languages. Buridan’s conception, since it is based on the Aristotelian idea of the uniformity of natural human capacities in all individual humans, is nothing like modern psychologism, the kind heavily criticized by Frege. Indeed, Buridan’s mental language is not a “private language” criticized by Wi…Read more
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2The Properties of TermsIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.Having seen the limitations of a reconstruction of Buridan’s semantics in terms of a modified quantification theory, this chapter begins engaging Buridan’s theory in its own terms, starting with a detailed discussion of the semantic properties of terms. The discussion moves from a brief discussion of Buridan’s distinction between immediate and ultimate signification, to Buridan’s theory of reference, namely, supposition, and oblique reference, namely, appellation. The chapter discusses suppositi…Read more
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2Natural Language and the Idea of a “Formal Syntax” in BuridanIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.The fifth chapter provides a detailed discussion of Buridan’s strategy of identifying the conceptual structures discussed in the chapter 4 by means of the various “syntactical clues” provided by spoken and written natural languages. The chapter compares the Buridanian strategy of “regimentation” with the modern strategy of formalization, and argues that for the purposes of a “natural logic” the former is not inferior to the latter. But in order to bridge the conceptual gap between the two approa…Read more
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2Ontological CommitmentIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.This chapter continues the discussion of the issues raised by the chapter 6, focusing on the issue of ontological commitment. The chapter argues that Buridan’s theory of ampliation, reconstructed in terms of quantification with restricted variables, provides a genuine third alternative to the opposing modern views of Quine and “the Meinongians.” Furthermore, the chapter argues that Buridan’s theory thus reconstructed says “all the right things” according to Quine in its object-language; however,…Read more
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Medieval Themes, Medieval and Modern Volume 11: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics (edited book)Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2014.
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1Logical Validity in a Token-Based, Semantically Closed LogicIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of Buridan’s conception of logical validity in a semantically closed token-based system, as he conceives of natural languages. The chapter argues first that Buridan has very good logical, as well as merely metaphysical, reasons to conceive of natural languages as compositional systems of significative token-symbols. Next, the chapter discusses the peculiar Buridanian conception truth and validity, according to which validity must not be based on truth…Read more
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1Existential Import and the Square of OppositionIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.The sixth chapter discusses the issue of how the reconstruction of the relevant parts of Buridan’s logic and medieval logic in general, using restricted variables, validates the attribution of existential import to affirmative propositions, in turn establishing the validity of all relations of the traditional Square of Opposition. The chapter also discusses how Buridan’s theory of natural supposition handles some objections to this conception concerning law-like statements, and, in general, how …Read more
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59Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2007.This collection of readings with extensive editorial commentary brings together key texts of the most influential philosophers of the medieval era to provide a comprehensive introduction for students of philosophy. Features the writings of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, John Duns Scotus and other leading medieval thinkers Features several new translations of key thinkers of the medieval era, including John Buridan and Averroes Readings are accompanied by expert commentary from the editors,…Read more
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2Buridan’s Life, Works, and InfluenceIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.The first chapter presents a brief summary of the little we know about Buridan’s life, and the somewhat more we know about his immediate historical influence. But this brief survey of known facts only sets up the main argument of the chapter intending to show Buridan’s “modernity” in more than one sense of the word. Buridan is “modern” in the medieval sense, being “the great architect” of what would become in late-medieval philosophy the nominalist via moderna, but he is also “modern” from our p…Read more
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2Buridan’s Logic and the Medieval Logical TraditionIn John Buridan, Oxford University Press. 2009.The second chapter spells out Buridan’s conception of logic as a practical science, teaching us, as logica docens, to heed the valid rules of reasoning embedded in our logical practice, logica utens. The chapter also deals with the particular difficulties of Buridan’s approach, considering his idea of the radical conventionality of written and spoken languages, consisting of token-symbols that owe their meaningfulness to the natural representational system of the human mind. This is the fundamen…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Intentionality |
Semantic Theories |