Paul Vincent Spade

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE LOGIC RADULPHUS BRITO, Quaestiones super Priscianum minorern. Introduction and critical edition by H.W. Enders and J. Pinborg. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980. 460 pp. 2 fascicules. DM 168 per fascicule. PAUL VINCENT SPADE, Peter of Ailly: concepts and insolubles. An annotated translation. (Synthese Historical Library, Volume 19.) Dordrecht, Holland: Boston, U.S.A.: London, England: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980. xii + 193 pp. Df1.60/$31.40. VINCENT FERRER, Tractatus de suppositionibus. Introduction and critical edition by J.A. Trentman. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977. 188 pp. No price stated. GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, Late scholastic and humanist theories of the proposition. Amsterdam, Oxford and New York: North Holland Publishing Co., 1980. 237 pp. Dfl.75.00/$36.50. LARRY HICKMAN, Modern theories of higher level predicates: second intentions in the Neuzeit. (Analytica. Investigations in Logic, Ontology and the Philosophy of Language.) Miinchen: Philosophia Verlag, 1980. 191 pp. DM 98. GERMAN TRADITIONS IN LOGIC JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE, Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre als Handschrift fiir seine Zuhörer (1794). Einleitung und Register von Wilhem G. Jacobs. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1979 (third edition). xxviii +272 pp. DM 23. GOTTHARD GUNTHER, Grundziige einer neuen Theorie des Denkens in Hegels’ Logik. Zweite Auflage. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1978. xx+226 pp. DM 26. DIEGO MARCONI (ed.), La formalizzazione della dialettica. Turin: Rosemberg &Sellier, 1979. 474pp. No price stated. SUBSTANCE >M.J. Loux, Substance and attribute: a study in ontology. (Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, volume 14.) Dordrecht, Boston and London: Reidel, 1978. xi + 187 pp. $29.00 (cloth)/$11.95 (paper). DAVID WIGGINS, Sameness and substance. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. xi + 238 pp. £12.50. EDITIONS OF FREGE GOTTLOB FREGE, Posthumous writings. Translated by P. Long and R. White, with the assistance of R. Hargreaves. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979. viii+288pp. £15.00. GOTTLOB FREGE, Philosophical and mathematical correspondence. Translated by Hans Kaal, abridged by Brian McGuinness. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xviii +214 pp. £15.00. G. FREGE, Schriften zur Logik und Sprachphilosophie. Aus dem NachlaB mit Einleitung, Anmerkungen, Bibliographie und Register herausgegeben von G. Gabriel. 2. Aufl. Hamburg: Meiner 1978. xxx + 224 pp. DM 25. PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ERNEST NAGEL, The structure of science: problems in the logic of scientific explanation. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, paperback edition 1979. xiii + 618 pp. £4.95 (paper). JENNIFER TRUSTED, The logic of scientific inference: an introduction. Foreword by Sir Peter Medawar. London: The MacMillan Press, 1979. xii + 145 pp. £8.00. G. TORALDO DI FRANCIA (ed.) Problems in the foundations of physics. (Proceedings of the International School of Physics ‘Enrico Fermi’, Course LXXII, Varenna, Italy, 25th July-6th August 1977.) Amsterdam and New York: North Holland Publishing Company, 1979. xvii + 500 pp. US $87.75/dfl.180.00. A.-F. SCHMID, Une philosophie de savant. Henri Poincar6 et la logique mathématique. Paris: Maspéro, 1978. 175 pp. No price stated. LOGIC AND LANGUAGE LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, Notebooks 1914-16. Second edition. Edited by G.H. Von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe. English translation by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979. 231 pp. £8.95 SAUL A. KRIPKE, Naming and necessity. Revised and enlarged edition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher, 1980. 172 pp. £7.95. M.A.E. DUMMETT, Truth and other enigmas. London: Duckworth, 1978. lvii + 470 pp. £24.00. MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS JAAKKO LOUNELA, Die Logik im XVII. Jahrundert in Finnland. (Annales Academiae Fennicae. Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum, no. 17.) Helsinki: Suomlainer Tiedeakatemia, 1978. vi + 188 pp. No price stated. BERNARD BOLZANO, Grundlegung der Logik. (Selections and synopses from Volumes I and I1 of Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre, second edition.) Edition and introduction by Friedrich Kambartel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1978. lxxi + 380 pp. DM 38 (paper). HERBERT MEHRTENS, Die Entstehung der Verbandstheorie. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 1979. ix + 363 pp. DM 42. JANE BRIDGE [KISTER], Beginning model theory. The completeness theorem and some consequences. (Oxford Logic Guides.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. viii + 143 pp. $10.00.

The history of the mediaeval obligationes-literature has only recently begun to be studied. Two important treatises in this literature, one by Walter Burley and the other attributed to William of Sherwood, have been edited by Romuald Green in a forthcoming book. But there is considerable doubt concerning the authenticity of the text attributed to Sherwood. The correct attribution and dating of this treatise is crucial for our understanding of the history of this literature. In this paper, we argue that the treatise is not as early as William of Sherwood, that on the contrary it dates no earlier than the very end of the thirteenth century, and that, although there is some contrary evidence, the treatise may be an early work by Walter Burley himself

Mediaeval logicians often wrote about changes between contradictory states, for example a switch’s changing from being on to not being on. One of the questions discussed in these writings was whether at the moment the change occurs the changing thing is in the earlier or the later state. The present paper investigates the general setting for that question, and discusses the answer given by Walter Burley, an important early-fourteenth century author whose theory was a standard one. Burley’s theory at first seems arbitrary, and moreover committed to serious theoretical problems. The last part of the paper therefore considers what unspoken factors may have motivated Burley. Certain causal principles are suggested that would remove the apparent arbitrariness and avoid the theoretical problems with his theory, but only at the expense of revising it in a substantive way.

Let me begin then by introducing you to a distinction between what I will call a broadly “Platonic”-style and a broadly “Aristotelian”-style metaphysics. The guiding thread will be the notion of the essential and non-essential (accidental) features of a thing. Perhaps you will find what I am here calling an “Aristotelian” view unfamiliar and even foreign, because there is a kind of metaphysical “common denominator” in some philosophical circles today, left-over perhaps from the days of “analytic” philosophical insularity, but in any case quite unlike what I am here calling an “Aristotelian” metaphysics. Instead it is much closer to what I regard as a Platonic approach.