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My aim in this essay is to shed light on the origins of Peircean vagueness. The intention is therefore primarily historical-philological, exploring the logical-semiotic roots of vagueness. First, I distinguish the two senses in which Peirce treats the notion of vagueness: one referring to the subject, the other to the predicate within a proposition, specifying that I am only concerned here with the first sense of vagueness. Second, I argue that Brock and Chauviré, while attempting to unravel the origins of Peircean vagueness through the notion of the individuum vagum , fail to fully resolve the problem. Third, I expound the medieval theory of suppositio , which concerns the denotation and quantification of the propositional subject. This medieval logical theory aimed to clarify the meaning of indefinite and indeterminate propositions. Fourth, I present textual evidence in which Peirce demonstrates his thorough knowledge of the medieval theory of suppositio , Peter of Spain's theory in particular. In the same section, I highlight a neglected detail within R 530, in which Peirce directly refers to the origins of the notion of vagueness. Finally, I argue that once the quantifiers (existential and universal) were discovered and formalized, Peirce gradually lost interest in the theory of suppositio as a useful tool for clarifying vague (indefinite) and general (indeterminate) propositions, since he had a better logical tool at his disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I seek to clarify some features of fray Luis de León's theory of names which he presents in a passage at the beginning of De los nombres de Cristo by making a comparison between that passage and some scholastic treatises on logic, especially the Summulae by Peter of Spain and the homonymous work by Domingo de Soto. Specifically, I expect to show that the theory can be fully understood only on these grounds. I shall deal particularly with the concepts of "simple term", "suppositio" and "significatio", and the way in which fray Luis articulates them, with the result that the scholastic elements can be clearly recognized by those who are acquainted with them and, at the same time, contribute with their essential philosophical meaning to the fundamental objectives of the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El presente artículo intenta indagar en el cuestionamiento que realiza Agustín acerca de la relación entre “palabras” y “cosas” en el diálogo De Magistro. Al evocar los interlocutores el verso de Virgilio en el capítulo II, surge el cuestionamiento acerca del término nihil y si, semióticamente, se lo puede considerar signo o no. El diálogo innovaría en este intermedio absoluto y arbitrario –incierto, impreciso–, que resulta al deliberar acerca de “cómo decir lo que no es pero que, sin embargo, el término nihil supone un significado”. En este contexto, la teoría de la Illuminatio recobra validez en tanto posibilita la intuición intelectual y la aprehensión sensible dando lugar a una semiótica de la suppositio en tanto explicación de las mencionadas relaciones, específicamente con el término nihil que, opuesto a ens, no sólo indica una ausencia sino una inefabilidad. A partir del análisis del diálogo en torno al término nihil, nos atrevemos a sospechar, para este tema, de la afirmación de que Agustín se proponga anular el escepticismo; más bien consideramos que es un reconocimiento del mismo.

The paper aims to evaluate the semantic - terminological effect on the use of the Latin lexicon that are shaped by a particular author, given the complete documentation of the occurrences of his lemmata (Index Thomisticus), further supplied by on-going syntactic annotation, but nevertheless requiring proper, theoretically well-founded semantic analysis and lexicographic production. We propose linking the rich theoretical tradition which has produced the Prague Dependency Treebank (PDT) and the correlated Tectogrammatical Annotation (TGA) to the objectives of the Bicultural Thomistic Lexicon (LTB). To do this, we will examine and discuss Havránek’s contribution to the shaping of standard language, especially through the distinctive, creative procedure he calls intellectualisation. At the same time, we will outline the effect determined by the use – established in all its extensions – of an expression (lexical item or noun phrase). Given that the user – Thomas Aquinas – was an author who profoundly influenced subsequent thought, the creation or codification of a terminological value of the item will be investigated.

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Thirteenth-century semantics is characterized by a double opposition: first of all that between the terminist and the modistic approaches, which will be the specific object of this contribution; secondly, that - internal to the first approach - between 'English' (or 'Oxonian') current and 'continental' (or 'Parisian') current, which shares several basic options with the modistic approach. In this contribution, after having mentioned very briefly the precedents (that is the Aristotelian-Boethian semantics and the grammatical semantics of Donatus and Priscian), the focus will be on the different ways of dealing with signification from a grammatical and a logical point of view, on the theory of suppositio, as the ultimate expression of terminism, and on the rupture determined by the success of the modistic paradigm at the Faculty of Arts in Paris (and Bologna), starting from the 1270s of the thirteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to reconsider our approaches to the suppositio theory (in the particular case of Peter of Spain's Summaries of logic) in light of a new hypothesis of the double nature1 of medieval logic. Starting from the existing points of view, i.e. the theory of suppositio as a theory of reference and suppositio as a theory of an untranslatable, this paper will examine their underlying commitments to the nature of medieval logic. Such an analysis will entail for the former approach a commitment to a formal nature, while for the latter to a non-formal one. The possibility of a new approach emerges when both natures can be traced in Peter's theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Os conceitos de significatio e de suppositio são centrais na semântica ockhamiana; a primeira noção é uma propriedade de termos isolados; a segunda, de termos em proposições. A compreensão da relação entre os dois é muito importante; está em jogo o caráter atomista ou proposicional de sua semântica. A definição de cada um destes termos remete à definição do outro, não sendo possível determinar a prioridade de um sobre o outro a partir de suas definições. Ambos termos têm excessos em relação ao outro, cobrem casos não cobertos pelo outro. A análise destes excessos permite identificar o termo dominante para explicação de tipos diferentes de fenômenos lingüísticos. Estes tipos de fenômenos são identificados como campos conceituais diferentes, o que permite estabelecer a prioridade de um termo sobre o outro em campos diferentes da semântica.

The constellation language-logic in medieval philosophy (1): St Augustine to St Aquinas This series of two articles provides an in-depth overview of some of the most prominent (and some of the most underpublished) medieval thinkers’ stance on the constellation of language and logic, thus as a combined and condensed problem in Western philosophy between the 5th and 15th centuries. The articles form part of a rehabilitating series of modern-critical articles on understated and marginalised themes, texts and figures in medieval philosophy. The positions of the well-known philosophers that are covered in the two articles, St Augustine, Peter Abelard, St Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, are juxtaposed with some less familiar philosophical positions, amongst others those of Boethius, Peter of Spain, John Wyclif and Peter de Rivo.

The paper focuses on some aspects of the early modern aftermath of supposition theory within the framework of the protestant logical tradition. Due to the growing influence of Humanism, supposition theory from the third decade of the sixteenth century was the object of general neglect and contempt. While in the late sixteenth-century a number of standard textbooks of post-Tridentine scholastic logic reintegrated this doctrine, although in a bowdlerized version, it remained for a century out of the scope of Protestant logic. The situation changed when the Strasburg Lutheran theologian J.C. Dannhauer, who in 1630 developed and propagated the program of a new discipline which he called 'general hermeneutics' (hermeneutica generalis), accentuating the importance of supposition theory as an indispensable device for the purpose of textual interpretation. Due to Dannhauer's influence on later developments of hermeneutics, which in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was regarded as a logical discipline, supposition theory is still present in several logical treatises of the eighteenth century. The explication of the underlying views on the notion of supposition and its logico-semantic function may give at least some clues as to how to answer the question of what supposition theory was all about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study comments on six notabilia found in the general observations (praemittenda) with which Brinkley begins his treatise on supposition in his Summa Logicae: i) the logico-metaphysical explanation of the distinction between significatio and suppositio, ii) the ontic division principle of supposition, Hi) the relationship between supposita and truth-makers, iv) what seems to be a late (and English) resurgence of natural sup-position, v) a pragmatic suspension of the régula appellationum and vi) Brinkley's apparently incompatible claims that there are communicable things and that there are only singular things, a position that is a medieval form of immanent realism. Based on the two manuscripts that contain the treatise on supposition, an appendix offers a pro-visional edition of part of Brinkley's Summa, a collaboration between the author and Joël Lonfat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his commentaries on Porphyry and Aristotle's Organon (Categories, Peri hermeneias, Sophistici elenchi, and Topics) and in his other works, John Duns Scotus shows his knowledge of both the modistlc theory of language and the theory of supposition. My contribution sheds some light on the relationship between Scotus' philosophy of language and the theory of supposition, collecting and commenting on all the passages in which he makes use of it or discusses some theoretical points. I take into special account the almost unknown commentary on the Topics, which is preserved in a Vatican manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates how the problem of (linguistic) reference is treated in Gilbert of Poitiers' Commentaries on Boethius' Opuscula sacra. In this text the terms supponere, suppositus,-a,-um, and suppositio mainly concern the act of a speaker (or of the author of a written text) that consists of referring-by choosing a name as subject term in a proposition-to one or more subsistent things as what the speech act (or the written text) is about. Supposition is for Gilbert an action performed by a speaker, not a property of terms, and his 'contextual approach' has a pragmatic touch: 'we do not predicate in order to supposit as much as we supposit in order to predicate'. Language is considered by Gilbert as a system for communication between human beings, key notions are the 'sense in the author's mind' (sensus mentis eius qui loquitur) and the 'interpreter's understanding' (intelligentia lectoris). The phenomenon of 'disciplinal' discourse ('man is a species of individuals') is treated by means of these hermeneutic notions and not by means of a special kind of supposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]