Ebook: Formalizing Medieval Logical Theories: Suppositio, Consequentiae and Obligationes

This book presents formalizations of three important medieval logical theories: supposition, consequence and obligations. These are based on innovative vantage points: supposition theories as algorithmic hermeneutics, theories of consequence analyzed with tools borrowed from model-theory and two-dimensional semantics, and obligations as logical games. The analysis of medieval logic is relevant for the modern philosopher and logician. This is the first book to render medieval logical theories accessible to the modern philosopher.

This second volume in the series Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science brings a pragmatic perspective to the discussion of the unity of science.

Contemporary philosophy and cognitive science increasingly acknowledge the systematic interrelation of language, thought and action. The principal function of language is to enable speakers to communicate their intentions to others, to respond flexibly in a social context and to act cooperatively in the world. This book will contribute to our understanding of this dynamic process by clearly presenting and discussing the most important hypotheses, issues and theories in philosophical and logical study of language, thought and action. Among the fundamental issues discussed are the rationality and freedom of agents, theoretical and practical reasoning, individual and collective attitudes and actions, the nature of cooperation and communication, the construction and conditions of adequacy of scientific theories, propositional contents and their truth conditions, illocutionary force, time, aspect and presupposition in meaning, speech acts within dialogue, the dialogical approach to logic and the structure of dialogues and other language games, as well as formal methods needed in logic or artificial intelligence to account for choice, paradoxes, uncertainty and imprecision.

This volume contains major contributions by leading logicians, analytic philosophers, linguists and computer scientists. It will be of interest to graduate students and researchers from philosophy, logic, linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. There is no comparable survey in the existing literature.