Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

it is still by and large murky terrain.
Logic in the 14 th Century after Ockham 467
2.2.2 Other developments worth mentioning
For reasons of space, it is impossible here to treat the totality of influential 14 th
century semantic theories; but before we move on to the next section, a few more
of these should be at least mentioned, so that the interested reader may further
pursue his/her investigations. One of them is the doctrine of the supposition of
relative pronouns, a vivid topic already in Ockham’s Summa Logicae (Part I, chap.
76), which is the medieval counterpart of modern theories of anaphora (cf. [King,
2005]).
Another important aspect which, for reasons of space, could not be addressed
here are the fascinating discussions on the semantics of propositions. In the same
way that the medieval authors were interested in what single terms stood (supposited)
for, many 14 th century authors raised similar questions concerning phrases
and propositions (see for example Chapter 6 of [Spade, 1996]). One of such questions
was what, in the extra-mental physical realm, the accusative-plus-infinitive
constructions then known as dicta (which are in fact nominalizations of indicative
propositions) corresponded to. Another important question concerned what in the
physical world, if anything, makes a true proposition true. Some of the authors
who addressed such issues are Burley (cf. [Cesalli, 2001]), Wyclif (cf. [Conti,
2005a, 2.1; Cesalli, 2005]), Henry Hopton (cf. [Ashworth and Spade, 1992, 51]),
[Richard Brinkley, 1987]; Paul of Venice (part II, fascicule 6 of his Logica Magna),
among others, often in treatises bearing the conspicuous titles of De significato
propositionis and De veritate et falsitate propositionis, or similar ones.
In sum, while 14 th century semantics has been a popular topic of research in
the last decades, this tradition itself is so rich that much of it still remains to be
further studied and better understood. Therefore, the foregoing analyses should
not be seen as an exhaustive account of this tradition but rather as a starting
point for further research.
3 CONSEQUENCES
Theories of consequences are considered to be genuine medieval inventions. Of
course, investigations on the nature of logical and inferential relations between
propositions have existed ever since logic has existed; but medieval theories of
consequence present a characteristic approach to the issue and a level of systematization
that is arguably not to be found in previous investigations. Some (see
[Moody, 1953]) see in them the forerunners of the ‘propositional turn’ in logic
that took place to its full extent only in the 19 th century with Frege, after millennia
of predominance of term logic — that is, of logical systems whose basic
units were terms, such as in traditional Aristotelian logic, and not propositions. 33
33 With the notable exception of Stoic logic, which is usually recognized as the first propositional
system of logic in the history of logic (see [Mates, 1973]).