A3 Book section, Chapters in research books
Valid on Formal Grounds (2024)

Yrjönsuuri, M. (2024). Valid on Formal Grounds. In C. G. Normore, & S. Schmid (Eds.), Grounding in Medieval Philosophy (pp. 251-280). Springer. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53666-3_12

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Yrjönsuuri, Mikko

Parent publication: Grounding in Medieval Philosophy

Parent publication editors: Normore, Calvin G.; Schmid, Stephan

ISBN: 978-3-031-53665-6

eISBN: 978-3-031-53666-3

Journal or series: Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action

ISSN: 2509-4793

eISSN: 2509-4807

Publication year: 2024

Pages range: 251-280

Number of pages in the book: 333

Publisher: Springer

Place of Publication: Cham

Publication country: Switzerland

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53666-3_12

Publication open access: Not open

Publication channel open access: 

Abstract

Could formal logic be a naturalist field of study? This paper analyses how medieval logicians committed to Aristotelian naturalism thought about the metaphysical grounding of logic. As they assumed, it is at least sometimes a fact that a conclusion follows from some premises; here it is questioned how they thought this fact, or logical validity, to be grounded. The early medieval Arabic tradition (e.g. Ibn Sinā) thought in a way comparable to Immanuel Kant’s position that logic is a formal study of intellectual structures, but given their metaphysical realism concerning universals, such intellectual structures may be taken to be natural parts of Aristotelian metaphysics. On the other hand, the early medieval Latin tradition (e.g. Abelard) thought in a way comparable to Bernard Bolzano that the subject matter logic studies is not the intellectual realm, but essentially linguistic facts, taking language to be a natural phenomenon. Robert Kilwardby endeavoured to combine these traditions, but turns out to have taken a stance much closer to Kant, and to have given little importance to linguistic facts in his account of how syllogistic validity and thereby validity in general is grounded. At the same time, Kilwardby’s work enhanced the conception of the formality of logic, although he thought that only the syllogistic form is a properly logical form. Analysis of John Buridan’s logic shows that he had a generalized conception of logical form that was tightly knit with linguistic form as it is found in mental language, which he took to be a metaphysically natural domain. Unlike Kant and Bolzano, both Kilwardby and Buridan can be viewed as naturalists as concerns the study of formal logic, inasmuch as they thought that logical validity is grounded in facts that their Aristotelian metaphysics would consider natural.

Keywords: philosophy; metaphysics; logic; thinking

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Ministry reporting: Yes

Preliminary JUFO rating: 2