The late medieval period is widely acknowledged as one of the most salient moments of the history of logic and semantics. It not only considered logic as a sine qua non condition for scientific knowledge, it also begot highly sophisticated theories about both argumentation and language. The last fifty years of increasingly intense research have brought about an ever more detailed knowledge of these theories. And yet, the questions as to what kind of logic is medieval logic, whether and to what extent it corresponds to our conception of logic, and, even, what the nature of its object was, remain challenging. That it has a formal character is widely accepted ; and its semantic components display remarkable affinities with contemporary ones. But is it formal in the way modern logic is - or believes it is ? Medieval logic does not really make recourse to symbolisms, after all, and the fact that the idea of formal validity might have been born in the twelfth century does not mean that developing formal approaches was an aim of medieval logicians. And what is its semantics a semantics of ? Medieval logicians use Latin to deal with Latin constructions, but do these constructions belong to natural language or are they regimented to the point of forming some sort of ideal language ? The twenty-five papers gathered in this volume deal with these issues, thus allowing to reassess the broader questions of the formal character and formalising ambitions of medieval logic, as well as that of the natural character of the language in (and on) which it operated : in other words, they address the question of the nature, object and purpose of medieval logic.

Formal Approaches and Natural Language in Medieval Logic

Les énoncés déclaratifs - les propositions - possèdent-ils un signifié propre et, le cas échéant, de quelle nature est ce "signifié propositionnel"? Les quatre penseurs du XIVe siècle étudiés dans ce livre - Jean Duns Scot, Gauthier Burley, Richard Brinkley et Jean Wyclif - ont en commun non seulement de reconnaître l'existence de tels signifiés, mais encore de poser qu'il s'agit de complexes de choses indépendants du langage. Telle est la thèse centrale du "réalisme propositionnel" dont Gauthier Burley, défendant l'existence de "propositions réelles" (propositions in re) donne la formulation à la fois la plus forte et la plus problématique. On s'est dès lors efforcé de contextualiser cette thèse et d'en préciser le sens, aboutissant à un double résultat : premièrement, les signifiés propositionnels ne sont ni des entités abstraites (platoniciennes), ni des complexes réels " bruts ", mais des objets que l'on peut qualifier d'intentionnels, à savoir des contenus cognitifs objectivement fondés dans les choses ; deuxièmement, le réalisme propositionnel est une catégorie historiographique et philosophique de plein droit, dépendante mais bien distincte du réalisme des universaux.

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