Sabtu, 26 Maret 2011

Mediaeval and Modern Logics I

Nevertheless, it is still a medieval world of thought we meet in Duns Scotus’ oeuvre, expressed with the help of scholastic tools, invented and elaborated on in Latin based semantics and logic. However, this world of thought does not depend essentially on these scholastic tools. We may pile up a list of famous names from modern logic and philosophy who have established theories Duns Scotus’ philosophy is definitely in need of: Cantor – Frege, Russell and Beth – Lewis, Kanger and Hintikka – Kripke and Plantinga – Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austin. We can also compose a list of crucial theories: the theory of sets and, in particular, the theory of infinite sets (Cantor), the theory of logical connectives and the logic of quantifiers (Frege, Beth), the logic of relation and identity (Russell, Whitehead). In general, modern standard logic is an excellent tool to translate, to extrapolate and to defend Scotian theories in combination with the ‘linguistic turn’ (Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin). Moreover, modal logic (Lewis, Kanger, Hintikka) and the ontology of possible worlds (Kripke, Plantinga) are crucial theories to discuss adequately Duns Scotus’ ontology and philosophical and theological doctrines of God.


-Antoine Vos, The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus, 8.

I really wish that Vos made clear somewhere in his book exactly which theories by these guys Scotus' philosophy is "definitely in need of." He doesn't, so far as I recall, and so I'm left very dubious. In fact I've long suspected that set theory and its use in the foundation of modern logic has had an almost completely pernicious effect on modern philosophy, emphatically including the so-called "linguistic turn" and possible world theorizing. The common element in all of these seems to me to be a systematic conflating of the logical with the ontological order, to the detriment of the latter. When contemporary philosophy lays down at its very beginning a set of premises making it difficult if not impossible to distinguish between ens realis and ens rationis, it guarantees a failed metaphysics.

My own opinion is that, if mediaeval philosophy can take useful supplements from modern thought, these are more likely to come through the phenomenological than through the linguistic-analytical traditions. (This is what St Edith Stein tried to do, though I haven't studied her very thoroughly yet and can't say how successful she was.) One has to acknowledge, though, that philosophers today attempting to "encounter" mediaeval philosophy through the lens of either tradition are much more likely to spoil and ruin it than to enhance it.
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