CORCORAN-SWINIARSKI RECOMMENDS PRIEST-READ ON OCKHAM

CORCORAN-SWINIARSKI RECOMMENDS OCKHAM AND PRIEST-READ CHAT: https://www.academia.edu/s/f45d9035d3?source=link TEXT:https://www.academia.edu/27755707/CORCORAN-SWINIARSKI_RECOMMENDS_OCKHAM_AND_PRIEST-READ  1979Review of Priest, G. and S. Read. "Formalization of Ockham on Supposition" Mind (1977) in Mathematical Reviews 57#27184. (Co-author:  J. Swiniarski).William of Ockham (c. 1285--1349?) carried out a semantic study involving thorny questions about relations of a given proposition containing a “common term" to various propositions containing “singular terms subsumed by the common term". His study, known as Ockham's theory of supposition, has attracted considerable attention by logicians in recent years. After referring readers to two expositions of Ockham's theory, the authors present a “formalization" based on an infinitary language treated by J. L. Bell and A. B. Slomson [Models and ultraproducts, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1972].The paper’s revealing observations, though mathematically elementary, could hardly have been made by historians and philosophers not versed in mathematical logic. This paper is an example of how mathematics can contribute to historical and philosophical enterprises.Although symbolic logic has been used in previous studies in Ockham's theory of supposition, the present symbolic formalization is the most technically sophisticated and the most insightful. The use of an infinitary language contributes to the clarity of the presentation, and attribution of an infinitary language to Ockham seems justifiable historically. Some of the metalinguistic devices and mathematical observations introduced in this article will likely become standard in future discussions of supposition.