“Do Thoughts Have Parts? Peter Abelard: Yes! Alberic of Paris: No!”
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“Do Thoughts Have Parts? Peter Abelard: Yes! Alberic of Paris: No!”. / Schuman, Boaz.
In: British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2023.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - “Do Thoughts Have Parts? Peter Abelard: Yes! Alberic of Paris: No!”
AU - Schuman, Boaz
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Spoken sentences have parts. Therefore they take time to speak. For instance, when you say, “Socrates is running”, you begin by uttering the subject term ("Socrates"), before carrying on to the predicate. But are the corresponding predications in thought also composite? And are such thoughts extended across time, like their spoken counterparts? Peter Abelard gave an affirmative response to both questions. Alberic of Paris denied the first and, as a corollary, denied the second. Here, I first set out Abelard’s account. I then present a series of arguments against Abelard, reconstructed from (sometimes fragmentary) manuscripts associated with Alberic’s school. I conclude with an observation about present philosophy of language: this twelfth-century debate points to some undefended (and largely unstated) assumptions common to our latest thinking about propositions. I highlight this by presenting recent accounts of two philosophers with radically different outlooks: Jeffrey King and Peter Hanks. Both their accounts take many of
AB - Spoken sentences have parts. Therefore they take time to speak. For instance, when you say, “Socrates is running”, you begin by uttering the subject term ("Socrates"), before carrying on to the predicate. But are the corresponding predications in thought also composite? And are such thoughts extended across time, like their spoken counterparts? Peter Abelard gave an affirmative response to both questions. Alberic of Paris denied the first and, as a corollary, denied the second. Here, I first set out Abelard’s account. I then present a series of arguments against Abelard, reconstructed from (sometimes fragmentary) manuscripts associated with Alberic’s school. I conclude with an observation about present philosophy of language: this twelfth-century debate points to some undefended (and largely unstated) assumptions common to our latest thinking about propositions. I highlight this by presenting recent accounts of two philosophers with radically different outlooks: Jeffrey King and Peter Hanks. Both their accounts take many of
M3 - Journal article
JO - British Journal for the History of Philosophy
JF - British Journal for the History of Philosophy
SN - 0960-8788
ER -
ID: 375141557