This essay attempts to extend the exercise in normative pragmatics undertaken by Robert Brandom to include consideration of the logical relations between the practices of making of claims involving the use of the first-person-singular pronoun (‘I-talk’) and the making of claims involving the second-person-singular pronoun (‘You-talk’). The first part of the essay makes the case that the implicit response found in Brandom’s work affirms the pragmatic independence of I-talk from You-talk, such that it is possible to conceive of a discursive (...) practice involving people using the first person-singular pronoun but not the second-person. The second part argues this response is mistaken, as there are reasons internal to Brandom’s own project that require pragmatic interdependence of I-talk and You-talk. The upshot of this exercise is normative pragmatics is thus that there can be no ‘I’ without a ‘You’. (shrink)

This paper seeks to articulate the relationship between medieval logic and theology. Reviewing modern scholarship, we find that the purpose of medieval logic, when it is even inquired about, has proven difficult to articulate without reference to theology. This prompts reflection on the metaphors of logic as a “tool” and a “game”: a tool is not merely instrumental, insofar as it can have its own intrinsic goods and can shape and be shaped by that which it serves; likewise a game, (...) with its own intrinsic goods, may yet contribute to extrinsic goods as well. After reviewing some distinctive ways in which theology shaped developments of medieval logic, this paper summarizes key examples from the work of Thomas Aquinas where medieval logic shaped the articulation of, and is therefore crucial to a proper understanding of, theological arguments and claims. The conclusion suggests implications for future philosophical and theological work. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 372 - 390 This paper investigates a series of Oxford _Obligationes_ texts, all of which can be associated with Richard Billingham. My study is based on eleven of the surviving manuscripts and two early printed texts. I focus on one aspect of their discussion, namely the rule for granting the initial _positum_ of an obligational disputation of the type called _positio_, and the six restrictions that could be placed on that rule. I explain (...) these restrictions with reference to several sophismata that were meant to illustrate the problems that the restrictions were intended to solve, and in particular, I discuss the fifth restriction ‘not inconsistent with the _positum_’. I also shed light on the final restriction, which has not always been well understood, namely the restriction ‘wherever there is no _obligatio_ relevant to the _positum_’. (shrink)

Este artículo se propone reconstruir histórica y metodológicamente la disputatio scholastica y acercarse a la manera como era ejercitado este tipo de juego dialéctico en los colegios jesuitas de la América Hispánica. Examinando fuentes manuscritas e impresas, se enumeran y discuten las reglas que los participantes de los certámenes filosóficos de la escolástica barroca obedecían. La estructura lógica y dialéctica de la disputatio es examinada a la luz del método de discusión abstraído y sistematizado por Aristóteles en los Tópicos. Se (...) destaca el lugar privilegiado de la capacidad de distinguir sentidos como instrumento de la dialéctica en la disputatio scholastica. (shrink)