Speech Act and Intentional Meaning in the Medieval Philosophy of Language

Abstract

The developments of medieval logic and semantics were realized by the Arts Masters in the medieval schools of the twelfth century and in the medieval universities from the thirteenth century onwards. Logic produced an analysis of the truth conditions of the proposition, in which special attention was given to the theory of the properties of the terms composing the proposition. However, while they were concentrating on truth, logicians considered semantic questions unrelated to this notion. Some of these cases have in common that their analysis requires one to take into account not only their semantic properties but also the context of their use, their proferring and reception. Interestingly, these analyses were found not only in grammar and logic but also outside the "arts of language," in theology and law. The examples given in this article contribute to answering the question: What was medieval logic? The answer will be that it was not only about truth conditions. But the examples that I give serve even more to show what medieval logic was not. It was not much about language use, nor about the moral and social dimensions of use, and not much about the interplay between speaker and hearer that is relevant for meaning.

Fictive Baptism

“…Normally, a baptized Christian who commits sins voluntarily has 220. Ibid., d. 4 recourse to the sacrament of penance. Without bothering to restate the point that the fictus receives no remission of sins at the font, Ockham notes that he retains his pre-baptismal sins until he repents, adding to them his post-baptismal sins.…”