States of affairs

Laurent Cesalli (1)

1 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

The philosophical problem of the correspondence between what we think, what we say and 'what there is' is a perennial one. At the beginning of the Sophistical Refutations (1, 165a7-9), for example, Aristotle gives a synthetic formulation of it: since 'it is impossible in a discussion to bring in the actual things discussed: we use their names as symbols instead of them; and we suppose that what follows in the names, follows in the things as well' (Aristotle 1984 , I, 278). But whereas this diffi culty pertains to language (or thought) in general , it becomes remarkably acute when the linguistic expressions at stake are not simple names, but bearers of truth and falsity , namely, statements or, to use the medieval word for it, propositions. Th is chapter addresses the following question: did medieval authors consider that just as names signify things, propositions, too, are semantically related to special objects-- and if so, what kind of things did they think those special objects are? I shall begin with two short introductory remarks about the notion of state of aff airs (SOA) as well as the identifi cation criteria for the theories describing them before the technical category of SOA was coined (Sections 1 and 2); I shall then give a survey of the fi ve main types of medieval answers given to the question of the nature of SOAs (Section 3); fi nally, I shall briefl y compare the medieval conceptions with (some) later, that is late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, as well as contemporary theories of SOAs (Section 4).

Mots clés: Medieval philosophy; states of affairs; ontology; semantics; contemporary philosophy; Austrian Philosophy

Domaines: Philosophie

Laurent Cesalli. States of affairs. John Marenbon. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy, Oxford University Press, pp.421-444, 2012. ⟨halshs-00750106⟩