Our old friend 'Ocham' writes:<\/font><\/p>\n I read <\/font>your discussion of 'alienans'<\/a> with interest. It is another of those interesting words (like 'inexistence') that look as though it comes from scholastic philosophy, but apparently doesn't. I use my Latin site searcher<\/a> <\/font><\/font>in cases of doubt – this analyses texts of specific writers and periods. None of the great scholastic writers, not even so late a one as Suarez, use the term in this sense – indeed they hardly use it at all. They did use the term 'deminuens' in a very similar context. From the Scotus I am currently busy with:<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n Et sic potest concedi quod Caesar non est homo vivus, sed mortuus; et quod mortuum illo modo non deminuit ab homine, nec infert non-hominem.<\/em> (And so it can be conceded that Caesar is not a living man, but dead; and that being \u2018dead\u2019 in this way does not take away from \u2018man\u2019, nor imply [that Caesar is] a non-man). <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n The context is the question whether 'Caesar is a man' is true or false. Scotus thinks it is true. Simon of Faversham says it is false. Roger Bacon, rather like Gareth Evans and the modern direct referentialists, think it has no truth value at all. (" \u2018Caesar is Caesar\u2019 signifies nothing… nor is it a proposition nor does it signify either what is true or false, because the whole \u2018statement\u2019 does not signify because of one or two parts that do not signify"). Note the appeal to the Fregean idea of compositionality here – the meaning of the whole is determined by the meaning of its parts. If one or more parts are meaningless, so is the whole.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n Bacon's view was rightly derided by his contemporaries in Oxford and Paris.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I learned about alienans<\/em> adjectives from Barry Miller who I believe borrowed the terminology from Peter Geach. From which writers Geach got the term I don't know. An interesting question is whether 'dead' in 'Caesar is a dead man' is an alienans<\/em> adjective as I have explained this term in the post linked to above. Clearly, artificial leather is not leather. So 'artificial' in this context is alienans<\/em>. And if so-and-so is the alleged assailant, it does not follow that he is the assailant. So 'alleged' in this context is alienans<\/em>. Is a dead man a man? Although it is not so clear, I am inclined to say that a dead man is a man in agreement with Scotus.<\/font><\/p>\n I am also inclined to agree with Scotus that 'Caesar is a man' is true. Although Caesar no longer exists, he did exist, and so it is reasonable to take 'Caesar' as having a referent. (Once referential, always referential.) It is not like 'Pegasus.' There was an individual, Caesar, but there is no individual, Pegasus. 'Pegasus' has sense but no referent. Furthermore, Caesar's having died did not remove him from the class of men. A dead man is a man. (I grant that this is not obvious.) Simon of Faversham, I take it, thinks the sentence false because he thinks a dead man is not a man. Ths is not obviously wrong. <\/font><\/p>\n As for Bacon's view, it sounds crazy, a piece of wildly revisionary philosophy of language. Of course, 'Caesar is a man' has a truth-value! And this, even if we say that 'Caesar' lacks a referent. For whether or not it has a referent it has a sense. What exactly did those Medieval dudes mean by 'signify'? Were they riding roughshod over Frege's Sinn\/Bedeutung<\/em> distinction — to put it anachronistically?<\/font><\/p>\n So I agree with 'Ocham' that Bacon's view was rightly derided.<\/font><\/p>\n <\/font> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our old friend 'Ocham' writes: I read your discussion of 'alienans' with interest. It is another of those interesting words (like 'inexistence') that look as though it comes from scholastic philosophy, but apparently doesn't. I use my Latin site searcher in cases of doubt – this analyses texts of specific writers and periods. None of … Continue reading “Still More on Alienans<\/i> Constructions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,408],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives","category-language-philosophy-of"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n