The aim of this monograph is to expound the conceptions of temporalized modality at issue in various Arabic logical texts. I claim to have been able to make good logical sense of doctrines of which even the later Arab logicians themselves came to despair. In the process, a substantially new area of the history of logic has come into a clear view. I am indebted to Anne Cross (Mrs. Michael) Pelon and especially Mr. Bas van Fraassen for assistance in the research. Miss Dorothy Henle merits my thanks for preparing the difficult typescript for the printer and helping to see the book through the press. Also, I am grateful to the Editors of Foun dations of Language for inviting inclusion of the monograph in the Supple mentary Series of the journal. The present work is part of a series of studies of Arabic contributions to logic supported by research grants from the National Science Foundation. It affords me much pleasure to record my sincere thanks for this assistance.

Autorentext
Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the Americna Metaphysical Society, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, and the C. S. Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received six honorary degrees from universities on three continents. Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Sources.- 3. Background.- 4. Fundamental Ideas.- 5. Basic Modal Relations.- 6. Enumeration of Modal Propositions - I: Simple Modalities.- 7. Enumeration of Modal Propositions - II: Compound Modalities.- 8. Rules for Contradictories.- 9. Conversion (i.e., Simple Conversion).- 10. C-Conversion (Conversion by Contradiction).- 11. Modal Syllogisms.- 12. Avicenna as the Source of al-Qazw?n? al-K?tib?'s Logic of Modality.- 13. Temporal Modalities Among the Ancient Greeks and the Latin Medievals.- 14. Conclusion.- Appendix B/A Fragment of Galen's Lost Treatise On Possibility.- Index of Names.