John Buridan and Jerónimo Pardo on the Notion of Propositio

Abstract

The first section offers a reconstruction of Buridan’s theory of propositions, along the following lines: on the syntactic plane, propositions obtain a special type of unity from the presence of a copula; on the semantic plane, the fact that a proposition does not have any specific significate (different from the significate of terms), does not erase the distinction between propositions and terms: the copula performs an act of “saying”, in virtue of which propositions can be true or false. The second section summarises Pardo’s theory of propositions, showing how in this case a Buridanian starting point led to a result very different from that which Buridan reached.