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LOGICAL POSSIBILITY: AN ARISTOTELIAN ESSENTIALIST CRITIQUE CLAIMS SUCH AS THAT IT IS logically possible for a solid iron bar to float on water or a cat to give birth to pups are either false or highly ambiguous, and this is a result of more than a mere failure to distinguish between socalled " logical " and " empirical " possibility. Rather, it is a result of a complete and total confusion of the objects logic properly studies, viz., second intentions, with those that science and metaphysics study, viz., first intentions. Further, this confusion of first with second intentions results from a tendency prevalent in philosophy, since at least Descartes, to regard concepts as atoms of meaning which one " unpacks " 1 in order to discover a priori or conceptual truth rather than intentions whose proper and definitive being consists in being of or about something other than themselves and which thus reveals the character of things. Though others 2 have noted that there is indeed something 1 Norman J. Brown notes that according to "the classical view of analyticity ... a eoncept is thought of as analogous to a chemical compound, a complex capa.ble of resolution into (comparative) simples; indeed, the notion of simple ideas which we find in Locke, with their successors the simple unanalyzable qualities of Moore. the atomic facts of logical atomism and the protocol sentences of some positivists (merely the linguistic version of the old conceptual doctrine) have been cast very much in the chemical-analysis mould. Necessary statements, on this view, simply unpaek the implications-the contents-of a given concept. Above all, they cannot extend to ' matters of fact and existence.' " " A Kind of Necessary Truth," Philosophy 50 (January 1975): 49. 2 See Jose A. Bemadete, "Is There a Problem about Logical Possibility? " Mind 71 (1962): 342-352; Arthur W. Collins, "Philosophical Imagination," American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (January 1967): 49-56; Tibor R. Machan, "Another Look at 'Logical Possibility'," The Personalist 51 (1970): 246-249; and "A Note on Conceivability and Logical Possibility," Kinesis (Fall 1969): 39-42; Edward H. Madden, "Hume and the Fiery Furnace," Phuosophy of Science 38 (1971): 64-78; Wallace Matson, "Against Induction and Empiricism," Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 62 (1961-1962): 143-158 and Sentience (Berkeley: 518 514 DOUGLAS B. RASMUSSEN problematic 3 about such claims as it is logically possible that a solid iron bar floats on water, it seems that no-one has attempted to examine how such claims might be considered when viewed from the perspective of the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition in logic. Such an examination this essay will undertake. First, it will begin by describing the Aristotelian/Thomistic view of logic (or at least one interpretation of that view). Second, it will describe the contemporary view of logical possibility and the procedure of i~pectio mentis. Third, the use of inspectio mentis as a procedure for determining logical possibilities will be criticized. The basis for this criticism will be an Aristotelian/Thomistic view of concepts. Fourth, possible objections will be considered and replied to, and an equivocal use of the phrase 'it is logically possible that' will be noted. Overall, it will be argued that these difficulties can be overcome and ambiguities prevented if logic is approached in the manner suggested by this tradition. An Aristotelian/Thomistic View of Logic 4 Aquinas has described the character of thought and perception in the following manner: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 10-55; Leonard Peikofl', " The AnalyticSynthetic Dichotomy," The Objectivist (May-September 1967): reprint ed. (New York: The Objectivist, 1967), pp. 3-25; Douglas B. Rasmussen, "Logical Possibility , Iron Bars, and Necessary Truth," The New Scholasticism 51 (Winter 1977): 117-122; F. Rinaldi, "Logical Possibility," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 28 (1967): 81-99; and George Seddon, "Logical Possibility," Mind 81 (October 197!t): 481-494. a Bernadete considered many contemporary uses of ' logical possibility ' to involve a "make-believe or storytelling" sense of 'possible'. Op. cit., 343. Rinaldi contended that many uses of ' it is logically possible that ' should be replaced with ' in fairy stories, but only there, one might say that '. Op. cit., p. 97. George Seddon may have put the difficulty best of all when he noted that...

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