St. Anselm and the Logical Syntax of Agency

ST. ANSELM AND THE LOGICAL SYNTAX OF AGENCY In a fascinating fragment, Lambeth Manuscript 50,1 St. Anselm of Canterbury has bequeathed to us the foundations of a logical syntax of agency utilizing the strikingly modern-seeming device of treating agency as a statement operator. This approach, whereby the syntax of agency becomes similar to that of the negation operator in classical sentence logic, is currently a subject of considerable interest because of recent developments in action theory,2 modal logic3 and generative semantics.4 One might reasonably expect that there might be little coherent historical precedent for the syntactical problems thereby generated. It is therefore something of a surprise, a welcome and interesting one, to find this approach explicitly suggested by St. Anselm, and to discover that he had studied in detail paradigm cases that are of a definite interest in their own right in the analysis of the syntax of agency locutions. The Anselmian approach , as I shall call it, proposes that attributions of agency, such as 'x kills y' can be analyzed out into an expression referring to an agent, a state of affairs, and an operation of "bringing about" such as 'x brings it about that y is dead'. In this paper I will undertake 1 The contents of this manuscript were first described and printed in F. S. Schmitt, Ein neues unvollendetes Werk des Ll. Anselm von Canterbury, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 3 (1936). The manuscript is reprinted in F. S. Schmitt and R. W. Southern, Memorials of St. Anselm (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 333-354. A very helpful commentary and partial translation is to be found in Desmond Paul Henry, The Logic of St. Anselm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), § 4. A more detailed analysis, also very helpful, is D. P. Henry, "Saint Anselm on the Varities of 'Doing,' " Theoria, 19 (1953), 178-183. 8 A good general source of material here is Myles Brand (ed.), The Nature of Human Action (Glenview, Illinois: Scott Foresman, 1970). 8 See G. H. von Wright, An Essay in Deontic Logic and the General Theory of Action (Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1968). 4 See John Kimball (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 1 (New York and London: Seminar Press, 1972). St. Anselm and the Logical Syntax of Agency299 the triple objective of outlining and commenting on the essentials of some recent developments of this type in the logic of agency, exegetically presenting some of the most interesting and germane arguments of St. Anselm from Lambeth 5g, and third, showing how these two perspectives interesect, to their mutual enrichment of understanding. A deeper awareness of the power, elegance and relevance of St. Anselm's thoughts on agency will, I hope, eventually enable us to gain a better appreciation of the beauty and force of his theological solutions to the problems of omnipotence, evil, and the free will defense. In the sequel, however, I will largely confine discussion to the minutiae of the logic of agency, except for a few cursory general remarks in conclusion. i. The Anselmian Approach St. Anselm begins with various syntactical remarks indicating that 'to do' can take as a value a wide range broadly verbal state of affairs. ...nemo reprehendit, si interroganti 'quid facit?', respondetur quia 'est in ecclesia,' aut 'vivit sicut bonus vir,' aut 'potest super totam civitatem in qua habitat,' aut 'magnam debet pecuniam,' aut 'nominatur super omnes vicinos suos,' aut 'vocatur ante omnes alios ubicumque sit.'5 We could translate Anselm's thesis that all verbs are instances of doing into a more modern idiom by equating it with the suggestion that 'doing' can be thought of as an operator relativized to individuals over states of affairs.6 Accordingly, 'Socrates drops the cup' is rendered as asserting that Socrates brings about a state of affairs whereby the cup falls.7 We have an individual, a (Socrates), who 5 Memorials, pp. 342 f. 6 I will not try to define 'state of affairs,' but refer the reader to G. H. von Wright, "The Logic of Action — A Sketch," TAe Logic of Decision and Action (Pittsburgh; University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966), pp. 121 f. 7 Donald Davidson, in...