JOÃO BURIDAN E A RETOMADA DA SUPOSIÇÃO NATURAL

This article aims to address a common notion in 13th century logical treatises, which virtually disappears in 14th century theories: the natural supposition. First, we show how this notion appears in the 13th century, especially in the work of Peter of Spain. We will then deal with the interpretation of this notion in the nominalist work of medieval philosopher John Buridan (14th century). The role of natural supposition in this framework is to cover the cases in which the terms of a proposition stands for all their past, present, and future meanings. This characteristic makes possible for a proposition to be true, even if the things to which its terms refer do not exist in the world at the time of enunciation. We will try to show that maintaining this notion in his theory required: (i) a reorganization of the supposition theory, and (ii) the insertion of natural supposition into a propositional framework.