Abstract

Since the classic writings of Frege, Russell, and Moore, philosophers have devoted considerable attention to questions concerning the nature and ontological status of propositions . Interest in propositions does not originate, however, with the 20th century. On the contrary, it begins in antiquity and runs through the Middle Ages, flourishing in the 14th century in particular, owing largely to the work of William Ockham on mental language and judgment. In his early writings, Ockham claims that what functions as the objects of judgment are mental sentences. This attempt to treat mental entities as objects of propositional attitudes kindles widespread controversy in the 14th century, thus beginning a debate that continues well into the Renaissance. ;This dissertation examines Ockham's views about propositions and the responses they provoked among some of his leading contemporaries and successors at Oxford: Robert Holcot , Adam Wodeham , and Walter Chatton . Regarding Ockham, it attempts to correct a longstanding misinterpretation of his views about objects of propositional attitudes. Commentators have failed to appreciate the way in which his views evolve, and in particular to see that they are closely connected to developments in his thinking about intentionality, being motivated largely by questions about how to account for the content of mental states. Regarding Ockham's contemporaries and successors, the dissertation argues that because they, too, overlook both the changes in and motivation for his views, their accounts of objects develop in very different ways from his, despite being developed as a direct responses to them. Thus, when Wodeham addresses the nature of objects of propositional attitudes, he is interested in accounting not for the content of judgments, as with Ockham, but for their truthmakers---where he takes the entities playing this role to be facts or states of affair. ;By challenging received accounts of the 14th century debate and Ockham's place in it, this dissertation shows the need to rethink the nature of late medieval discussions of propositions as a whole.