Roger Swyneshed's obligationes: A logical game of inference recognition? (Q857672)

This paper compares the rules given by Roger Swyneshed for the logical game of \textit{obligationes} with those given some thirty years earlier by Walter Burley. It is argued that for Swyneshed, the Respondent's task is not consistency maintenance but rather the correct identification of propositions as (ir)relevant to the \textit{positum}; and that therefore his game serves an essentially different (and more limited) purpose than that of Burley. Swyneshed's game is determined and static; Burley's is neither. It is further argued that the relation between the two shows that \textit{P. V. Spade}'s theory [``Three theories of obligationes: Burley, Kilvington and Swyneshed on counterfactual reasoning'', Hist. Philos. Log. 3, 1--32 (1982)] that \textit{obligationes} should be regarded as a logic of counterfactuals is mistaken.