Susan Brower-Toland

ABSTRACT. Ockham’s so-called nominalism consists of two distinct, but closely related, projects: namely, (i) securing a reductionist ontology, and (ii) developing a nominalist semantics. Ockham’s commentators have long supposed that Ockham’s ontological reductionism is achieved through the development and deployment of his nominalist semantics. In this chapter, I challenge this traditional, ‘semantics-first’, understanding of Ockham’s nominalism. In particular, I argue that a careful reading of Ockham’s elaborate treatment of terms in SL I shows that his semantics presupposes rather than establishes his reductionist ontology. Thus, far from being a semantics-first project in ontology, Ockham’s treatment of key semantic principles and distinctions in SL I reads much more like an ontology-first project in semantics. Having thus dispatched the semantics-first reading of Ockham’s nominalism, I concluded by sketching an alternative account of the principles that guide Ockham’s metaphysical methodology.

Ockham is well-known—indeed notorious—for his commitment to parsimony. Given the amount of attention his metaphysics has garnered it is perhaps surprising that there is, as yet, no consensus regarding either the methodological principles driving his reductionist program or its basic success. Ockham himself claims to admit (at least in the natural order) only two kinds of entity: individuals in the category of Substance and individuals in the category of Quality. Yet some commentators insist that, pace Ockham’s claims to the contrary, he is, in fact, committed to entities in other categories. In this paper, I attempt to clarify Ockham’s commitments. I begin, first, by sketching a novel interpretation of Ockham’s metaphysical methodology. I argue that his reductionist program is not, as commentators have long supposed, driven by semantic considerations. Rather, it is guided by a concern for metaphysical explanation. Second, I argue that, while Ockham’s ontological commitments do not go beyond the postulation of individual substances and qualities, nevertheless, it turns out that adequate metaphysical explanation does, on his view, require a further, non-ontic commitment—namely, to their spatial or local arrangements. While this is, I insist, a genuine metaphysical commitment, it is not an ontological commitment and, hence, does not conflict with Ockham’s reductionist ontology.

In this paper, I explore the connection between Olivi’s views about the nature of conscious experience, on the one hand, and his views about the nature of the soul on the other. In particular, I argue that Olivi’s account of the soul as essentially active and essentially reflexive entails a commitment on his part to a kind of innate self-knowing. I further show that, for Olivi, this primal psychological self-reflexivity plays an important role in explaining the subjective character of conscious states.

It is well-known that Chatton is among the earliest and most vehement critics of Ockham’s theory of judgment, but scholars have overlooked the role Chatton’s criticisms play in shaping Ockham’s final account. In this paper, I demonstrate that Ockham’s most mature treatment of judgment not only contains revisions that resolve the problems Chatton identifies in his earlier theories, but also that these revisions ultimately bring his final account of the objects of judgment surprisingly close to Chatton’s own. Even so, I argue that, at the end of the day, there remain significant differences between their respective analyses of the structure and intentionality of judicative states.

This paper explores William Ockham's account of memory with a view to understanding its implications for his account of the nature and persistence of human beings. I show that Ockham holds a view according to which memory (i) is a type of self-knowledge and (ii) entails the existence of an enduring psychological subject. This is significant when taken in conjunction with his account of the afterlife. For, Ockham holds that during the interim state—namely, after bodily death, but prior to bodily resurrection—we retain and recall our embodied experiences. This entails that the subject of our embodied psychological states can survive in a disembodied state and continue to engage in characteristic rational activities—a claim that appears to run against Ockham's own commitment to a hylomorphic conception of human beings (as essentially material). A central aim of this paper is to explore the prospects for reconciling Ockham's account of interim memory with his account of human beings.

William of Ockham (d. 1347) is well known for his commitment to parsimony and for his so-called ‘razor’ principle. But little is known about attempts among his own contemporaries to deflect his use of the razor. In this paper, I explore one such attempt. In particular, I consider a clever challenge that Ockham’s younger contemporary, Walter Chatton (d. 1343) deploys against the razor. The challenge involves a kind of dilemma for Ockham. Depending on how Ockham responds to this dilemma, his razor will, Chatton argues, either prove unacceptably dull when it comes to determining ontological commitment or prove unacceptably sharp when it comes to determining commitments entailed by certain theological doctrines. While Chatton’s objection is subtle and interesting in its own right, the broader significance of the debate between these thinkers lies in the light it sheds on medieval approaches to issues surrounding metaphysical methodology.

This special issue of Res Philosophica brings together articles exploring the theme of “Theological Dogma and Philosophical Innovation in Medieval Philosophy”. Philosophy during the medieval period is deeply influenced and significantly shaped by the religious and theological commitments that define not only the outlook of its individual practitioners, but also the institutional and cultural context within which medieval philosophy develops. Philosophical theorizing during this period is often and explicitly in service of theological ends. And even when philosophers are not explicitly concerned with matters theological, philosophical speculation is nevertheless inevitably constrained by theological boundaries. After all, an adequate, systematic account of any aspect of reality must accommodate relevant theological data. It would be easy, in light of this, to suppose that the theological commitments and constraints that characterize philosophy during this period had a largely stultifying effect on its development. But such an assumption, would significantly miss the mark. In point of fact, mapping the theological contours of the medieval philosophical landscape required a great deal of ingenuity and originality from philosophers engaged in the project. Indeed, as a number of the papers in this issue nicely illustrate, it is the attempt to philosophically articulate (or accommodate) the theological data that prompts some of the most interesting and important philosophical innovations to emerge during the period. What is more, the discussions included in this volume likewise shed light not only on ways in which theology stimulates philosophical innovation, but even ways in which it motivates distinctive modes of philosophical theorizing.

In this paper, I explore Augustine’s account of sense cognition in book 11 of De Trinitate. His discussion in this context focuses on two types of sensory state—what he calls “outer vision” and “inner vision,” respectively. His analysis of both types of state is designed to show that cognitive acts involving external and internal sense faculties are susceptible of a kind of trinitarian analysis. A common way to read De Trin. 11, is to interpret Augustine’s account of “outer” vision as an analysis of sense perception and his account “inner” vision as an analysis of occurrent sensory memory and imagination. I argue against such a reading of De Trin. 11, however. Insofar as we take perception to be a phenomenally conscious mode of sensory awareness, outer vision cannot, I claim, be the equivalent of ordinary sense perception. For, on Augustine’s view, the deliverances of outer vision only reach the threshold of consciousness, when outer vision occurs in conjunction with inner vision. Hence, on my analysis, sense perception turns out to be a complex, hybrid state—one that involves both outer and inner vision. If I am right, acts of sense perception turn out not to be directly susceptible to trinitarian analysis. Even so, the account is interesting and nuanced for all that.

Propositions are items that play certain theoretical roles: (among other things) they serve as objects of belief, fundamental bearers of truth-value, and the semantic contents of sentences. In this paper, I examine the key role Ockham played in the development of later medieval debates about propositions. Unlike contemporary philosophers, who typically assume that propositions are abstract entities of some sort, Ockham holds a nominalist view of propositions according to which token entities—namely, token mental representations—play the proposition role. While Ockham's view generates a great deal of controversy and discussion I argue that it isn't his nominalism about propositions per se that proves objectionable. Indeed, insofar as few medieval philosophers countenance abstract objects, the view that token mental representations function as fundamental bearers of truth and as the semantic content of sentences is fairly standard. What does prove controversial, I claim, is Ockham's contention that token mental states—what he refers to as ‘mental sentences’—serve as objects for propositional attitudes. My discussion in the paper explores both (i) the reasons why Ockham’s attempt to treat mental representations as objects for belief and knowledge proved controversial and (ii) what alternative positions emerged in the subsequent debate about propositional attitudes.

Buridan holds that the proper subject of psychology (i.e., the science undertaken in Aristotle’s De Anima) is the soul, its powers, and characteristic functions. But, on his view, the science of psychology should not be understood as including the body nor even the soul-body composite as its proper subject. Rather its subject is just “the soul in itself and its powers and functions insofar as they stand on the side of the soul". Buridan takes it as obvious that, even thus narrowly construed, such a science is possible. To the extent that this science includes the human or intellective soul, however, Buridan’s claim regarding its possibility is far from obvious. After all, like most of his contemporaries, Buridan takes the human soul to be immaterial. Thus, he readily admits that “the intellect cannot be sensed” and its operations are likewise inaccessible to the senses. Yet, on Buridan's broadly empiricist theory of knowledge, all (human) knowledge, including knowledge of the intellect or intellective soul, takes its start in the senses. How, then, is a science of the human soul possible? What is the nature or source of our knowledge of the intellect? In this paper, I reconstruct Buridan's answer to these questions. My discussion divides roughly into two parts. In the first, I set out the main elements of Buridan’s account of how we come to cognize the intellect, focusing on what he says about the genesis of our concept of the intellect. I then consider his account of our cognition of our own intellective states. As the discussion in part one make clear, Buridan holds that our concepts of intellect and of intellective states are both derived (inferentially) from subjective “experience” of our own states and rational activities. In part two, therefore, I try to elucidate Buridan’s notion of experience. Ultimately, I argue that it is a non-conceptual, non-discursive mode of self-awareness. I suggest, moreover, that it might best be understood in terms of our own notion of phenomenal consciousness. On the interpretation I advance, then, it turns out that, for Buridan, our concept of the intellect itself and, hence, the science of (human) psychology in general, is ultimately grounded in phenomenal experience of our own intellective states.

On the dominant interpretation, Ockham is an externalist about mental content. This reading is founded principally on his theory of intuitive cognition. Intuitive cognition plays a foundational role in Ockham’s account of concept formation and judgment, and Ockham insists that the content of intuitive states is determined by the causal relations such states bear to their objects. The aim of this paper is to challenge the externalist interpretation by situating Ockham’s account of intuitive cognition vis-à-vis his broader account of efficient causation. While there can be no doubt that intuitive states are causally individuated, I argue that, given Ockham’s broader theory of efficient causation (on which causation turns out to be an internal relation), this very fact entails that the content of such states is determined by factors internal (rather than external) to the states themselves.

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.

Ockham holds what nowadays would be characterized as a “higher-order perception” theory of consciousness. Among the most common objections to such a theory is the charge that it gives rise to an infinite regress in higher-order states. In this paper, I examine Ockham’s various responses to the regress problem, focusing in particular on his attempts to restrict the scope of consciousness so as to avoid it. In his earlier writings, Ockham holds that we are conscious only of those states to which we explicitly attend. This view, I go on to argue, is inadequate on both phenomenological and philosophical grounds. Interestingly, and perhaps for this very reason, in later works, Ockham goes on to develop an alternative explanation for his account of the limited scope of consciousness.

This essay explores some of the central aspects of Aquinas's account of mental representation, focusing in particular on his views about the intentionality of concepts (or intelligible species). It begins by demonstrating the need for a new interpretation of his account, showing in particular that the standard interpretations all face insurmountable textual difficulties. It then develops the needed alternative and explains how it avoids the sorts of problems plaguing the standard interpretations. Finally, it draws out the implications of this interpretation with the aim of correcting some persistent misunderstandings of the connection between Aquinas's views and those developed by contemporary philosophers of mind.

In this paper I challenge recent externalist interpretations of Ockham’s theory of intuitive cognition. I begin by distinguishing two distinct theses that defenders of the externalist interpretation typically attribute to Ockham: a ‘direct reference thesis’, according to which intuitive cognitions are states that lack all internal, descriptive content; and a ‘causal thesis’, according to which intuitive states are wholly determined by causal connections they bear to singular objects. I then argue that neither can be plausibly credited to Ockham. In particular, I claim that the causal thesis doesn’t square with Ockham’s account of supernaturally produced intuition and that the direct reference thesis sits uneasily with Ockham’s characterization of the intentional structure of intuitive states.

The theory of mind that medieval philosophers inherit from Augustine is predicated on the thesis that the human mind is essentially self-reflexive. This paper examines Peter John Olivi's (1248-1298) distinctive development of this traditional Augustinian thesis. The aim of the paper is three-fold. The first is to establish that Olivi's theory of reflexive awareness amounts to a theory of phenomenal consciousness. The second is to show that, despite appearances, Olivi rejects a higher-order analysis of consciousness in favor of a same-order theory. The third and final is to show that, on his view, consciousness is both self-intimating and infallible.

This paper traces a rather peculiar debate between William Ockham, Walter Chatton, and Robert Holcot over whether it is possible for God to know more than he knows. Although the debate specifically addresses a theological question about divine knowledge, the central issue at stake in it is a purely philosophical question about the nature and ontological status of propositions. The theories of propositions that emerge from the discussion appear deeply puzzling, however. My aim in this paper is to show that there is a way of making sense of these views (and, by implication, of much of what is puzzling about medieval theories of propositions). The key, I argue, lies in getting clear about the precise theoretical roles these thinkers assign to propositions in their accounts of propositional attitudes.

Walter Chatton (ca. 1290–1343) is not exactly a household name—even among historians of medieval philosophy. Indeed, to the extent that he is known to scholars, it is more for his role as a critic of William of Ockham (d. 1347) than for any particular philosophical contribution of his own. Part of the reason for this owes to Chatton's own philosophical style: he uses his objections to Ockham's (and, to a lesser extent, to Peter Aureol's) views as a foil for developing his own. Another, larger part of the explanation, however, is that the bulk of Chatton's philosophical writings have not been accessible for research and study. Thanks to the efforts of the late Joseph Wey and Girard Etzkorn, this is no longer the..

Commentators have long agreed that Wodeham’s account of objects of judgment is highly innovative, but they have continued to disagree about its proper interpretation. Some read him as introducing items that are merely supervenient on (and nothing in addition to) Aristotelian substances and accidents; others take him to be introducing a new type of entity in addition to substances and accidents—namely, abstract states of affairs. In this paper, I argue that both interpretations are mistaken: the entities Wodeham introduces are really distinct from substances and accidents, but, like substances and accidents, they are concrete (rather than abstract). Moreover, the key to understanding the significance of his theory, I contend, lies in a proper understanding of the theoretical role these entities play in his theory of judgment.

In this paper I examine William Ockham’s theory of judgment and, in particular, his account of the nature and ontological status of its objects. Commentators, both past and present, habitually interpret Ockham as defending a kind of anti-realism about objects of judgment. My aim in this paper is two-fold. The first is to show that the traditional interpretation rests on a failure to appreciate the ways in which Ockham’s theory of judgment changes over the course of his career. The second, and larger, aim is to show that careful attention to these changes in Ockham’s account (and to the motivations for them) sheds new light on broader developments in his philosophy of mind—specifically, on his views about the nature of concepts and on his account of the nature and structure of intentionality itself.

In Quodlibet XV q.13, Henry of Ghent considers whether the Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived. He argues that she was not, but rather possessed sin only at the first instant of her existence. Because Henry’s defense of this position involves an elaborate discussion of motion and mutation, his discussion marks an important contribution to medieval discussions of Aristotelian natural philosophy. In fact, a number of scholars have identified Henry’s discussion as the source of an unusual fourteenth-century theory of change referred to as “quasi-Aristotelianism” (so-called because the account purports to be Aristotelian but is not). My aim in the paper is two-fold: first, to show that Henry's position is not quasi-Aristotelian in the sense that scholars have supposed; second, to show that, even so, his discussion in q. 13 does involve a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s account of instantaneous change.

My aim in this paper is to advance our understanding of medieval approaches to consciousness by focusing on a particular but, as it seems to me, representative medieval debate. The debate in question is between William Ockham and Walter Chatton over the existence of what these two thinkers refer to as “reflexive intellective intuitive cognition”. Although framed in the technical terminology of late-medieval cognitive psychology, the basic question at issue between them is this: Does the mind (or “intellect”) cognize its own states via higher-order (or “reflexive”) representational states? Their debate is representative both because it highlights the central dialectical issues and alternatives at play in medieval discussions of consciousness generally and because it showcases the two main types of approach to consciousness one finds in the later medieval period, namely, those that explain consciousness in terms of intentionality (typically, higher-order intentionality), and those that understand consciousness as a non-intentional, sui-generis mode of awareness.