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Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages

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Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages Theories of cognition in the later Middle Ages ROBERT PASNAU St. Joseph's University q;.::.~ CAMBRIDGE - ::: UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, United Kingdom 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Samford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Robert Pasnau 1997 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1997 Typeset in Palatino Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pasnau, Robert. Theories of cognition in the later Middle Ages / Robert Pasnau. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-58368-3 1. Knowledge, Theory of - History. 2. Cognition - History. 3. Philosophy, Medieval. 4. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274. 5. Olivi, Pierre Jean, 1248 or 9-1298. 6. William, of Ockham, ca. 1285-ca. 1349. 1. Title. B161.P37 1997 128'.2'0902 - dC20 96-36249 C1P A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library Transferred to digital printing 2003 Contents Preface page vii List of abbreviations x Introduction 1 1 The philosophical-historical context 4 2 Thomas Aquinas and the theory of species 11 3 Challenges to the theory 18 PART r: FUNDAMENTALS 1 Immateriality and intentionality 31 1 Cognition as intentional information 31 2 A materialist theory of sensation? 42 3 The intentionality criterion 47 4 Ockham on the intentionality criterion 60 2 Intentionality made mysterious 1 Physical, not intentional (Roger Bacon and William Crathom) 2 Intentional, not physical (Olivi) 3 Existing, but not really (Peter Aureol) 4 From fictions to actions (Ockham) 3 Form and representation 1 The natural likeness account (William Crathom) 2 Representation without resemblance (William of Auvergne) 101 3 Form and likeness in Aquinas 105 4 Causal connections 113 5 The act itself as likeness 121 v Contents 4 Passivity and attention 125 1 Cognition as a kind of being affected 126 2 Attending to the object (Olivi) 130 3 Judging and attending (Aquinas) 134 4 A mixed account (Scotus) and pure passivity (Ockham) 146 PART II: REPRESENTATIONS AND REALISM 5 Are species superfluous? 161 1 Direct realism via action at a distance (Ockham) 162 2 Direct realism via spiritual attention (Olivi) 168 3 Explaining illusions 181 4 Species and parsimony 189 6 Aquinas and direct realism 195 1 The official position 197 2 The act-object doctrine 200 3 Two versions of representationalism 209 4 Through the species and to the world 213 7 The veil of species 220 1 Hercules and his image (Henry of Ghent) 221 2 Would God deceive us? (William Crathorn) 229 3 The species as a veil (Olivi) 236 4 Hercules returns (Ockham) 247 8 Word and concept 254 1 Word and concept in Aquinas 256 2 Concepts as acts (Olivi) 271 3 Abandoning ficta (Ockham) 277 Conclusion: A new form of knowing 290 Appendix A: The identity of knower and known (Aquinas) 295 Appendix B: Henry of Ghent and intelligible species 306 References 311 Index 321 vi Preface T HIS is not a survey of later medieval theories of cognition but a study of some of the central aspects of the debate during that time. My pri­ mary focus is on two authors from the thirteenth century, Thomas Aqui­ nas and Peter John Olivi, and one from the fourteenth century, William Ockham. Readers hoping to learn about other philosophers from this period will occasionally be rewarded, but more often disappointed. The choice of these three figures was not arbitrary. I believe that Thomas Aquinas presents the most impressive and coherent statement of the dominant Aristotelian theory of cognition, and I believe that Peter John Olivi and William Ockham offer the most interesting and innovative challenge to that theory. In the chapters that follow, I argue that these two Franciscan philosophers developed a fundamentally new account of the workings of our cognitive systems. Their insight, in brief, was to see that a theory of cognition might be formulated without the sorts of representations that, on the standard view, served as inter­ mediaries between us and the world. My pursuit of this theme has forced me to take a selective approach. Authors who were originally envisaged as playing integral parts in the study, in particular Henry of Ghent and William Crathorn, have been consigned to the supporting role that better suits their more-limited contributions. Other important figures from the period, in particular John Duns Scotus, did not exten­ sively contribute to this particular debate. This study focuses, then, on what has struck me as the most important development in cognitive theory during the later Middle Ages. Such judgments must certainly be tentative, given the poverty of our current understanding of medieval philosophy, and they are, naturally, to some extent subjective. I hope and expect that, as we learn more about medieval philosophy, others will uncover aspects of the medieval debate over cognition that are equally significant and interesting. This is not a survey, in part because there are all too many surveys of vii Preface medieval philosophy and not nearly enough close studies of particular topics. I believe that within later medieval philosophy there is scarcely a single topic - no matter how well known - tha t is not crying out in need of careful study and criticism. For example, there is probably no part of Aquinas's work that is better known and more widely discussed than his claim that sensible and intelligible species are the quo of cognition: not the objects of cognition, but that by which we come to know the world. Nevertheless, in Chapter 6 I argue that the standard (indeed, unquestioned) reading of this claim is badly mistaken. Such misread­ ings are spread throughout the study of medieval philosophy, in every comer. One needs only to pick a topic. My own choice of topic came while studying at Cornell University. This work is a substantially revised and expanded version of my 1994 Ph.D. dissertation. (Together with Pasnau 1995a it entirely supersedes that work, aside from the translations included as an appendix to the dissertation, most of which I plan to publish eleswhere.) This book could not have been written without substantial help from a great many people. First and foremost, I am indebted to my advisor at Cornell, Norman Kretzmann. It would be wrong to say (as former students are sometimes tempted to say at such points in their careers) that I learned from Kretzmann everything I know about medieval philosophy. In fact, that would in a sense understate his influence, which manifests itself not in any particular substantive views that I hold (we disagree on numerous points of interpretation) but in the way I have learned to think about and write about philosophy. It is for this training that I am most grateful to him. Many others have contributed to this work, either through their encouragement or through reading and criticizing some or all of the chapters. In particular, I want to thank Carl Ginet, Scott MacDonald, John Marenbon, Sydney Shoemaker, John Carriero, Jeff Hause, Paul Hoffman, Hannes Jarka-Sellers, Joe Moore, Dominic Perler, Dave Robb, Carol Roberts, Eleonore Stump, Martino Traxler, and an anonymous reader for Cambridge University Press. While at Cornell, I was fortu­ nate to be a part of the Medieval Studies Program. A completion-year fellowship from the Mellon Foundation, through Medieval Studies, al­ lowed me not just to complete the dissertation, but to tum the disserta­ tion into a book. I have also read various chapters at philosophy depart­ ments throughout the country, as a job candidate, and I often received helpful feedback on those occasions. I want to give particular thanks to VIll Preface my colleagues at Saint Joseph's University for their support and encouragement. I would not be studying medieval philosophy, and perhaps not phi­ losophy at all, if not for Jim Ross's influence on me at the University of Pennsylvania. For this influence, I remain deeply grateful, but I am also left somewhat puzzled: what would I be doing now if Ross hadn't spent long hours with me, a mere undergraduate, discussing such obscure topics as Cajetan on Aquinas on Aristotle (compared to Armstrong) on universals? Finally, I want to thank my parents, who didn't laugh when I told them I wanted to be a philosopher, and my wife, who I'm sure will always laugh when she thinks of me as a philosopher. IX Ab breviations PETER JOHN OLIVI II Sent. Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum (1922-26, Jan­ sen [ed.], in three volumes) Quod. Quodlibeta quinque (Citations are to the 1509 Venice edition) TDV Tractatus de verbo (edited in Pasnau [forthcoming], from the Lectura super Iohannem) THOMAS AQUINAS (For convenience, citations to DW, InDA, InDMR, InDSS, and InPH give, in brackets, the section numbers of the Marietti editions [for DUI, the Keeler edition]. Also, I have retained the conventional chapter num­ bering for InDA, rather than adopting the new numbering of the Leonine edition.) CT Compendium theologiae (Leonine V.42) DW Tractatus de unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (Leonine V·43) ImCor. Super secundum Epistolam ad Corinthios lectura (Marietti, 1953b) InDA Sentencia libri De anima (Leonine V.45,l) InDMR Sentencia libri De memoria et reminiscentia (Leonine V.45,2) InDSS Sentencia libri De sensu et sensa to (Leonine V-45,2) InDT Super librum Boethii De trinitate (Leonine V.50) InJoh. Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura (Marietti, 1952) InMet.
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