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Durand of St.-Pourc¸Ain on Cognitive Acts: Their Cause, Ontological Status, and Intentional Character

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Durand of St.-Pourc¸Ain on Cognitive Acts: Their Cause, Ontological Status, and Intentional Character Durand of St.-Pourc¸ain on Cognitive Acts: Their Cause, Ontological Status, and Intentional Character by Peter John Hartman A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto Copyright c 2012 by Peter John Hartman Abstract Durand of St.-Pour¸cainon Cognitive Acts: Their Cause, Ontological Status, and Intentional Character Peter John Hartman Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto 2012 The present dissertation concerns cognitive psychology|theories about the nature and mechanism of perception and thought|during the High Middle Ages (1250{1350). Many of the issues at the heart of philosophy of mind today|intentionality, mental represen- tation, the active/passive nature of perception|were also the subject of intense investi- gation during this period. I provide an analysis of these debates with a special focus on Durand of St.-Pour¸cain,a contemporary of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Durand was widely recognized as a leading philosopher until the advent of the early modern period, yet his views have been largely neglected in the last century. The aim of my dissertation, then, is to provide a new understanding of Durand's cognitive psychol- ogy and to establish a better picture of developments in cognitive psychology during the period. Most philosophers in the High Middle Ages held, in one form or another, the thesis that most forms of cognition (thought, perception) involve the reception of the form of the object into the mind. Such forms in the mind explain what a given episode of cognition is about, its content. According to what has been called the conformality theory of content, the content of our mental states is fixed by this form in the mind. Durand rejects this thesis, and one of the primary theses that I pursue is that Durand replaces the conformality theory of content with a causal theory of content, according to ii which the content of our mental states is fixed by its cause. When I think about Felix and not Graycat, this is to be explained not by the fact that I have in my mind the form of Felix and not Graycat, but rather by the fact that Felix and not Graycat caused my thought. This is both a controversial interpretation and, indeed, a controversial theory. It is a controversial interpretation because Durand seems to reject the thesis that objects are the causes of our mental states. In the first half of the present dissertation, I argue that Durand does not reject this thesis but he rejects another nearby thesis: that objects as causes give to us `forms'. On Durand's view, an object causes a mental state even though it does not give to us a new `form'. In the second half of the dissertation I defend Durand's causal theory of content against salient objections to it. iii Dedication Wooster, family, and friends. iv Acknowledgements The people: Peter King, Martin Pickav´e,Deborah Black (for keeping me on task, teach- ing me a thing or two about this stuff, and the guidance; mistakes are my own), two anonymous referees from the Journal for the History of Philosophy, Adam Wood, Su- san Brower-Toland, Simona Vucu (for comments in one form or another on Chapter 4), Claude Panaccio (for comments on an ancient ancestor of Chapter 5), Cathal O'Madagain (for comments on an ancient ancestor of Chapter 1, and comments on the spoken form of pretty much the whole thing), Antoine C^ot´e(for helpful comments as external exam- iner), the members of the Collaborative Programme in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Gyula Klima and the Philosophy Department at Ford- ham University (for allowing me to be a research student there), Donald Knuth, Leslie Lamport et al. (for TEX and LATEX), and Richard D. Stallman, Linus Torvalds et al. (for GNU and Linux). And, of course, the buildings: Herzog August (Wolfenb¨uttel), Robarts (Toronto), Bobst (NYU), PIMS (Toronto), Kelly (Toronto), Butler (Columbia), and Walsh (Fordham). v Contents I Causation and Cognition 14 1 Affectionism and its discontents 15 1.1 Varieties of affectionism . 18 1.1.1 The first opinion: the species theory . 19 1.1.2 The second opinion: Godfrey of Fontaines' theory . 25 1.1.3 Summary of the two opinions . 28 1.1.4 Self-affectionism, in brief . 28 1.2 Against object affectionism . 29 1.2.1 Agency and Language . 30 1.2.2 Nobility and the Animate-Inanimate Gap . 36 1.3 Conclusion . 46 2 Affectionism and self-affectionism 49 2.1 Godfrey's defense of affectionism . 49 2.2 Godfrey's `achilles' argument . 55 2.2.1 The necessity principle . 56 2.2.2 The sufficiency principle . 60 2.2.3 The mystery objection . 62 2.2.4 The ad hoc objection . 63 2.3 Duns Scotus's defense of self-affectionism . 66 2.3.1 Duns Scotus vs. Godfrey . 71 2.3.2 Duns Scotus vs. Henry of Ghent . 73 2.3.3 Duns Scotus vs. Duns Scotus . 76 The mystery objection, Duns Scotus's reply . 76 The ad hoc objection, Duns Scotus's reply . 79 vi 2.3.4 Concluding remarks on Duns Scotus . 80 3 Durand's theory about the ontological status and causation of our cog- nitive acts 83 3.1 Durand's theory of sine qua non causality . 85 3.1.1 The ontological claim . 87 Arguments from the disputatio ................... 89 Arguments from Sent. II-A 3.5 . 93 Analysis . 95 3.1.2 The generans claim . 97 Accidental and essential potentiality . 101 3.1.3 The sine qua non claim . 105 (A) Two kinds of first/second acts . 108 (B) Relational first/second acts . 110 (C) Thought and sensory perception as relative second acts . 112 3.1.4 Replies to Godfrey's `achilles' argument . 117 The mystery objection, Durand's reply . 117 The ad hoc objection, Durand's reply . 118 3.1.5 The sources of Durand's view . 119 3.2 Is Durand's theory adequate? . 123 3.2.1 The `innatism' objection . 124 The charge that Durand's position entails innatism . 128 James of Viterbo: a real innativist . 132 Durand is not an innativist and he is not an anti-conceptualist . 134 II Content and Cognition 138 4 Durand of St-Pour¸cainand Thomas Aquinas on mental representations139 vii 4.1 Against species ................................ 142 4.1.1 An objection . 143 4.2 Defensio Durandi . 146 4.2.1 The burden of proof . 150 4.2.2 The species-theory of optics: a neutral description . 154 4.3 Some responses . 162 4.3.1 The bad answer . 162 4.3.2 The plausible (but wrong) answer . 164 4.3.3 Chalk and cheese: antinaturalism about representational species . 168 Does Aquinas think the species is even a representation? . 173 4.4 Conclusion . 175 5 Durand of St-Pour¸cainand aboutness 178 5.1 Those that came before. 178 5.1.1 Durand's rejection of internalist theories of aboutness . 182 5.2 The causal or covaration theory of intentionality . 191 5.2.1 The problem with covariation . 192 5.3 And so: the general problem of intentionality . 193 5.4 Special kinds of possessors . 196 5.5 Intentional possession . 197 5.6 General complaint about both intentional possession and intentional pos- sessors . 198 5.7 The primitive-intentionality theory . 199 5.7.1 Is intentionality a primitive relational property? . 204 5.7.2 The problem with primitivism . 207 5.8 Functionalism . 208 5.8.1 Conclusion . 227 viii 6 Bio-bibliography 229 6.1 Biographical sketch . 229 6.2 Critical Editions, Manuscripts and Early Modern Printings . 230 6.2.1 Sentences - Status Quaestionis . 230 6.2.2 Sentences Critical Editions . 232 6.2.3 Sentences Manuscripts . 232 6.2.4 Quodlibeta - Status Quaestionis . 234 6.2.5 Quodlibeta Critical Editions . 234 6.2.6 Miscellanea . 235 6.3 Primary Sources Bibliography . 236 6.4 Abbreviations . 250 Bibliography 252 ix 1 Introduction Most philosophers in the High Middle Ages (1250{1350) subscribed to, in one form or another, what has come to be known as the conformality theory of content, according to which the contents of our mental states are fixed primarily owing to the fact that such mental states either are or at least involve `forms' in the mind.1 This theory can be cashed out in a variety of different ways, but the basic idea is that my thought is about cats rather than dogs because it either is or at least involves the `form' of cats rather than dogs. Durand of St.-Pour¸cain(y1334) rejects this thesis without reserve, and one of the primary aims of this dissertation is to show both why he came to be dissatisfied with the conformality theory and what he replaces it with. Called the Doctor Modernus and the Doctor Resolutissimus, Durand was viewed as an important thinker by subsequent generations of philosophers, and as a controversial figure during his own day.2 William Courtenay claims that Durand was \one of the most frequently cited Dominicans of the century" (Schools and Scholars, 182), and Leen Spruit notes that Durand held \a surprisingly high position in the philosophical firmament of those days" (Species Intelligibilis I, 281).3 A Durandian chair was eventually established 1. See, e.g., Peter King, \Rethinking Representation in the Middle Ages: A Vade-Mecum to Mediaeval Theories of Mental Representation," in Representation and Objects of Thought in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Henrik Lagerlund (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 81{100 and Robert Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: CUP, 1997).
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