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Adam Wodeham on Evident Knowledge

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Adam Wodeham on Evident Knowledge “Nisi Deus Decipiat”: Adam Wodeham on Evident Knowledge by B. D. Adam Langridge A Thesis presented to The University of Guelph In partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Guelph, Ontario, Canada © B. D. Adam Langridge, March, 2015 Abstract “Nisi Deus Decipiat”: Adam Wodeham on Evident Knowledge B.D. Adam Langridge Advisor: The University of Guelph, 2015 Dr. Peter Eardley The following focuses on the Lectura Secunda, the only critically-edited Sentences commentary we have from the late-medieval Franciscan, Adam Wodeham (c. 1295-1358), and the only of Wodeham’s works with a secondary literature sufficient to support a dissertation. I argue in accord with Rega Wood that Wodeham’s epistemology as given in the Lectura Secunda avoids the threat of skepticism posed by natural threats to the reliability of knowledge. I build on her work by claiming that his position also successfully avoids the threat to knowledge posed by divine deception. Against the emerging consensus that Wodeham was a skeptic, I agree with Wood that Wodeham’s epistemology is reliabilist. Wodeham’s claim that sensory intuition is the source of all naturally acquired mental content opens him to the charge of skepticism on two fronts: natural deception, by which all would be doubtable owing to sense- deception; and divine deception, by which all would be doubtable owing to God’s ability to deceive by directly creating a false intuition. To the first, Wodeham claims that although sensation alone is naturally unreliable, deliberation can sort veridical from deceptive sensory intuitions, ensuring the reliability of sensation. Regarding divine deception, Wodeham Abstract accepts it as an irreducible possibility, for which he has been branded a skeptic. But, I claim, this reading overlooks the fact that Wodeham argues in favour of divine deception to make science, thought of as demonstrative knowledge, possible, and that he posits a hypothetical form of proposition regarding facts of the world capable of causing conviction in the mind that what it expresses is reliably but not infallibly the case. His hypothetical contingent propositions, “Unless God deceives, this whiteness exists and is present” (pointing to a swath of whiteness), cause invincible conviction, but make explicit a condition that reliabilists tacitly accept: we have beliefs that constitute knowledge despite the possibility that all such may be false. Wodeham’s position, I further claim, is indistinguishable from that of a clearly recognized reliabilist of a subsequent generation, John Buridan (c. 1300-1361). In a nutshell, Buridan and Wodeham both claim that although deception is always possible, doubt is never justified. Contents Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................... iv Introduction ...................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER I: APPREHENSION ............................................................................................17 § 1.1: Apprehension ............................................................................................................. 19 § 1.2: The Unity of the Soul ............................................................................................... 39 § 1.3: Intuition and Judgment .......................................................................................... 55 § 1.4: Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................ 61 CHAPTER II: NATURAL DECEPTION .............................................................................64 § 2.1: The Senses Deceive .................................................................................................. 65 § 2.2: Seeing Nothing .......................................................................................................... 74 § 2.3: The Veil of Impressions ......................................................................................... 104 § 2.4: Concluding Remarks .............................................................................................. 106 CHAPTER III: THE OBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE ......................................................109 § 3.1: Historiography of the Complexe Significabile .................................................. 110 § 3.2: D. 1, Q. 1 ................................................................................................................... 116 § 3.3: What, Exactly, is “Being So”? ............................................................................... 147 § 3.4: Concluding Remarks .............................................................................................. 154 CHAPTER IV: DIVINE DECEPTION ...............................................................................156 § 4.1: The Problem of Divine Deception ........................................................................ 158 § 4.2: The Skeptic Ockham Once Was ........................................................................... 176 § 4.3: Knowable Truth ...................................................................................................... 180 § 4.4: The Solution of Divine Deception ........................................................................ 195 § 4.5: Concluding Remarks .............................................................................................. 201 CHAPTER V: WODEHAM’S RELIABILISM ..................................................................204 § 5.1: The Hierarchy of Evident Complexes ................................................................. 206 § 5.2: The Infallibilist Reading ....................................................................................... 213 § 5.3: Wodeham’s and Buridan’s Reliabilism .............................................................. 228 § 5.4: Concluding Remarks .............................................................................................. 239 Concluding Remarks ..............................................................................................................245 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................249 Abbreviations SIGLA LIBRORUM ST = Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Theologiea. © Thomas Aquinas Foundation, 2011. Published online: Published online: www. corpusthomisticum.org/sth0000.html. A = Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Modern Library Paperback Ed. New York: Random House, 2001. SD = Buridan, John. Summulae de Dialectica. Trans. Gyula Klima. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. RP = Chatton, Walter. Reportatio et Lectura Super Sententias, Prologue. Ed. Joseph C. Wey and Girard J. Etzkorn. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1989. OTh = Ockham, William. Opera Philosphica (7 vols.). Eds. Philotheus Boehner, Gedeon Gál et al. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1974-1988. OPh = —. Opera Theologica (10 vols.). Eds. Gedeon Gál, Stephen Brown et al. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1967-1986. LS = Wodeham, Adam. Lectura Secunda (3 vols.). Ed. Rega Wood and Gedeon Gál. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1990. TI = —. Tractatus De Indivisibilibus: A Critical Edition with Introduction, Translation and Textual Notes. Trans. Rega Wood. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988. NB: Where possible, line numbers have been provided. It should be noted, however, that rather than maintain numbering throughout a question the editors of the Lectura Secunda, the main source cited in this dissertation, numbered according to section. This means that there are instances of two of the same line numbers on the same cited page. Accordingly, when needed section numbers are provided prior to line numbers for citations from the LS. iv Introduction1 The topic of this dissertation is the philosophy of mind and epistemology of Adam Wodeham (c. 1295-1358). Wodeham was considered by some to be an authority in philosophy and theology on par with the likes of Ockham from the mid-fourteenth century into the Renaissance,2 until a fall into obscurity and a reading of him in the modern period as little more than a “slavish” follower of the Venerable 1 For sections of text in Latin provided in the footnotes, and there are over fifty pages of such in this dissertation, I’ve ignored the usual convention of italicizing, to make the text readable. In the absence of firm citation rules for primary sources, I cite work, volume number, page number, and then, following a comma, line numbers. So, a citation from the Lectura Secunda would look like this: LS I 23, 23-24. For sequential citations from the same work for the same page, I use the usual “Ibid.” but always provide line numbers when possible. The line numbers always immediately follow a comma. So, for a citation from the same page of the Lectura Secunda cited above, with only line numbers differing, here is how it would look: Ibid. 23, 45-89. 2 Simo Knuuttila, “Review: The Critical Edition of Adam Wodeham's ‘Lectura Secunda’”, Synthese 96.1 (Jul., 1993): 155-159, 156. Little is known about Wodeham’s life apart from what we are told in a very short “De Vita Ade” provided by John Major in his early-modern publication of Henry Totting of Oyta’s abbreviatio of Wodeham’s Oxford Lectures, published as
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