There is a long history of philosophers granting a privileged epistemic status to cognition of directly present objects. In this paper, I examine three important historic accounts which provide different models of this cognitive state and its connection with its objects: that of the Stoics, who are corporealists and think that ordinary perception may have an epistemically privileged status, but who seem to struggle to accommodate non-perceptual cognizance; that of Augustine, who thinks that incorporeal objects are directly present to us (...) in ‘intellectual perception’, and that, by way of contrast, ordinary sense-perception does not have a privileged epistemic status; and that of William of Ockham, who allows for unmediated action at a distance and is fairly generous about what counts as being directly present. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Ockham defines intuition as the kind of cognition on the basis of which it is not only possible to evidently judge that a thing exists when it exists, but also that a thing does not exist when it does not exist. He makes a further distinction between natural intuition and supernatural intuition. The aim of this paper is to determine what, according to Ockham, can be judged evidently by means of natural intuition and what can only be judged evidently by (...) means of supernatural intuition. It is commonly assumed that by natural intuition we can make only affirmative judgements, whereas by supernatural intuition we can make both affirmative and negative judgements. The paper shows that this way of contrasting the two is mistaken. The paper argues instead that also natural intuition, according to Ockham, enables us to make both affirmative and negative judgements. (shrink)

This volume portrays the Polish or Lvov-Warsaw School, one of the most influential schools in analytic philosophy, which, as discussed in the thorough introduction, presented an alternative working picture of the unity of science.

ABSTRACTIn the recent secondary literature on Ockham’s philosophy of mind, it has been debated whether Ockham proposed an externalist or an internalist view of the intentional contents of intuitive...

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to challenge the reliabilist interpretation of William Ockham 's epistemology. The discussion proceeds as follows. First, I analyse the reliabilist interpretation into two theses: a negative thesis I call the Anti-Internalism Thesis, according to which, for Ockham, epistemic justification does not depend on any internal factors that are accessible by reflection; a positive thesis I call the Reliability Thesis, according to which epistemic justification in Ockham depends on the reliability of a causal process through (...) which a given judgment is produced. Secondly, I argue that the Anti-Internalism Thesis fails since Ockham's notion of evidentness, which is at the heart of his theory of justification, strongly suggests that he posits an indispensable, internalist element of justification. Lastly, I argue that the Reliability Thesis also fails since not only can there be a reliable but inevident judgment in Ockham's framework, his emphasis on causality is best read not as talk of reliability, but as his emphasis on the relation between reason and what is based on reason. (shrink)

There is debate over whether the content of an intuitive cognition is determined externally or internally in Ockham’s theory. According to the most common view, which I call the Strong Externalist Interpretation, intuitive content is wholly determined externally. Opposed to SE is the Strong Internalist Interpretation, according to which the content of an intuition is wholly determined by internal features of a cognizer. The aim of this paper is to argue against those interpretations, and to argue for a third kind (...) of interpretation which preserves interpretative advantages of SE and SI without falling into the difficulties that each faces. On this view, intuitive content is complex, and its complexity is analyzed into a mix of internalist and externalist elements. (shrink)

Ockham developed two theories to explain the intentionality of memory: one theory that takes previously perceived things to be the objects of memory, and another that takes one’s own earlier acts of perceiving to be the objects of memory. This paper examines both theories, paying particular attention to the reasons that motivated Ockham to give up the first theory in favor of the second. It argues that the second theory is to be understood as a theory of double intentionality. At (...) the core of this theory is the thesis that one directly remembers one’s own acts, and indirectly also the objects of these acts. The paper analyzes the cognitive mechanism that makes this double intentionality possible and examines the causal account that Ockham gave for explaining the emergence of acts of remembering. It emphasizes that he accepted nothing more than a causal chain of acts and habits, thereby offering an ontologically parsimonious theory of memory. (shrink)

In his Repastinatio . . . Lorenzo Valla launched a heavy attack on Aristotelian-scholastic thought. While most of this book is devoted to metaphysics, language and argumenta- tion, Valla also incorporates chapters on the soul and natural philosophy. Using as criteria good Latin, common sense and common observation, he rejected much of standard Aristotelian teaching on the soul, replacing the hylopmorphic account of the scholastics by an Augustinian one. In this article his arguments on the soul’s autonomy, nobility and independency (...) from the body are studied and analysed. His critique of Aristotle’s opinions on natural phenomena as being untrue to what we observe will also be briefly studied. His arguments do not show him always to be deep or consistent thinker, but the critical review of Aristotelian philosophy proceeds from some philo- sophically interesting assumptions. Moreover, from a broader historical perspective his undermining of Aristotle’s authority may be regarded as a contribution to the final demise of the Aristotelian paradigm, even though the humanist critique was just one factor in this process. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to reassess the debate between Boehner and Karger about Ockham’s views on the infallibility of intuitive cognition, and to present a new account of infallible intuitive cognition. After a detailed overview of Ockham’s theory of intuitive and abstractive cognition, the Boehner/Karger debate is examined. At the center of this debate are two conflicting interpretations of a certain passage in Ockham’s writings. It is shown that neither of these interpretations is ultimately successful. Next, a (...) third interpretation is introduced and shown to be superior to the previous two. This new interpretation leads to a refutation of one of Karger’s main arguments against Boehner’s theory of the infallibility of intuitive cognition. Finally, a distinction between weak and strong infallibility is introduced, and it is argued that intuitive cognition is always weakly infallible, and often also strongly infallible. (shrink)