Robert Cummins [(1996) Representations, targets and attitudes, Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT, p. 1] has characterized the vexed problem of mental representation as "the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now." This remark is something of an understatement. The same topic was central to the famous controversy between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld in the 17th century and remained central to the entire philosophical tradition of "ideas" in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Kant. However, the scholarly, (...) exegetical literature has almost no overlap with that of contemporary cognitive science. I show that the recurrence of certain deep perplexities about the mind is a systematic and pervasive pattern arising not only throughout history, but also in a number of independent domains today such as debates over visual imagery, symbolic systems and others. Such historical and contemporary convergences suggest that the fundamental issues cannot arise essentially from the theoretical guise they take in any particular case. (shrink)

"Richard Burthogge's Conceptualism and Its Origins in the Medieval Perspectivist Optics" The paper aims to analyse the historical determinants of the conceptualist argument for epistemological idealism made by the seventeenth-century English philosopher Richard Burthogge. The crux of this argument, unprecedented in earlier philosophy, is an attempt to prove the inherent inadequacy of human cognition from the divergence between the general concepts and the extra-mental singulars. At the same time, Burthogge considers the relationship between the universal and the particular to be (...) analogous to the relation between the visual image and the thing. I argue that, as suggested by certain significant aspects of Burthogge’s theory, it was medieval perspectivist optics that had decisively influenced the conception of visual cognition, which provided the basis for this analogy and, consequently, for the conceptualist argument itself. (shrink)

From a cultural perspective, the universe is believed to be an active network of forces kept alive by the constant activities of beings. This network shows that beings do not exist in isolation, as one being needs another for its continuous existence. Flora life needs fauna life and fauna life needs flora life. In this same manner, humans need other humans to be truly humans. Therefore, a person is a person through persons. The source of man’s humanity is in his (...) interaction with others and Mbiti is of the view that the African recognises the sources of his or her own humanity, and so realises, with internal assurance, that in the absence of others, no grounds exist for a claim regarding his own standing as a person. Our knowledge and coexistence with the ‘other’ do not only influence our actions, they warrant the institution of moral codes. This is because, without the other, judgments about the rightness or wrongness of human actions would be unnecessary. This essay will consider the role of morality in determining an individual’s cultural identity. (shrink)

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)

It is widely thought that Augustine thinks perception is, in some distinctive sense, an active process and that he takes conscious awareness to be constitutive of perception. I argue that conscious awareness is not straightforwardly constitutive of perception and that Augustine is best understood as an indirect realist. I then clarify Augustine’s views concerning the nature and role of diachronically unified conscious awareness and mental representation in perception, the nature of the soul’s intentio, and the precise sense in which perception (...) is an active process. (shrink)

This book collects six unpublished and published academic studies on the thought of Francisco Suárez, which is addressed through accurate textual analyses and meticulous contextualization of his doctrines in the Scholastic debate. The present essays aim to portray two complementary aspects coexisting in the work of the Uncommon Doctor: his innovative approach and his adherence to the tradition. To this scope, they focus on some pivotal, but often neglected, topics in Suárez’s metaphysics and psychology – such as his theories of (...) cognition and truth, angelology, continuous quantity – thereby developing an original inquiry into a crucial moment in the development of Western philosophy. (shrink)

In De Anima Book III, Aristotle subscribed to a theory of formal identity between the human mind and the extra-mental objects of our understanding. This has been one of the most controversial featu...

I argue that a study of the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Parva Naturalia shows that Aristotle had a notion of attention. This notion captures the common aspects of apparently different phenomena like perceiving something vividly, being distracted by a loud sound or by a musical piece, focusing on a geometrical problem. For Aristotle, these phenomena involve a specific selectivity that is the outcome of the competition between different cognitive stimuli. This selectivity is attention. I argue that Aristotle studied the (...) common aspects of the physiological processes at the basis of attention and its connection with pleasure. His notion can explain perceptual attention and intellectual attention as voluntary or involuntary phenomena. In addition, it sheds light on how attention and enjoyment can enhance our cognitive activities. (shrink)

As we now know, most, if not all, philosophers in the High Middle Ages agreed that what we immediately perceive are external objects and that the immediate object of perception must not be some image present to the mind. Yet most — but not all — philosophers in the High Middle Ages also held, following Aristotle, that perception is a process wherein the percipient takes on the likeness of the external object. This likeness — called a species — is a (...) representation (of some sort) by means of which we immediately perceive external objects. But how can perception be at once direct — or immediate — and at the same time by way of representations? The usual answer here was that the species represents the external object to some percipient even though the species itself is not at all perceived: the species is that by which I perceive and not that which I perceive. John Buridan defends this traditional view — call it direct realism with representations. However, just a couple of decades before Buridan, one of the more important philosophers at Paris, Durand of St.-Pourçain, had already rejected direct realism with representation. Durand defends what I will call direct realism without representations. On his view, a species is not at all necessary during overtly direct forms of perception, neither as cause nor as representation. This paper has two parts. In the first part, I will discuss some of the more interesting arguments that Durand makes against direct realism with representations. In the second part, I will look at Buridan's defense of the view. -/- . (shrink)

Keskityn siihen miten Leibnizilla yksittäiset mielihyvän tai mielipahan tiedostamattomat havainnot voivat kasautua tai tiivistyä ja muodostaa vähitellen tunteita, joista tulemme tietoisiksi.

We begin with a puzzle about how to intelligibly combine the active and passive elements of perception. For counsel, we turn to Augustine’s account of perception in De Trinitate. Augustine’s trinitarian account of perception offers an attractive resolution of our puzzle. Augustine’s resolution of our puzzle, however, cannot be straightforwardly adopted. It must be adapted. We end with speculation about how this might be done.

Augustine is often credited for upholding a theory of active perception, whereby our acquaintance with ordinary material objects and their properties cannot be explained by the causal efficaciousness of these objects. In a previous work, I attempted to connect this theory with the account of perception found in his treatise On the Trinity. Mark Kalderon has challenged this ‘reconciliationist’ reading, claiming that in this work Augustine admits to a strong causal role of the object in bringing about perceptual experiences. In (...) this paper I stand by my original reading, with one important qualification: the object is a cause in determining the content of the act of perception, but not of the perceptual act or the activity of the soul in general. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to provide a new account of Descartes’s positive philosophical view on sensory perception, and to do so in a way that will establish a hitherto unnoticed continuity between his thought and that of his scholastic Aristotelian predecessors on the topic of sensory perception. I will argue that the basic framework of the scholastic Aristotelian view on sensory perception (as traditionally understood) is operative within Descartes's own view, and then reveal some insights on the (...) issue of whether Descartes was a representationalist about sensory perception by critically examining one kind of representationalist reading of Descartes under the lens of my account. I will conclude by examining the implications that my view has for the proposed distinction between Descartes and the scholastics based on attributing representationalism to the former and direct-realism to the latter. (shrink)

Centre and Periphery in the Historiography of Philosophy: Peter Olivi and Medieval Psychology The paper inquiries into the (historiographical) question what does it mean to be a “marginal thinker” in the context of the medieval philosophy. The question is investigated on the example of Franciscan philosopher and theologian Peter Olivi (1248/49–1298) and his philosophical psychology. First, a preliminary option is introduced: for a thinker, being “marginal” depends on his relation to who is considered to be canonical. Since the most famous (...) thinker of the Middle Ages is Thomas Aquinas (at least according to the traditional canon of medieval philosophy), Olivi’s positions in psychology are compared with these of Aquinas. It is revealed that Olivi’s psychology is very different from the Aquinas’ one. (E.g. Olivi stresses the activity of perception, proprioceptual nature of the sense of touch, and direct access of the intellect to its own acts.) Moreover, Olivi is very critical towards the Aristotelian philosophy as is done by some thinkers of his time. Nevertheless, it does not follow that Olivi is a marginal thinker only because of his dissimilarity from the more Aristotelian-minded ones. It is argued that “centre” and “periphery” in the history of medieval philosophy depends not on the canon (which is rather a historians’ construct and instrument), but rather on the tradition. Hence, although Olivi can be considered as a marginal thinker if we take into the account the Aristotelian tradition of medieval philosophy, he is definitely a central and important thinker, if considered as a member of the Augustinian tradition. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

El presente estudio ofrece, desde una perspectiva teórica, una breve visión de conjunto de la concepción tomista sobre las emociones, su encaje en el ciclo de la vida consciente, su génesis, su clasificación, su encadenamiento y su dinamismo. Desarrolla consideraciones sobre las contribuciones que este referencial teórico puede aportar al estudio de las emociones y deduce algunos de sus principales corolarios éticos.

This paper argues that Malebranche’s semantics sheds light on his metaphysics and epistemology, and is of interest in its own right. By recasting issues linguistically, it shows that Malebranche assumes a Neoplatonic semantic structure within Descartes’ dualism and Augustine’s theory of illumination, and employs linguistic devices from the Neoplatonic tradition. Viewed semantically, mental states of illumination stand to God and his ideas as predicates stand in Neoplatonic semantics to ideas ordered by a privative relation on “being.” The framework sheds light (...) on interpretive puzzles in Malebranche studies such as the way ideas reside in God’s mind, the notion of resemblance by which bodies imitate their exemplar causes, and the issue of direct vs. indirect perception through a mechanism by which agents can see bodies by “seeing” ideas. Malebranche’s semantics is of interest in its own right because it gives a full account of the mediating relations that determine indirect reference; lays out a correspondence theory of truth for necessary judgments; defines contingent truth as based on an indirect reference relation that is both descriptive and causal but that does not appeal to body-mind causation; and within his theory of perception, works out an account of singular reference in which singular terms carry existential import, refer indirectly via causal relations, but describe their referents only in a general way. (shrink)

This paper argues that three characteristic modern positions concerning intentionality – namely, (1) that intentionality is ‘the mark of the mental’; (2) that intentionality concerns a specific type of objects having intentional inexistence; and (3) that intentionality somehow defies logic – are just three ‘modern myths’ that medieval philosophers, from whom the modern notion supposedly originated, would definitely reject.

This paper examines the pressures leading two very different Early Modern philosophers, Descartes and Locke, to invoke two ways in which thought is directed at objects. According to both philosophers, I argue, the same idea can simultaneously count as “of” two different objects—in two different senses of the phrase ‘idea of’. One kind of intentional directedness is invoked in answering the question What is it to think that thus-and-so? The other kind is invoked in answering the question What accounts for (...) the success of our proper methods of inquiry? For Descartes as well as Locke, the two kinds of “ofness” come apart as a result of strong rationalist commitments. However, I will suggest that even if we reject such commitments, we go wrong if we assume that a single kind of intentional directedness suffices to address both questions. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

“The problem of universals” in general is a historically variable bundle of several closely related, yet in different conceptual frameworks rather differently articulated metaphysical, logical, and epistemological questions, ultimately all connected to the issue of how universal cognition of singular things is possible. How do we know, for example, that the Pythagorean theorem holds universally, for all possible right triangles? Indeed, how can we have any awareness of a potential infinity of all possible right triangles, given that we could only (...) see a finite number of actual ones? How can we universally indicate all possible right triangles with the phrase ‘right triangle’? Is there something common to them all signified by this phrase? If so, what is it, and how is it related to the particular right triangles? The medieval problem of universals is a logical, and historical, continuation of the ancient problem generated by Plato's (428-348 B.C.) theory answering such a bundle of questions, namely, his theory of Ideas or Forms. (shrink)

El término “conocimiento” y la disciplina filosófica que lo estudia —la teoría del conocimiento— han experimentado notables cambios hasta el presente. La teoría clásica concibe el conocimiento en íntima unión con la verdad, como una captación intelectual de realidades necesarias e inmutables. Con la llegada de la modernidad, la difusión de un clima escéptico puso en duda esta pretensión, cuestionando la aptitud misma del conocimiento para la verdad. Esta duda ha presidido toda la modernidad hasta el presente. Para responder al (...) desafío escéptico, las principales corrientes de la llamada epistemología analítica contemporánea han intentado, sin éxito, explorar el carácter justificante del conocimiento. En este intento, han destacado teorías encaminadas a mostrar que el conocimiento recibe su justificación desde un fundamento, como el fundacionismo y el coherentismo; teorías encaminadas a mostrar que el conocimiento recibe su justificación desde sus fuentes, como el externismo y el internismo; y teorías encaminadas a mostrar que la recibe por las facultades cognitivas mismas como instrumentos de conocimiento fiables, como la epistemología de la virtud. Todas ellas generan, a su vez, nuevas paradojas e imponen la necesidad de volver a los fundamentos de esta disciplina, presentes en la teoría clásica, para descubrir la conexión entre conocimiento y verdad, e intentar detener el desafío escéptico. (shrink)

Pedro de João Olivi sustenta que a atenção intencional tem de ser posta como a condição para o desempenho ativo do ato cognitivo perceptual. A intencionalidade é um componente natural da apreensão sensorial. Em Olivi, ela requer que a alma tenha uma natureza ativa, pois o desempenho intencional é precípuo à alma e é independente de elementos representacionais intermediários, como as species. Olivi não reduz o ato cognitivo ao modo de ação ativo ou passivo, mas adiciona a causa terminativa como (...) uma função do objeto na produção do ato. A terminação, então, é crucial para mostrar como a atenção cognitiva é classificada como intencional. Por fim, este artigo sustenta que a atenção intencional como a condição pré-experiencial garante o acesso imediato aos objetos do mundo exterior. (shrink)

The paper explores the existential import of universal affirmative in Descartes, Arnauld and Malebranche. Descartes holds, inconsistently, that eternal truths are true even if the subject term is empty but that a proposition with a false idea as subject is false. Malebranche extends Descartes? truth-conditions for eternal truths, which lack existential import, to all knowledge, allowing only for non-propositional knowledge of contingent existence. Malebranche's rather implausible Neoplatonic semantics is detailed as consisting of three key semantic relations: illumination by which God's (...) ideas cause mental terms, creation by which God's ideas cause material substances by a kind of ?ontic privation?, and sensation in which brain events occasion states of mental awareness. In contrast, Arnauld distinguishes two types of propositions ? necessary and contingent ? with distinct truth-conditions, one with and one without existential import. Arnauld's more modern semantics is laid out as a theory of reference that substitutes earlier causal accounts with one that adapts the medieval notion of objective being. His version anticipates modern notions of intentional content and appeals in its ontology only to substances and their modes. (shrink)

Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). “Repression” was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for consciousness. Freud (...) adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of “unbearable” mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms (“repression in the widest sense”). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, except for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other “memory illusions” are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions. Key Words: avoidance; Bartlett; defense; denial; distortion; Ebbinghaus; false-memories; Freud; inhibition; repression; suppression. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to accept either some version of dualism or physicalism when considering the mind–body problem. Likewise, recent philosophers of religion typically assume that we must work within these two categories when considering problems related to the possibility of bodily resurrection. Recently, some philosophers have reintroduced the Thomistic version of hylomorphism. In this article, we will consider the distinctive doctrines of Thomistic hylomorphism and how they can be used to address concerns about both the mind–body problem and (...) the possibility of resurrection. We will see that hylomorphism allows for a novel version of emergent property dualism that is both metaphysically plausible and allows us to recognize the irreducibility of mental states and the possibility of resurrection without ignoring the fact of human embodiment. We will also discuss the currently lively debate among Thomistic hylomorphists who advocate opposed corruptionist and survivalist versions of the afterlife. (shrink)

Scotus’ mark on Suárez’s metaphysics can be perceived not only in his elaboration of intellectual knowledge of the singular, but also in the idea that prime matter is not pure potency, but possesses its own act, as well as in the thesis that states that the accident possesses too its own being. Of these two ideas, in addition to the tendency towards hypostatisation both regarding matter and accident, comes the breakdown of the unity of material substance both in the substantial (...) and accidental planes, something that Suárez, in a way very similar to Scotus, tries to remedy by appealing to the modes of union. Lastly, a fundamental consequence of the hypostatisation of the accident is phenomenism, as seen in the works of authors such as Locke and Kant. (shrink)

Reply to NormoreCalvin Normore offers a very interesting big-picture thesis about the later medieval period, one with multiple components. First, he thinks the first quarters of the thirteenth century—the era of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas—are “gobsmacked” by the recovery of Aristotle’s work, and hence are “anomalous.” Second he thinks that, once the gobsmacking is over, the philosophers—beginning with Peter John Olivi and onward into the fourteenth century—return to “building upon the insights of the twelfth century”—that is, back to (...) the era of Peter Abelard and others. Third, he thinks that this broader movement—what one gets if one sets aside the anomaly of Thomas Aquinas and his era—is characterized by a broader interest in the whole spectrum of ancient philosophical traditions, so that it is not just Aristotelian, but also Platonic and Stoic and Epicurean and much else. Fourth, this broadening movement sees its culmination in the seventeenth century, when the authority of. (shrink)

The paper argues in favour of a direct realist reading of Aquinas’s theory of intelligible species, in opposition to the recent representationalist challenges. In order to secure the direct realist reading, the paper follows three steps: a short description of Aquinas’s process of cognition, a survey of the direct realist arguments and the analysis of the representationalist interpretation. The final step consists of investigating the representationalist reading as it is suggested by two scholars, Claude Panaccio in Aquinas on Intellectual Representation (...) and Robert Pasnau in Theories of Cognition in the Latter Middle Ages. Thus, the paper can be construed as a reply to these two authors, due to the thorough attention paid to their argumentative trails. With regard to Panaccio’s reading the paper focuses on the identity between the intelligible species and the essence of the extra-mental object and argues that Panaccio understands identity in a very narrow sense. Concerning Pasnau’s line of reasoning the focus is on the primum cognitum status of the intelligible species, and the main argument is that intelligible species is understood by Aquinas as the quo and not the quod of cognition. As the paper shows, neither one, nor the other interpretation poses a threat to the direct realist reading of Aquinas’s intelligible species. (shrink)

RESUMO Ainda que Tomás de Aquino não usasse o termo intencionalidade frequentemente, ele tem uma teoria que explica como nós, enquanto sujeitos, nos referimos intencionalmente aos objetos. Nossa referência funciona quando há uma "identidade formal" entre a forma no ato de percepção ou conhecimento do sujeito e a forma do objeto. Na literatura secundária, "identidade formal" é muitas vezes o nome usado para chamar essa teoria. Nosso artigo visa o fato de que, em Tomás, a tese da identidade formal não (...) é só epistemológica, mas ela exige uma base metafísico-ontológica. O resultado da nossa investigação é que, segundo a tese da identidade formal, a referência epistêmica aos objetos funciona de maneira direta, mas por meio disso ela não produz uma variedade de objetos imanentes ou intencionais na ontologia. ABSTRACT Even if Thomas Aquinas did not use the term intentionality often, He has a theory that explains how we, as subjects, intentionally refer to objects. Our reference works when there is a "formal identity" between the form in the act of perception or subject knowledge and the form of the object. In secondary literature, "formal identity" is the name used to refer to that theory. Our article aims at the fact that, in Thomas's writings, the formal identity thesis is not only epistemological, but requires a metaphysical-ontological basis. The result of our investigation is that, according to the formal identity thesis, the epistemic reference to objects works on a direct way, but by means of that it does not produce a variety of immanent or intentional objects within ontology. (shrink)

In contemporary literature, one can find much information concerning Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of intelligible species. However, none of the literature takes into account how and why Aquinas developed his doctrine of intelligible species. Often, it is purported that Aquinas is just following Aristotle. However, this is not the case. There are aporiae in the Aristotelian corpus, and those who followed Aristotle tried to resolve the intellection and hylomorphism aporia, an aporia that arose as a result of denying Platonic forms and (...) affirming hylomorphism. Among those who attempted to resolve this aporia were Avicenna and Averroes from whom Aquinas drew and developed his doctrine of intelligible species. Avicenna's and Averroes' influence on Aquinas's doctrine of intelligible species is the focus of this dissertation. In addition, Aquinas's hylomorphic doctrines and natural and supernatural psychologies are explicated, and the influence of Avicenna and Averroes on Aquinas's psychologies is highlighted. Finally, the arguments posed by contemporary scholars as to whether Aquinas is a direct realist or a representationalist are reviewed in light of the Arabic contributions and Aquinas's synthesis. (shrink)

Talking of “medieval aesthetics” is historiographically disputable. During the Middle Ages, in fact, there is no discipline comparable with the aesthetics as from the eighteenth century we know it. In the medieval period, aesthetic considerations mostly occur in spurious contexts, and are all, so to say, pre-theoretical. They refer to different insights on what is the beautiful and what relationship holds between the beauty and its artistic expression. In the Middle Ages, that is, one can frequently encounters forms we would (...) nowadays call of descriptive aesthetics, occasionally forms of normative aesthetics, rather sporadically meta-aesthetic considerations. Not even a privileged attention is reserved to aesthetics understood as the description of the conditions of pleasure that follow from the perception of the beautiful, despite the theme of dilectum is important in the aesthetic meditations of medieval masters. Aesthetic discussions predominantly concern the relationships between the artist, an object and its representation. In this essay, I reconsider these relationships by discussing a key point of Thomas Aquinas’s reflection on the beauty: the role played by of the notion of representation in the explanation of the artistic process. (shrink)