In this review of Dominik Perler’s book Eine Person sein, Perler’s reconstruction of the relationship between Thomas Aquinas’s unitarist position and his theory of incontinence is analyzed. Perler argues that the unitarist position of Thomas allowes him to conceive of incontinence as a weakness of the whole psychological system of the person. Unlike the mad person, the incontinent has responsibility because she has preserved a degree of rational control. Perler argues that the incontinent person is not responsible for the spontaneous (...) emergence of desire, which is a natural process, only for the way in which she rationally controls it (or not). By analyzing Aquinas’s notion of naturality with respect to desires, I argue that the person is actually responsible for the emergence of a desire, just in case the content of the desire is constituted by a rational choice of end. (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)