5
Philosophical Review Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages. by Robert Pasnau Review by: Dominik Perler The Philosophical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1 (Jan., 1999), pp. 143-146 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2998279 . Accessed: 25/06/2014 03:01 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Philosophical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 03:01:00 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages.by Robert Pasnau

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages.by Robert Pasnau

Philosophical Review

Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages. by Robert PasnauReview by: Dominik PerlerThe Philosophical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1 (Jan., 1999), pp. 143-146Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2998279 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 03:01

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Philosophical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 03:01:00 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages.by Robert Pasnau

BOOK REVIEWS

The Philosophical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1 (January 1999)

THEORIES OF COGNITION IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES. By ROBERT PAS-

NAU. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xi, 330.

Historians of philosophy often credit Descartes, Locke, and other seven- teenth-century authors with having introduced one of the most vexing problems into epistemology: the problem of mental representations. For these authors claimed that our knowledge of the external world is always mediated by mental representations, so that we have immediate access only to these representations, the ideas in our mind. As is well known, this "veil- of-ideas epistemology" gave rise to a number of skeptical questions. How can we be certain that our ideas are accurate representations of the exter- nal world? And how can we be sure that there is an external world at all if we never have immediate access to it? In his highly original and provoc- ative study, Robert Pasnau argues that these questions are not distinctively modern. They were already asked and thoroughly discussed by medieval authors: "much of what is often taken to be novel in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was already old news by the fourteenth" (6). Accord- ing to Pasnau, it was Thomas Aquinas who introduced some form of rep- resentationalism into epistemology by developing the species-theory, and it was first Peter John Olivi and later William Ockham who attacked this theory, insisting that we always have immediate cognitive access to the ex- ternal world.

Pasnau argues for this claim by adducing an impressive number of texts written in the period between 1250 and 1340. He starts by presenting and discussing Aquinas's theory of cognition and then looks at critical reactions to this theory-reactions stemming from such different authors as Olivi, Henry of Ghent, Peter Aureol, Ockham, and William Crathorn. In his examination of all these authors, Pasnau follows a philosophical rather than a strictly historical order. That is, he does not give a chronological overview of various theories but goes back and forth between the thir- teenth and the fourteenth century, focusing on one crucial question: How did the scholastics explain the cognitive processes by which information about the external world is acquired and transformed into mental repre- sentations? This way of approaching the topic makes his study particularly valuable for philosophical readers. It shows that medieval authors tackled genuinely philosophical problems, even if they quite often discussed them within a theological framework.

In both the first part ("Fundamentals") and the second part ("Repre- sentations and realism") of his book, Pasnau thoroughly discusses many controversial details of the scholastic theories. Let me mention just one of them: the famous "intentional change" that a cognizing person is sup-

143

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 03:01:00 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 3: Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages.by Robert Pasnau

BOOK REVIEWS

posed to undergo. Many medieval authors in the Aristotelian tradition, among them Aquinas, claimed that a person cannot have a cognition of a thing unless he or she receives the form of that thing without the matter. And in order to receive the form, the person needs to undergo a mere "intentional change," not a natural change. How is this change to be un- derstood? A number of commentators identified "intentional" with "non- physical," assuming that, for Aquinas, there is simply an immaterial process of taking on the form without there being any physical process. A careful evaluation of all relevant passages leads Pasnau to the conclusion that such an understanding is inadequate. For Aquinas, intentional change is not incompatible with physical or physiological change (46). As far as the sen- sory level is concerned, there cannot be a non-physical change, because every change occurs in a physical organ. Such an organ undergoes a mere intentional change because it does not assimilate itself to the external thing (when I see a red apple, my eyes do not become red) while it receives some information. Yet this process of being informed is itself a physiolog- ical process, as Pasnau convincingly points out.

In Aquinas's theory there is, of course, not just the sensory level but also the intellectual. And as far as the immaterial intellect is concerned, there is indeed no physical or physiological change. That is why Aquinas can aptly be called a "semimaterialist," as Pasnau suggests (36). But what ex- actly happens in the intellect when it receives the form? Pasnau claims that it is Aquinas's answer to this question that leads him straight into the mud- dy terrain of representationalism. For Aquinas argues that the intellect receives the form by abstracting a cognitive entity, the so-called species in- telligibilis, from the sensory impressions. This entity enables the intellect to have a cognition of an external thing.

Pasnau interprets Aquinas as holding the view that the species is the first object of the intellect (200-208). All the intellect has immediate access to, and all it is immediately aware of, is this species; external things are some- how hidden behind a "veil of species." What prevents Aquinas from holding an extreme form of representationalism, according to Pasnau, is just the fact that Aquinas does not take the realm of species to be the realm of the objects of our judgments and beliefs: although the intellect immediately apprehends the species, it forms beliefs about the external things repre- sented by the species.

Pasnau is well aware of the fact that his interpretation contradicts the standard account, which presents Aquinas as a direct realist. According to the "official position" (197f.), the species are not the entities that are im- mediately cognized, but the entities in virtue of which the intellect cognizes the external things. Why does Pasnau reject the standard interpretation in favor of which a number of passages (for example, Summa theol. 1.85.2; Summa contra Gentiles 2.75; Quaestiones de veritate, 18.1.1) can be cited? He

144

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 03:01:00 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 4: Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages.by Robert Pasnau

BOOK REVIEWS

reproaches the defenders of the standard interpretation with having ig- nored those passages where Aquinas clearly says that the species are the first thing apprehended by the intellect. It is undeniable that there are such passages, in particular in the early Commentary on the Sentences, and it is also undeniable that they have not always been taken into account by com- mentators who tended to focus on the later Summa theologian. Yet I do not think that they clearly favor Pasnau's interpretation. At least two arguments can be adduced against his representationalist interpretation.

(i) One needs to be careful in evaluating the passages where Aquinas says that the species are immediately apprehended. These passages (for ex- ample, Quaestiones de veritate, 1.11 corp.) do not commit him to holding the view that the species are the first objects cognized by the intellect or by the senses, as Pasnau assumes (203). The Latin word 'apprehendere' often simply means 'to grasp' and does not necessarily have strong cognitive implications. Let me illustrate this point with an example. When I am standing next to a tree, I receive sensory impressions of the tree and my intellect abstracts a species. But when I am absentminded or sleepy, my intellect does not actively use the species; it does not grasp it. In order to have an actual cognition of the tree, my intellect needs to abstract a species and to use it as a cognitive device. But the species is never more than such a device. It does not become the cognitive object unless I perform an act of reflection, that is, unless I think about the way I cognize the tree.

(ii) The species has the function of making the form of a thing present to the mind. Thus, when my intellect actively uses the species of a tree, the species makes it possible that the form be present not just outside the in- tellect (namely, in the material tree) but also inside the intellect. Yet it is one and the same form that is present outside and inside; it has two dif- ferent instantiations. That is why Aquinas can say that "there is a single conversion to the thing's species and to the thing itself" (II Sent., 4.1.1.4) without claiming that the intellect cognizes the species as a distinct object. There is one single conversion, because there is one single form present inside the intellect (by means of the species) and outside.

Given the second argument, I am somewhat skeptical of Pasnau's claim that "there is no radical conceptual difference between the role of early- modern ideas and the role of Aquinas's species" (293). It seems to me that there is a considerable difference: Aquinas develops his species-theory within a metaphysical framework that takes universal forms to be the most basic constituents of the world. Descartes, Locke, and other seventeenth- century philosophers, however, categorically reject such a theory of forms. I also think that one can better understand Olivi's and Ockham's critique of Aquinas's species-theory if one bears in mind the metaphysical framework of this theory. Ockham's rejection of species is always motivated by his re-

145

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 03:01:00 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 5: Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages.by Robert Pasnau

BOOK REVIEWS

jection of universal forms: given that there are no such forms, there is no need for cognitive devices to make them present to the mind.

My short critical remarks are by no means intended to call into question the outstanding quality of Pasnau's study. It is indeed his clear and detailed presentation of arguments that makes a critical reaction possible. Pasnau has written a fascinating, provocative book that should be read by anyone who is interested in medieval philosophy of mind and epistemology.

DOMINIK PERLER Universitdt Basel

The Philosophical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1 (January 1999)

HOBBES AND THE PARADOXES OF POLITICAL ORIGINS. By MATTHEW H. KRAMER. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 144.

JOHN LOCKE AND THE ORIGINS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. PHILOSOPHI- CAL EXPLORATIONS OF INDIVIDUALISM, COMMUNITY, AND EQUAL- ITY By MATTHEW H. KRAMER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xiii, 347.

Each of these two volumes grew out of what was originially intended to be a single chapter in a larger study of seventeenth-century liberalism. Al- though there is a strong degree of stylistic and methodological continuity between the two, neither book presupposes any familiarity with the other. I will therefore consider them separately.

Hobbes and the Paradoxes of Political Origins is a short work consisting of two chapters. The first contains an explication and defense of what Kramer refers to as a "paradox-focused" approach to the interpretation of philo- sophical texts (1). The second contains a critical assessment of Hobbes's political philosophy that is meant to serve as an instantiation of such an approach. A paradox, on Kramer's account, emerges whenever a claim or set of claims entails a statement of the form "X if and only if -X' (3). A paradox-focused approach to reading a philosophical text, therefore, in- volves scrutinizing the logical structure of the arguments it contains with an eye toward uncovering contradictions of this form. The cornerstone of Hobbes's political philosophy is the social contract. His defense of an un- limited, undivided sovereign rests on the claim that people in a state of nature would choose to create and submit themselves to such a sovereign. Uncovering a paradox in Hobbes's political philosophy would therefore involve demonstrating that Hobbes is committed to the view that there is some Xwhose existence can be generated only by the sovereign but whose existence is also necessary in order for people successfully to create such a sovereign.

146

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 03:01:00 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions