Walter Burley on Co-Signification in Opaque Contexts

Foreshadowing in many ways theories of direct reference popular today, Walter Burley (died c. 1345) favors a theory of direct signification, according to which names directly signify things in the world. But he recognizes that opaque contexts, such as propositional attitude reports, represent a challenge to that theory. In response, Burley develops a sophisticated account of our noetic states, one according to which those states can be individuated more finely than in terms of their contents. Paired with a certain semantic analysis of propositional attitude reports, that account of our noetic states is ready-made to accommodate Burley’s commitment to direct signification even in the face of opacity considerations.

Thomas of Sutton’s Intellectualist Doctrine of the Will’s Self-Motion

Thomas Aquinas famously draws a distinction between a potency in the will to the specification of its act and a potency in the will to the exercise of its act. He also thinks that the will is moved to the specification of its act by the good apprehended by reason and to the exercise of its act by itself. Although Aquinas’s distinction has many attractive features, his explanation of how the will moves itself to the exercise of its act (namely, by moving reason) is not adequate; it does not really explain how the will’s potency to the exercise of its act is actualized. I argue that, by distinguishing between three modes of self-motion, effective, accidental, and consecutive, and two types of potency, essential and accidental, the early Oxford Thomist Thomas of Sutton (ca. 1250–1315) presents a plausible development of Aquinas’s distinction that addresses this problem; the will, by willing some end, actualizes its accidental potency to willing some means to that end, thereby moving itself consecutively. Although I think that Sutton does give us the means to clear up some of the confusion surrounding Aquinas’s view on the will, I also motivate some doubts about whether he really succeeds in preserving what makes Aquinas’s distinction so attractive in the first place.

Meditating on the Meditations

A common thread runs through Descartes’ First Meditation, the opening part of Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle, and al-Ghazālī’s intellectual autobiography The Deliverer from Error. For spiritual and intellectual progress to occur, each of these authors concurs, one must first divest oneself of previously held certainties, even though evil deceivers will try to assault and halt this process. But what could explain the similarities between the three presentations? And are there philosophical lessons to draw from such comparisons, or are al-Ghazālī’s and Teresa’s meditations destined to remain curiosities and marginal as compared to Descartes’? In this article, I show how al-Ghazālī’s use of the same trope twice can point to a fresh consideration of the relation between Teresa and Descartes.

The Justice and Mercy of God

In his eleventh-century Proslogion St. Anselm puts forward the view that, far from being an exception to divine justice, divine mercy is the highest form of divine justice. Anselm’s cryptic reasoning is initially puzzling. It becomes more accessible if we notice that he is taking as a model the theory of imperial clemency put forward by the first-century CE Stoic Seneca in his De Clementia, in which it is argued that imperial clemency is the highest form of justice. Anselm does not quote or make reference to Seneca’s work, and so the case for the relationship between the two works has to be made on internal grounds, but recent scholarship has shown that Senecan materials were readily available in Anselm’s milieu and that there are other cases in which he seems to be using Senecan material.

Thomas Aquinas on How the Soul Moves the Body

It is uncontroversial that Thomas Aquinas has a hylomorphic account of both living and non-living beings. Yet some of his views about living beings, and especially his view that souls (including animal and plant souls) are movers of their bodies, seem to depart from his account of soul as a substantial form, taking a step in the direction of dualism. In this paper, I will (1) propose a new reading of what Aquinas means in calling the soul the mover of the body, and (2) distinguish the causal contribution of souls from that of inanimate substantial form on the one hand and from the action of spiritual substances on the other. The key to my interpretation will be a close analysis of vital motions as self-motions, which is the basis for Aquinas’s attributing a mover role to the soul in the first place.

Social Powers and Mental Relations

Taking its departure from the current interest in the metaphysics of the social world, this paper argues that lordship or ownership (dominium) on Ockham’s view is a power that is really identical to a person, persons, or collectivity of persons. In this sense, it is not a real entity that adds to Ockham’s famously parsimonious ontology. Rather, lordship is a mental relation connecting certain human beings (‘lords’ or ‘owners’) with certain things (‘property’) that is instituted by the individual intellective and volitional acts performed by members of the past and present community. Lordship is real, however, to the extent that the community authorizes certain members of the community to perform certain acts with respect to certain things. On the reading defended, Ockham’s view is ontologically reductionist but receptive to the shared reality of the social world.

Perception in Augustine’s De Trinitate 11

In this paper, I explore Augustine’s account of sense cognition in book 11 of De Trinitate. His discussion in this context focuses on two types of sensory state—what he calls ‘outer vision’ and ‘inner vision,’ respectively. His analysis of both types of state is designed to show that cognitive acts involving external and internal sense faculties are susceptible of a kind of trinitarian analysis. A common way to read De Trin. 11, is to interpret Augustine’s account of ‘outer’ vision as an analysis of sense perception and his account of ‘inner’ vision as an analysis of occurrent sensory memory and imagination. I argue against such a reading of De Trin. 11. Insofar as we take perception to be a phenomenally conscious mode of sensory awareness, outer vision cannot, I claim, be the equivalent of ordinary sense perception. For, on Augustine’s view, the deliverances of outer vision only reach the threshold of consciousness, when outer vision occurs in conjunction with inner vision. Hence, on my analysis, sense perception turns out to be a complex, hybrid state—one that involves both outer and inner vision. If I am right, acts of sense perception turn out not to be directly susceptible to trinitarian analysis. Even so, the account is interesting and nuanced for all that.

What Does the Happy Life Require?

Many critics of religion insist that believing in a future life makes us less able to value our present activities and distracts us from accomplishing good in this world. In Augustine’s case, this gets things backwards. It is while Augustine seeks to achieve happiness in this life that he is detached from suffering and dismissive of the body. Once Augustine comes to believe happiness is only attainable once the whole city of God is triumphant, he is able to compassionately engage with present suffering and see material and social goods as part of our ultimate good.