The Roots of Occasionalism? Causation, Metaphysical Dependence, and Soul-Body Relations in Augustine

It has long been thought that Augustine holds that corporeal objects cannot act upon incorporeal souls. However, precisely how and why Augustine imposes limitations upon the causal powers of corporeal objects remains obscure. In this paper, the author clarifies Augustine’s views about the causal and dependence relations between body and soul. He argues that, contrary to what is often thought, Augustine allows that corporeal objects do act upon souls and merely rules out that corporeal objects exercise a particular kind of causal power (that of efficient or sustaining causes). He clarifies how Augustine conceives of the kind of causal influence exercised by souls and bodies.

A Fourteenth-Century Scholastic Dispute on Astrological Interrogations

This article examines and edits an anonymous text from the late 1330s (Quesitum fuit utrum per interrogationes …), which was written to refute the arguments presented in a lost quaestio disputata by an unknown Parisian philosopher. At the heart of this scholastic dispute was the question whether the astrological branch known as interrogations was an effective and legitimate means of predicting the future. The philosopher’s negative answers to this question as well as the rebuttals preserved in our anonymous text offer valuable new insights into the debate over astrology that raged at the University of Paris during the fourteenth century. Besides arguing at length for the internal coherence and philosophical soundness of interrogations, the text contains a bold defence against the Augustinian view that astrologers consort with demons. This defence was later rebutted as part of an anti-astrological polemic by the astronomer Heinrich Selder, who is known to have studied in Paris during the 1370s.

Durand of St.-Pourçain on Reflex Acts and State Consciousness

Some of my mental states are conscious and some of them are not. Sometimes I am so focused on the wine in front of me that I am unaware that I am thinking about it. But sometimes, of course, I take a reflexive step back and become aware of my thinking about the wine in front of me. What marks the difference between a conscious mental state and an unconscious one? In this article, the author focuses on Durand of St.-Pourçain’s rejection of the higher-order theory of state consciousness, according to which a mental act is conscious when there is another, suitably related, mental (reflex) act that exists at the same time with it. Durand rejects such higher-order theories on the grounds that they violate the thesis that a given mental power can have or elicit only one mental act at a given time. The author first goes over some of Durand’s general arguments for this thesis. He then turns to Durand’s application of the thesis to the issue of state consciousness and reflex acts. He closes by considering the objection that Durand’s same-order theory of state consciousness makes consciousness ubiquitous.

The First of All Natural Sciences: Roger Bacon on Perspectiva and Human Knowledge

This article is devoted to Roger Bacon’s understanding of perspectiva as “the first of all natural sciences.” After considering a few alternative medieval definitions and classifications of this discipline – such as al-Fārābī’s, Grosseteste’s and Kilwardby’s – the author turns to Bacon’s arguments for according to perspectiva so exceptional a role. He shows that Bacon’s arguments are grounded in his peculiar understanding of the visual process: according to Bacon, vision is indeed the only sense in which perception takes place “by reasoning” (per sillogismum). The author argues that this theory of perception also lays the foundations for Bacon’s – prima facie amiss – claim that “concerning vision alone, and no other sense, have philosophers developed a separate science.” The author explores this point by contrasting with one another Bacon’s conception of perspectiva and of music, and closes with some more general remarks on the implications of Bacon’s account of the visual process for his theory of knowledge. Based on his theory of a “vision by reasoning,” the author concludes that Bacon came to reinterpret perspectiva as the organon of visual knowledge.

La raison chez Hugues de Saint-Victor : du feuilleté des acceptions à la cohérence d’un sens, d’une pensée, d’un programme éducatif

Three conclusions can be drawn from the study of the word ratio and its derivatives in the works of Hugh of Saint-Victor († 1141). First, the approximately 1500 occurrences present an exceptional diversity of meanings. Second, these meanings are not tightly separated from each other, but tend to tile or merge: not only are there many passages where the translator can legitimately hesitate between two or more interpretations, but the author himself plays on this malleability of significations, as if to refer his reader to an original cohesion of the meanings. Third, it is therefore possible to reconstitute a complex but unified notion of reason, underlying all the uses identified; and it is surely no coincidence that this common notion corresponds very precisely to the Victorine educational program, as Hugh defined it in his Didascalicon.

Potens per accidens sine accidentibus: Ockham on Material Substances and Their Essential Powers

Medieval scholastics share a commitment to a substance-accident ontology and to an analysis of efficient causation in which agents act in virtue of their powers. Given these commitments, it seems ready-made which entities are the agents or powers: substances are agents and their accidents powers. William of Ockham, however, offers a rather different analysis concerning material substances and their essential powers, which this article explores. The article first examines Ockham’s account of propria and his reasons for claiming that a material substance is essentially powerful sine accidentibus. However, the article subsequently argues that, given Ockham’s reductionism about material substance, only substantial forms – never substances – are truly agents and powers. Thus, a material substance is essentially powerful but only by courtesy – per accidens, as Ockham calls it – because it has a non-identical part, its substantial form, which does all the causal work by itself, per se.

Perfect Subjects, Shields, and Retractions: Three Models of Impassibility

According to theological consensus at least from the thirteenth century, at the End of Times our body will be resurrected and reunited with our soul. The resurrected body, although numerically identical to our present one, will be quite different: it will possess clarity, agility, subtility, and the inability to suffer. It is the last of these characteristics that will be of most concern in the present article. There are two reasons why impassibility presents a problem in the medieval framework. The first has to do with how to characterize impassibility more precisely; the second arises because at first it may seem that impassibility is not metaphysically possible at all. The article will look at three attempts to tackle these problems: those of Thomas Aquinas, Durand of St.-Pourçain, and Peter of Palude. As the article aims to show, looking at how causal powers work on the New Earth may shed some light on how medieval thinkers thought they worked on the present one.

Bonaventure on the Soul and Its Powers

This article examines Bonaventure’s account of the soul and its powers, which seeks to strike a middle path between the better-known identity and distinction views of the thirteenth century. Bonaventure contends that the powers of the soul are neither fully distinct from the soul nor completely identical to it. The article argues that Bonaventure’s view comprises four key theses. Bonaventure maintains (i) that the soul’s powers are necessary features of the soul; (ii) that they depend on the soul; (iii) that they are in the same category as the soul; (iv) but that they belong to this category “by reduction” (per reductionem). The article also considers an objection to Bonaventure’s view raised by Peter John Olivi.

James of Viterbo on Seminal Reasons as inchoationes formarum

This article examines James of Viterbo’s theory of seminal reasons as inchoate forms (inchoationes formarum). James intends this theory to explain how the eduction (eductio) of substantial forms from the potency of matter does not entail that such forms are created ex nihilo. Substantial forms that come to be in generation preexist in matter as forms in potency. The form in potency is an inchoation of, or aptitude or propensity for, the form that comes to be in act. Generation is thus understood by James to be a modal change, for the form in potency and the form in act are one and the same thing (res); they differ only with regard to their mode of being. James’s theory of inchoate forms is a development of Bonaventure’s theory of seminal reasons, but reformulated with the help of Simplicius and Averroes.