Between the Supernatural and the Natural: Ockham on Evident Judgements

Abstract

Ockham defines intuition as the kind of cognition on the basis of which it is not only possible to evidently judge that a thing exists when it exists, but also that a thing does not exist when it does not exist. He makes a further distinction between natural intuition and supernatural intuition. The aim of this paper is to determine what, according to Ockham, can be judged evidently by means of natural intuition and what can only be judged evidently by means of supernatural intuition. It is commonly assumed that by natural intuition we can make only affirmative judgements, whereas by supernatural intuition we can make both affirmative and negative judgements. The paper shows that this way of contrasting the two is mistaken. The paper argues instead that also natural intuition, according to Ockham, enables us to make both affirmative and negative judgements.

1 Introduction

According to our everyday notions, we can acquire beliefs, and even true ones, about things we perceive. This possibility is not confined to cases where what is believed is affirmative: seeing a rook on the roof, one can judge, and hence, come to believe not only that the rook is on the roof, but also that the rook is not in the tree. One of the philosopher’s tasks is to give a systematical account of the relation between perception and the acquisition of (true) beliefs. The Franciscan William Ockham approaches this issue in terms of intuitive cognition and evident judgement:¹ the former is a kind of (intellectual) perception on the basis of which one can judge correctly that the thing ‘intuited’ exists or that it is thus-and-so. The idea is that intuitive cognition, as a non-propositional cognition (partially) causes a propositional act of judging.²

Ockham calls this kind of judgement ‘evident’. By definition, if an act of judging is evident, then what is judged is true. According to the Franciscan, what can be evidently judged can also be negative in form: one can judge evidently that (a) a thing does not exist or that (b) a thing is not thus-and-so—by means of intuitive cognition, or intuition, for short.

Ockham further distinguishes between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural intuition’, thereby marking a crucial cognitive difference between acts of intuition that obtain by wholly natural means and those that occur only by divine intervention. It is commonly assumed in the secondary literature that by natural intuition we can make only affirmative judgements, whereas by supernatural intuition we can make both affirmative and negative judgements. This view, however, is mistaken, since by natural intuition we can make both affirmative and negative judgements, or so the paper argues.

Ockham’s claim concerning the intuition of non-existent things has provoked a still ongoing debate in medieval scholarship centering on his basic attitude towards scepticism. As Panaccio and Piché have argued convincingly, the ‘current consensus is that the traditional [sceptical] readings of Ockham in the first half of the twentieth century were generally misguided on these topics.’³ Panaccio and Piché also defend the possibility of intuition of non-existents against scepticist interpretations.⁴ By focussing on this supernatural intuition of non-existents, however, it is easily overlooked that within Ockham’s theoretical framework it is also possible to make certain evident negative judgements on a wholly natural cognitive basis. Take the two forms of negative evident judgements that (a) a thing does not exist or that (b) a thing is not thus-and-so. These are not on a par with respect to their cognitive requirements, since (a) requires the supernaturally achieved intuition of a non-existent thing, whereas (b) does not involve any supernatural cognition. In this paper, therefore, I pay special attention to both supernatural and natural cases where what is judged takes for example the form ‘a is not F’ or ‘a does not exist’.⁵

As I see it, the scope of what can be evidently judged by wholly natural means is restricted to the very presence or absence of things and their presently being thus-and-so or not being thus-and-so.⁶ By contrast, evident judgements concerning either the mere existence of a thing, where this existential judgement does not entail any judgement about the thing’s presence, or the non-existence of a thing are unattainable without God’s intervention, that is, without supernaturally induced acts of intuition. Thus it should be noted that evident judgements can differ with respect to their scope although they do not differ as to their form.

I proceed as follows: I first discuss Ockham’s paradigmatic presentation of natural intuition and evident judgement, both affirmative and negative (Sects. 2.1, 2.2 respectively) and then turn to the supernatural cases (Sects. 3.1, 3.2). Against this background, I finally come to an assessment of the general relation between the natural and the supernatural cases of evident judgement (Sect. 4).

2 Intuition and Evident Judgement: The Natural Paradigm

2.1 The Natural Affirmative Cases

Ockham introduces the possibility of acquiring evident knowledge that a thing exists along with the possibility of acquiring evident knowledge that a thing does not exist. He writes:

[…] the intuitive cognition of a thing is such a cognition by virtue of which it can be known whether a thing exists or not, such that if the thing exists, the intellect judges immediately that it exists and evidently recognizes that it exists, […]. And in the same way, if by divine power such a […] cognition of a non-existent thing were to be preserved, then by virtue of this non-complex cognition the intellect would evidently cognize that this thing does not exist.⁷

In the natural course of the world, if a subject has an intuition of a thing a, then a is the efficient cause of this act.⁸ The intuition is ‘proper’ (propria) to the thing that causes it insofar as an intuition is individuated by its cause. It is only an intuition of the very thing that causes it, of nothing else. As Ockham states in an often-quoted passage in the Quodlibeta:

[Intuitive cognition] is proper to particulars […] because it is immediately caused by a particular thing or is apt to be caused, and cannot be caused by another thing, […].⁹

Ockham emphasizes that an intuition of a cannot be caused by a thing b, no matter how much a and b are alike.¹⁰ This illustrates that an intuitive act is exclusively individuated by its cause. It also gives us the following sufficient condition for a subject’s intuiting a thing a in the natural order of things:

• (1) If a thing a causes an intuition in a subject S, then S intuits a.

Now if the subject intuits a, then the subject is in a position to correctly judge that a exists (a est): that this act of judging is ‘evident’ means that—by definition—what is judged is true. Also, Ockham states that ‘the intellect judges immediately (statim)’. This is to say that intuition-based thoughts leave no room for lack of truth commitment:¹¹ the subject cannot merely entertain the thought that a thing exists if he has an intuition of the thing in question.

Note that what can be judged in this way can take different forms. Why? The general idea is that things are normally not intuited in isolation, or one-by-one, but (a) in relation to their spatial and temporal position (‘here and now’) as well as (b) in relation to other things in their vicinity; analogously, it is not possible to perceive just one particular thing in total isolation: if two rooks are sitting next to each other on the roof, then, under normal lightning conditions etc., I do not only see one of the rooks, but both of them, together with the things in their surroundings, e.g., (part of) the roof. As to (a), even if, say, in an art exhibition, someone is intuiting only one thing, say, a sculpture in an otherwise empty room, then he nevertheless intuits the sculpture in relation to the walls, the floor, in short, with respect to its position not only in space, but also with respect to its position in time, that is, as being present (to him) now. In Ockham’s own words:

I say that the intellect cognizes intuitively particular things as to here and now and with respect to all conditions under which the senses cognize […].¹²

The point is that it is possible to entertain more than one thought on the basis of one and the same intuitive act. And which thought the subject comes to entertain also depends on factors such as the subject’s attention or other preoccupations.¹³ If, however, the thought the subject is entertaining is about a while he is intuiting a, then the thought is immediately accepted (as true). Now due to the natural cognitive situation it is not possible that someone who judges evidently that a exists while intuiting a would not be ready to judge that a is present (to him), since he can only judge evidently that a exists in the very presence of a. We rarely—if ever—acknowledge the mere existence of a thing (‘this thing exists’).¹⁴ On some occasions, however, we do state a thing’s being present (to us), that is, its being ‘here and now’.¹⁵ Consider the following scenario. Looking for her glasses, Anne (in the kitchen) asks Peter (in the living room): ‘Can you spot my glasses?’ And Peter, seeing (‘intuiting’) the glasses on the table, answers, ‘Yes, they are here.’ This case of an existential judgement seems to be a fairly natural one. And it seems that Ockham has cases such as these in mind when he speaks of natural affirmative evident judgements about things. Thus:

• (2) If a subject S judges evidently that a exists while intuiting a in the presence of a, then S is ready to judge evidently that a is here or that a is present.¹⁶

It is important to keep this in mind when it comes to supernaturally induced ‘affirmative’ judgements, since in the supernatural case, the subject is not ready to judge that the thing is present or that it is here.

Speaking in terms of causal powers, everything present to a subject can act on him as a cause of an intuitive act. Therefore, the complete cause of an intuition can be rather complex, e.g. if several things causally act on a subject simultaneously. This is even the case where there is apparently only one thing, such as a sculpture, in a room. According to Ockham, there are only particular things and everything that exists or can exist is either a substance (Socrates, this rook) or a quality of a substance (Socrates’ being wise, the rook’s being black).¹⁷ Normally, it is not possible to intuit a substance without at least some of its qualities.¹⁸ For instance, when I intuit a rook in plain daylight etc., then I also intuit some its qualities such as the black colour of its feathers. For this reason, it is possible to evidently judge about one and the same things in different respects on the basis of one and the same intuitive act. In a passage immediately subsequent to the very introduction of intuition Ockham writes:

Similarly, intuitive cognition is such that when certain things are cognized and one of them (I) inheres in another or (II) is located in a different place to another or (III) relates to another thing in any other way, then it is known immediately by virtue of the non-complex cognition of these things whether (I’) the thing inheres (in another thing) or not, whether (II’) it is located in a different place or not, and (III’) the same applies with respect to any other contingent truth […].¹⁹

We can generalize three forms of what can be evidently judged—affirmatively or negatively—on the basis of natural intuition. As we saw earlier, it is possible to judge about a thing’s being present on the basis of an intuition of that thing. The form of this judgement can be rendered as follows:

• (A) a is (not) here.²⁰

A judgement about one thing inhering in another—(I’) in the quotation—can be of the following form:

• (B) a is (not) F.

Lastly, (II’) and (III’), that is, judgements about things standing in a spatial relation or in another kind of relation to each other can be of the following form:

• (C) a (not)R b.

It should have become clear that due to the referential complexity of intuition, what can be evidently judged also covers different aspects of the thing or things intuited and thus, can take different forms.

Now what exactly does it mean that ‘by virtue of’ the intuition a subject can evidently judge about the things intuited in different respects? The relation thereby expressed is, again, nothing but a causal relation: the intuition of a causes the act of evidently judging that a exists. In the natural affirmative case, the intuition of a thing, say, a rook causes the act of judging that the rook exists in conjunction with the rook itself. The intuition is only a partial cause of the judgement, the rook acting as another cause of the act of judging evidently that the rook exists. One could also say that the rook’s causal contribution to the judgement is indirect insofar as it directly causes the intuition of the rook which, in turn, directly causes the judgement. The natural act of judging that a exists and the supernatural act of judging that a does not exist differ in the composition of their respective cause. The underlying idea is that something in conjunction with something else can cause an effect opposite to the one it would produce by itself. Ockham writes:

It is not contradictory that some cause in connection with another partial cause causes some effect, but that the former without the other partial cause produces the opposite effect. […] I concede that the cause of these judgements [that the thing exists or that it does not exist] is not the same, because the cause of the one [that the thing does not exist] is the cognition without the thing, and the cause of the other [that the thing exists] is the cognition along with the thing as a partial cause.²¹

It is possible to reconstruct the following causal chain in the natural affirmative case: First, a thing a causes an intuition of a within a subject, and then a and the intuition of a jointly cause the evident act of judging that a exists. In the supernatural negative case, the—supernaturally sustained—intuition of a (without a) causes the evident act of judging that a does not exist. This is the ‘opposite effect’ insofar as what is judged in this case (‘that a does not exist’) and what is judged in the former case (‘that a exists’) are contradictory. I discuss the supernatural negative case in some detail later.²²

Natural affirmative cases taking one of the forms of (B) or (C) can be described analogously to the former causal chain.²³ Let us briefly review them. As to (B), by naturally intuiting a rook, Anne normally intuits also some of the rook’s qualities (its blackness for instance), such that she is able to evidently judge that (B) the rook is black.²⁴ Put differently, it is necessary to intuit a thing together with one of its qualities in order to evidently judge that that thing is thus-and-so. As to (C), Anne can also judge about for instance the rook’s spatial relation to other things. For instance, she can judge that the rook is on the roof. Just as it is necessary to intuit a in order to evidently judge that a is here it is necessary to have an intuition of two things a and b in order to evidently judge that a relates to b in a certain way. For instance, Anne can evidently judge that the two halves of the cheesecake are equal only if she intuits both halves of the cake simultaneously. The following diagram can be given for affirmative natural evident judgements.²⁵ The decisive point is that the causal relations obtain simultaneously. Thus:

This illustrates that the intuition of a—together with a—causes the act of judging correctly about what is thought in the very presence of a. Which of the possible thoughts are entertained depends on the subject’s attention and preoccupation. Now does this diagram also apply if what is judged is of one of the three negative forms?

2.2 The Natural Negative Cases

One of the rare examples Ockham actually gives of such a case is the following:

[…] for instance, if I see simultaneously a whiteness and a blackness in one single act of intellectual cognition, and then I form this complex ‘[the] white [thing] is not black’ (‘album non est nigrum’) by means of this intuitive cognition, I have only two acts: one intuitive [act] aimed at the whiteness and the blackness and another complex [act] […] that is aimed at the copula and the terms negatively.²⁶

Several remarks are in place here. First: In this passage, Ockham is primarily concerned with the question of how many acts are involved in the ‘forming’ of such a thought (a ‘complex’). Therefore, he does not repeat that if this kind of thought is ‘formed’ while intuiting both something white and something black it is at once accepted as true. Second, it becomes clear once more that more than one thing can be intuited in one intuitive act, where the intuitive act is distinct from the entertaining of a thought about the things intuited. In Ockham’s example, the subject evidently judges that

• (I) [the] white thing is not black.²⁷

On the same cognitive basis, the subject could also judge that

• (II) [this] whiteness is not identical to [this] blackness.

Again, it might depend on the subject’s preoccupation and attention on which of the aspects of what is intuited he focuses: whether he focuses on the qualities as particulars while neglecting the substance having the quality or whether he focuses on just this relation of a substance to its qualities. More generally, it should also be possible to judge evidently that one particular is not related to another particular in a certain way while intuiting both particulars at once. (See (C) above).

Suppose that what is judged is of the form ‘a is not here’ (see (A) above)? The problem is that in the natural case, there simply is no intuition of a, if a is not present. I would like to apply here Fred Dretske’s idea that—at least with respect to some relations, especially spatial ones—it is possible to see in a primary epistemic way that one particular is not related to another particular in a certain way by seeing only one of them.²⁸ This, of course, presupposes that the subject has some notion of the particular he has no intuition of. Ockham distinguishes another kind of singular cognition from intuition, namely the so-called abstractive cognition. By abstractive cognition, Ockham explains a subject’s ability to think about a particular in its absence, that is, after it has been intuited by him. If I once had an intuition of Socrates, then if he is no longer present to me, I can think of him nevertheless, because, as Ockham says,

I saw him with such a shape, color, of such a height, breadth, and in such a place; and by this composite conception (conceptum compositum) I remember that I saw Socrates.²⁹

This ‘abstractive cognition’ of a particular—other than the intuition of it—is composite. This means that it has (conceptual) parts. These can be rendered explicit by way of a description of the thing.³⁰ Most importantly, this singular abstractive cognition differs from intuition in that only intuition, but not abstractive cognition has the power of (partially) causing an evident act of judging about a thing’s existence or its presently being thus-and-so. Abstractive cognition has no such causal powers. Ockham characterizes abstractive cognition as follows:

Abstractive cognition is that cognition by means of which it cannot be known of a contingent thing whether it exists or not. And in this way abstractive cognition abstracts from existence and non-existence, since neither can one evidently know by means of it that a thing exists when it exists nor that it does not exist when it does not, as opposed to intuitive cognition.³¹

I would like to adapt one of Dretske’s examples according to which it is possible to see in a primary epistemic way that a particular person is not in her room just by seeing either the person (without her room) or her room (without the person) to Ockham’s conception. Consider Anne and Peter again. Suppose Anne is able to think of Peter in his absence because she intuited him many times such that she also acquired some singular ‘abstractive conception’ of him.³² Now in her search for Peter, Anne intuits the living room, but not Peter. Her intuition does not include Peter. One could say that her focus of attention is shaped by her preoccupation of finding Peter. Therefore she is willing to pay special attention to any Peter-like-aspect of her intuition. It is plausible that if Anne now thinks that

• (III) Peter is not here,

she cannot but accept this thought as true because she has an intuition of the living room to which she refers to as ‘here’ while lacking an intuition of Peter at the same time. Put differently, her thought is partly based on the intuition of the living room and partly on her abstractive cognition of Peter.

One might worry that the involvement of abstractive cognition in this case changes things, and even radically.³³ But in what respect? Of course, Anne could certainly not entertain the thought that Peter is not here without having some abstractive cognition of Peter. However, I see no reason why the causal powers of the abstractive cognition could change the overall causal picture sketched so far—simply because abstractive cognition, as noted before, altogether lacks causal powers with respect to the present-tense evident judgements discussed here. Abstractive cognition is relevant as to the content of the judgement; but since it is possible to think that a is thus-and-so on the sole basis of abstractive cognition, but not to evidently judge that a is thus-and-so on that basis, abstractive cognition, in this respect at least, is causally irrelevant.

In other words, I think there is no reason to suppose that in this case, the intuition of the living room could not be a (partial) cause of the evident judgement that Peter is not here (in the living room).³⁴ If this is plausible, it can be held in general that if a subject has an intuition of a (or of b) but merely an abstractive cognition of b (or of a), then what he can evidently judge about a (or a and b) can be of one of the negative forms:

• (A) a is not here.

• (B) a is not F.

• (C) a notR b.

The diagram can be adjusted as follows to the case of natural negative evident judgement:³⁵

It should have become clear that the fact that certain thoughts about absent things involve abstractive cognition in Ockham’s picture does not affect the point that in the ‘negative’ cases discussed here the naturally induced intuition of a thing or things causes evident judgements.³⁶ These acts of judging occur by wholly natural means. I now turn to the supernatural cases.

3 Intuition and Evident Judgement: The Supernatural Paradigm

3.1 The Supernatural Negative Case

Recall that Ockham introduces the possibility of acquiring evident knowledge about a thing’s existence along with the—exclusively supernatural—possibility of acquiring such knowledge about a thing’s non-existence. For this reason, I start the exposition of the supernatural paradigm with the negative case. I quote again the relevant passage:

[…] the intuitive cognition of a thing is such a cognition by virtue of which it can be known whether a thing exists or not, such that if the thing exists, the intellect judges immediately that it exists and evidently recognizes that it exists, […]. And in the same way, if by divine power such a […] cognition of a non-existent thing were to be preserved, then by virtue of this non-complex cognition the intellect would evidently cognize that this thing does not exist.³⁷

In the supernatural case described here, the intuitive act is attainable only by divine intervention, since the thing does not exist. The idea, as indicated above, is that the—supernaturally sustained—intuition of a (without a) causes the evident judgement that a does not exist.³⁸ I suggest thinking of the conditional—if […] a […] cognition of a non-existent […] were to be preserved, then […] the intellect would evidently cognize that this thing does not exist—in the sense of a (true) counterfactual conditional. In the Latin text, Ockham uses subjunctive forms of the imperfect (esset, cognosceret). This indicates that he takes the content of the antecedent as quite exceptional, or contrary to the ordinary course of the world.³⁹

Two metaphysical principles apply here. Both are related to divine omnipotence. The first concerns replaceability of any efficient cause by God.⁴⁰ The second relates to the ontological separability of any two distinct things (res absolutae). According to Panaccio and Piché, these two principles illustrate what it amounts to that God’s power be restricted only by what is contradictory.⁴¹ Applying the first principle to intuition, it means that God can act as a cause in place of any particular a and cause an intuition of a within the subject directly—even though a might not exist.⁴² Note that Ockham speaks of the ‘preservation’ of such an intuitive cognition in this case. Medieval authors distinguish between the (initial) causation of an effect and the preservation of that effect by its cause. For instance, the natural intuition of a rook is not only initially caused, but also sustained by the rook. If the rook is no longer present to the subject and thus, cannot sustain the intuition further, the intuition of the rook ceases to exist—unless God were to replace the rook as a cause such that the intuition would be sustained further. This suggests that in his introduction of the intuition of non-existents, Ockham has in mind the case where the thing no longer exists. Applying now the second principle, the point is that God can replace a as a cause only because a and the intuition of a are ‘really’ distinct. Two things are distinct in this sense if and only if the one can exist without the other. Ockham specifies this a little further by stating that

[…] an intuitive vision, […] is an absolute thing distinct in place and subject from the object that is seen; therefore the vision [of a star] can remain while the star is destroyed.⁴³

There seem to be two criteria for distinctness: (a) difference in place and (b) difference in subject. The former should be clear: if a and b are not in the same place (at the same time), then a and b are distinct. What about (b)? A quality, as an absolute thing, inheres in a subject, without being itself a subject of further qualities. A substance, by contrast, is itself a subject of qualities. Thus if a and b are either not qualities of the same subject or if a and b are not the same substance, then a and b are distinct. An intuitive act and its object are distinct in both respects: they are (a) locally distinct and (b) distinct as to their subject: the intuitive act is a quality of the ‘cognizing’ substance whereas the thing intuited is either itself a substance or a quality of the ‘cognized’ substance.⁴⁴ Modifying (1) above, it can be said that⁴⁵

(1a) if a thing a causes an intuition of a in a subject S, then (A) S intuits_na as long as the intuition of a in S is sustained by a or (B) S intuits_sna as long as the intuition of a in S is supernaturally sustained by God (where a is either absent or has ceased to exist).⁴⁶

It is crucial that the naturally and the supernaturally sustained intuitive acts differ as to their causal powers with respect to evident judgements. Whereas in the natural, affirmative case, the intuition of a together with a causes an evident act of judging if what is thought is affirmative (See DIAGRAM 1 above), the supernatural negative case can be rendered as follows:

Here the limits of God’s power become apparent: to judge that a exists when a does not exist would be contradictory. Such an act of judging could not be evident, since by definition, an evident act implies the truth of what is thus judged. Therefore, Ockham could argue, God can only replace the non-existent thing as a cause of an act of intuition, but he cannot replace the thing as a cause in the production of the act of judging, if what is judged is that the thing exists. This applies only to evident judgement, not intuitive cognition. In other words, not every cause is replaceable in every respect in view of the limits of divine power: a particular a is replaceable in every situation with respect to its ‘immediate’ power to cause an act of intuition within a subject, but it is not replaceable in every situation with respect to its ‘mediate’ power to cause an evident act of judging. By natural means, it is not at all possible to evidently judge that a thing does not exist, since it is not possible to have an intuition of a thing that does not exist at present. Taking into account the distinction between initial causation and preservation, there are four possible combinations of naturally and supernaturally induced intuitive acts⁴⁷:

Case (1) was discussed in Sect. 2.1: a thing a naturally causes and preserves an intuition as long as it is present to the subject. Case (2) was discussed in this section: the intuition of a thing is naturally caused by a, but supernaturally sustained by God. I now turn to the supernatural affirmative case, case (3).⁴⁸

3.2 The Supernatural Affirmative Case

In his Reportatio, Ockham presents a supernatural case where the thing intuited exists without being present to the subject. He writes:

[…] If God were to cause in me an intuitive cognition of a thing existing in Rome, then I could judge that the thing I am intuiting and seeing exists, on the basis of the intuitive cognition of it, just as well as if that cognition would be had naturally. If you say that this object is neither presently here, nor sufficiently near, I answer: although the intuitive cognition cannot be caused naturally unless the object is present in some determinate distance, it can be [caused] supernaturally [in the absence of its object].⁴⁹

As Ockham points out, a thing can act as a natural cause of an intuition only if it is sufficiently near to the intuiting subject. In this supernatural case, however, God causes an intuition of a thing a (in Rome) within a subject being in another city (in Hamburg, let’s say). That is, if God causes in Anne (being in Hamburg) an intuition of the pope (being in Rome), then this intuition causes Anne to judge evidently that he (the pope) exists. Recall that in the natural affirmative case, a subject judging evidently that a exists in the presence of a is ready to judge evidently that a is present or that a is here.⁵⁰ This is not so in this supernatural case. For one thing, it is simply not true that the pope is present (to Anne). The question is whether Anne is in a position to judge evidently about the pope’s spatial position or his relation to other things at all. Above I held that the natural cause of an intuitive act can be rather complex, since everything present to a subject can exert its causal powers in the production of one and the same intuitive act.⁵¹ But here, God supernaturally produces the intuition of exactly one thing in the subject, since he replaces just one thing as a cause. It is a salient feature of supernaturally induced intuition that a subject can intuit one thing in total isolation, without even in relation to its spatial position, if that thing exists. It is not contradictory that God could cause an intuition of exactly one thing within a subject, that is, without causing an intuition of the thing’s actual position or in general, of the thing’s surrounding. As Ockham emphasizes, it is not contradictory that ‘a thing is seen without (the) situation, at least by divine power […]’⁵²

Why does the intuition of a (existing, but not present to the subject) cause the subject to judge evidently that a exists? Normally, a thing a does not only cause the intuition of it in a subject, but a together with the intuition of a causes the subject to judge evidently that a exists. If, however, a exists, but is not present to the subject, then a cannot naturally exert any of these two causal powers. If a exists, but is not present to a subject, then God can replace the object of intuition in both respects while causing the intuition in the subject as well as the evident judgement that a exists, if a exists. Again, one could say that God causes the judgement indirectly insofar as he directly causes the intuition of a, which in turn, directly causes the judgement. God is able to do this because it is not contradictory to judge that a exists if a exists. Only, this is a judgement concerning merely the existence of a thing without its presence. As such, it is not naturally attainable. This case can be rendered as follows:⁵³

In general, supernaturally induced intuition helps us to determine the limits of what can be naturally and evidently known—affirmatively and negatively—on the basis of intuition. It is time to summarize.⁵⁴

4 Conclusion

It became clear that according to Ockham, we are able to make both affirmative and negative judgements by natural intuition, just as we are by supernatural intuition. However, it became also clear that these judgements differ as to what exactly they are about: whereas naturally available evident judgements include judgements about the presence or absence of particulars and their presently being or not being thus-and-so, the supernaturally available judgements are about the mere existence or non-existence of things. The latter do not broaden our existential knowledge as to what we have a real chance to know; rather, they are relevant in determining the limits of God’s power: God does not have the power to cause incorrect judgements on the basis of supernaturally induced intuitions in us, since he cannot replace the thing intuited as a (partial) cause of the judgement that a exists, if a does not exist. In Ockham’s picture, the divine power to replace any object with respect to at least some of its causal powers should not be a mere logical possibility: God can produce everything that is not contradictory in this world, if he wants to, since he is a free, not a necessary cause.⁵⁵ Therefore, in Ockham’s view the intuition both of non-existent and of existing-yet-absent things is to be included in a complete and proper account of the causal powers of intuition, although these two latter cases are only conditional.