Abstract
On the dominant interpretation, Ockham is an externalist about mental content. This reading is founded principally on his theory of intuitive cognition. Intuitive cognition plays a foundational role in Ockham’s account of concept formation and judgment, and Ockham insists that the content of intuitive states is determined by the causal relations such states bear to their objects. The aim of this chapter is to challenge the externalist interpretation by situating Ockham’s account of intuitive cognition vis-à-vis his broader account of efficient causation. While there can be no doubt that intuitive states are causally individuated, I argue that, given Ockham’s broader theory of efficient causation, this very fact entails that the content of such states is determined by factors internal (rather than external) to the states themselves.
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Notes
- 1.
Some of the earliest statements of this sort of interpretation are found in Normore (1990, 2003), but its leading champion is Claude Panaccio, who has done more than any other to develop, defend, and systematically incorporate the externalist reading into a broader interpretation of Ockham’s philosophy of mind. See, for example, Panaccio (2004, 2010, 2014, 2015). Other notable discussions, elaborations, and defenses of the externalist reading can be found in King (2005, 2007, 2015), Schierbaum (2010, 2014), Klima (2015), and Choi (2016). While the foregoing list represents explicit treatments of externalist themes in Ockham, the externalist interpretation echoes pervasively in the literature. Indeed, it is often merely taken for granted by scholars writing on any aspect of Ockham’s philosophy of mind.
- 2.
Cf. Ord. Prol. q. 1, OTh II, 49. All references are to Ockham unless otherwise stated.
- 3.
- 4.
See Ockham’s discussion at Ord. Prol. q. 1, OTh I, 31ff.
- 5.
Panaccio (2014, 62ff) offers a fuller treatment of the various connections between intuition and other mental states.
- 6.
I adopt, with slight modifications, Freddoso and Kelly’s translation of passages from the Quodlibetal Questions (Ockham 1991). All other translations of Latin texts are my own.
- 7.
Ockham himself calls attention to this result: “No simple abstractive cognition is more a likeness of one singular thing than of another maximally similar to it. […] Therefore, no such act is proper to a singular, rather every [abstractive act] whatsoever is general” (Quodl. I, q. 13, OTh IX, 76).
- 8.
Indeed this just the conclusion Panaccio (2015, 174) draws from this passage (and others like it).
- 9.
Commentators go one of two ways in their account of the individuation of concepts: either they claim that causality alone determines the content of our general concepts (Normore 1990, 2003; King 2005, 2007, 2015) or they suppose that both causation and similitude play a role (Panaccio 2015, 2010, 2004; Schierbaum 2010). More recently, Normore has changed his mind about abstractive states; he now seems to think only intuitive states are externally individuated. For details, see Normore (2010).
- 10.
This is a point that I think Philip Choi (2016) fails to appreciate in his recent article defending a kind of two-factor interpretation of Ockham’s theory of intuitive cognition. Choi (responding to my own earlier paper) is willing to concede that intuitive states are at least partly individuated by appeal to some internal feature of the state itself. However, Choi also wants to insist that intuitive states are, nonetheless, object-dependent. Hence, he claims that “there is an essential difference between the content of a natural, veridical intuitive cognition and that of a supernaturally produced intuitive cognition” (Choi 2016, 8). But his interpretation violates the very principle that motivates Ockham’s entire discussion of supernaturally caused intuitions—namely that every effect that God can bring about via a secondary cause he can bring about directly on his own. Ockham’s insistence on this principle is both explicit and unrelenting. For an illuminating discussion of this issue in Ockham’s philosophy see Keele (2007).
- 11.
In his 2010 paper, Panaccio directly addresses the challenge I had issued in Brower-Toland (2007).
- 12.
More precisely, Panaccio (2010) argues that these relations of counterfactual causal dependence are a result of a pre-ordained divine ordering of causes and effects. On Panaccio’s reading, God, as part of his creative activity, sets things up so that for each naturally producible thing “there is only one individual thing—or one possible individual thing—that is its possible cause in this natural ordering” (250). What this means, then, is that “what in general uniquely fixes what the singular cause of a thing is, is not an internal feature of the thing itself, but something else: namely, the natural order as designed by God” (250).
- 13.
To take just one example, consider the following passage from SL I, c. 38, “Being is divided into being in potentiality and being in actuality. This should not be understood to mean that something that can exist, but does not actually exist, is truly a being, or that something other than what actually exists is also a being” (OPh I, 108). What is more, Ockham has straightforward theological reasons for denying existence to possibilia. According to Ockham, God is the only being that exists necessarily—everything else is both created and contingent. This is likely why Ockham claims that all uncreated creatures (i.e. possibilia) exist only “in their cause” (namely, in God). See Ord. d. 36, q. 1, OTh IV, 550.
- 14.
Ockham’s stance on the ontological status of possibilia is a matter of some controversy. Some scholars deny commitment to such entities on Ockham’s part (e.g. Adams 1990; Freddoso 1980) others (e.g. Panaccio 1999; Spade 1999; McGrade 1985; Karger 1980) have argued that his semantics requires their postulation. But this is a contentious reading of his semantics. Calvin Normore (2012, 91–95), for example, argues against it.
- 15.
Ockham refers here (and elsewhere) to the natural cause a “partial” cause merely to signal the fact that even when a given creature functions as the complete natural cause, it nonetheless does not produce its effect without God’s concurrence.
- 16.
The Latin reads: “sed causa est quia omnis effectus naturaliter producibilis ex natura sua determinat sibi quod producatur ab una causa efficiente et non ab alia.”
- 17.
This is precisely the point Ockham goes on to make just after passage 6. Thus, he goes on to argue (and this is from the text cited above as passage 4): “any intention of a creature that is caused by God [is such that it] could be (partially) caused by a creature, even if, in fact, it is not so caused” (Rep. II, qq. 12–13, OTh V, 289).
- 18.
For an overview of Ockham’s views on causation that pays special attention to the role of active and passive powers, see Robert (2002).
- 19.
For example, scholastics disagree about whether action and passion are entities that belong only to the patient, and if so whether they are to be identified with one and the same entity in the patient. With regard to the latter question, for example, Scotus argues (against the standard view, which takes both action and passion as an entity that exists in the patient) that action exists in the agent and passion in the patient. For a brief summary of Scotus’s views on this score see Nielsen (2011, 381–382). But even among those who agree that action and passion exist in the patient, some resist the claim that they are to be identified with one and the same entity. Thus, Peter Auriol, for example, agrees that action and passion are both to be identified with something in the patient, but resists the claim that they are one and the same entity. See Nielsen (2011), Amerini (2014, 523–524), Frost (forthcoming), and Löwe (forthcoming).
- 20.
Here, I focus only on Ockham’s account of action, but he employs the same strategy in explaining the Aristotelian notion of passion. Thus, while “action” and “passion” are conceptually distinct, he insists that these expressions refer to one and the same entity: the effect in the patient. See his discussion at Summula III, c. 28, OPh VI, 333–334.
- 21.
- 22.
Of course, as Ockham points out, these things only suffice on the assumption that the fire is “present to” the water, which apparently just means that it is in contact with, or relevant proximity to, it. But it is worth keeping in mind that Ockham doesn’t regard relations as things, and hence doesn’t take “presence” or proximity as fourth thing to be considered alongside the other three. For more on Ockham’s theory of relations see Adams (1987, c. 7).
- 23.
In these cases, Ockham is also assuming that no impediment to the fire’s action is present.
- 24.
Cf. n. 19 above. See Keele (2007) for a discussion of Ockham’s debate with Walter Chatton over the status of causal relations.
- 25.
As the ensuing discussion makes clear, versions of both kinds of case can be found in Auriol. It may be, in fact, that the presence of these cases in subsequent debates about action and causality owes something to his influence.
- 26.
Löwe (forthcoming) cites several instances of this kind of example in Auriol. Adam Wodeham (at d. 3, q. 2 of his Lectura Secunda) also mentions such cases, though not so much to defend non-reductionism as to call attention to some of the implications of positions held by non-reductionists.
- 27.
In addition to the example from Auriol cited just below (from his Scriptum), see also his Quodlibet q. 2, a. 1 § 2.3.3.1.1) a critical edition of which can be found as an appendix to Nielsen (2011). Walter Chatton also uses this sort of case explicitly against Ockham in his Reportatio super Sententias I, d. 30, q. 1, a. 4, ed. Wey, 237. Discussion of this sort of example persists even in late-scholastic debates about action. As Jake Tuttle (2016) shows, Suárez relies on just this sort of case in defense of his non-reductionist account of action.
- 28.
Here I rely on Russell Friedman’s critical edition of this text available at http://www.peterauriol.net.
- 29.
Indeed, Ockham considers a case almost identical to Auriol’s case 2 at Quodl. VII, q. 3. Here, however, Ockham appears to be responding to Chatton, not Auriol.
- 30.
Despite the fact that Ockham makes this claim in a couple of different contexts, opponents apparently charged him with inconsistency on this point. In fact, the two main contexts in which he explicitly asserts that there cannot be two total causes of numerically one effect he notes that this claim might appear to run counter to things he has said elsewhere. But, then, he also goes on to attempt to explain away this apparent inconsistency. See for example his remarks in Rep. IV, q. 12, OTh VII, 249–50. See also Rep. II, qq. 12–13, OTh V, 288–289. Marilyn Adams (1987, 759–765) traces Ockham’s various remarks about total causes throughout his entire corpus.
- 31.
Rep. IV, q. 12, OTh VII, 250. A total cause is, roughly, the entity (or entities) the existence of which is (in appropriate circumstances) sufficient for the existence the effect. For Ockham’s more careful definition see Summula II, c.3, OPh VI, 219.
- 32.
As Ockham puts it elsewhere: “it is necessary that an effect determine for itself one and not another agent of the same nature so that it can be produced by the one and not the other” (Rep. II, qq. 12–13, OTh 5, 288–289).
- 33.
Or, if an effect is such that more than one agent can produce it, this is only, Ockham insists, because “it could not be from just one of them alone; and, as a result, with respect to that effect these agents are partial causes even if with respect to some other effects they could be total causes” (Rep. IV, q. 12, OTh VII, 250).
- 34.
Although Ockham doesn’t say this expressly in his discussion at Quodl. VII, q. 3 (where the sufficiency argument quoted in passage 9 occurs) he does, in that context, refer his reader to previous quodlibets in which he responds to supernatural counterexamples to the same sort of sufficiency argument—notably, Quodl. I, q. 5 and Quodl. VI, q. 12. In these latter two discussions, he does make clear that such arguments are restricted to cases in which God is not working a miracle.
- 35.
For a contemporary defense of such a view see Heil (2016).
- 36.
Interestingly, Ockham takes it to be an implication of his position (one that he willingly embraces) that numerically one and the same effect can re-occur multiple times. For example, say a fire acts on a given bit of matter to produce heat in it. Then suppose the matter is removed from the fire, allowing the heat to dissipate completely. Ockham holds that were that same matter brought into proximity to the same fire, the same effect—that is, the very heat that existed before—would be produced again (resurrected, as it were). See QP q. 31, OPh VI, 473–476.
- 37.
Indeed, Ockham insists, “even though there is a maximal, essential ordering and dependence between a cause and its effect, still a non-propositional cognitive grasp of the one does not include non-propositional grasp of the other thing” (Ord. Prol. q. 9, OTh I, 241).
- 38.
Cf. Rep. II, q. 15, OTh V, 379.
- 39.
I’m not the only one to notice this sort of connection between Ockham’s discussion of angelic mind-reading and his broader theory of about the scope and limits of creaturely knowledge of causal connections. See Adams (1979, 29ff).
- 40.
Many thanks to Jeff Brower for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
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Brower-Toland, S. (2017). Causation and Mental Content: Against the Externalist Reading of Ockham. In: Pelletier, J., Roques, M. (eds) The Language of Thought in Late Medieval Philosophy. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66634-1_4
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