Online research in philosophy

In this paper, I argue that Ockham’s seemingly pessimistic epistemological assessments of what we can know about the human soul and its relation to the body reflect a sound appreciation of what is involved in the theoretical development of philosophy and natural science. In order to make my argument, I first undermine the idea that demonstration was a norm that scholastic disputation regularly expected to achieve; and second, I examine Ockham’s treatment of three major topics in psychology (thus illustrating how alternative intellectual standards were in play in scholastic disputation).

The purpose of this essay is to take issue with two aspects of Marilyn Adams's monumental work William Ockham . Part I deals with Ockham's ontology, arguing (i) that Adams does not sufficiently appreciate the use Ockham makes of the prinicple of ontological parsimony in his attempt to refute the thesis that there are extramental universals or common natures and (ii) that she sets an implausibly high standard of success for Ockham's project of showing that the only singular entities are substances and qualities. Part II argues that Adams fails to provide a convincing defense of Ockham's 'anti-secularist' answer to the question of how Christian thinkers should react to prima facie conflicts between the deliverances of faith and the deliverances of reason.

Let me begin somewhat perversely by making clear what I do not intend to do in this paper. I do not propose to offer a general defense of Ockham's resolution of the metaphysical perplexities engendered by the dogma of the Incarnation. In fact, I have argued elsewhere that his account of the hypostatic union is seriously deficient. 1..

Remember that for Ockham there is nothing in the universe that is in any way universal except a concept or word: there are no real natures shared by many things. However, things do resemble one another, some things more closely than others. So the various degrees of resemblance give a foundation in reality for our conceptual structures, such as Porphyry's tree. Now resemblance (or similitude or likeness) is a relation. If such relations are realities, then we can say that there are realities out there that correspond to our conceptual structures. But it won't surprise you to hear that Ockham denies that relations are realities out there in the world: or more exactly, he denies that relations are out there as realities additional to the things that are related. He wants to say that if Socrates is white and Plato is white then they are similar in respect of their whiteness, but their similarity is not something additional to Socrates and Plato and Socrates' whiteness and Plato's whiteness. Nothing is out there except absolute things.