William of Ockham

in Handbook of the Philosophy of Information, J. van Behthem and P. Adriaans, eds., to appear.

Intellective intuitive cognition plays a key role in William of Ockham’s philosophy. On many occasions, Walter Chatton argues that this kind of cognition is unnecessary. Chatton has two main arguments for his point. First, he raises doubts about the possibility of distinguishing intellective intuitive cognition from sensory intuitive cognition. The former always arises with the latter, and whatever we can explain through the former, we can explain equally well through the latter. Second, he argues that we cannot separate the intellective (...) intuitive cognition of a singular thing from the cognition of the species of that thing. We cannot intuitively and intellectively cognize a thing without recognizing that thing as a thing of a certain kind. Chatton’s conclusion is that since we can never experience an act of intellective intuitive cognition in itself, it is superfluous to posit this act of cognition. We can explain the singular cognition of an extramental singular simply by making the cognition of its species and the sensory intuitive cognition of it interact with each other. (shrink)

We highlight the fundamental influence that the work of Alasdair Urquhart has had in the area of distributive lattice-ordered algebras and in particular to the development of Ockham algebras, to which we attach some new results.

The article analyses the concept of actual infinity in William of Ockham’s thought, thanks to a close reading of his writings, first those on physics, where he argues more than once the existence of the actual infinity, intended as a set of infinite parts in act present in a continuum. By virtue of this representation of infinity, Ockham also states that two sets with infinite parts are not necessarily equal, but one of the two can be greater than the other, (...) as would happen with the revolutions of the moon and the sun in an endless time. Nonetheless, in the theological works, the Franciscan seems to have apparently a different position, since he denies the possibility of the actual infinity, either as a set of infinite entities existing all simultaneously, or as an infinite entity, since in both cases a limit would be placed on God’s omnipotence. Ockham instead demonstrates that he has a double vision of the actual infinity, similar to that of Cantor, as already proposed by Annaliese Maier. The essay will therefore show the compatibility of Ockham’s physics and theological writings by virtue of the different meanings of infinity. (shrink)

Review of William of Ockham, Questions on Virtue, Goodness, and the Will, ed. and tr. Eric W. Hagedorn (Cambridge University Press, 2021), in Metascience (2021.

Ockham’s own formulations of his Razor state that one should only include a given entity in one’s ontology when one has either sensory evidence, demonstrative argument, or theological authority in favor of it. But how does Ockham decide which theological claims to treat as data for theory construction? Here I show how over time (perhaps in no small part due to pressure and attention from ecclesiastical censors) Ockham refined and changed the way he formulated his Razor, particularly the “authority clause” (...) that states that authoritative theological pronouncements constitute a reason for postulating entities in one’s ontology. This refinement proceeded across three stages, culminating in the political writings of the final period of his life, in which Ockham offers reasons (not previously mentioned in scholarly discussions of Ockham’s Razor) against granting ecclesial authority any significant role to play in settling ontological questions. (shrink)

Ockham developed two theories to explain the intentionality of memory: one theory that takes previously perceived things to be the objects of memory, and another that takes one’s own earlier acts of perceiving to be the objects of memory. This paper examines both theories, paying particular attention to the reasons that motivated Ockham to give up the first theory in favor of the second. It argues that the second theory is to be understood as a theory of double intentionality. At (...) the core of this theory is the thesis that one directly remembers one’s own acts, and indirectly also the objects of these acts. The paper analyzes the cognitive mechanism that makes this double intentionality possible and examines the causal account that Ockham gave for explaining the emergence of acts of remembering. It emphasizes that he accepted nothing more than a causal chain of acts and habits, thereby offering an ontologically parsimonious theory of memory. (shrink)

One version of moral error theory maintains that the central problem with morality is an ontological commitment to irreducible normativity. This paper argues that this version of error theory ultimately depends on an appeal to Ockham’s Razor, and that Ockham’s Razor should not be applied to irreducible normativity. This is because the appeal to Ockham’s Razor always contains an intractable element of epistemic circularity; and if this circularity is not vicious, we can construct a sound argument for the existence of (...) irreducibly normative truths that contains a similar kind of epistemic circularity. This argument is a version of Pascal’s Wager which I call “Parfit’s Wager,” because it is based on a passage from Derek Parfit’s On What Matters. It states that, if we believe that there are some irreducibly normative truths, we are more likely to be believing what we ought to believe compared to not believing that there are such truths, and that this indicates that we ought rationally to believe that there are such truths, justifying the ontological commitment to irreducible normativity in the process. (shrink)

In the most recent monograph on William of Ockham’s political writings, Takashi Shogimen rightly asserts that “there is no such thing as the ‘standard’ view of the Venerabilis Inceptor as a political thinker.”1 This could be said of many medieval writers, but the extent to which it is true of Ockham is noteworthy. Who else has been described as both “a constitutional liberal” and “an anarchist?”2 Was he a “meticulous deconstructor of church and polity” who “irredeemably undermined the foundations of (...) institutions” or “a true theologian” caught up in a “political and doctrinal hurricane?”3 As Tierney notes, we are “not dealing with a schizophrenic,” so it is impossible for these diverse categorizations of Ockham’s... (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether future contingents are knowable, that is, whether one can know that things will go a certain way even though it is possible that things will not go that way. First I will consider a long-established view that implies a negative answer, and draw attention to some endemic problems that affect its credibility. Then I will sketch an alternative line of thought that prompts a positive answer: future contingents are knowable, although our epistemic access of (...) them is limited in some important respects. (shrink)

Resumen El concepto de scientia plasmado en la obra de Guillermo de Ockham considera, en primer lugar, la teoría de la suposición, la cual transforma la visión del conocimiento evidente a partir del examen de términos y proposiciones como signos de las cosas. En segundo lugar, el conocimiento intuitivo de los singulares, el cual posibilita la formulación de proposiciones necesarias que describen hechos y estados de cosas. En tercer lugar, una perspectiva lógica de scientia como conjuntos de proposiciones que configuran (...) las distintas ciencias.The concept of scientia established in William of Ockham's work considers firstly, the theory of supposition, which transforms the view of the evident knowledge based on the analysis of terms and propositions as signs of things. Secondly, the intuitive knowledge of singulars, which allows the formulation of necessary propositions that describe facts and state of affairs. Thirdly, a logical approach of science as set of propositions that configure the different sciences. (shrink)

The methods of intellectual history have not yet been applied to studying the invention of technology for printing texts and images ca. 1375–ca. 1450. One of the several conceptual developments in this period refl ecting the possibility of mechanical replication is a view of the relationship of eternity to durational time based on Gregory of Nyssa’s philosophy of time and William of Ockham’s. Th e article considers how changes in these ideas helped enable the conceptual possibilities of the dissemination of (...) ideas. It describes a direct connection of human perceptual knowledge to divine knowledge that enhanced the authority of printed production to transfer and reproduce the true and the good. (shrink)

Claude Lafleur et Joanne Carrier En tant qu’introduction générale aux commentaires d’Ockham sur la logique, celle de Porphyre et d’Aristote, l’Expositionis in libros artis logice Prohemium traite la nature de cette discipline, de son sujet, de son utilité, de sa spécificité et de son statut épistémologique. La nouvelle traduction française ici offerte est accompagnée d’une édition annotée qui restitue l’orthographe médiévale du latin d’Ockham. Il en va de même pour la nouvelle traduction du début du premier commentaire logique d’Ockham, l’Expositio (...) in librum Porphirii De predicabilibus, dont le moment fort est l’interprétation des questions de Porphyre sur les universaux. (shrink)

Les Questiones in libros Phisicorum Aristotelis, putativement discutées en public au Studium franciscain de Londres par Ockham avant son départ d’Angleterre pour Avignon au printemps 1324, s’ouvrent par sept questions sur la nature du concept. Sont ici offertes une traduction française et une édition orthographique, avec un tableau de correspondance intertextuelle, de ce De conceptu, qui, massivement, paraît avoir été « magistralement » compilé à partir de l’excursus de l’Expositio in Prohemium libri Peryermenias Aristotelis, aussi traduit et édité de la (...) sorte, ci-dessus, dans ce dossier. (shrink)

Les Questiones in libros Phisicorum Aristotelis, putativement discutées en public au Studium franciscain de Londres par Ockham avant son départ d’Angleterre pour Avignon au printemps 1324, s’ouvrent par sept questions sur la nature du concept. Sont ici offertes une traduction française et une édition orthographique, avec un tableau de correspondance intertextuelle, de ce De conceptu, qui, massivement, paraît avoir été « magistralement » compilé à partir de l’excursus de l’Expositio in Prohemium libri Peryermenias Aristotelis, aussi traduit et édité de la (...) sorte, ci-dessus, dans ce dossier. The Questiones in Libros Phisicorum Aristotelis, putatively discussed in public at the Franciscan Studium of London by Ockham before leaving England for Avignon in the spring of 1324, opens with seven questions about the nature of the concept. Here are offered a French translation and an orthographic edition, with an intertextual correspondence table, of this De conceptu, which, massively, appears to have been “magistrally” compiled from the excursus of the Expositio in Prohemium libri Peryermenias Aristotelis, also translated and edited in this way, above, in this dossier. (shrink)

En tant qu’introduction générale aux commentaires d’Ockham sur la logique, celle de Porphyre et d’Aristote, l’Expositionis in libros artis logice Prohemium traite la nature de cette discipline, de son sujet, de son utilité, de sa spécificité et de son statut épistémologique. La nouvelle traduction française ici offerte est accompagnée d’une édition annotée qui restitue l’orthographe médiévale du latin d’Ockham. Il en va de même pour la nouvelle traduction du début du premier commentaire logique d’Ockham, l’Expositio in librum Porphirii De predicabilibus, (...) dont le moment fort est l’interprétation des questions de Porphyre sur les universaux. As a general introduction to Ockham’s commentaries on logic, that of Porphyry and Aristotle, the Expositionis in libros artis logice Prohemium deals with the nature of this discipline, its subject, its utility, its specificity, and of its epistemological status. The new French translation offered here is accompanied by an annotated edition that reproduces the medieval spelling of Ockham’s Latin. The same goes for the new translation of the beginning of Ockham’s first logical commentary, the Expositio in librum Porphirii De predicabilibus, whose highlight is the interpretation of Porphyry’s questions on universals. (shrink)

Claude Lafleur et Joanne Carrier Suivant l’ordre traditionnel à son époque d’un cours sur la « Vieille Logique », ou Ars Vetus, Ockham, après avoir commenté l’Isagoge de Porphyre et les Catégories d’Aristote, en vient à son Expositio in librum Perihermenias Aristotelis, dont on offre ici une traduction française et une édition orthographique de la partie considérée alors comme le Proême, une partie divisée elle-même en trois parties — l’exégèse du Vénérable incepteur insistant très fortement sur le début de la (...) deuxième partie et, de façon notable, encore plus spécialement sur ce que signifie une « passion de l’âme », autrement dit, pour Ockham lui-même et surtout pour nous, un « concept ». (shrink)

Suivant l’ordre traditionnel à son époque d’un cours sur la « Vieille Logique », ou Ars Vetus, Ockham, après avoir commenté l’Isagoge de Porphyre et les Catégories d’Aristote, en vient à son Expositio in librum Perihermenias Aristotelis, dont on offre ici une traduction française et une édition orthographique de la partie considérée alors comme le Proême, une partie divisée elle-même en trois parties — l’exégèse du Vénérable incepteur insistant très fortement sur le début de la deuxième partie et, de façon (...) notable, encore plus spécialement sur ce que signifie une « passion de l’âme », autrement dit, pour Ockham lui-même et surtout pour nous, un « concept ». Following the traditional order in his time of a course on “Old Logic”, or Ars Vetus, Ockham, after commenting on Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories, comes to his Expositio in librum Perihermenias Aristotelis, of which is offered here a French translation and an orthographic edition of the part considered then as the Proem, a part itself divided in three parts — the exegesis of the Venerable Inceptor insisting very strongly on the beginning of the second part and, notably, even more especially on what a “passion of the soul” means, in other words, for Ockham himself and particularly for us, a “concept”. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham disagree over how and whether virtues are specified by their objects. For Thomas, habits and acts are specified by their formal objects. For instance, the object of theft is something that belongs to someone else, and more particularly theft is distinct from robbery because theft is the open taking of another’s good, whereas robbery is open and violent. A habit such as a virtue or a vice shares or takes the act’s (...) object. For Scotus, although the same virtue or act cannot have objects which differ formally, different virtues and acts can have an object which is identical according to its formal ratio, in the way that the different theological virtues might even formally have God as their object. Ockham accepts Scotus’s view that charity and hope are two kinds of love, we will see how, unlike Scotus, he argues that these theological virtues differ on account of their immediate complex objects. The disagreement between these three figures raises important difficulties concerning what it even means to be a formal object. (shrink)

Claude Panaccio Guillaume d’Ockham rejette l’existence des universaux, des relations et des quantités à titre d’entités distinctes, mais il reconnaît en même temps que la vérité des énoncés généraux, des énoncés relationnels et des énoncés quantitatifs dépend pour l’essentiel de ce qui se passe objectivement dans le monde. On montre ici comment l’idée ockhamiste de chose résout cette tension apparente et l’on reconstruit à partir de là le programme nominaliste qui est celui d’Ockham : établir l’ontologie la plus économique possible (...) et la défendre par une théorie sémantique appropriée. (shrink)

This article investigates the relation between the will and evil in Ockham’s thought. The main purpose is to show to what extent the deliberate and conscious will of evil (velle malum sub ratione mali) is possible according to Ockham’s psychological and metaethical assumptions.

Il volume ripercorre lo sviluppo del pensiero del giovane Nicola Cusano dalla frequentazione del maestro albertista Eimerico da Campo presso l’Università di Colonia (1425) e dal confronto con le posizioni filosofiche dei domenicani dello Studium coloniense, fino agli anni della maturità a Roma (1450). Il saggio illustra il contesto storico-culturale della genesi del De docta ignorantia, testo che suggella la presa di distanza di Cusano dal proprio passato universitario ma anche, al contempo, la sua insoddisfazione nei confronti dell’umanesimo diffuso in (...) Italia negli anni del Concilio di Ferrara-Firenze; e lo segue nella sua ‘caccia della Sapienza’, nell’incontro con differenti tradizioni e contesti, fino alla formulazione dell’ideale del ‘Socrate cristiano’ nell’Idiota. Il volume, riccamente documentato anche sul piano della storia delle interpretazioni e degli studi su Cusano, contribuisce a far luce sulla formazione del suo pensiero e sulle questioni che ne hanno segnato la vita. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the recent secondary literature on Ockham’s philosophy of mind, it has been debated whether Ockham proposed an externalist or an internalist view of the intentional contents of intuitive...

An overview of debates in ethical theory within Christian Scholasticism in the decades after Thomas Aquinas.

This light revision of Bornholdt's doctoral thesis (Würzburg, 2015) is effectively a medievally-oriented follow-up to Richard Gaskin’s 'The Sea Battle and the Master Argument' (1995). The book is stimulating from a philosophical point of view, but the exegesis is disappointingly unreliable.

The focus of this paper is Ockham's stance on the question of divine concurrence---the question whether God is causally active in the causal happenings of the created world, and if so, what God's causal activity amounts to and what place that leaves for created causes. After discussing some preliminaries, I turn to presenting what I take to be Ockham's account. As I show, Ockham, at least in this issue, is rather conservative: he agrees with the majority of medieval thinkers (including (...) Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and others) that both God and created agents are causally active in the causal happenings of the world. Then I turn to some texts that may suggest otherwise; I argue that reading Ockham as either an occasionalist or a mere conservationist based on these texts originates from a misunderstanding of his main concern. I conclude with raising and briefly addressing some systematic worries regarding Ockham's account of concurrence. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 56, Issue 3-4, pp 201 - 221 This paper summarizes medieval definitions and divisions of consequences and explains the import of the medieval development of the theory of consequence for logic today. It then introduces the various contributions to this special issue of _Vivarium_ on consequences in medieval logic.

Ockham's razor asks that we not multiply entities beyond necessity. The razor is a powerful methodological tool, enabling us to articulate reasons for preferring one theory to another. There are those, however, who would modify the razor. Schaffer, for one, tells us that, ‘I think the proper rendering of Ockham's razor should be ‘Do not multiply fundamental entities without necessity’’. Our aim, here, is to challenge such re-workings of Ockham's razor.

Relatively recent literature on supposition theory seems to use different modern logical tools of interpretation that can be generally described as formalizations. Since the act of formalizing may be understood as a process of changing its object in the sense of making it more formal, an assessment of this kind of approaches is necessary. Accordingly, our main goal in this paper is to analyze the formality of Peter of Spain’s theory of supposition and to evaluate its interpretation as a quantification (...) theory. Our main thesis is that although Peter’s theory presents certain weak notions of formality, the formality presupposed by the quantificational interpretation is nowhere to be found in his considerations. (shrink)

In this paper, I proceed from the assumption that Ockham’s account of self-awareness can be correctly described as a kind of higher-order approach, because just like modern higher-order theorists, Ockham accounts for a mental act being conscious in terms of a higher-order act that takes the act as its object. I aim to defend Ockham’s approach against the objection that it fails to provide an explanation of how self-awareness comes about because any such explanation would be circular. Part of the (...) critique, in light of recent findings in Ockham scholarship, is that the ontological identity of the subject does not suffice to explain – in a non-circular way – the psychological identity and unity of the subject of awareness. Here, I argue that Ockham can respond to this objection by highlighting the power of will. Roughly speaking, the idea is that he can account for the limits of the psychological subject in terms of what the subject can want or will with respect to her own acts and these acts alone. It is along these lines that Ockham can account for the asymmetry between first-person and third-person perspective in a non-circular way, with reference to the exotic case of angelic mind-reading and the comparatively less exotic case of human memory. (shrink)

Although Descartes’s ideas regarding consciousness and memory have been studied extensively, few attempts have been made to address their systemic relations. In order to redress this deficiency, I argue in favor of three interrelated theses. The first is that intellectual memory has a crucial role to play in Descartes’s concept of consciousness, especially when it comes to explaining higher forms of consciousness. Second, the connection between memory and consciousness has been obscured by the fact that intellectual memory, taken as a (...) subject in its own right, was relatively neglected in Descartes’s philosophy: By and large, his views on the matter remained within the limits of late scholastic Scotism. Third, what makes the question of intellectual memory so fascinating in Descartes is not some ground-breaking insight into its nature; rather, it is his gradual recognition of the role that intellectual memory plays in the constitution of higher forms of consciousness. With these arguments, and relying on Descartes’s 1648 correspondence with Antoine Arnauld, where he progressed beyond the substance-based approach to the self, I try to show that he deserves to be credited with a more prominent status in the history of the self and personhood than has previously been the case. (shrink)

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 paper 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 (on which causation turns out to be an internal relation), this very fact entails that the content of such states is determined by factors internal (rather than external) to the states themselves. (shrink)

In discussions about the existence of God, it is sometimes claimed that the progress of science has removed the need for God. This paper uses a Bayesian analysis of Ockham’s razor to formulate and evaluate this argument, which is referred to as the science explains away God argument. Four different strategies for responding to this argument are presented and evaluated. It is argued that one of these strategies highlights how difficult it is to show that the conditions for applying Ockham’s (...) razor are satisfied and hence why SEAGA is very unlikely to succeed. (shrink)

The focus of the article is the self-predication principle, according to which the/a such-and-such is such-and-such. We consider contemporary approaches (Frege, Russell, Meinong) to the self-predication principle, as well as fourteenth-century approaches (Burley, Ockham, Buridan). In crucial ways, the Ockham-Buridan view prefigures Russell’s view, and Burley’s view shows a striking resemblance to Meinong’s view. In short the Russell-Ockham-Buridan view holds: no existence, no truth. The Burley-Meinong view holds, in short: intelligibility suffices for truth. Both views approach self-predication in a uniform (...) way. We were unable to find a medieval philosopher who, like Frege, approaches self-predication in a non-uniform way. We do not want to dispute that there are also considerable differences between the contemporary and the fourteenth-century approach to self-predication. Importantly, fourteenth-century accounts of self-predication rely strongly on the identity theory of predication, and this theory is not endorsed by contemporary philosophers of language. Nevertheless, some basic tenets seem to us to be clearly shared between fourteenth-century and contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

Ockham has a very particular definition of modality: every term that is predicable of a whole sentence is a modal term. His definition reaches well beyond “necessary,” “possible,” “contingent” and “impossible,” including predicates such as “known” and “believed,” but also “written” and “spoken.” He provides a general framework for inferences including every term covered by his definition of modality. However, there is a proper modal syllogistic in Ockham only for the Aristotelian modalities, that combines two distinct semantic apparatus, constituted by (...) Ockhamist modal predicates, on the one hand, and by modal and modally modified copulae, on the other. For the development of a syllogistic for the Aristotelian modalities, both are needed. There is no similar apparatus for other modalities in Ockham. (shrink)

Ockham’s approach to the problem of the instant of change as it is found in the Summa logicae i, chapter 5, and ii, chapter 19, is usually described as “purely logical,” narrowing the treatment of “begins” and “ceases” to simplistic cases. The aim of this paper is to complement our knowledge of Ockham’s position on the problem of the instant of change by analysing the treatment of the problem he gives in his questions on the Physics 98-101. In these passages, (...) Ockham adopts a “physical approach” in order to deal with problems related to the continuity of alteration and the production of the form of the mix from elementary qualities. To solve these problems, he is compelled to give up one of the most important claims at the basis of the logical approach that he adopted in the Summa logicae, namely that the distinction between permanent and successive entities is not relevant in the assignment of truth-conditions to propositions containing the aspectual verbs “beginning” and “ceasing.”. (shrink)

This book examines William Langland’s late medieval poem, The Vision of Piers Plowman, in light of contemporary intellectual thought. David Strong argues that where the philosophers John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham revolutionize the view of human potential through their theories of epistemology, ethics, and freedom of the will, Langland vivifies these ideas by contextualizing them in an individual’s search for truth and love. Specifically, the text ponders the intersection between reason and the will in expressing love. While scholars (...) have consistently noted the text’s indebtedness to these higher strains of thought, this is the first book-length study in over thirty years that explores the depth of this interconnection, and the only one that considers the salience of both Scotus and Ockham. It is essential reading for medieval literary specialists and students as well as any cultural historian who desires to augment their knowledge of truth. (shrink)

In his De primo et ultimo instanti, Walter Burley paid careful attention to continuity, assuming that continua included and were limited by indivisibles such as instants, points, ubi, degrees of quality, or mutata esse. In his Tractatus primus, Burley applied the logic of first and last instants to reach novel conclusions about qualities and qualitative change. At the end of his Quaestiones in libros Physicorum Aristotelis, William of Ockham used long passages from Burley’s Tractatus primus, sometimes agreeing with Burley and (...) sometimes disagreeing. How may this interaction between Burley and Ockham be understood within its historical context? (shrink)

One of the founding myths of analytic philosophy is that the predicate logic that was developed in the late 19th century was far more powerful than its predecessors. This ambitious book argues on the contrary that medieval philosophers developed "a system of logic that is similar to the predicate calculus in richness and power" – or that, as Parsons put it in his presidential address to the APA, "the core of medieval logic is as accurate and as expressive as the (...) core of contemporary logic.". (shrink)