Abstract

ABSTRACTIn a recent book, Thomas Ward advances an original interpretation of Duns Scotus’s hylomorphism, which stresses the ability of the parts of certain kinds of composites to exist independently from each other and from the composite to which they belong. Ward argues that the notion of essential order plays a key role in accounting for the unity of those parts in a composite. In another book, Richard Cross gives a comprehensive treatment of Duns Scotus’s theory of cognition, which proposes an interesting but controversial interpretation of Duns Scotus as introducing a distinction between object and content and defending the view that the contents of intellectual cognitive acts are determined only by their internal structure.