In William Ockham on Metaphysics, Jenny E. Pelletier gives an account of Ockham's concept of metaphysics as the science of being and God as it emerges sporadically throughout his philosophical and theological work.

Part 1. Human capability in light of God's power -- Divine power and the creation -- God's will and human destiny -- Part 2. Human capability to understand God -- Human knowledge -- Human knowledge of God -- Part 3. Human capability in relation to doctrinal ordination -- Criteria of Christian authorities -- Philosophical freedom and doctrinal minimalism : two test cases -- Conclusion.

William Ockham joins the general view that in its natural capacities, the intellectual soul of Christ is nobler than any other human being’s soul, but he does not think that Christ is omniscient or omnipotent in his human nature. Despite this, Ockham genuinely believes that Christ did not sin during his earthly life. He did not have any intrinsically sinful acts which are acts of the will, nor even acts that can be extrinsically sinful, such as acts of (...) the sensory appetite like the desire to fornicate. Furthermore, Christ did not have the tinder of sin which inclines ordinary human beings to commit sinful acts. Christ had, instead, a kind of inner rebellion against reason and will. His sensory acts, such as feeling hungry, thirsty, and tired were not always in accordance with his reason and will. As viator, Christ had the greatest possible amount of delight. Since God miraculously prevented the sadness-excluding effect of beatitude and delight in his soul, there was at the same time sadness in him. In hea... (shrink)

Ockham holds what nowadays would be characterized as a “higher-order perception” theory of consciousness. Among the most common objections to such a theory is the charge that it gives rise to an infinite regress in higher-order states. In this paper, I examine Ockham’s various responses to the regress problem, focusing in particular on his attempts to restrict the scope of consciousness so as to avoid it. In his earlier writings, Ockham holds that we are conscious only of (...) those states to which we explicitly attend. This view, I go on to argue, is inadequate on both phenomenological and philosophical grounds. Interestingly, and perhaps for this very reason, in later works, Ockham goes on to develop an alternative explanation for his account of the limited scope of consciousness. (shrink)

Towards the end of Aline Medeiros Ramos’s study of John Buridan on craft as an intellectual virtue, she mentions William Ockham in passing and points towards his conception of craft. In this paper, I take up her implicit invitation to explore that conception. I begin by reconstructing Ockham’s notion of craft, and then proceed to discuss three consequences of that conception: the moral neutrality of craft, the role of deliberation in craftwork, and the epistemic status of craft and (...) the craftworker. I conclude by summarizing a number of issues that Buridan, according to Medeiros Ramos, finds it important to discuss, and which are noticeably absent from Ockham’s considerations. (shrink)

It has long been acknowledged that one of the most original aspects of Ockham’s account of knowledge is his contention that bodies of scientific knowledge are aggregates but without much explanation as to why he holds this view. In this chapter, I argue that a plausible philosophical motivation lies in the inner structure of his mental ontology, namely, in the intellect’s habits, acts, and their objects, which are the true and necessary principles and conclusions of demonstrations. Ockham upholds (...) what I call a “Principle of Object-Act-Habit-Specification,” according to which kinds of habits and their acts are determined by the objects they grasp. This principle entails that if a body of scientific knowledge contains two or more sentences, it can only have aggregate unity. Furthermore, I look at the logical and determinate orders that gather together the sentences of various aggregate bodies of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The recent revival of scientific interest in medieval texts is happily removing the long neglect of the scientific works of William Ockham. While a new edition of his political writings is being prepared in England, the late Father Boehner has initiated a school of study of his philosophical and theological works in New York. As the basic instrument to Ockham’s philosophical evaluation he insisted upon the understanding of Ockham’s systematic re-organization of Aristotelian logic, with some extraordinary anticipations (...) of modern mathematical logic, which he rigorously applied to solve his problems. Lack of appreciation of this logical power exposes us to misjudge, and possibly to charge him with scepticism, since Ockham drew a firm line between the evident presence and absence of proof in the strict sense. Establishing the text of the capital work, Summa Logicae occupied the last twenty years of Fr. Boehner’s life. The present accurate volume carries forward the edition to the second, and the first section of the third part. It expounds the logic of proposition and syllogism and is particularly rich on modal logic. It was composed, according to the editor’s final judgment at Avignon between 1324 and 1327. (shrink)

The recent revival of scientific interest in medieval texts is happily removing the long neglect of the scientific works of William Ockham. While a new edition of his political writings is being prepared in England, the late Father Boehner has initiated a school of study of his philosophical and theological works in New York. As the basic instrument to Ockham’s philosophical evaluation he insisted upon the understanding of Ockham’s systematic re-organization of Aristotelian logic, with some extraordinary anticipations (...) of modern mathematical logic, which he rigorously applied to solve his problems. Lack of appreciation of this logical power exposes us to misjudge, and possibly to charge him with scepticism, since Ockham drew a firm line between the evident presence and absence of proof in the strict sense. Establishing the text of the capital work, Summa Logicae occupied the last twenty years of Fr. Boehner’s life. The present accurate volume carries forward the edition to the second, and the first section of the third part. It expounds the logic of proposition and syllogism and is particularly rich on modal logic. It was composed, according to the editor’s final judgment at Avignon between 1324 and 1327. (shrink)

Sharon M. Kaye - Passions in William Ockham's Philosophical Psychology - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.2 330-332 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Sharon Kaye John Carroll University Vesa Hirvonen. Passions in William Ockham's Philosophical Psychology. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Mind, 2. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004. Pp. ix + 212. Cloth, €96.30. This volume is the second in a series aiming to produce monographs that "are (...) historically reliable as well as congenial to the contemporary reader" by providing "original insights into central contemporary problems" . The aim of this series is ambitious, yet sorely needed in scholarship today. As modern technology catapults our understanding of ourselves and the world into the future, history seems.. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper reconstructs William of Ockham's (c. 1287–1347) account of the ontology of social groups. Across his writings, Ockham mentions kingdoms, religious orders, crowds, people, armies, and corporations. Using the political community as a case-study against the background of Ockham’s metaphysics of parts and wholes, it is argued that at least some social groups are identical to a plurality of many human beings who have decided to order themselves with respect to another in some particular way. (...) In this regard, a social group is a structured aggregate that is nothing over and above its existing and ordered parts, and, at least in the case of the political community, is like an artefact inasmuch as it is partly dependent on the volitional acts of its members to exist at all. (shrink)

The paper describes W. Ockham’s theory of signification on the background of the classical medieval philosophy, with which Ockham comes to terms by the help of an original metaphysical-logical theory of sign having its effects also on the theory of universals. There are two approaches rejected by Ockham: First, the Aquinas’s theory of species which in Ockham’s view can not correspond to the really perceived world; secondly, from the metaphysical perspective he also rejects Scot’s metaphy- sics (...) and epistemology, whose terminology in his view was too detailed and expanded. Ockham’s logic and metaphysics intertwine in his theory of signification, which, seen from the semantic perspective, makes the resolution of the relationship between world and language reflecting the former possible. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs William of Ockham's account of the ontology of social groups. Across his writings, Ockham mentions kingdoms, religious orders, crowds, people, armies, and cor...

This massive study makes an important contribution to the history of philosophy for two reasons. First of all, it stands as the most complete and careful philosophical analysis of Ockham's thought to date. Adams's expositions and analyses will become the gloss which generations of students will have to reckon with as they confront the text of Ockham. Secondly, this work represents an exemplary method of philosophical commentary, one that proves to be a remarkably illuminating way into the mind (...) of a medieval scholastic disputant. Because Ockham's thought is intensely dialectical and argumentative, Adams appropriately exposes his doctrines through an exacting recovery of his argument within its dialogical context. For example, in the crucial chapter 2, "Universals Are Not Things other than Names," we come to understand Ockham's nominalism as it emerges from his rejection of moderate realism; Adams presents this rejection through a reconstruction of Ockham's encounter with the living tradition of Aquinas, Scotus, Walter Burleigh, William of Alnwick, Nervaeus Natalis, and Henry of Harclay. As the dialectic proceeds from figure to figure, the issue of the universal reshapes itself with great sophistication. Adams's formidable analytic powers and her sharp focus on the key philosophical issue enable her to succeed in this method. The reader also gets the sense that Adams herself believes one can come to truth through philosophical argument, and not just the truth of what Ockham taught but the truth of what he sought. This earnestness enables her to keep a fix on the dialectic's "emerging rule" which becomes the source of unity in what could otherwise degenerate into a bewildering complexity of historical detail or the vanity of analytic logic-chopping. (shrink)

L'A. si occupa della ricezione della logica occamista, soprattutto in Stefano da Reate , dedicata in grande parte alla confutazione della nova loyca, rappresentata soprattutto dalla Summa logicae di Ockham. Stefano informa anche sulla grande presenza presso i Domenicani del commento di Pietro d'Alvernia all'Isagoge di Porfirio oltre allo Scriptum super Artem veterem di Graziadei da Ascoli. Accanto a questi testi sono utilizzati anche il Tractatus de sencundis intentionibus e i Quodlibeta di Erveo Natale. L'A. esamina un caso esemplare (...) del dibattito tra Ockham e i Domenicani italiani riguardante la natura del genere. Esiste solo un altro caso di rifiuto del pensiero occamista, quello della Loyca di Francesco da Prato. Francesco e Stefano mostrano di essere soprattutto interessati alla confutazione del programma riduzionista di Ockham. L'A. prende in esame l'interpretazione di Francesco e Stefano sull'Isagoge di Porfirio. (shrink)

This article focuses on one aspect of the late mediaeval debate over divine power, as it was discussed by Oxford philosophers Walter Chatton (d. 1343) and William Ockham (d. 1347). Chatton and Ockham would have agreed, for example, that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of the works of Pablo Picasso, but they would not agree over wheher it violates God's omnipotence to say that he cannot make something that Picasso made, for example, the painting Guernica, without (...) using Picasso himself as an intermediate cause. The context of their dispute was a larger debate regarding the ontological status of relations. This article (1) explains how these two issues, omnipotence and relations, became so interestingly tangled together, (2) tries to see which of the two men mentioned above got the better of their exchange, and finally (3) draws out some important consequences for fourteenth-century discussions of causality, occasionalism, and omnipotence. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

How can the Body and Blood of Christ, without ever leaving heaven, come to be really present on eucharistic altars where the bread and wine still seem to be? Marilyn McCord Adams examines how this question and its answer engaged thirteenth and fourteenth century philosophical theologians.

This book examines the central ideas that defined the debate about divine production in the Trinity in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, namely those of Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William Ockham. Their discussions are significant for the history of trinitarian theology and the history of philosophy.