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Intuitive Cognition and Divine Omnipotence: Ockham in Fourteenth-Century Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Rega Wood
Rega Wood*
Affiliation:
The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonavenrure University, St. Bonavenrure, New York
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Extract

When someone calls Ockham a philosophical skeptic, he is usually claiming that Ockham denied that our knowledge of the external world is based on certain apprehensions. To discuss this claim requires an understanding of Ockham’s doctrine of intuitive cognition. According to Ockham—and Scotus from whom he derived this view—knowledge of our internal states and the external world is acquired by an intuitive grasp of the facts of existence and presence. But Ockham criticized Scotus on intuitive cognition, holding that Scotus’ views must be modified because God is limited only by the principle of contradiction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 5: From Ockham to Wyclif , 1987 , pp. 51 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987 

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References

1 Scotus, , Opus Oxon. IV, d. 45, q. 2, n. 12Google Scholar; q. 3, n. 17; d. 49, q. 8, n. 5, ed. Wadding X (Lyons 1639) 182, 207, 498; Quodlibet VI, a. 1, nn. 20-1, ed. Alluntis (Madrid 1968) 214-5.

2 Quodlibet VI, a. I, nn. 18-19; XIII, a. 2, nn. 27-42 (ed. Alluntis, 212, 455-62); Opus Oxon. IV, d. 49, q. 12, n. 6 (ed. Wadding X, 574). For a further account of Scotus’ views see Day, S., Intuitive Cognition (St. Bonaventura, N.Y. 1947)Google Scholar; Berube, C., La connaissance de l’individuel (Paris, 1964) 176–224Google Scholar; Honnefelder, L., Ens inquantum ens, Beitraege zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, NF 16 (1979) 218–53Google Scholar; Boler, J., ‘Intuitive and abstractive cognition,’ pp. 460–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Aureol, , Scriptum, prol., q. 2, a. 2, nn. 102-111, ed. Buytaert, Eligius M. (St. Bonaventura, N.Y. 1952) 203–6.Google Scholar

4 Aureol, , Scriptum I, prol., q. 2, a. 2, nn. 93-5Google Scholar; a. 4, n. 120 (ed. Buytaert I, 200-2, 209); Aureol’s experiential argument and the reaction against it is described in Wood, R., ‘Adam Wodeham on Sensory Illusions,’ Tradilio 38 (1982) 213–34.Google Scholar

5 Quodlibet 12, q. 1, ed. J. Hoffmans, Les Philosophes Belges V (Louvain 1932) 78-82.

6 See Bernardus Guidonis as quoted in Quetif, J. and Echard, J., Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatomm, I, pars II (Paris 1719-23; repr. New York 1959) 533.Google Scholar

7 Hervaeus’ Quodlibet IV, q. 11 is a reply to the Reportado preserved in Borgh. 123, not to the Scriptum of 1316. Hervaeus’ Quodlibet IV, q. 11 quotes briefer versions of Aureol’s arguments than found in the Scriptum, and it includes two arguments not found in the Scriptum —namely an argument de rebus remotis and an argument that things which appear curved or prominent at a distance may in fact be flat or straight. Aureol, Scriptum, prol., q. 2, a. 2, nn. 93-5, 1, 200-2; Hervaeus, Quodlibet IV q. 11, fol. 110 (misnumbered 107) rb; Ph. Boehner, ‘Notitia Intuitiva of Non Existents According to Peter Aureoli’, Franciscan Studies 8 (1948) 412-13.

8 Quodlibet II, q. 5, fol. 41va-vb; III, q. 8, fol. 78rb-79rb; IV, q. 11, fol. 110rb-11ra.

9 Scriptum, I, prol., q. 1, ed. G. Gàl and S. Brown (OTh I, 31, 70-1).

10 At the end of his quodlibetal treatment of this subject, Ockham adds an incomplete and puzzling reply to Chatton which seems somewhat to resemble Mirecourt’s later treatment of the subject. Ockham holds that it is a fallacy to claim that God could cause evident cognition of an object’s presence by himself without the object. But instead of pointing to the meaning of evident knowledge, he says that it is similar to the fallacious argument: since God can cause a meritorious act by means of the will of a creature, he could do so on his own. The fallacy arises because of the different connotations of the terms in the antecedent and the conclusion. Summa logicae, OPh I, 506; Scriptum, prol., OTh 1, 71; Quodlibet V, q. 5, OTh IX, 496, 498-500.

11 Scriptum I, d. 27, OTh IV, 243-50.

12 Boler criticizes Ockham for not telling ‘us how to distinguish cognitions from deceptive creditive acts’. But if we could make such a distinction, then how could we be deceived, except by our own stupidity? Potentially infallible cognition for people would be a much greater limitation on God’s power than any of the participants in this discussion even discussed. ‘Inruirive cognition’, p. 471; Ockham, Quodlibet V, q. 5, OTh IX, 498.

13 See the similar case of commanding evil, Quaestiones in II Sententiarum, quaest. 19, ed. G. Gál and R. Wood, Opera Theologica V, 352-4.

14 Chatton, Gualterus, Lecturae in I Sent., prol., q. 2, ed. O’Callaghan, J., ‘The Second Quesrion of the Prologue to Walter Chatton’s Commentary on the Sentences,’ Nine Mediaeval Thinkers, ed. O’Donnell, J. R. (Toronto, 1955), 248–9.Google Scholar

15 Ibid. pp. 242-3, 248-9.

16 Lecturae, prol., q. 2 (ed. O’Callaghan, 244-5).

17 Wodeham, , Lectura secunda, prol., q. 6, quoted in Wood, , ‘Adam Wodeham’, p. 220n.Google Scholar

18 Though John Rodyngton, a Franciscan who incepted at about 1330, says that many concede that God can deceive, of the authors studied here only Wodeham does so. Rodyngton, for example, admits the possibility that God can cause error while denying that God deceives on the grounds that deception implies bad will. Ioannes de Rodyngton, Sent. I, d. 2, q. 3 (cod. Vat. lat. 5306, fol. 70vb; quoted in Prezioso, ‘La teoria’, p. 40, nn. 1-3).

19 Lectura secunda, prol., q. 6, na 77-8, cod. Cambridge, Gonville-Caius 281/674, fol. 127ra.

20 Lectura secunda, prol., q. 6, quoted in Wood, ‘Adam Wodeham’, p. 23211.

21 The truths specified by Mirecourt here are the principle of contradiction and truths known by a priori demonstration, such as the existence of God, inferred from the existence of a dependent being, the soul. But note that Mirecourt does not allow the existence of God to be demonstrable except in the narrowest sense, namely that an independent being exists. Sent., prol. q. 4, q. 6, pp. 424, 437-49; Apologia prima, ed. Friedrich Stegmueller, ‘Die zwei Apologien des Jean de Mirecourt’, Recherches de Theologie ancienne et medievale 5 (1933), 66-7.

22 That is unless they are rectified (nisi aliunde rectificare). Unlike Wodeham, however, Mirecourt does not specify per rationem vet experientiam aliunde. Neste, Roy J. Van, ‘A Reappraisal of the Su posed Skepticism of John of Mirecourt,’ Recherches de Theologie ancienne et medievale 44 (1977) 107Google Scholar. Note also that Mirecourt does not allow the existence of God to be demonstrable except in the narrowest sense, namely that an independent being exists. Sent., prol. q. 4, q. 6, pp. 424, 437-49; Apologia prima, pp. 66-7.

23 Apologia prima, p. 67; Sent., prol., q. I, 6, pp. 323-28, 445-6.

24 Neste, Van, ‘The Supposed Skepticism,’ pp. 107–8, 125.Google Scholar

25 Apologia prima, pp. 51-6.

26 Sent., prol., q. 1, 2 and 6, pp. 323-30, 445-6; Apologia prima, pp. 67-8.