There is broad agreement in the medieval tradition that we conceive things in the world owing to the transmission of intelligible content through various media that culminates in the concept by which something in the world is cognitively present for us. Yet how the intelligible content is transmitted along with the nature of the ultimate object of cognition provoked ceaseless debate. The first three essays in Universal Representation, and the Ontology of Individuation consider these issues as they play out in the metaphysics and natural philosophy of Avicenna, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, Ockham and others. The last three essays turn to the metaphysical problem of the nature of the principle of individuation. Moderate realists believe in the existence of immanent general natures such as humanity and equinity, whereby individuals are members of diverse natural kinds. Accordingly, moderate realists such as Aquinas, Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus need to investigate the nature of the individuating principle by which members of one and the same natural kind differ from one another. Nominalists, for their part, need not concern themselves with any principle of individuation as, for them, all reality is individual, there being no immanent universals; but this release comes at the cost of a new set of epistemological problems.

"There is broad agreement in the medieval tradition that we conceive things in the world owing to the transmission of intelligible content through various media that culminates in the concept by which something in the world is cognitively present for us. Yet how the intelligible content is transmitted along with the nature of the ultimate object of cognition provoked ceaseless debate. The first three essays ... consider these issues as they play out in the metaphysics and natural philosophy of Avicenna, Avrroes, and Thomas Aquinas, Ockham and others. The last three essays turn to the metaphysical problems of the nature of the principle of individuation. Moderate realists believe in the existence of immanent general natures such as humanity and equinity, whereby individuals are members of diverse natural kinds. Accordingly, moderate realists such as Aquinas, Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus need to investigate the nature of the individuating principle by which members of one and the same natural kind differ from one another. Nominalists, for their part, need not concern themselves with any principle of individuation as, for them, all reality is individual, there being no immanent universals, but this release comes at the cost of a new set of epistemological problems"--Publisher's description, back of dust jacket.

Moses Maimonides and John Duns Scotus are key figures as regards the thirteenth-century philosophical tradition that developed out of the Western Christian reception of the Neo-Platonized Aristotelianism of Islamic and Jewish thinkers. Whereas the writings of Maimonides count among the received works that inaugurate and shape this span, the variety of conceptual instruments developed by Scotus arguably signal its end, preparing the way for the emergence of diverse fourteenth-century philosophical worldviews. Maimonides on God and Duns Scotus on Logic and Metaphysics explores the eponymous thinkers’ work across a variety of fields. In the domain of natural theology, Maimonides presses for creation de novo, adapting from the Islamic Kalām tradition what has come to be known as the Argument from Particularity, which deduces intelligent design when science seems, in principle, unable to account for states of affairs that conceivably needn’t obtain (to take an example from modern physics, the strength of the four fundamental forces). Part one of this volume contrasts Maimonides’s and Aquinas’s parallel treatments of this and other proof strategies still employed by contemporary philosophers. Part two, on Scotus, includes discussion of the authenticity of the logical writings attributed to him, the evolution of his thought in this field against the backdrop of various thirteenth-century developments, the types of Aristotelian universals theorized by Scotus, his semantics of theological discourse and ontology of possible entities.

The Philosophy of Knowledge: A History presents the history of one of Western philosophy's greatest challenges: understanding the nature of knowledge. Divided chronologically into four volumes, it follows conceptions of knowledge that have been proposed, defended, replaced, and proposed anew by ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary philosophers. This volume covers the influence of Aristotle and Augustine during the Middle Ages. With original insights into the vast sweep of ways in which philosophers have sought to understand knowledge, The Philosophy of Knowledge: A History embraces what is vital and evolving within contemporary epistemology. Overseen by an international team of leading philosophers and featuring 50 specially-commissioned chapters, this is a major collection on one of philosophy's defining topics.

This volume features essays that explore the insights of the 14th-century Parisian nominalist philosopher, John Buridan. It serves as a companion to the Latin text edition and annotated English translation of his question-commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul. The contributors survey Buridan’s work both in its own historical-theoretical context and in relation to contemporary issues. The essays come in three main sections, which correspond to the three books of Buridan’s Questions. Coverage first deals with the classification of the science of the soul within the system of Aristotelian sciences, and surveys the main issues within it. The next section examines the metaphysics of the soul. It considers Buridan’s peculiar version of Aristotelian hylomorphism in dealing with the problem of what kind of entity the soul (in particular, the human soul) is, and what powers and actions it has, on the basis of which we can approach the question of its essence. The volume concludes with a look at Buridan’s doctrine of the nature and functions of the human intellect. Coverage in this section includes the problem of self-knowledge in Buridan’s theory, Buridan’s answer to the traditional medieval problem concerning the primary object of the intellect, and his unique treatment of logical problems in psychological contexts.

Averroes on Intellect provides a detailed analysis of the Muslim philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd)'s notorious unicity thesis — the view that there is only one separate and eternal intellect for all human beings. It focuses directly on Averroes' arguments, both from the text of Aristotle's De Anima and, more importantly, his own philosophical arguments in the Long Commentary on the De Anima. Stephen Ogden defends Averroes' interpretation of De Anima using a combination of Greek, Arabic, Latin, and contemporary sources. Yet, Ogden also insists that Averroes is not merely a 'commentator' but an incisive philosopher in his own right. The author thus reconstructs and analyzes Averroes' two most significant independent philosophical arguments, the Determinate Particular Argument and the Unity Argument. Alternative ancient and medieval views are also considered throughout, especially from two important foils before and after Averroes, namely, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas' most famous and penetrating arguments against the unicity thesis are also addressed. Finally, Ogden considers Averroes' own objections to broader metaphysical views of the soul like Avicenna's and Aquinas', which agree with him on several key points including the immateriality of the intellect and the individuation of human souls by matter, while still diverging on the number and substantial nature of the intellect. The central goal of this book is to provide readers with a single study of Averroes' most pivotal arguments on intellect, consolidating and building on recent scholarship and offering a comprehensive case for his unicity thesis in the wider context of Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics.

It is commonly supposed that certain elements of medieval philosophy are uncharacteristically preserved in modern philosophical thought through the idea that mental phenomena are distinguished from physical phenomena by their intentionality, their intrinsic directedness toward some object. The many exceptions to this presumption, however, threaten its viability. This volume explores the intricacies and varieties of the conceptual relationships medieval thinkers developed among intentionality, cognition, and mental representation. Ranging from Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan through less-familiar writers, the collection sheds new light on the various strands that run between medieval and modern thought and bring us to a number of fundamental questions in the philosophy of mind as it is conceived today.