OCKHAM’S RELIABILISM AND HE INUIION OF NONEXISENS 1 Claude Panaccio and David Piché
Ockham’s stance toward skepticism has been variously assessed throughout the last hundred years o medieval scholarship, and much o the uss, as it turns out, revolved around his controversial thesis about the intuition o non-existent beings. Te great Polish medievalist Konstanty Michalski, or one, considered this thesis to be highly characteristic o the Venerabilis Inceptor’s thought, and described it in the nineteen-twenties nineteen-twenties as “a destructive idea which had a large in�uence on ourteenth century”: “Te steady and ill-considered application o this principle in the �eld o knowledge”, Michalski wrote, “was bound to engender distrust and skeptical spirit in philosophy o nature as well as in metaphysics and theology.” 2 Tis assessment was shared by and large by such renowned scholars as Étienne Gilson and Anton Pegis in the thirties and the orties. 3 Philotheus Boehner and Sebastian Day, on the other hand, energetically criticized it as early as the nineteen-orties on the basis o a much closer study o Ockham’s own writings, and decisively corrected some o their predecessor’s worst misinterpretations, rightly insisting in the process on the act that the intuition o non-existents non-existents is not meant by Ockham to be misleading since it is supposed to lead to the true judgement that the object in question does not exist. 4 Marilyn Adams in her landmark book o 1987 dedicated a long and �nely shaded chapter to “Certainty and Skepticism in Ockham’s Epistemology” and concluded that Ockham on the whole showed but very small interest interest in the the question question o skepticism skepticism and that that his thought thought in general and his doctrine o the intuition o non-existents in particular All reerences to Ockham’s writings will be to the critical edition published under the supervision o Father Gedeon Gál by the Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, N.Y., in two series: Opera Teologica (abrev.: OT), 10 vols., 1967–1986; and Opera Philosophica (abrev.: OPh), 7 vols., 1974–1988. Unless otherwise stated, the English translations o the quotations are ours. 2 Michalski, 1921, p. 9 (our translation). For more on Michalski’s reading readin g o Ockham, see Panaccio, orthcoming a. 3 See Gilson, 1937, especially pp. 61–91: “Te Road to to Skepticism”; and Pegis, 1944. 4 See Boehner, 1943, 1945, and Day, 1947. 1
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can hardly be seen as the beginning o a skeptical trend in late medieval and early modern philosophy.5 And the French scholar Elizabeth Karger went even urther in a recent paper by contending that Ockham’s thesis about the intuition o non-existents is largely driven by strong antiskeptical motivations. 6 As a result, the current consensus is that the traditional readings o Ockham in the �rst hal o the twentieth century were generally misguided on these topics. It is still ar rom clear, however, what Ockham’s precise motivations were or holding the rather bizarre positions he did deend about the intuition o non-existents and what connection exactly his attitude on the subject has with the question o skepticism. Tis is what we intend to re-examine in this paper. We will �rst recall the main components o Ockham’s relevant doctrine, and then successively consider what theological and philosophical reasons he may have had or them. Our main conclusion will be that although he did have theological reasons to some extent, the most distinctive eatures o Ockham’s thought on the matter are based on a properly philosophical attitude with respect to knowledge, which can legitimately be labelled, in contemporary terms, as a strong orm o reliabilism. O�����’� ����� Ockham repeatedly describes intuitive cognition as “this cognition o a thing in virtue o which it can be known whether the thing exists or not ;” ;”7 and he is very explicit that “through an intuitive cognition I judge not only that a thing exists, exists, when when it exists, exists, but also that it does not 8 exist, when it does not exist .” .” Against Duns Scotus, who—in Ockham’s rendering—holds that intuitive cognition bears “only upon what really exists and is present”, 9 the possibility o intuiting non-existent things is clearly admitted by the Venerabilis Inceptor . Adams, 1987, chap. 14, 14, pp. 551–629. Karger, 2004. 7 Ordinatio (abrev.: Ord.), Prologue, quest. 1, OT I, p. 31 (with our italics). 8 Quodlibeta Septem (abrev.: Quodl.), V, 5, OT IX, p. 496; Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, 1991, p. 414 (with our italics). Ockham’s main developments on the subject are to be ound in Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OT I, pp. 30–39 and 70–71, Reportatio (abrev.: Rep.) II, quest. 12–13, OT V, pp. 256–261, and Quodl. V, 5, OT IX, pp. 495–500, and VI, 6, OT IX, pp. 604–607. 9 Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OT I, p. 33. On this whole disagreement between Ockham and Scotus, see Day, 1947. 5 6
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Among human beings, however, such intuitions, according to him, can only occur miraculously.10 In the natural order, human beings, he thinks, can have sensible or intellectual intuitions o existing things only, and whenever such an intuitive grasping naturally occurs, it causes in the mind an evident assent to the contingent truth that this thing presently exists, plus normally a number o other contingently true judgements about the thing, that it is white, or example, or that it is presently moving, and so on. 11 As long as the laws o nature hold, there is no such thing or us as an intuition o a non-existent being. Tis is true at least or what Ockham calls ‘perect intuitive cognition’, which exclusively has to do with present tense judgements. He also admits o an ‘imperect intuitive cognition’, which he de�nes as “that in virtue o which we judge that a thing once was or was not.” 12 Imperect intuitive cognition, then, is a ‘recordative cognition’ ( cognitio recordativa), and can naturally occur, o course, even i its object no longer exists at the time o the intuitive act: I might vividly remember something that I saw just a ew minutes ago, but which has ceased to exist in the meanwhile. Te object o this cognition in such a case turns out to be something that does not presently exist. 13 Yet this is not the sort o situation we are interested in here, and Ockham himsel, actually, �nally concludes that “an imperect intuitive cognition is simply an abstractive cognition” since it does not induce in us a true judgement about the present existence o anything. 14 Te sort o cases we want to discuss, rather, are those intuitions o non-existent beings that, according to Ockham, can only be caused in us by God’s miraculous intervention. intervention. Te important point to keep in mind in this regard is that what the intuitive cognition would cause in us in a situation o this sort is the evident judgement that the thing does not exist. exist. Even when miraculously See Quodl. VI, 6, OT IX, pp. 604–606: “Te �rst [conclusion] is that by God’s power there can be an intuitive cognition o an object that does not exist [. . .] Te second thesis is that an intuitive cognition cannot be naturally caused or conserved i its object does not exist” (Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, 1991, pp. 506–507). 11 For an explicit mention o these other contingent judgements that can be caused by intuitive cognitions, in addition to judgements o existence, see Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OT I, p. 31. 12 Rep. II, quest. 12–13, OT V, p. 261. 13 Note however that the judgement naturally caused by such a cognition in this case is not that that the thing does not exist anymore, but only that it did exist a moment ago. 14 Rep. II, quest. 12–13, OT V, p. 262. 10
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caused, and even when their objects don’t exist, intuitive cognitions or Ockham always cause true judgements about the existence or nonexistence o their objects. Tis is a peculiar thesis, which ran counter to the dominant position in medieval philosophy both beore and afer Ockham, and which, pace Michalski, never was very in�uential, as Katherine achau, in particular, has amply documented. 15 Te doctrine, moreover, became even stranger when Ockham paused to consider the ollowing objection. Imagine that you have a naturally produced intuitive grasping o some existing thing, by which you are caused to rightly judge that this thing exists, as happens all the time in normal lie. And suppose now that God miraculously annihilates the thing in question without modiying in any way your intuitive act o grasping. Tis is something he can do according to Ockham’s theology, since there are two really distinct things in this situation: the external object on the one hand, and your intuitive act on the other hand. On Ockham’s theory, you should now be induced to (rightly again) judge that the intuited object does not exist. Which is to say that the very same intuition which previously caused a true judgement o existence now causes a true judgement o non-existence. But, the objection goes, how can the very same thing—this particular intuitive act namely—cause both a certain judgement and its opposite? 16 Ockham’s answer is that when the thing exists, the intuitive act is but a partial cause cause o the judgement that the thing exists, the thing itsel, in this circumstance, being another partial cause o this judgement. Which is why, Ockham writes, [. . .] I concede that the cause o those [opposite] judgements is not the same, since the cause o one o them is the cognition without the thing, while the cause o the other is the cognition with the thing as an additional partial cause.17
Te rather bizarre picture we end up with is that when an intuitive cognition acts alone, what it causes in the mind is a judgement o non-existence, and when the thing joins in, the total effect is radically different without the intuitive act itsel being modi�ed in any way, as See achau, 1988, e.g. p. 124n.: “[. . .] when medieval scholars beore and afer Ockham spoke o an ‘intuitive cognition o a non-existent [object]’ they generally speci�ed that they reerred to the ‘intuitive cognition o a non-existent object by which it is perceived as present and existing ’.” ’.” 16 Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OT I, p. 56. 17 Ibid., p. 71. 15
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i the external thing had some independent effect on our judgements without going through the channel o our intuitive grasping o it! And urther surprising consequences o the theory come out when the ollowing question is raised: Which object is it exactly that we are intuiting when we have an intuition o a non-existent thing? Ockham’s answer was that the intuited object in such a case is the one thing that would have caused this very same intuitive act i the latter had been naturally caused instead o being miraculously induced by God. 18 Since, however, this particular object is not supposed to exist in the situation, this answer seems to strongly commit him to attributing a special ontological status to mere possibilia: there would simply be no distinction, otherwise, between this particular non-existent object that would have caused this intuitive act in natural circumstances, and any other old non-existent thing. And it also seems to imply certain unexpected positions about causality: that in the natural order, namely, any given effect can have only one singular (though possibly complex) cause. I, in other words, A is a singular thing that is in act caused by another singular thing B in the natural order, then A could not in any naturally possible world be caused by anything but B. Which is indeed an interesting, but pretty strong metaphysical metaphysical thesis to hold . . . None o this, obviously, can be grounded on empirical evidence. Te question, then, is this: What exactly did Ockham want this peculiar doctrine or? What were his theoretical motivations? And were they, in particular, predominantly theological, or did some properly philosophical and epistemological considerations play, as we will maintain, a decisive role in its resolute adoption by the Venerabilis Inceptor ? ���������� R������ Given his proessional title and the texts he was reading, Ockham is prima facie likely to have worked out some theological doctrines that might have logically implied the thesis o the intuition o non-existents. We have retained our candidates in order to check this assumption: (1) divine omnipotence; (2) divine omniscience; omniscience; (3) beati�c vision; (4) prophetic knowledge.
18
Quodl. I, 13, OT IX, p. 76.
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������ �������� �������� ��� ����� ����� ����� Divine Omnipotence
Among these our, the doctrine o divine omnipotence holds a particular status, since it is, so to speak, the condition o possibility or the Ockhamistic thesis o the intuition o non-existents, and the Venerabilis Inceptor in in act explicitly uses it in support o the thesis. 19 Tere are two ways, in his view, to make explicit the idea that God can do everything, except what is contradictory. First, God can perorm immediately by himsel everything everything that he ordinarily does by means o secondary causes. Second, given two absolute things, distinct in place and subject, God can make it that one o them exists without the other. Both statements directly apply to the case o intuitive cognition. It ollows rom the �rst one that although God has established the natural order o things in such a way that the direct cause o an intuition normally is an existent and present object, he can immediately produce an intuitive act in any cognitive power even i the object o this intuitive cognition does not exist. And it ollows rom the second statement that God can give existence to an intuitive act without giving existence to its object, since the ormer is an absolute thing which is locally and subjectively distinct rom the latter. So there is no doubt about this: divine omnipotence is the doctrine without which the thesis o the intuition o non-existents would not be possible in Ockham’s thought. What does not ollow ollow rom it, however, is that the intuitive act in such a case should cause the true judgement that the thing does not exist. It would have been totally compatible with God’s omnipotence that an intuitive act miraculously kept in existence without its normal object should then cause in us the very same judgement that it would normally cause i the object existed, that the object exists namely, a judgement which in this special case would simply be alse. Tis is how most other medieval authors who accepted the possibility o an intuition o non-existents viewed the matter, and nothing in the �rst article o the Catholic Creed, “ Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem”, implies differently. God’s omnipotence, in other words, is a necessary, but not n ot suffi s ufficient cien t , condition or Ockham’s special theses about the intuition o non-existent beings.
19
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Quodl. VI, 6, OT IX, pp. 604–605.
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Divine Omniscience
Ockham alls in with the idea, commonly accepted by the theologians o his time, that God knows not only himsel, but also all things present, past, uture and even possible. Properly speaking, we should say, Ockham thinks, that “God himsel, or the divine essence, is one single intuitive cognition both o himsel and o every other thing.” 20 How God knows all things other than himsel, however, turned out to be a difficult problem probl em or medieval medi eval thinkers, thinke rs, which had ha d to be solved sol ved in conormity with two essential belies: God’s unconditional reedom and his absolute simplicity. Te key to the solution was usually sought in the Augustinian doctrine o divine ideas, and Ockham in this respect is no exception. Yet he puts orward a completely new interpretation o this doctrine, which, as we shall see, has signi�cant bearing on the question o the intuition o non-existents. Te term ‘idea’, or him, is a connotative term, and its meaning, consequently, can be unolded in a nominal de�nition, 21 which, he contends, should be the ollowing: “an idea is something cognized by an efficient intellectual intelle ctual principle princip le which is such that attending a ttending to it, it , this 22 active principle can produce something in real being.” For Ockham, the question is: what is it that this de�nition applies to in the case o God? Afer having considered and dismissed divine essence itsel and both real relations and relations o reason as possible candidates, he surmises that as a characterization o divine ideas, the de�nition adequately applies only to the creatures themselves. 23 Tis is Ockham’s original view on the matter: the divine ideas are the creatures themselves, which are known rom eternity by the divine intellect as possible beings, to which God can give real existence in a rational way, precisely by looking at them as patterns o production. Te creatable thing is or itsel its own archetype; and the best one indeed since it is identical to
20 21
Ord. I, dist. 38, questio unica, OT IV, p. 585. Ord. I, dist. 35, quest. 5, OT IV, p. 485. It is a crucial tenet o Ockham’s seman-
tics that all connotative terms—by contrast with what he calls ‘absolute terms’—have a nominal de�nition, which makes their meaning explicit. See on this his Summa logicae I, 10, OPh I, pp. 36–37. A detailed account o the role o nominal de�nitions in Ockham is provided in Panaccio, 2004, chap. 5, pp. 85–102. 22 Ord. I, dist. 35, quest. 5, OT IV, p. 486. 23 Ibid., pp. 488–489.
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itsel! No intermediary archetypal entity intervenes in the process o God’s cognition o the creatures. 24 Provided that we take the ideas to be objects o thought which give a term to the divine act o knowing, it is correct, according to Ockham, to claim with the Christian tradition afer Augustine, that God knows all things other than himsel by the the ideas, which in Ockhamistic terms amounts to saying that God knows the creatures by grasping the creatures themselves. Yet the idea is not merely the quo, that by which something other is known, or the ratio, the cause or the principle, o God’s knowledge, but rather “illud quod cognoscitur ”, ”,25 that very thing which is known. In order to create the various things with wisdom, God does not need anything but his own knowledge o the creature. Since this knowledge is nothing but the divine essence itsel, Ockham ends up with the claim that it is because God is God that he knows all things. Tis radical and ontologically simple position has the merit, �rst and oremost, o being consistent with two crucial ideas in Ockham’s thought, namely the ontological singularity o every thing, and the epistemological immediacy o intuitive cognition. It is in harmony, moreover, with the two dogmatic belies mentioned above. Indeed, it guarantees the unconditional reedom o God, since nothing apart rom the divine mind is necessary with respect to the act o creation; and it does not compromise the absolute simplicity o God, since the many ideas neither are the divine essence, nor different ways o conceiving this essence as imitable, and i the ideas are said to be in God, that only means that they are known by him. But what kind o existence are we to attribute to the creatures insoar as they are so grasped by the divine intuition? Te problem arises i we consider the novelty o the world in connection with the divine eternity (i such a thing is possible): rom eternity, beore the world was made, the divine mind must have conceived o all things, while none o these existed. And even i we consider the situation which prevails afer the creation o the world, we are led to conclude that there are plenty o things that God cognizes as things that could be created, but which he knows he will never give existence to, as opposed to the things he Several studies have been dedicated to this theme in Ockham. Ockham. See in particular: Adams, 1987, especially chap. 24, pp. 1033–1063; Biard, 1999, especially pp. 67–85; Maurer, 1999, especially chap. 5, pp. 205–228; Michon, 2002; Robert, 2003. 25 Ord. I. dist. 35, quest. 5, OT IV, p. 507. 24
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has actually decided to create. God, then, must be seen, in Ockham’s thought, as a single intuitive act who cognizes rom eternity an in�nite number o non-existent things. From which it ollows that the intuition o non-existents, beore being a logical possibility or the wayarer, is a real act in God. Moreover, since the oundation o the creation is an uncreated intuition intuition o all creatable things which could exist but do not exist yet, and perhaps will never exist, what is logically possible or the wayarer—namely the intuition o non-existents—is ounded on the absolute necessity o the �rst being. As a matter o act, the link between divine knowledge and the intuition o non-existents is explicitly drawn twice by Ockham himsel. In the �rst question o the Prologue o the Ordinatio, afer having concluded that the intuitive knowledge o a non-existent thing is possible, Ockham writes that it is clear thus how God knows with evidence that the creatures do not exist, when they do not exist, just like he knows with evidence that they exist, when they exist, since God has the intuitive knowledge o all things, existent as well as non-existent. 26 And in his Quodlibeta VI, question 6, Ockham holds that there is no contradiction that what is not actual should be the object o an intuition, provided that it could exist as a being in act or that it already did exist as such. Which is why, he adds, “God saw rom eternity all creatable things, although they were nothing.” 27 Once more, however, this understanding o God’s knowledge as involving an intuitive cognition o non-existents, in no way entails that such intuitions should cause true judgements o non-existence when they miraculously occur in human beings. Even i God is credited with an adequate intuitive and immediate grasping o every possible being, as Ockham holds, this yields no prima facie reason to believe that human intuitive acts are never misleading. Human intuitions, afer all, are a completely different sort o reality than the divine intuition, the latter, in Ockham’s view, being identical with God himsel. Ockham’s theology here, however closely related to his general ontology and epistemology, cannot account or the distinctive peculiarities o his theory o the intuition o non-existents in human beings, any more than his theology o divine omnipotence did.
26 27
Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OT I, p. 39. Quodl. VI, 6, OT IX, p. 607.
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������ �������� �������� ��� ����� ����� ����� Beati�c Vision
Given the Ockhamistic idea o God as an in�nite intuitive cognition o all creatable things, one might be tempted to conclude that the blessed who sees the divine essence would then have in himsel the intuition o some non-existent things. Te reasoning would be the ollowing: the divine essence, which is an in�nite cognition, is a perect representation o any thing, existent or non-existent; but the beati�c vision precisely consists in grasping by a single act o intuition the divine essence and everything it represents; the blessed, thereore, intuitively cognizes (although in a mediate way) some things which do not exist. I this reasoning was right, the thesis o the intuition o non-existents would ollow rom the doctrine o the beati�c vision, and we would thus have a strong additional theological reason in avour o it. Ockham, however, would have reused both the major and the minor premises o the argument. o see why the major premiss should be rejected rom an Ockhamistic point o view, we must turn to Ockham’s analysis o the verb ‘to represent’ in Quodlibeta IV, 3, where he explicitly addresses the subject o beati�c vision. ‘o represent’, he says there, can be taken in three senses: (1) the �rst meaning is “to be that by means o which something is cognized, in the way that something is cognized by means o a cognition”: a representation in this sense is the cognitive act itsel; (2) in the second meaning, “ ‘represent’ is taken or that which is such that once it is cognized, something else is cognized”, as in the case o an image which leads to the cognition o what it represents by means o the memory; (3) in the third meaning, �nally, “‘represent’ is taken or something that causes a cognition, in the way that an object or an intellect causes a cognition.” 28 Now, God or Ockham is a representation in the �rst sense o the word, since he is a cognition o all things. But in this sense, he represents only or himsel, since his essence is a cognition by which no one other than himsel cognizes. 29 In the second sense, Ockham believes that it is possible that God would be a representation o some things or somebody other than himsel. Te person who would have a cognition o God would then be led, by the mediation o a commemorative Quodl. IV, 3, OT IX, p. 310 (Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, 1991, p. 257). Ibid., pp. 310–311.
28 29
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cognition (notitia recordativa), to think abstractly o a creature he would have seen or known beore. 30 But such a cognition being abstractive, no intuition o non-existents is involved in this case. According to the third sense o the verb ‘to represent’, �nally, God indeed represents all things, but as a voluntary, not a natural cause. In this sense, God, i he wanted so, could o course cause the vision o any given creature in the blessed intellect, but the causal process, then, would be neither necessary nor natural.31 Although an intuition o non-existents could then occur—since this is something God can induce in anybody—, it would not automatically ollow upon the beati�c grasping o God’s essence, but it would depend on an additional special divine intervention. 32 As to the minor premiss o the argument ormulated above, it should also be rejected under the terms o Ockham’s doctrine o beati�c vision. Beati�c vision, according to him, is indeed a simple intuitive act, and a direct one ( rectus) since it is a cognition o the thing seen and not a cognition o the cognition o this thing (in which case it would be a re�exive act). 33 But in order or such an act to be beati�c, according to Ockham, it is enough or it to have precisely or object the divine essence and nothing else, or, stated otherwise, it is enough or the essential beati�cation o an intellect that God causes in it a vision o his essence, without inducing any intuition o creatures. 34 Contrary, then, to what was assumed in the minor premiss o the above argument, it is not necessary or an act to be beati�c that anything besides God should be intuited by it. In short, the Ockhamistic doctrine o beati�c vision does not distinctively require the thesis o the intuition o non-existents. For the blessed as well as or the wayarer, this kind o intuition is a special supernatural event which occurs only i God decides to intervene in this way.
Ibid., p. 311. See also Quodl. IV, 5, p. 319 (Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, p. 263): “[. . .] one who sees God does not see distinctly all the things that God sees. Still, he is indeed able to cognize all those things abstractively [. . .]”. 31 Quodl. IV, 3, p. 312. 32 See Rep. IV, quest. 15, OT VII, p. 326: “[. . .] it can be reasonably posited that God when causing an act o vision with respect to his own essence can also cause an act with respect to one or several creatures, as it pleases him [. . .]” 33 See Rep. IV, quest. 15, OT VII, p. 329. 34 See on this the whole development o Rep. IV, quest. 15, OT VII, pp. 318–339. 30
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������ �������� �������� ��� ����� ����� ����� Prophetic Knowledge
Tere are prima facie reasons to think that prophetic knowledge, as described in the Bible, involves something like the intuition o nonexistents. Prophets sometimes relate having had visions o things that did not exist at the moment o the visions. Ezechiel, or example, claims to have clearly seen in a vision the rebuilding o Jerusalem’s temple with all the details o its new architectural structure. 35 And Amos describes a number o things that God showed to him in visions: a cloud o locusts, a mason’s tool, or a basket o ruits. 36 Te prophet in such cases presumably knows that the singular objects o these visions do not presently exist, even i he thinks that they might come to exist under certain circumstances. It could be conjectured, then, that Ockham’s doctrine o the intuition o non-existents was speci�cally designed to accommodate these prophetic visions. Ockham’s own description o prophetic knowledge, however, explicitly leaves it open that it might occur without the support o any intui intuitive cognition. In Quodlibeta IV, 4, he acknowledges three different possibilities. 37 Te �rst o these, admittedly, is that the prophet might have an evident knowledge o a uture contingent proposition (e.g. that the Virgin will give birth) on the basis o an intuitive cognition cognition o what the terms o this proposition stand or. Since the required intuitions then relate to things which do not exist at the time when the revelation occurs, God himsel, in this hypothesis, must have supernaturally caused these intuitions in the intellect o the prophet, and they must be such that once they are so caused, the prophet knows that these objects do not presently exist. Which indeed closely corresponds to Ockham’s typical description o intuitive cognitions o non-existent beings. But the problem is that Ockham also admits o two other acceptable ways o accounting or prophetic knowledge. In one o them, God would directly cause in the prophet’s intellect an evident assent to a uture contingent proposition without the intermediary o any intuitive cognition. cognition. In the other one, God would cause in the prophetic intellect an act o aith (or belie) rather than an evident knowledge, in which case, obviously, no intuition at all would be implied. Ockham, then, concludes, not without a touch o humour, that which one o these possibilities was See Ezechiel 40. 40. See Amos 7–8. 37 Quodl. IV, 4, OT IX, pp. 317–318. 35 36
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in act realized in the minds o the prophets, he simply doesn’t know since this has not been revealed to him (“ quid de facto sit nescio quia non est mihi revelatum ”) . . .38 Te case o prophetic knowledge, thereore, leads us to a non decisive result with respect to our initial questioning. Although the occurrence o intuitive cognitions o non-existent beings is acknowledged by Ockham as a possibility in such cases, this could hardly have been his main motivation or the doctrine: since he also admits o other possibilities, among which he reuses to choose in the end, we cannot conclude that the Ockhamistic conception o what prophecy amounts to, inevitably calls or the thesis o the intuition o non-existents as he understands it. Our general conclusion, at this point, must be that among the our theological theories that we have considered, only divine omnipotence has, in the context o Ockham’s thought, a direct impact on the possibility o intuitive cognitions o non-existent things by human minds, but that it is not sufficient in itsel itsel to account or what is most mo st speci�c about Ockham’s doctrine on the matter, namely that such intuitions, should they occur, would cause true judgements o non-existence. Divine omniscience, omniscience, on the other hand, does entail, as Ockham understands it, that God has a direct and adequate intuitive cognition o non-existent beings, but it has no consequence whatsoever upon human cognition. As to beati�c vision and prophetic knowledge, it turns out that they could occur, in Ockham’s view, without any human intuition o non-existent beings. P������������ P������������ C������� Tis being clari�ed, our contention is that Ockham’s distinctive doctrine o the intuition o non-existents was rooted in what is called today a basically ‘reliabilist’ attitude with respect to human knowledge. In order to make the point, we will �rst demarcate our interpretation rom an intriguing suggestion recently advanced by Elizabeth Karger, according to which what Ockham really sought with this doctrine was to neutralize the radical skeptical consequences that acknowledging the possibility o divine deception would otherwise entail. And we will then explain
Ibid., p. 318.
38
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our own view o how Ockham’s position on the matter is related with the philosophical question o skepticism. Divine Deception
Te theological possibility that God should deceive us even in our most vivid experiences seems to imply some sort o radical skepticism. skepticism. Couldn’t I be, afer all, a brain in a vat or a purely spiritual being manipulated or some mysterious reasons by an omnipotent God? Elizabeth Karger, in a recent paper, contrasts Ockham and Adam Wodeham on this. Wodeham, she says, bites the bullet and grants “that we cannot know o any external thing—more precisely, o any thing other than our own mind—that it exists.” 39 “Ockham, on the other hand,” Karger claims, “avoided this consequence”; consequence”;40 and how he did it, she holds, was precisely with his doctrine o the intuition o non-existents. Ockham’s view, according to Karger, was that the possibility o divine deception—which he does admit—is rendered “epistemologically harmless” 41 by the theory in question: [. . .] on Ockham’s doctrine, when I am perceiving a thing, as I am now perceiving a tree, and it seems to me evident, in virtue o the perception I am having o it, that the thing exists, causing me to judge that it exists, I can rule out the possibility that God should be deceiving me in the way just described.42
I Karger is right, it must have been one o Ockham’s main motivations or his peculiar theses on the intuition o non-existent beings to philosophically neutralize the wild theological possibility that we should be radically deceived by God in our existential judgements about external things. Tere is much we �nd to agree with in Karger’s interpretation, but she goes a bit too ar, we think, in claiming that a human cognitive
Karger, 2004, p. 229. Her—totally convincing—reerences convincing—reerences are to questions 2 and 6 o Wodeham’s Prologue to his Lectura Secunda in librum primum Se ntentiarum, ed. R. Wood, St. Bonaventure, NY, Te Franciscan Institute, 1990, vol. I, pp. 34–64 and 143–179. See e.g. p. 169: “No such judgement [about the existence o some external thing] is simply evident with an evidence that excludes any possible doubt”; and p. 170: “In virtue, however, o an intuitive cognition [. . .], it can evidently be judged that a whiteness exists unless God is deceiving us” (italics by us). 40 Karger, 2004, p. 229. 41 Ibid., p. 225. 42 Ibid., p. 232. 39
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agent could be in a position to rule out—on his own, so to say—the possibility o presently being deceived by God. As Karger rightly remarks, Ockham does admit the possibility or God to deceive us any time he so chooses, by directly causing in us a alse conviction about the existence o some external things. 43 In such a case the alse conviction would not be caused by an intuitive act, but directly by God, and this would not be, thereore, a situation where an intuitive cognition misleads the agent. Nevertheless, the agent would indeed be misled: “And through such an act o belie”, Ockham says, “ a thing can appear to be present when it is absent .” .”44 Nothing indicates that Ockham wanted to endow intuitive acts with special subjective eatures that would allow the agent to distinguish them rom miraculous alse appearances. We can never ully rule out, then, the possibility that this is what is presently happening when something seems to be present to us. Compare, in particular, the ollowing two situations: �rst, the normal one, in which I have an intuitive grasping o something, and I rightly judge, because o this grasping, that the thing exists; and second, the miraculous situation in which God annihilates the external thing, but keeps this very same intuitive cognition in existence within me, while neutralizing its causal import, causing in me instead a false judgement o existence. Our point is that Ockham is ully—and sel-consciously— sel-consciously— committed to the possibility o the second situation, and that those two situations, in his view, would be totally indiscernible rom one another or the agent. What ultimately distinguishes the second situation rom the �rst one is how the judgement o existence is caused: it is caused by the intuitive act in the normal situation, and directly by God in the miraculous situation. But such causal paths, or Ockham, are not introspectively perspicuous to the agent. It is true, o course, that i the proposition that this tree exists seems evident to me in virtue o my intuitive cognition o the existing tree, then it could not be the case that the tree does not exist. It cannot simultaneously simultaneously be the case, in other words, that my intuitive cognition is caused by the existing tree and that the tree does not exist: this would be a plain contradiction. But the point is that I can never, in Ockham’s approach, completely rule out the possibility that both the intuitive
Quodl. V, 5, OT IX, p. 498. Ibid., p. 498; Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, 1991, p. 416 (slightly amended; italicized by us). 43 44
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cognition and my my judgement o existence are directly caused by God while the external thing does not exist. Since the existential judgement would then be alse, what it all amounts to is that I can never rule out the possibility that I am presently being misled in precisely this way. Te general Ockhamistic principle that applies here is that whatever is in the agent’s mind at any given moment is a distinct mental quality, and that, consequently, it could in principle be kept in existence by God, whatever the external contingent conditions are. However it is that I internally eel, in other words, and whatever mental quality is present in me, it is always logically compatible with God deceiving me. Te possibility, then, that I am presently being radically deceived by God as to what is going on around me, simply cannot be ruled out on the basis o my internally accessible states o mind. Tis directly ollows rom some o Ockham’s most deeply entrenched positions, and he could hardly have ailed to notice it. Our conviction, indeed, is that he would have granted the point without qualms and that this is just what he was doing in act when he wrote, as quoted earlier, that through God’s miraculous intervention, “a thing can appear to be present when it is absent.” I so, the main point o Ockham’s doctrine o the intuition o nonexistents cannot have been to neutralize the epistemological skepticism induced by such radical possibilities. he Reliability of Intuition
We do think, however, that there is some antiskeptical motivation or the doctrine in Ockham, but o a more modest brand, so to say: a reliabilist motivation namely. Reliabilism, in recent philosophy, is the idea that a belie is justi�ed insoar as it has been caused by a reliable process, the reliability o a process, in this vocabulary, being its tendency to cause true judgements. 45 Reliabilism normally goes hand in hand with some orm o externalism in epistemology, which is the thesis that a belie is justi�ed insoar as certain external actors are present: how much a belie is justi�ed or a certain agent in this view, is not merely a matter o what is subjectively accessible to the agent, o how he eels so to say, but it depends, rather, on whether certain objective For a short and well-inormed presentation presentation o reliabilism, see Goldman, 1993. In recent philosophy, the position has been promoted in particular by Armstrong, 1973, Goldman, 1986, and Sosa, 1991, among others. 45
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conditions actually hold, independently o whether the agent is aware o it or not. In a reliabilist approach, these non-subjective actors will have to do with how the belie was actually caused. Now, this is what we have in Ockham. In the strong sense, an authentic knowledge is de�ned by him as an ‘evident cognition’; 46 and a cognition, in his vocabulary, is said to be ‘evident’ not merely when it is taken by the knower as subjectively certain, however strong this conviction might be, but when (1) it bears upon a true proposition, and (2) “it is apt ap t to be sufficiently caused, caused , mediately or o r immediately, immediatel y, by the incomplex cognition o the terms [o this proposition].” 47 Tat a belie, then, should be so justi�ed as to be called ‘knowledge’ depends upon two external actors. Te �rst one is that the belie has to be true. Not even God could induce in me an evident knowledge o something alse: this would simply be contradictory. 48 And the truth o a proposition, o course, usually depends on how the world really is, not on how the agent eels. But it is mainly the second condition which is o interest or us in the present context. Te cognitive status o a belie, or Ockham, depends on how it is caused, which is something the agent might not be aware o: Ockham, in this way, resolutely turns out to be an externalist in epistemology. 49 And what, in his perspective, grounds the ‘evidence’ o a cognition is that the causal process in question should be naturally reliable. Te latter point is the one we want to stress. In the natural order, the cognitive process Ockham has in mind can be divided in two stages. First, the external thing, when it is present and the conditions are avourable, causes an intuitive act in the agent’s mind. And second, this intuitive act in turn causes the agent to give his assent to the true contingent proposition that the thing exists. Ockham, we surmise, seems to have thought that the epistemological reliability o the whole Exp. in libros Physicorum Aristotelis , Prologue, paragr. 2, OPh IV, p. 6. Ockham in this passage distinguishes our senses o the term ‘knowledge’ (scientia), and only the weakest—according to which certain things are said to be known when they are believed on the basis o reliable testimonies—makes no use o the notion o ‘evident cognition’. See on this Panaccio, orthcoming b. 47 Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OT I, p. 5. 48 See Quodl. V, 5, OT IX, p. 408: “[. . .] God cannot cause in u s a cognition through which it would evidently appear appear to us that a thing is present when it is absent, since this involves a contradiction” (Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, 1991, p. 415; italicized by us). 49 For a detailed argument on this, see Panaccio, Forthcoming c, especially section 3: “Epistemic externalism”. 46
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process required the independent reliability o the second stage. Which amounts to saying, just as he did, that intuitive acts, once they occur, should naturally cause true existential judgements. God, o course, could miraculously prevent a given intuitive cognition rom causing anything and he could instead cause a alse conviction within the agent—this is where the possibility o divine deception comes in—, but the point is that i the intuitive act should cause an existential judgement at all, then it will be a true judgement, even if the �rst stage of the process has been independently independently tampered by God . From which it ollows that i God has chosen to cause an intuitive act himsel while the external object did not exist, the existential judgement caused by this intuitive act should be that the thing does not exist, exist, as Ockham holds. What Ockham wants, in other words, is that the natural cognitive process which is triggered inside the intellect by an intuitive act should be independently reliable, even though the agent is normally not aware o how it works. Not only does this reliabilist attitude smoothly account or his most distinctive thesis about the intuition o non-existents (that it leads to true judgements o non existence, namely), but it is consonant, moreover, with some very explicit statements he makes about human cognition. In the Reportatio, or example, he subscribes to the principle that our intellectual processes should not be taken by philosophers to be intrinsically misleading: “what leads the intellect in error should not be posited within the intellect.” 50 Tis principle, admittedly, occurs in the ormulation o an objection addressed to him about intuitive cognition, but his reply makes it clear that he does accept it, and that intuitive cognition, in his view, “in no way leads the intellect in error”, whether it is naturally or supernaturally caused, and whether its external object exists or not. 51 And he makes it clear in the Ordinatio that the main eature he wants or intuitive cognition cognition is that it should be such as to lead the intellect to true existential judgements, whatever its own cause should be: It is suffi cient or intuitive i ntuitive cognition that whenever it occurs, it should suffice by itsel or producing a correct judgement about the existence existen ce or non-existence o a thing.52
Rep. II, quest. 12–13, OT V, p. 281. Ibid., pp. 286–287. 52 Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OT I, p. 70. 50 51
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Human intellectual intuitive acts constitute a natural kind o mental qualities or Ockham. Te principle o divine omnipotence as he understands it entails, as we saw, that such qualities can be caused by God even i their normal objects do not exist. And it also entails that their own causal powers can be neutralized by God i he so wishes. But what turns out to be essential to them, in Ockham’s view, is their natural reliability: once they come into existence, whether naturally or supernaturally, then the causal process they are part o (along with the thing, i it exists) naturally tend to cause true judgements about the existence (or non-existence) o their objects. It is true, as Elizabeth Karger has shown, that in cases o sensory illusions, Ockham admits that our intuitive graspings can tend to induce in us certain alse judgements.53 Seeing a stick hal-immersed in water, or example, can tend to cause in me the erroneous belie that the stick is broken.54 But, as Karger has also rightly insisted, these phenomena occur only in special circumstances, and the alse judgements induced by such illusions can always be resisted, e.g. by someone who is amiliar with reraction. And sensory illusions, above all, do not prevent any given intuitive act to also cause true contingent judgements, about the existence o certain things in particular. Within these limits, then, intuitive cognitions can still be said to be essentially reliable or Ockham. Tis reliabilist perspective, most notably, has a crucial consequence or the question o skepticism: it makes it possible or human beings to evidently know certain contingent truths about external things . And this holds even though, pace Karger, we can never ully rule out the possibility that God is presently deceiving us. o see the point, let us recall that an evident knowledge, or Ockham, is a true judgement naturally induced in us by the cognition o those singular things that the component terms o the believed proposition reers to. I can be said, or example, to evidently know that this thing in ront o me is white when my belie that it is white is indeed true, and caused, in addition, by my intuitive cognitions o the thing in question and o its whiteness. Tis is basically what happens, according to Ockham, when an intuitive cognition occurs in me (unless, o course, its causal powers should be supernaturally neutralized). Contrary to Wodeham,
53
See Karger, 1999, especially pp. 218–220. 218–220. Ockham’s relevant development is in
Ord. I, dist. 27, quest. 3, OT IV, pp. 243–251. 54 Ord. I, dist. 27, quest. 3, OT IV, p. 247.
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then, Ockham can grant without reservation the possibility o human contingent knowledge about the existence o external things. Karger on this is absolutely right. Yet, this remains compatible with the supernatural possibility o radical divine di vine deception, deceptio n, because it is suffi s ufficient or human huma n knowledge, knowledge , according to Ockham, that the relevant causal conditions should be ul�lled in fact . He does not take it to be necessary, in addition, that we should know that they are so ul�lled. Ockham, in other terms, agrees with modern reliabilists that �rst-order knowledge does not require that the agent should have any second-order knowledge about his own knowledge: I can have the evident knowledge that a certain thing exists without having the evident knowledge that I have this knowledge. So even i I cannot rule out the possibility that God presently deceives me, i my belie that a certain thing exists (or not) is in act correctly caused by my intuitive cognitions, then I do have an evident knowledge that the thing exists (or not). Ockham’s reliabilism effectively effectively counters skepticism understood as the thesis that human beings can never have have any evident knowledge about external things, but it does so without neutralizing the radical possibility that most o our existential belies might turn out to be alse, should God be deceiving us. C��������� Ockham’s basic motivation or his distinctive doctrine o the intuition o non-existents, in short, must have been that it simultaneously preserves both God’s omnipotence and the the reliability o intuitive cognitions with respect to existential judgements. Te �rst o these two ideas is undoubtedly o a theological character, but what it amounts to in effect in the present context is to grant the logical possibility possibility that we should be radically wrong in our belies about the external world. As to the reliabilist thesis, it too can plausibly be attributed a theological ground in Ockham’s thought: his conviction that human intellectual processes are basically reliable presumably owes much to his trust in the Creator’s goodness and wisdom. But it also stands as a philosophical requirement o its own within Ockham’s system insoar as it is brought about by a general philosophical enterprise in which he clearly was engaged: that o accounting or the possibility o human knowledge on the basis o natural causal processes. He could have pursued it otherwise, no doubt, than by way o his peculiar theses about the intuition o non-existents. It might have been
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sufficient, or example, ex ample, that our ou r cognitive processes pr ocesses should shoul d be reliable reliabl e under non-miraculous circumstances only; the reliability o human intuitions o non-existent things, then, would not have been called or. But Ockham, apparently, was convinced that the internal part o the human intuitive process—the part that goes on merely within the mind—had to be independently reliable, in such a way that what judgement is caused within the intellect when it occurs varies according to whether the external object exists or not. Tis amounts to saying that once an intuitive act is elicited within a human intellect by whatever external cause , it naturally tends in turn to cause in this intellect some true contingent judgements. Tis is, in the last analysis, the core o Ockham’s distinctive brand o philosophical reliabilism; and his most surprising theses about the intuition o non-existents directly depend on it.55 R��������� Adams, Marilyn M. 1987. William Ockham. Notre Dame, Ind.: University o Notre Dame Press. Armstrong, David M. 1973. Belief, ruth and Knowledge . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bardout, Jean-Claude et Olivier Boulnois, eds. 2002. Sur la science divine . Paris: P.U.F. Biard, Joël. 1999. Guillaume d’Ockham et la théologie . Paris: Éditions du Cer. Boehner, Philotheus. 1943. “Te notitia intuitiva o non-existents according to William Ockham”. raditio 1, 223–275. Repr. in Boehner, 1958, 268–300. ——. 1945. “In propria causa. A reply to Proessor Pegis concerning William o Ockham”. Franciscan Studies 5, 37–54. Repr. in Boehner, 1958, 300–319. ——. 1958. Collected Articles on Ockham. St. Bonaventure, NY: Te Franciscan Institute. Compa nion to Epistemo Epis temology logy . Oxord: Dancy, Jonathan and Ernest Sosa. 1993. A Companion Blackwell. Day, Sebastian. 1947. Intuitive Cognition. A Key to the Signi�cance of the Later Scholastics. St. Bonaventure, NY: Te Franciscan Institute. Freddoso, Alred J. and Francis E. Kelley. 1991. William of Ockham. Quodlibetal Questions (Engl. transl.). New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Gilson, Etienne. 1937. Te Unity o Philosophical Experience. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Goldman, Alvin I. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni versity Press.
A preliminary version o this paper was read at the international workshop on the roots o Western anthropology, “Te Human Condition”, held in Victoria, B.C., in August 2005. We want to thank the participants or their useul remarks on this occasion. Special thanks are also due to the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and to the Canadian Program or Research Chairs or their generous support. 55
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——. 1993. “Reliabilism”. In Dancy and Sosa, 1993, 433–436. Karger, Elizabeth. 1999. “Ockham’s misunderstood theory o intuitive and abstractive cognition”. In Spade, 1999, 204–226. ——. 2004. “Ockham and Wodeham on divine deception as a skeptical hypothesis”. Vivarium 42, 225–236. Klima, Gyula, ed. Forthcoming. Intentionality, Cognition and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy . New York: Fordham University Press. Lapointe, Sandra et al., eds. he Golden Age of Polish Philosophy . New York: Springer. Maurer, Armand. 1999. Te Philosophy of William of Ockham in the Light of Its Principles. oronto: Ponti�cal Institute o Medieval Studies. Michalski, Konstanty. 1921. “Les courants philosophiques philosophiques à Oxord et à Paris pendant le XIVe siècle”. Cracovie: Imprimerie de l’University. Repr. in Michalski, 1969, 1–32. au XIV e siècle. Six études. Frankurt: Minerva GMBH. ——. 1969. La philosophie au XIV Michon, Cyrille. 2002. “L’idée, c’est la chose: Guillaume d’Ockham et les idées divines”. In Bardout and Boulnois, 2002, 273–284. Nadeau, Robert and Josiane Boulad-Ayoub, eds. Forthcoming. Philosophies du savoir. Contributions à une histoire de la théorie de la connaissance . Paris/Québec: Vrin/ Presses de l’Université Laval. Panaccio, Claude. 2004. Ockham on Concepts. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate. ——. Forthcoming a. “Konstanty Michalski on late-medieval nominalism”. In Lapointe et al., orthcoming. ——. Forthcoming b. “Le savoir selon Guillaume d’Ockham”. In Nadeau and BouladAyoub, orthcoming. ——. Forthcoming c. “Ockham’s externalism”. In Klima, orthcoming. Pegis, Anton. 1944. “Concerning William o Ockham”. raditio 2, 465–480. Robert, Aurélien. 2003. “Idées humaines, idées divines: Ockham lecteur d’Augustin”. Revue thomiste 103, 479–493. Sosa, Ernest. 1991. Knowledge in Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spade, Paul Vincent, ed. 1999. Te Cambridge Companion to Ockham . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. achau, Katherine H. 1988. Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham . Leyden: Brill.
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