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Gabriele de Anna, Realismo metafisico e rappresentazione mentale, Unindagine tra Tommaso dAquino e Hilary Putnam, Il Poligrafo, Padova, 2001.
According to John Haldane, analytical Thomism is not concerned to appropriate
St. Thomas for the advancement of any particular set of doctrines it is not a movement of pious exegesis it seeks to deploy the methods and ideas of twentieth-century
philosophy of the sort dominant within the English-speaking world in connection
with the broad framework of ideas introduced and developed by Aquinas.1 De Annas
book is both an introduction to Thomistic philosophy of mind in the analytical tradition
and a contribution to it.
Pace Haldane, one can wonder if analytical, added to Thomism, is not alienans,
as the Scholastics might have said. If Y is an adjective which is alienans, and you say
that X is Y, then, in being Y, an X is not truly an X. For example, Popular democracy designates non-democratic states. Might not the same be the case for the expression analytical Thomism?
De Anna shows early in his book that he is perfectly conscious of such difficulties.
He stresses the methodological affinities between analytical philosophy and scholastic
thought and discusses the ways in which contemporary philosophy might benefit from
approaching certain philosophical problems in the spirit that animated Aquinas (p. 40),
particularly as regards problems having to do with mental representation and metaphysical realism. This is made clear in de Annas reconstruction of the debate between
Hilary Putnam and analytical Thomism.
The first part of the book examines realism (and antirealism) in connection with
mental representation. The first chapter describes the philosophical context within which
Putnams account, presented in the second chapter, must be understood. This part is
mainly expository. De Anna introduces such notions as metaphysical and epistemological realism (robust or weak), scientific realism, the mental representation, intentionalism, naturalism (of which he discusses several versions, including eliminativism), phenomenalism and, finally, semantical realism. As exposition, this is clear and well done,

1 John Haldane, Analytical Thomism: A Brief Introduction, The Monist, vol. 80, no 4,
oct. 1997, p. 486.

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but there is little in it that is new. The same may be said about de Annas exposition of
Putnams critique of metaphysical realism and his move toward internal realism. De
Anna stresses the fact that Putnams account, and what McDowell wrote later in a similar spirit, reintroduce Kantian themes in analytical philosophy of mind.2 (De Anna says
nothing about Sellars, but a lot of the insights he attributes to Putnam and McDowell
could be explained as Sellarsian reminiscences!)
After explaining why Putnam abandoned his own functionalist philosophy of mind
and the form of naturalism he once defended, de Anna turns, in the second part of the
book, chapter 3, to an exposition of Aquinas account of the intellect (possible and agent
intellect). De Anna tries to show that a form of metaphysical realism is compatible with
a form of semantical anti-realism which maintains that understanding a sentence is a
sufficient condition for having the capacity to recognize its truth-conditions.
Chapter 4 develops a Thomistic answer to Putnams account of the mind. In fact, it
is Haldanes answer: De Anna gives systematic form to an account which is dispersed
throughout many overlapping papers by Haldane. De Anna explains the essential features of Aquinas account of the mind those that permit us to understand his (supposed)
account of mind-world identity, at least according to Haldanes reading. The kind of
metaphysical realism proposed by Haldane is marked by the idea that mind and world
are structurally identical, which means that the wide contents of thought are intrinsically
representational and that the world is intrinsically intelligible (p. 241).
De Annas efforts show two things. He shows, first, that Aquinas conception of the
mind, as he interprets it, can function as a corrective to a Kantian (semantical anti-realist-cum-metaphysical-anti-realist) account of the mind, such as one finds in McDowells
Mind and World and in some of Putnams earlier views. For de Anna, it can be said that,
from the standpoint of mind-world identity theory, metaphysical realism is consistent
with the rejection of a full-blooded semantical realism, since the mind-world identity
theorist may maintain that there is nothing in reality which cannot be conceptualised,
while agreeing that not all truths can be empirically known (p. 243). Second, de Annas
reading of Haldane provides us with a coherent account of the mind, an alternative to
naturalistic accounts that have flourished for the past fifty years (although I think that
he goes a bit far in speaking of a widespread materialistic orthodoxy of analytical philosophy; cf. p. 272). Philosophers like von Wright, Malcolm, Kenny, and many others,
deplored the fact that Wittgensteins insights proved insufficient to stave off the kind of
philosophy that developed during the cognitive science wave. Well, Haldanes account
is perhaps a more impressive way of escaping the very powerful Cartesian image of the
mind, which seems, much more than materialism, to be the presupposition of much of
contemporary philosophy of mind, even where dualism has been abandoned.3 But I wonder if Putnams ever-evolving realism is really a proper target for the admirers of
Aquinas. Putnams recent evolution shows that, as an analytic Mamonidian, he is for
Thomists something like an objective ally!
2
The last part of chapter 4, a large part of the chapter 5, and a new version of the chapter 6 are included in papers by De Anna: Mind-World Identity Theory and Semantic Realism:
Haldane and Boutler on Aquinas, The Philosophical Quarterly, 198 2000; Aquinas on
Sensible and Semimatrialism, The Review of Metaphysics, LIV-1 2000; The Simple View of
Colours and the Reference of Perceptual Terms, Philosophy 77 2002.
3 See Roger Pouivet, Aristole and Aquinas on Soul, in T.L. Smith (ed), Aquinas
Sources: The Notre Dame Symposium, St Augustines Press, South Bend, IN, to appear.

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An historian of philosophy who thinks that there exists an historical episteme within
which philosophers of past times must be read, or a neo-Thomist who is persuaded that
the so-called metaphysics of Being is the alpha and omega of Aquinas philosophy (or
even that Aquinas philosophy and theology are so intimately related that it is silly to try
to separate them), would be very suspicious of the Haldane-de Anna project. But their
approach surely permits the liberation of Aquinas from the medieval prison into which
some historians and neo-Scholastics have shut him, and frees him likewise from his official, but perhaps largely ineffective, position of Philosopher of the Church.
The third part of de Annas book is the most interesting. Chapter 5 deals with the
question of Aquinas semimaterialism. De Anna defends Sheldon Cohens interpretation
(approved by Haldane) of the immaterialiter reception of sensible form, against the
materialistic account of the same phenomenon given in a recent book by Robert Pasnau,
and against David Hamlyns judgment that Aquinas views on these matters might well
be simply contradictory. The discussion is extremely careful. One may wonder whether
a Davidsonian account of supervenience, as a non-reductive materialism, would not help
here.4 Even if the reception of a sensible form is a physical event, it does not follow that
the mental event in which it consists can be reduced to it. Why not distinguish an ontological monism and a conceptual dualism? Jaegwon Kim claimed that such a solution is
unable to give an account of mental causation,5 but that is not the problem here. If Cohen
fails to see the difference between an event taking place in something physical and an event
being wholly physical (p. 255), one can perhaps say to him that non-physical properties
can supervene on physical ones. The non-physical properties might be dependant upon the
physical properties, and might co-vary with them, without being reducible to them. I know
that Haldane himself has serious doubts about supervenience. But this would provide a
clear way to describe the possibility to reject both materialism and ontological dualism.
Chapter 6 concerns colour properties, considered as secondary qualities, and examines the question of their objectivity. This is of course a crucial question for a theory of
mind-world identity. De Anna defends a simple theory of colour from the perspective of
a simple theory of perception, a theory which explains perception as an event in which
both a subject and a object are involved, without requiring an absolute point of view
(p. 290). According to such a theory, the traditional distinction between primary and secondary qualities must be rejected. Secondary qualities are claimed to be real properties,
to which human minds have direct access. De Annas discussion examines a paper by John
Mackie, an answer to this paper by John McDowell, and an answer to this answer by John
Campbell. These authors advance the simple theory of colours that de Anna accepts and
defends against the criticisms of Michael Smith and Jim Edwards. This is generally the
method of the book to examine each problem through arguments and counter-arguments
which have appeared in a series of papers. I would have liked to see here again the notions
which were thought to be important in the first parts of the book: metaphysical realism,
semantical realism, and so on. Such would be the natural result of a somewhat different
method, one less related to a particular series of papers, and more personal. In the end, de
Anna seems to defend something close to reliabilism curiously he does not use the term
by stressing the importance of the etiological origin of our experience. That this sort of
reliabilism is compatible with Aristotelian realism seems to me obvious.
4
Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980
(Essay 11. Mental Events).
5
Jaegwon Kim, Supervenience and Mind, Cambridge University Press, 1993 (Chap. 14:
The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism).

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Finally, I have two main critical remarks about this serious and quite interesting book.
First, I wonder if it would not have been interesting to enlarge its perspective. Before
the expression was coined by Haldane, analytical Thomism flourished in the works of
Elisabeth Anscombe, Peter Geach, Anthony Kenny, David Braine, Herbert McCabe, Brian
Davis, Norman Kretzmann, and others.6 I wonder if a reflection on Aquinas philosophy
of mind based on the debate between Putnam and Haldane is not too narrowly focused and
is perhaps even somewhat unfair. Historically, analytical Thomism is connected with
philosophers who found in Wittgenstein something close to an Aristotelian or Thomistic
dispositional account of beliefs and concepts.7 The debate between the Thomistic and modern philosophies of mind is a long story, as is shown in Etienne Gilsons Ralisme thomiste
et critique de la connaissance.8 Of course, de Annas project is not historical but issue-oriented. But when he discusses the question of sensible forms, and the different meanings
of matter in Aquinas, it seems to me that references to Geach, Anscombe and even Gilson
would have been a great help. If you think that a philosopher of the past, like Aquinas, is
a useful, or even indispensable, reference, you must explain how and why. Otherwise,
someone could say: Please, give me a direct explanation of your theory and leave the old
medieval philosophers, with their strange notions, to the historians!
Second, in the course of reading this book, I was often led to wonder whether the
thesis of mind-world identity ought really be considered to belong to the AristotelianThomistic tradition. I do understand the sense in which there could be a straightforward
Thomist account of our representation of the world. But the problem of knowing
whether and how our mental representations could be faithful to the world is a postCartesian metaphysical anguish.9 One of the only modern philosophers to remain free
of this sort of anguish was Thomas Reid, a result which was deeply connected with Reids
critique of the ideal system of Descartes and the post-Cartesians. For Thomas Aquinas,
there is an identity of the knower and of the known within the activity of knowing, but
not an identity of the world and the mind; to speak of such an identity would be already
to frame the issue in post-Cartesian terms. We should not burden Aquinas with such a
formulation of the problem of knowledge.
I am not sure that there is a Thomist solution of the problem of mental representation, for I think that for Aquinas, as for Wittgenstein, there is simply no mental repre6 Just before the Second world war, a group of Polish philosophers, including Fr Jzef
Bochenski,

proposed a reading of Thomas Aquinas using the tolls of Fregean and Russellian
Logic. Perhaps they were actually the first analytic Thomists. See R. Pouivet, Le thomisme
analytique, Cracovie et ailleurs, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 3 2003.
7 See Roger Pouivet, Aprs Wittgenstein, saint Thomas, Presses Universitaires de France,
Paris, 1997. (This book will be published in 2004 in English by St Augustines Press, South
Bend, IN.)
8 E. Gilson, Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, trans. By M.A. Wauck,
Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986.
9 Skepticism based upon doubts about the veracity of mental representations of the
world is, of course, ancient and is based upon premises which were first systematically articulated by the Stoics. In the ancient and medieval periods, however, this was but one type of perspective, which co-existed with others, for example with the Aristotelian perspective, which
was Aquinas. It was only with Descartes that Stoic representationalism took philosophy in its
grip, generating the so-called skeptical crisis. For Aquinas there was no such crisis, as he was
never in thrall to the premises upon which that crisis rested. See Mikael M. Karlsson,
Skepticism in Don Garrett and Edward Barbanell (eds) Encyclopedia of Empiricism
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997), pp. 396-403.

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sentation something inside our head about which we can ask whether it represents the
world as it is. I would say simply that the world and the soul (I am more and more suspicious about certain use of mind for what Aquinas calls mens and for what he calls
anima) do not confront one another but are moments within certain relations of efficient, formal, final and material causality and that is no small difference.
Even if I regret that Geach or Kenny are not given sufficient consideration (Geach
not at all!), and even if I find simply anachronistic De Annas attribution of a theory of
mind-world identity to Aquinas, this book offers, beyond any doubt, an important contribution to analytical Thomism and a very interesting examination of the status of mental representation.
Roger Pouivet
Universit de Nancy 2 LPHS-Archives Poincar

Book Symposium Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta

Franois RECANATI, Jonathan BARNES, Marco SANTAMBROGIO

Franois Recanati, Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta: An Essay on Metarepresentation, Bradford Books/MIT Press, Representation and Mind series, 2000

Prcis
Franois RECANATI

Utterances and thoughts have content: They represent (actual or imaginary) states of
affairs. Those states of affairs consist of entities having properties and standing in relation to other entities. Among the entities which can be linguistically or mentally represented in this manner are linguistic and mental representations themselves. This is the
phenomenon known as metarepresentation. Thus we can think or talk about speech or
thought, whether our own or someone elses, as in the following example:
(1)
John believes I want to stay
This sentence describes John as believing something. This is a metarepresentation
because the belief which is described itself possesses a content and represents a state of
affairs (viz. the fact that I want to stay). So we must distinguish two representations.
Johns belief is the primary representation. Sentence (1) represents Johns belief and is
therefore the metarepresentation. Note, however, that the primary representation is not
so absolutely, but relatively. If we analyze it we see that it itself is a metarepresentation.
The belief represents a state of affairs involving a certain person (myself) having a certain desire (the desire to stay). Now a desire, as much as a belief, is a representation
endowed with content. We therefore have three levels of representation in the sentence.

Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS, Paris. Email: Francois.Recanati@ehess.fr

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