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C. PANACCIO y PICHE - Ockham's Reliabilism and The Intuition of Non-Existents
C. PANACCIO y PICHE - Ockham's Reliabilism and The Intuition of Non-Existents
NONEXISTENTS1
1
All references to Ockham’s writings will be to the critical edition published under
the supervision of Father Gedeon Gál by the Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure,
N.Y., in two series: Opera Theologica (abrev.: OTh), 10 vols., 1967–1986; and Opera
Philosophica (abrev.: OPh), 7 vols., 1974–1988. Unless otherwise stated, the English
translations of the quotations are ours.
2
Michalski, 1921, p. 9 (our translation). For more on Michalski’s reading of Ockham,
see Panaccio, forthcoming a.
3
See Gilson, 1937, especially pp. 61–91: “The Road to Skepticism”; and Pegis, 1944.
4
See Boehner, 1943, 1945, and Day, 1947.
Ockham’s Theses
5
Adams, 1987, chap. 14, pp. 551–629.
6
Karger, 2004.
7
Ordinatio (abrev.: Ord.), Prologue, quest. 1, OTh I, p. 31 (with our italics).
8
Quodlibeta Septem (abrev.: Quodl.), V, 5, OTh IX, p. 496; Engl. transl. Freddoso
and Kelley, 1991, p. 414 (with our italics). Ockham’s main developments on the subject
are to be found in Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OTh I, pp. 30–39 and 70–71, Reportatio
(abrev.: Rep.) II, quest. 12–13, OTh V, pp. 256–261, and Quodl. V, 5, OTh IX, pp.
495–500, and VI, 6, OTh IX, pp. 604–607.
9
Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OTh I, p. 33. On this whole disagreement between Ockham
and Scotus, see Day, 1947.
10
See Quodl. VI, 6, OTh IX, pp. 604–606: “The first [conclusion] is that by God’s
power there can be an intuitive cognition of an object that does not exist [. . .] The
second thesis is that an intuitive cognition cannot be naturally caused or conserved if
its object does not exist” (Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, 1991, pp. 506–507).
11
For an explicit mention of these other contingent judgements that can be caused
by intuitive cognitions, in addition to judgements of existence, see Ord., Prologue,
quest. 1, OTh I, p. 31.
12
Rep. II, quest. 12–13, OTh V, p. 261.
13
Note however that the judgement naturally caused by such a cognition in this
case is not that the thing does not exist anymore, but only that it did exist a moment
ago.
14
Rep. II, quest. 12–13, OTh V, p. 262.
caused, and even when their objects don’t exist, intuitive cognitions
for Ockham always cause true judgements about the existence or non-
existence of their objects. This is a peculiar thesis, which ran counter
to the dominant position in medieval philosophy both before and after
Ockham, and which, pace Michalski, never was very influential, as
Katherine Tachau, in particular, has amply documented.15
The doctrine, moreover, became even stranger when Ockham paused
to consider the following objection. Imagine that you have a naturally
produced intuitive grasping of some existing thing, by which you are
caused to rightly judge that this thing exists, as happens all the time in
normal life. And suppose now that God miraculously annihilates the
thing in question without modifying in any way your intuitive act of
grasping. This 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 of existence now
causes a true judgement of 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 of the judgement that the thing exists, the thing itself,
in this circumstance, being another partial cause of this judgement.
Which is why, Ockham writes,
[. . .] I concede that the cause of those [opposite] judgements is not the
same, since the cause of one of them is the cognition without the thing,
while the cause of the other is the cognition with the thing as an addi-
tional partial cause.17
The rather bizarre picture we end up with is that when an intuitive
cognition acts alone, what it causes in the mind is a judgement of
non-existence, and when the thing joins in, the total effect is radically
different without the intuitive act itself being modified in any way, as
15
See Tachau, 1988, e.g. p. 124n.: “[. . .] when medieval scholars before and after
Ockham spoke of an ‘intuitive cognition of a non-existent [object]’ they generally
specified that they referred to the ‘intuitive cognition of a non-existent object by which
it is perceived as present and existing’.”
16
Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OTh I, p. 56.
17
Ibid., p. 71.
Theological Reasons
Given his professional 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 of the intuition of non-existents.
We have retained four candidates in order to check this assumption:
(1) divine omnipotence; (2) divine omniscience; (3) beatific vision; (4)
prophetic knowledge.
18
Quodl. I, 13, OTh IX, p. 76.
Divine Omnipotence
Among these four, the doctrine of divine omnipotence holds a particu-
lar status, since it is, so to speak, the condition of possibility for the
Ockhamistic thesis of the intuition of non-existents, and the Venerabilis
Inceptor in fact explicitly uses it in support of the thesis.19
There are two ways, in his view, to make explicit the idea that God
can do everything, except what is contradictory. First, God can perform
immediately by himself everything that he ordinarily does by means of
secondary causes. Second, given two absolute things, distinct in place
and subject, God can make it that one of them exists without the other.
Both statements directly apply to the case of intuitive cognition. It fol-
lows from the first one that although God has established the natural
order of things in such a way that the direct cause of an intuition nor-
mally is an existent and present object, he can immediately produce an
intuitive act in any cognitive power even if the object of this intuitive
cognition does not exist. And it follows from the second statement that
God can give existence to an intuitive act without giving existence to
its object, since the former is an absolute thing which is locally and
subjectively distinct from the latter.
So there is no doubt about this: divine omnipotence is the doctrine
without which the thesis of the intuition of non-existents would not be
possible in Ockham’s thought. What does not follow from 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 if the object existed, that
the object exists namely, a judgement which in this special case would
simply be false. This is how most other medieval authors who accepted
the possibility of an intuition of non-existents viewed the matter, and
nothing in the first article of the Catholic Creed, “Credo in Deum Patrem
omnipotentem”, implies differently. God’s omnipotence, in other words,
is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for Ockham’s special theses
about the intuition of non-existent beings.
19
Quodl. VI, 6, OTh IX, pp. 604–605.
Divine Omniscience
Ockham falls in with the idea, commonly accepted by the theologians
of his time, that God knows not only himself, but also all things pres-
ent, past, future and even possible. Properly speaking, we should say,
Ockham thinks, that “God himself, or the divine essence, is one single
intuitive cognition both of himself and of every other thing.”20 How
God knows all things other than himself, however, turned out to be
a difficult problem for medieval thinkers, which had to be solved in
conformity with two essential beliefs: God’s unconditional freedom and
his absolute simplicity. The key to the solution was usually sought in
the Augustinian doctrine of divine ideas, and Ockham in this respect
is no exception. Yet he puts forward a completely new interpretation
of this doctrine, which, as we shall see, has significant bearing on the
question of the intuition of non-existents.
The term ‘idea’, for him, is a connotative term, and its meaning,
consequently, can be unfolded in a nominal definition,21 which, he
contends, should be the following: “an idea is something cognized by
an efficient intellectual principle which is such that attending to it, this
active principle can produce something in real being.”22 For Ockham,
the question is: what is it that this definition applies to in the case
of God? After having considered and dismissed divine essence itself
and both real relations and relations of reason as possible candidates,
he surmises that as a characterization of divine ideas, the definition
adequately applies only to the creatures themselves.23 This is Ockham’s
original view on the matter: the divine ideas are the creatures them-
selves, which are known from 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 of production. The creatable thing is for
itself its own archetype; and the best one indeed since it is identical to
20
Ord. I, dist. 38, questio unica, OTh IV, p. 585.
21
Ord. I, dist. 35, quest. 5, OTh IV, p. 485. It is a crucial tenet of Ockham’s seman-
tics that all connotative terms—by contrast with what he calls ‘absolute terms’—have
a nominal definition, which makes their meaning explicit. See on this his Summa
logicae I, 10, OPh I, pp. 36–37. A detailed account of the role of nominal definitions
in Ockham is provided in Panaccio, 2004, chap. 5, pp. 85–102.
22
Ord. I, dist. 35, quest. 5, OTh IV, p. 486.
23
Ibid., pp. 488–489.
24
Several studies have been dedicated to this theme in 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, OTh IV, p. 507.
26
Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OTh I, p. 39.
27
Quodl. VI, 6, OTh IX, p. 607.
Beatific Vision
Given the Ockhamistic idea of God as an infinite intuitive cognition of
all creatable things, one might be tempted to conclude that the blessed
who sees the divine essence would then have in himself the intuition
of some non-existent things. The reasoning would be the following: the
divine essence, which is an infinite cognition, is a perfect representation
of any thing, existent or non-existent; but the beatific vision precisely
consists in grasping by a single act of intuition the divine essence and
everything it represents; the blessed, therefore, intuitively cognizes
(although in a mediate way) some things which do not exist.
If this reasoning was right, the thesis of the intuition of non-existents
would follow from the doctrine of the beatific vision, and we would thus
have a strong additional theological reason in favour of it. Ockham,
however, would have refused both the major and the minor premises
of the argument.
To see why the major premiss should be rejected from an Ock-
hamistic point of view, we must turn to Ockham’s analysis of the verb
‘to represent’ in Quodlibeta IV, 3, where he explicitly addresses the
subject of beatific vision. ‘To represent’, he says there, can be taken
in three senses: (1) the first meaning is “to be that by means of which
something is cognized, in the way that something is cognized by means
of a cognition”: a representation in this sense is the cognitive act itself;
(2) in the second meaning, “ ‘represent’ is taken for that which is such
that once it is cognized, something else is cognized”, as in the case of
an image which leads to the cognition of what it represents by means
of the memory; (3) in the third meaning, finally, “‘represent’ is taken
for something that causes a cognition, in the way that an object or an
intellect causes a cognition.”28
Now, God for Ockham is a representation in the first sense of the
word, since he is a cognition of all things. But in this sense, he repre-
sents only for himself, since his essence is a cognition by which no one
other than himself cognizes.29 In the second sense, Ockham believes
that it is possible that God would be a representation of some things
for somebody other than himself. The person who would have a cogni-
tion of God would then be led, by the mediation of a commemorative
28
Quodl. IV, 3, OTh IX, p. 310 (Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, 1991, p. 257).
29
Ibid., pp. 310–311.
30
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, OTh VII, p. 326: “[. . .] it can be reasonably posited that
God when causing an act of 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, OTh VII, p. 329.
34
See on this the whole development of Rep. IV, quest. 15, OTh VII, pp. 318–339.
Prophetic Knowledge
There are prima facie reasons to think that prophetic knowledge, as
described in the Bible, involves something like the intuition of non-
existents. Prophets sometimes relate having had visions of things that
did not exist at the moment of the visions. Ezechiel, for example, claims
to have clearly seen in a vision the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s temple with
all the details of its new architectural structure.35 And Amos describes
a number of things that God showed to him in visions: a cloud of
locusts, a mason’s tool, or a basket of fruits.36 The prophet in such cases
presumably knows that the singular objects of these visions do not
presently exist, even if he thinks that they might come to exist under
certain circumstances. It could be conjectured, then, that Ockham’s
doctrine of the intuition of non-existents was specifically designed to
accommodate these prophetic visions.
Ockham’s own description of prophetic knowledge, however, explic-
itly leaves it open that it might occur without the support of any intui-
tive cognition. In Quodlibeta IV, 4, he acknowledges three different
possibilities.37 The first of these, admittedly, is that the prophet might
have an evident knowledge of a future contingent proposition (e.g. that
the Virgin will give birth) on the basis of an intuitive cognition of what
the terms of this proposition stand for. Since the required intuitions
then relate to things which do not exist at the time when the revela-
tion occurs, God himself, in this hypothesis, must have supernaturally
caused these intuitions in the intellect of 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 of intuitive cognitions of non-existent beings. But
the problem is that Ockham also admits of two other acceptable ways of
accounting for prophetic knowledge. In one of them, God would directly
cause in the prophet’s intellect an evident assent to a future contingent
proposition without the intermediary of any intuitive cognition. In the
other one, God would cause in the prophetic intellect an act of faith
(or belief) rather than an evident knowledge, in which case, obviously,
no intuition at all would be implied. Ockham, then, concludes, not
without a touch of humour, that which one of these possibilities was
35
See Ezechiel 40.
36
See Amos 7–8.
37
Quodl. IV, 4, OTh IX, pp. 317–318.
Philosophical Concerns
38
Ibid., p. 318.
our own view of how Ockham’s position on the matter is related with
the philosophical question of skepticism.
Divine Deception
The theological possibility that God should deceive us even in our
most vivid experiences seems to imply some sort of radical skepticism.
Couldn’t I be, after all, a brain in a vat or a purely spiritual being manip-
ulated for 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 of any external thing—more precisely, of any thing other than
our own mind—that it exists.”39 “Ockham, on the other hand,” Karger
claims, “avoided this consequence”;40 and how he did it, she holds, was
precisely with his doctrine of the intuition of non-existents. Ockham’s
view, according to Karger, was that the possibility of divine decep-
tion—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 of the perception
I am having of 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
If Karger is right, it must have been one of Ockham’s main motiva-
tions for his peculiar theses on the intuition of 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.
There is much we find to agree with in Karger’s interpretation, but
she goes a bit too far, we think, in claiming that a human cognitive
39
Karger, 2004, p. 229. Her—totally convincing—references are to questions 2 and
6 of Wodeham’s Prologue to his Lectura Secunda in librum primum Sententiarum, ed.
R. Wood, St. Bonaventure, NY, The Franciscan Institute, 1990, vol. I, pp. 34–64 and
143–179. See e.g. p. 169: “No such judgement [about the existence of some external
thing] is simply evident with an evidence that excludes any possible doubt”; and p. 170:
“In virtue, however, of 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.
43
Quodl. V, 5, OTh IX, p. 498.
44
Ibid., p. 498; Engl. transl. Freddoso and Kelley, 1991, p. 416 (slightly amended;
italicized by us).
45
For a short and well-informed presentation of reliabilism, see Goldman, 1993. In
recent philosophy, the position has been promoted in particular by Armstrong, 1973,
Goldman, 1986, and Sosa, 1991, among others.
46
Exp. in libros Physicorum Aristotelis, Prologue, paragr. 2, OPh IV, p. 6. Ockham
in this passage distinguishes four senses of 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 of reliable testimonies—makes no use of the notion of ‘evident
cognition’. See on this Panaccio, forthcoming b.
47
Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OTh I, p. 5.
48
See Quodl. V, 5, OTh IX, p. 408: “[. . .] God cannot cause in us a cognition through
which it would evidently 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; itali-
cized by us).
49
For a detailed argument on this, see Panaccio, Forthcoming c, especially section
3: “Epistemic externalism”.
50
Rep. II, quest. 12–13, OTh V, p. 281.
51
Ibid., pp. 286–287.
52
Ord., Prologue, quest. 1, OTh I, p. 70.
53
See Karger, 1999, especially pp. 218–220. Ockham’s relevant development is in
Ord. I, dist. 27, quest. 3, OTh IV, pp. 243–251.
54
Ord. I, dist. 27, quest. 3, OTh IV, p. 247.
Conclusion
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55
A preliminary version of this paper was read at the international workshop on
the roots of Western anthropology, “The Human Condition”, held in Victoria, B.C.,
in August 2005. We want to thank the participants for their useful remarks on this
occasion. Special thanks are also due to the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council and to the Canadian Program for Research Chairs for their gener-
ous support.