Two Models of Thinking - Fordham University Faculty

3. Scotus’s model of thinking: thinking as a qualityScotus laid the foundations of his account of thinking some forty yearsafter Aquinas had developed his most mature views on the subject. In theeventful period between Aquinas and Scotus, several thinkers subjectedAquinas’s treatment to careful scrutiny and sometimes harsh criticism. Amongthe elements that were most often criticized were Aquinas’s account ofabstraction and his analysis of the act of thinking as an act of conceptformation. Concerning the agent intellect’s act of abstraction, thinkers asdiverse as Henry of Ghent, 57 Godfrey of Fontaines 58 and Peter John Olivi 59eventually argued that the agent intellect’s act of abstraction does not result inthe production of an intelligible species in the possible intellect. ConcerningAquinas’s view that an act of thinking results in the production of a concept,Henry of Ghent 60 and William of Ware conceded that a concept is actuallyproduced when an act of thinking occurs but disagreed with Aquinas’sspecific analysis of how a concept is produced. Specifically, William ofWare’s criticism of Aquinas’s second account of acts of thinking as selfcontainedactions is particularly interesting as an anticipation of Scotus’sposition. Ware argued that Aquinas’s view that self-contained actions producesomething (i.e. a concept) was both unprecedented and in contrast withAristotle’s position. He also held that while transitive actions require anobject, self-contained actions do not. And most interestingly, he argued thatAquinas posited an unnecessary intermediate entity between an act ofthinking and the extramental thing that act is about. Thus, William of Ware,just as Peter John Olivi, rejected the very idea that when an act of thinkingoccurs anything apart from that act of thinking is produced. 6157 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. V, q. 14, ff, 174Y, 176O–177R. See Martin Pickavé’s paperin this volume. See in general T. V. Nys, De psychologia cognitionis humanae secundumHenricum Gandavensem (Rome: Gregorian University, 1947).58 Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl. IX, q. 19 (PhB IV, 271–275). In general on Godfrey’sviews on abstraction, see Quodl. V, q. 10 (PhB III, 3540). See Wippel, “The Role of the Phantasmin Godfrey of Fontaines’ Theory of Intellection,” 573–582.59 Peter John Olivi, Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum, q. 74, 106–135.See Pasnau, Theories of Cognition, 236–247.60 Henry of Ghent, Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, art. 58, q. 1, vol. 2, 124H–L.See S. P. Marrone, The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge of God in theThirteenth Century (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001), 270–298; G. Pini, “Henry of Ghent’sDoctrine of Verbum in Its Theological Context,” in Henry of Ghent and the Transformation ofScholastic Thought: Studies in Memory of Jos Decorte (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003),307–326. 61 William of Ware, Sent. I, d. 27, q. 3, 258*–263*. It should be noticed that William ofWare is often thought to have been one of Scotus’s teachers. On Peter John Olivi, see Pasnau,Theories of Cognition, 271–276; id., “Petri Johannis Olivi Tractatus de Verbo,” Franciscan Studies53 (1993): 121–153, at 141–142.26