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This is a remarkable argument. It is based on the key fact that thepassage from dispositional to occurrent knowledge takes place without theacquisition of any new form in the intellect. The apparent technicality ofScotus’s point should not obscure the novelty of his position. Scotus wasfocusing on the weak point of the Aristotelian account of thinking as a changeor process. As scholars of Aristotle have noticed, the passage fromdispositional to occurrent knowledge (which I labeled “the problem ofoccurrent thought”) constituted the breaking point of the view that thinking isa change since at least Aristotle’s times. As I have showed above, Aquinas hadstruggled to find a solution to this problem. He introduced the suspect notionof a species being present in the intellect in incomplete actuality just for thatreason. By contrast, Scotus took the peculiar character of the passage fromdispositional to occurrent knowledge (a “change” without the acquisition of anew form) as the starting point to investigate the nature of an act of thinking.Scotus’s third argument in support of his claim that an act of thinkingis not a relation was based on the fact that an act of thinking is itself related toits object. For example, my act of thinking about what it is to be a cat isrelated to what it is to be a cat, i.e. (according to Scotus) the essence of cats.Now it was a common assumption that only a non-relative item can be relatedto something else, because only a non-relative item can play the role of thefoundation of a relation. For example, the relation of paternity holdingbetween a father and his child is grounded in a non-relative feature pertainingto the father, i.e., presumably, his power to procreate. The father’s power toprocreate must be interpreted as a non-relative item in order to exclude thepossibility of an infinite regress. Acts of thinking, however, are related to theirobjects. It follows that they are not relations. 79Scotus’s arguments that acts of thinking are neither relations noractions or passions are remarkable especially because they reveal hiscommitment to two claims that Aquinas had been forced to reject. In hisargument that acts of thinking are not actions or passions, Scotus assumed thatacts of thinking do not produce anything (unless, accidentally, a habit). Thisassumption is intuitively uncontroversial. Unlike actions such as building orad actum non recipit aliquam formam novam priorem ipsa operatione, quia tunc non fuisset priusin potentia accidentali sed essentiali. Secunda pars minoris est manifesta. Patet enim quod nihilasbolutum advenit visibili quando videtur actu nec intelligibili quando intelligitur actu, etconsimiliter de aliis.” The English translation is taken, with a few modifications, from John DunsScotus, God and Creatures. The Quodlibetal Questions, translated with an Introduction, Notesand Glossary by F. Alluntis and A. B. Wolter (Princeton and London: Princeton University Press,1975), 286–287.79 Quodl., q. 13, n. 5, Vivès XXV, 509; Rep. I-A, d. 3, q. 6, n. 170, eds. Wolter andBychkov, 235.34
painting, acts of thinking do not issue in a result separate from their veryexercise. Aquinas, however, had rejected precisely that claim in his secondaccount of acts of thinking as self-contained actions with internal termsproduced by those very acts. Similarly, in his third argument that acts ofthinking are not relations, Scotus assumed that acts of thinking areimmediately related to their objects. Again, this assumption is intuitivelynoncontroversial. My act of thinking about what it is to be a cat is about whatit is to be a cat, so it is related to it. As I have shown, however, Aquinas hadrejected precisely that claim in both of his accounts of thinking as a selfcontainedaction.Scotus’s general strategy can be easily perceived behind thetechnicality of his arguments. Aquinas’s commitment to the view that acts ofthinking are actions forced him to embrace some implausible conclusions, i.e.that acts of thinking are not related to their objects or that they produce theirown terms. By contrast, Scotus took the implausibility of these conclusions asevidence that Aquinas’s approach was wrong-headed. In order to avoid thoseimplausible positions, the claim that acts of thinking are relative items andmore specifically that they are actions should be rejected.Since acts of thinking are neither relations nor actions or passions,Scotus concluded that they are qualities. Specifically, he argued that they arein the first of the four species of qualities Aristotle had distinguished in theeighth chapter of his Categories. Since Aristotle sorted out the qualitiesbelonging to the first species into habits such as virtues and more fleetingconditions such as heat, cold, disease and health, it seems likely that Scotusregarded acts of thinking as those fleeting dispositions (diatheseis, affectiones),which can be easily acquired or lost. 80Scotus seems to have been aware of the novelty of this claim.According to Aquinas and to the standard Aristotelian theory, acts of thinkingare actions similar to fire’s action of heating. By contrast, Scotus likened theact of thinking to heat, not to the action of heating or the passion of beingheated. This position clashed with the intuition that to think is something that Iperform, i.e. something I do. By contrast, according to Scotus what I performis the action that results in an act of thinking. By itself, however, an act of80 Rep. I-A, d. 3, q. 6, nn. 175–176, eds. Wolter and Bychkov, 237: “Restat ergonecessario concedere quod istae operationes sint qualitates, cum non sint nihil nec in aliquogenere, sicut superius est probatum. Sed non sunt de secunda specie qualitatis, quia non suntnaturalis potentia vel impotentia; nec de tertia vel quarta specie, quia istae tantum conveniuntcorporalibus […]. Relinquitur ergo quod operationes sunt in prima specie qualitatis, etuniversaliter omnis perfectio naturae spiritualis, si non sit substantia eius—sive sit in fieri, sive sitpermanens et in facto esse—est in prima specie qualitatis.” See also Quodl., q. 13, n. 15, VivèsXXV, 570–571. For Aristotle’s text, see Cat. 8, 8b26–9a4.35
Page 1 and 2: Two Models of Thinking:Thomas Aquin
Page 3 and 4: conclusion about cats. Accordingly,
Page 5 and 6: am informed by an agent, i.e. I rec
Page 7 and 8: intellect. Third, an act of thinkin
Page 9 and 10: 2.1. The form in the intellect: the
Page 11 and 12: etween the case of the color and th
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Page 21 and 22: Aquinas never gave a detailed descr
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Page 25 and 26: ***Based on what I have said, these
Page 27 and 28: None of these authors, however, que
Page 29 and 30: species. 67 That real quality, howe
Page 31 and 32: have shown above, Aquinas had alrea
Page 33: existence of its term. Scotus held
Page 37 and 38: exists only as long as the intellec
Page 39 and 40: cat rather than about what it is to
Page 41 and 42: Concerning the second issue, as I h
Page 43: (2) In the current order of things,

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