Two Models of Thinking - Fordham University Faculty

Scotus, however, attempted to give a more positive description of theintentional relation holding between an act of thinking and its object. Aristotlehad already mentioned a class of relations involving “the measure and themeasured” 87 . He had illustrated that class of relations by making reference tothe relation holding between something known (playing the role of themeasure) and knowledge (playing the role of the measured). 88 The idea wasthat, if an object o acquires a relation R to a knower k, no real change occursin o. This implies that the relation R holding between o and k is not real. Theexplanation for this is that the relation R is not founded on any real feature ofo that o lacked when it was not related to k by R and that o acquired when itbecame related to k by R. Thus, when I know a certain thing, that thing doesnot acquire any real feature and does not undergo any real change. Bycontrast, if a knower k acquires a relation R i to an object o, some real changeoccurs in o. This implies that the relation R i holding between k and o is real.The explanation for this is that the relation R i is founded on a real feature of k,which k lacked when it was not related to o by R i and acquired when itbecame related to o by R i .These relations were called “non-mutual,” because one of them is realand the other one is not. By contrast, mutual relations are either both real orboth non-real. For example, the relation holding between a father and a son ismutual, because there is a corresponding real relation holding between theson and the father.Aristotle had developed this framework to account for the relationholding between dispositional knowledge and its objects. Scotus applied it tothe relation holding between occurrent knowledge and its objects, i.e. acts ofthinking and what they are about. When I think about something, no realfeature is acquired by the object of my act of thinking; by contrast, I acquire areal feature, i.e. an act of thinking, which is a quality present in the mind butnevertheless real. I possess that mental quality only as long as I actually thinkabout a certain thing. Thus, to think makes a difference to me but not to what Iam thinking about. The intentional relation linking my act of thinking to what Iam thinking about is a non-mutual relation of the same kind as the relationlinking knowledge to what is known and what is measured to what measuresit.87 Quodl., q. 13, nn. 11–12 (Vivès XXV, 525–526). In that passage, Scotus distinguishedthe measure/measured relation from another kind of relation, which he called “relatioattingentiae.” He clarified, however, that the relatio attingentiae pertains only to acts of intuitivecognition. See ibid., n. 14 (Vivès XXV, 540). Since I focus on abstractive cognition, I do not takethe relatio attingentiae into account.88 Meta. V, 15, 1021a26–b3; Meta. X, 1, 1053a31–b3; Cat. 7, 6b1–6. See Henninger,Relations, 6–8.40