This book features 20 essays that explore how Latin medieval philosophers and theologians from Anselm to Buridan conceived of habitus, as well as detailed studies of the use of the concept by Augustine and of the reception of the medieval doctrines of habitus in Suàrez and Descartes. Habitus are defined as stable dispositions to act or think in a certain way. This definition was passed down to the medieval thinkers from Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Augustine, and played a (...) key role in many of the philosophical and theological developments of the time. Written by leading experts in medieval and modern philosophy, the book offers a historical overview that examines the topic in light of recent advances in medieval cognitive psychology and medieval moral theory. Coverage includes such topics as the metaphysics of the soul, the definition of virtue and vice, and the epistemology of self-knowledge. The book also contains an introduction that is the first attempt at a comprehensive survey of the nature and function of habitus in medieval thought. The material will appeal to a wide audience of historians of philosophy and contemporary philosophers. It is relevant as much to the historian of ancient philosophy who wants to track the historical reception of Aristotelian ideas as it is to historians of modern philosophy who would like to study the progressive disappearance of the term “habitus” in the early modern period and the concepts that were substituted for it. In addition, the volume will also be of interest to contemporary philosophers open to historical perspectives in order to renew current trends in cognitive psychology, virtue epistemology, and virtue ethics. (shrink)

Since antiquity, philosophers have investigated how change works. If a thing moves from one state to another, when exactly does it start to be in its new state, and when does it cease to be in its former one? In the late Middle Ages, the "problem of the instant of change" was subject to considerable debate and gave rise to sophisticated theories; it became popular and controversial again in the second half of the twentieth century. The studies collected here constitute (...) the first attempt at tackling the different aspects of an issue that, until now have been the object of seminal but isolated forays. They do so in through a historical perspective, offering both the medieval and the contemporary viewpoints. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to reconstruct Ockham’s semantics of the categories in order to prove first that his semantics is consistent. Second, Ockham is not skeptical about the possibility to derive the categories from primitives. According to Ockham, one must accept two principles in order to derive the categories. The first is the principle of ‘in quid’ predication, according to which a name of category can be predicated ‘in quid’ of a determined class of terms. The second is the (...) principle of the transitivity of predication, according to which A is predicated of C if A is predicated of B and B is predicated of C. I will show that Ockham’s semantics of the categories makes two assumptions. According to the first assumption, there exist only two types of things, substances and qualities. According to the second, the categories are mutually exclusive. Ockham’s semantics of the categories implies that the categories are both ontological and conceptual and that it is not possible to prove that there is a determined number of categories. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze William Crathorn’s view on extension and compare it to William Ockham’s reductionist view, according to which extension is not really distinct from substance or quality. In my view, Crathorn elaborates a metaphysical machinery based on mereological and topological relationships in order to solve what he considers to be problems in Ockham’s account of quantity. In order to make my point, I reconstruct Crathorn’s main arguments in favor of his finitist atomism. Crathorn claims that certain fundamental (...) spatial structures are of a mereological nature and that the mereological properties of located entities perfectly match those of their locations. This idea lies at the core of his solution to the paradox of touching and the metrical paradox. It allows him to redefine contiguity in such a way that extensionless magnitudes can touch and succeed each other. Crathorn goes one step further and claims that indivisibles are extended in the sense that they occupy an extended incorporeal space, which is their dimension. In this sense, they can come together to form a continuous magnitude. Thus, Crathorn succeeds in defining a concept of continuity that is compatible with his finitist atomism and that addresses what he takes to be a major weakness in Ockham’s view on extension, namely a murky concept of impenetrability. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to William of Ockham’s theory of habit, which he considers to be a disposition of a power of the soul. I will argue that Ockham’s view on the relation between a habit and its manifestation sheds new light on his well-known thesis that sensible and intelligible species are not needed to account for cognition. The identity conditions of habits are themselves the ground of their intentionality: there is no way to track a habit from an act (...) of a given kind except by stipulating a causal relation between them. In this sense, a study of Ockham’s theory of habit is a step towards our understanding of the relation between similarity and causation in his theory of intentionality. Ockham’s theory of habit accommodates intentional phenomena that, contrary to the scholarly consensus, are not ipso facto semantic phenomena. (shrink)

Ockham’s approach to the problem of the instant of change as it is found in the Summa logicae i, chapter 5, and ii, chapter 19, is usually described as “purely logical,” narrowing the treatment of “begins” and “ceases” to simplistic cases. The aim of this paper is to complement our knowledge of Ockham’s position on the problem of the instant of change by analysing the treatment of the problem he gives in his questions on the Physics 98-101. In these passages, (...) Ockham adopts a “physical approach” in order to deal with problems related to the continuity of alteration and the production of the form of the mix from elementary qualities. To solve these problems, he is compelled to give up one of the most important claims at the basis of the logical approach that he adopted in the Summa logicae, namely that the distinction between permanent and successive entities is not relevant in the assignment of truth-conditions to propositions containing the aspectual verbs “beginning” and “ceasing.”. (shrink)

This edited volume presents new lines of research dealing with the language of thought and its philosophical implications in the time of Ockham. It features more than 20 essays that also serve as a tribute to the ground-breaking work of a leading expert in late medieval philosophy: Claude Panaccio. Coverage addresses topics in the philosophy of mind and cognition, concepts, logic and language, action theory, and more. A distinctive feature of this work is that it brings together contributions in both (...) French and English, the two major research languages today on the main theme in question. It unites the most renowned specialists in the field as well as many of Claude Panaccio’s former students who have engaged with his work over the years. In furthering this dialogue, the essays render key topics in fourteenth-century thought accessible to the contemporary philosophical community without being anachronistic or insensitive to the particularities of the medieval context. As a result, this book will appeal to a general population of philosophers and historians of philosophy with an interest in logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter consists of a systematic introduction to the nature and function of habitus in Latin medieval philosophy. Over the course of this introduction, several topics are treated: the theoretical necessity to posit habitus; their nature; their causal contribution to the production of internal and external acts; how and why habitus can grow and decay; what makes their unity when they can have multiple objects and work in clusters. Finally, we examine two specific questions: why intellectual habitus represent a special (...) case that triggered considerable debate; how human beings can be said to be free if their actions are determined by moral habitus. (shrink)

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 380-387, January 2020.

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 380-387, January 2020.

Le but de cet article est de proposer une nouvelle interprétation de la nature et de la fonction du principe d’économie tel qu’il est formulé et employé par Guillaume d’Ockham. Je défends l’idée que le principe d’économie tel qu’il est employé par Guillaume d’Ockham peut être compris comme un précepte méthodologique à suivre pour procéder à une inférence vers la meilleure explication. Je me propose donc de répondre aux deux questions suivantes. En quoi un argument d’économie consiste-t-il et quelle est (...) sa valeur explicative? Quel rapport établit-il entre la théorie adoptée et les faits? Pour défendre ma thèse, je procéderai en deux parties principales. Je commencerai par présenter... (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to examine the conception of metaphor developed by fourteenth-century nominalist philosophers, in particular William of Ockham and John Buridan, but also the Ockhamist philosophers who were condemned by the 1340 statute of the faculty of arts of the University of Paris. According to these philosophers, metaphor is a transfer of meaning from one word to another. This transfer is based on some similarity, and is intentionally produced by a speaker. My aim is to study whether (...) this view on metaphor is related to a specific view on the relation between thought, language, and communication. With this case study, I intend to argue that the view on the nature of thought one holds does not necessarily determine what the nature and function of metaphor are. I will show that the three philosophical doctrines under study diverge in their understanding of the mechanisms of a metaphor, while they share the same view on the nature of thought, namely that thought is a mental language. (shrink)

Cet article traite d’un cas particulier dans la métaphysique de la relation de Guillaume d’Ockham, à savoir la relation de composition entre la matière et la forme substantielle. Le cas théologique du triduum mortis soulève un problème pour les métaphysiques réductionnistes de la relation comme celle d’Ockham. Ce dernier peut-il en rendre compte sans accepter que certaines relations soient irréductibles à leurs relata? Le point de départ de l’article est l’interprétation communément partagée sur la théorie de la relation d’Ockham. Je (...) m’en sépare pour soutenir l’idée que, même si Ockham affirme que la distinction entre chose et mode d’être est inintelligible dans la plupart des cas, il pourrait avoir reconnu l’existence d’au moins un type de mode dans son ontologie. (shrink)

This paper argues that, for Ockham, the parts of the continuum exist in act in the continuum: they are already there before any division of the continuum. Yet, they are infinitely many in that no division of the continuum will exhaust all the existing parts of the continuum taken conjointly. This reading of Ockham takes into account the crucial place of his new concept of the infinite in his analysis of the infinite divisibility of the continuum. Like many of his (...) fellow anti-atomists, Ockham stresses that the concept of a potential infinite seems to contradict Aristotle’s modal logic, in particular the central assumption that there is no potency that will never be realized. Ockham, like other fourteenth-century anti-atomists, tried not only to refute atomism, but also to propose an analysis of the infinite divisibility of the continuum that is not incompatible with their modal logic. (shrink)

This edited volume presents new lines of research dealing with the language of thought and its philosophical implications in the time of Ockham. It features more than 20 essays that also serve as a tribute to the ground-breaking work of a leading expert in late medieval philosophy: Claude Panaccio. Coverage addresses topics in the philosophy of mind and cognition (externalism, mental causation, resemblance, habits, sensory awareness, the psychology, illusion, representationalism), concepts (universal, transcendental, identity, syncategorematic), logic and language (definitions, syllogisms, modality, (...) supposition, obligationes, et cetera), action theory (belief, will, action), and more. A distinctive feature of this work is that it brings together contributions in both French and English, the two major research languages today on the main theme in question. It unites the most renowned specialists in the field as well as many of Claude Panaccio's former students who have engaged with his work over the years. In furthering this dialogue, the essays render key topics in fourteenth-century thought accessible to the contemporary philosophical community without being anachronistic or insensitive to the particularities of the medieval context. As a result, this book will appeal to a general population of philosophers and historians of philosophy with an interest in logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Ockham’s ontology of arithmetic, specifically his position on the ontological status of natural numbers, has not yet attracted the attention of scholars. Yet it occupies a central role in his nominalism; specifically, Ockham’s position on numbers constitutes a third part of his ontological reductionism, alongside his doctrines of universals and the categories, which have long been recognized to constitute the first two parts. That is, the first part of this program claims that the very idea of a universal thing is (...) self-contradictory, while the second part asserts that it is more rational to accept only two distinct types of singular things, namely substance and quality. These two elements are incomplete, however, for they do not fully encompass Ockham’s position on what realists take to be abstract objects. For this, one needs the third part of Ockham’s program of ontological reductionism, dealing with numbers, among the most paradigmatic abstract objects for realists. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to present the way in which contingency and causal determinism relate in some major late-medieval views on the metaphysics of causation. I will focus on Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and John Buridan. First, I will show that Scotus’s new insights into the metaphysics of modalities had important consequences for the way contingency was related to causality: Ockham and Buridan do not consider contingency as a by-product of the necessary emanation of God (...) any more but as a distinctive property of God as the first cause and, therefore, of the created world as a whole. Second, I will show that the growing interest from Scotus onward in explaining and justifying inductive reasoning led to an extensive analysis of the nature and function of the principle of the uniformity of nature. Third, I will explain why the progressive psychologization of final causes led to the exclusion of final explanations from physics. The consequence of this process is the development a new way of conceiving chance and hazard, and the separation between free and natural agents. We can speak here of a tendentially mechanistic picture of the world. (shrink)

The chapter published in the book ‘Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science’, pages 27–59, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67378-3_3, has been retracted because it contains significant parts plagiarizing another publication.