Abstract

Like many philosophers in the scholastic tradition, Suárez claims that we cannot cognize anything unless we use a cognitive device, a so-called intelligible species. But how can we produce such a device? And what kind of cognition does it make possible? This chapter examines these questions, paying particular attention to Suárez’s rejection of traditional theories that explained the production of intelligible species by referring to efficient causation. On his view, there can only be a relation of occasional causation: the existence of sensory images is simply an occasion for the intellect to produce intelligible species. This chapter first analyzes this type of causation and then looks at the function of the species. It argues that species are inner representations that make particular things cognitively present. In presenting this view, Suárez breaks with a long tradition that took species to be the product of a process of assimilation of universal forms and paves the way for early modern theories of representation.