If we consider heritage as a process of exhibiting the past and the present to present these for future observers then encyclopedias are good candidates for assessing what constitutes heritage. We propose to study the Fluxion entries in British encyclopaedias over a long period of time. With the help of this corpus of more than thirty articles, it will then be possible to identify several markers that contribute to making mathematics a heritage object—a reference to history, sources of inspiration (...) and bibliographical references. (shrink)

Averroes on Intellect provides a detailed analysis of the Muslim philosopher Averroes 's notorious unicity thesis -- the view that there is only one separate and eternal intellect for all human beings. It focuses directly on Averroes' arguments, both from the text of Aristotle's De Anima and, more importantly, his own philosophical arguments in the Long Commentary on the De Anima. Stephen Ogden defends Averroes' interpretation of De Anima using a combination of Greek, Arabic, Latin, and contemporary sources. (...) Yet, Ogden also insists that Averroes is not merely a 'commentator' but an incisive philosopher in his own right. The author thus reconstructs and analyzes Averroes' two most significant independent philosophical arguments, the Determinate Particular Argument and the Unity Argument. Alternative ancient and medieval views are also considered throughout, especially from two important foils before and after Averroes, namely, Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas' most famous and penetrating arguments against the unicity thesis are also addressed. Finally, Ogden considers Averroes' own objections to broader metaphysical views of the soul like Avicenna's and Aquinas', which agree with him on several key points including the immateriality of the intellect and the individuation of human souls by matter, while still diverging on the number and substantial nature of the intellect. The central goal of this book is to provide readers with a single study of Averroes' most pivotal arguments on intellect, consolidating and building on recent scholarship and offering a comprehensive case for his unicity thesis in the wider context of Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

As part of the Historical Materialism research stream on immaterial labour, cognitive capitalism and the general intellect, begun in issue 15.1, this articles explores the importance of the expression 'general intellect', proposed by Marx in the Grundrisse, for an analysis of linguistic and intellectual work in contemporary capitalism. It links the notion of general intellect to the crisis of the law of value, the political significance of mass intellectuality, and the definition of democracy in a world where (...) knowledge is a productive force in its own right. (shrink)

We often claim to know about what is good or bad, right or wrong. But how do we know such things? Both historically and today, answers to this question have most commonly been rationalist or sentimentalist in nature. Rationalists and sentimentalists clash over whether intellect or affect is the foundation of our evaluative knowledge. This paper is about the form that this dispute takes among those who agree that evaluative knowledge depends on perceptual-like evaluative experiences. Rationalist proponents of perceptualism (...) invoke intellectual experiences, while sentimentalist proponents invoke affective experiences. The goal of this paper is to offer a fresh strategy for adjudicating between intellectual and sentimental perceptualism. I argue that the perceptualist’s hand will be forced either in the direction of intellectual or sentimental perceptualism once she decides between two views about the modal status of our basic evaluative knowledge. I close with an argument that the more plausible of the two options is the one which fits best with sentimental perceptualism. The argument, then, is that perceptualists ought to be sentimentalists. (shrink)

La référence au mythe de Kronos dans l’œuvre de Plotin occupe une place qui n’est pas facile à définir. Ce mythe est peu abordé dans le cadre des travaux sur la métaphysique plotinienne, bien que Kronos - l’Intellect dans ses rapports à l’Un et à l’Âme représente un des points particulièrement sensibles de la doctrine de Plotin. Ce motif est, en revanche, étudié en tant que l’exemple de l’exégèse d’un mythe : consternant, car il n’y a rien de plus (...) éloigné de la version hésiodique des théogonies. L’analyse des quatre fragments relatifs au mythe de Kronos, permet de constater la référence à Platon comme premier objectif de l’exégèse plotinienne. Plotin réalise un étrange « morcellement » du mythe, dont il sépare les personnages et les épisodes pour ensuite les intégrer dans l’architecture de ses discours. Cette attitude a pour résultat des interprétations très audacieuses et parfaitement insérées dans la noétique plotinienne et dans la culture philosophique de son époque. (shrink)

Due to his innatist theory, James of Viterbo brings original answers to a number of late-thirteenth century questions concerning cognition. While he maintains a certain distinction between the soul and its faculties, and among these faculties, he rejects the Aristotelian distinction between agent and patient intellects. Thanks to its predispositions to knowing, the mind is able to be an agent for itself. Correlatively, James rejects the usual conception of abstraction. Neither does the intellect act on the phantasms, nor the (...) phantasms on the intellect. The intellect simply actualizes a conceptual scheme at the occasion of adequate sensory representations. Since the innate predispositions are the intrinsic principles of cognitive acts, James maintains with Giles of Rome the notion of intelligible species. But he agrees with Godfrey of Fontaines that an act of intellection is nothing else than the fully actualized species itself. He also concedes to Henry of Ghent that the form of an intelligible object need not be ontologically received in the intellect, but can just have an “objective” presence. Finally, thanks again to his theory of predispositions, he has an easy solution to the vexed problems of the knowledge of substance essences and of the self. (shrink)

According to strong metaphysical readings of Kant, Kant believes there are noumenal substances and causes. Proponents of these readings have shown that these readings can be reconciled with Kant’s claims about the limitations of human cognition. An important new challenge to such readings, however, has been proposed by Markus Kohl, focusing on Kant’s occasional statements about the divine or intuitive intellect. According to Kohl, how an intuitive intellect represents is a decisive measure for how noumena are for Kant, (...) but an intuitive intellect would not represent using metaphysical categories like those of substance and causation. I argue that Kohl’s argument does not succeed, since it overlooks the possibility that the intuitive intellect only indirectly represents certain noumenal facts. In addition, in response to a secondary argument Kohl suggests, I argue that Kant’s apparently anti-metaphysical statements about the content of the categories can be read as merely describing the constitution of the categories, instead of what they represent. Thus, while Kohl advances the debate by raising an under-appreciated question, his argument against the strong metaphysical reading is unsound. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the “multimedia encyclopedia” genre launched in the 1980s, the era of “the multimedia revolution.” Encyclopedias of this kind were released on CD-ROM by several well-respected encyclopedia publishers and were widely discussed as an innovation which would lead to information and communication technologies extending rather than replacing the Gutenberg Galaxy. While discussing the launch of multimedia encyclopedias I aim to show how the culture of the printed word was perceived in “the (...) information revolution” discourse of the time by relevant cultural intermediaries. (shrink)

The article analyses the idea that according to the averroist Jean de Jandun, Master of Arts in Paris at the beginning of the 14th century, human beings are composed of a «double form» the separated intellect on the one hand, the cogitative soul on the other hand. After recalling several major accounts of the time, we explore Jean's reading of Averroes' major conceptions concerning the problem. Finally, we challenge the idea according to which we observe in his writings the (...) radical thesis of a sometimes cogitating sometimes thinking «double human being» that makes of the homo intelligens a punctual and exclusive new being, which is accidentally produced while the thinking takes place. (shrink)

The ideas behind open source software are currently applied to the production of encyclopedias. A sample of six English text-based, neutral-point-of-view, online encyclopedias of the kind are identified: h2g2, Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, Encyclopedia of Earth, Citizendium and Knol. How do these projects deal with the problem of trusting their participants to behave as competent and loyal encyclopedists? Editorial policies for soliciting and processing content are shown to range from high discretion to low discretion; that is, from granting unlimited trust (...) to limited trust. Their conceptions of the proper role for experts are also explored and it is argued that to a great extent they determine editorial policies. Subsequently, internal discussions about quality guarantee at Wikipedia are rendered. All indications are that review and ?super-review? of new edits will become policy, to be performed by Wikipedians with a better reputation. Finally, while for encyclopedias the issue of organizational trust largely coincides with epistemological trust, a link is made with theories about the acceptance of testimony. It is argued that both non-reductionist views (the ?acceptance principle? and the ?assurance view?) and reductionist ones (an appeal to background conditions, and a?newly defined??expertise view?) have been implemented in editorial strategies over the past decade. (shrink)

Medieval Integration Challenge for Intellection (MICI) in Albert the Great, Siger of Brabant, and Radulphus Brito.

In "De anima" 3.5, Aristotle argues for the existence of a second intellect, the so-called "Agent Intellect." The logical structure of his argument turns on a distinction between different types of soul, rather than different faculties within a given soul; and the attributes he assigns to the second species make it clear that his concern here -- as at the climax of his other great works, such as the "Metaphysics," the "Nicomachean" and the "Eudemian Ethics" -- is the (...) difference between the human and the divine. If this is right, we needn't go on a wild goose chase trying to invent a role for the so-called Agent Intellect to play. God moves our intellects as he moves the heavenly spheres, "as a beloved": he constitutes the complete actualization towards which all of our intellectual striving is directed. Aristotle regards such final causation as an efficient cause, but not in a way that would make it part of what we would call the causal processes or mechanisms of human psychology. But, he would insist, it is essential for appreciating who we are and what our place is in the world. (shrink)

Le XI.ème Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M..) s’est déroulé à Porto (Portugal), du 26 au 30 août 2002, sous le thème général: Intellect et Imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale. A partir des héritages platonicien, aristotélicien, stoïcien, ou néo-platonicien (dans leurs variantes grecques, latines, arabes, juives), la conceptualisation et la problématisation de l’imagination et de l’intellect, ou même des facultés de l’âme en général, apparaissaient comme une ouverture possible (...) pour aborder les principaux points de la pensée médiévale. Les Actes du congrès montrent que « imagination » et « intellect » sont porteurs d’une richesse philosophique extraordinaire dans l’économie de la philosophie médiévale et de la constitution de ses spécificités historiques. Dans sa signification la plus large, la théorisation de ces deux facultés de l’âme permet de dédoubler le débat en au moins six grands domaines: — la relation avec le sensible, où la fantaisie/l’imagination joue le rôle de médiation dans la perception du monde et dans la constitution de la connaissance ; — la réflexion sur l’acte de connaître et la découverte de soi en tant que sujet de pensée ; — la position dans la nature, dans le cosmos, et dans le temps de celui qui pense et qui connaît par les sens externes, internes et par l’intellect ; — la recherche d’un fondement pour la connaissance et l’action, par la possibilité du dépassement de la distante proximité du transcendant, de l’absolu, de la vérité et du bien ; — la réalisation de la félicité en tant qu’objectif ultime, de même que la découverte d’une tendance au dépassement actif ou mystique de toutes les limites naturelles et des facultés de l’âme ; — la constitution de théories de l’image, sensible ou intellectuelle, et de ses fonctions. Les 3 volumes d’Actes incluent les 16 leçons plénières et 112 communications, ainsi que les index correspondants (manuscrits ; noms anciens et médiévaux ; noms modernes ; auteurs). Le volume IV des Actes, contenant 39 communications et des index, est publié par la revue " Mediaevalia. Textos e Estudos ", du Gabinete de Filosofia Medieval de l’Universidade do Porto (volume 23, de 2004). Ouvrage publié avec l’appui de l’Universidade do Porto, de la Faculdade de Letras da U.P., du Departamento de Filosofia - F.L.U.P. et de la Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 269-270 [Access article in PDF] Steven Harvey, editor. The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy: Proceedings of the Bar-Ilan University Conference. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000. Pp. xi + 547. Cloth, $239.00. This fine volume, covering the proceedings of a conference at Bar-Ilan University (January, 1998), is the first book devoted to the medieval Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy. (...) According to the editor, the talks at the conference "were arranged to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle," and that intention is also reflected in the current volume: It is extremely well-organized, the earlier essays provide useful background for the later ones, and the various parts of the book complement each other quite well. Though they contain much that is highly technical, the editor has succeeded in making the essays comprehensible to the non-specialist, as was his declared intention. [End Page 269]The editor's introductory essay draws the book together and makes it a coherent whole. The most important part of that essay raises the conceptual problem underlying the entire book, namely: what defines a medieval encyclopedia? The contributors do not always agree on how to answer this question, nor should we expect such agreement. Some of their criteria are: an encyclopedia must treat a subject comprehensively; it must be well-enough organized to facilitate retrieval; it is meant to be consulted, not read cover-to-cover; it is usually an eclectic collection of previously extant material, not an original composition, and certainly not a major source for new ideas. Finally, an important goal of the encyclopedist is popular enlightenment.The book's first two sections deal with the predecessors of the medieval Hebrew encyclopedias, the medieval Latin and Arabic works. Only the latter had heavy influence on the structure and content of later Hebrew works. Nevertherless, the Islamic author who had the greatest influence by far on Jews during the age of the encyclopedias under discussion, namely Averroes, is judged by Butterworth (as well as by Biesterfeldt) not to be an encyclopedist at all. The basis for this judgment is that Averroes had no interest whatsoever in popular enlightenment; his books are not introductory, and nowhere does he address himself to anyone but the expert.Nevertheless, when it comes to Averroes, it would be prudent to honor the editor's admonition that we not be too demanding with our criteria for what constitutes a medieval encyclopedia. Perhaps the corpus of Averroes's works does not make him an encyclopedist, as the essays contend. But we should not lose sight of how his works were actually used by later Hebrew writers: their Hebrew translations were copied and paraphrased extensively as state-of-the-art presentations of science on nearly every important topic. In other words, even if Averroes himself did not have the intentions of an encyclopedist for his works, later authors mined them for informative essays as if they were encyclopedias.Part 3 deals with Early Hebrew Encyclopedias. Despite the volume's otherwise outstanding organization, Woolf's fine article on Maimonides' Mishneh Torah seems out of place here, since it is by no means an encyclopedia of science and philosophy.Part 4 deals with the structure and organization of the three thirteenth-century encyclopedias that are the focus of the volume: Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen's Midrash ha-Hokhmah; Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera's De'ot ha-Filosofim; and Gershom ben Solomon's Sha'ar ha-Shamayim. The descriptive essays are extremely useful for getting a balanced picture of these books, but perhaps of even greater value are the content outlines, which include pagination from the manuscripts to make them easier to consult.The most fascinating section of the book by far, and the most likely to become a productive model for future research, is part 5, which analyzes specific topics within the encyclopedias. These essays trace scientific problems from Aristotle to the medieval Aristotelians, especially Averroes, and then examine how they are dealt with in the Hebrew... (shrink)

Two stories have dominated the historiography of early modern philosophy: one in which a seventeenth century Age of Reason spawned the Enlightenment, and another in which a skeptical crisis cast a shadow over subsequent philosophy, resulting in ever narrower "limits to knowledge." I combine certain elements common to both into a third narrative, one that begins by taking seriously seventeenth-century conceptions of the topics and methods central to the rise of a "new" philosophy. In this revisionist story, differing approaches to (...) the central subject matter of early modern metaphysics--knowledge of substances through their essences and causal powers--arise as a result of disagreements about the powers of the human cognitive faculties. Methodological writings are seen as attempts to direct readers in the proper use of their cognitive faculties. The early modern rejection of the Aristotelian theory of cognition ranks equally in importance with rejection of Aristotelian doctrines about nature. Skepticism is more often than not a tool to be used in teaching the reader the proper use of the cognitive faculties, or indeed in convincing the reader of the existence or inexistence of certain cognitive faculties or powers. Instead of early modern "epistemology" or "theory of knowledge," one speaks, with seventeenth century writers, of theories of the cognitive faculties and their implications for the possibility of human knowledge. The early modern rejection of Aristotelian logic can then be seen as reflecting a negative assessment about the fit between syllogistic reasoning and logic as an art of reasoning or thinking which refines the use of the cognitive faculties. -/- Central to this new historiography is the story of the relation between the intellect and senses as cognitive faculties or powers. The development of philosophy from Descartes to Kant can be portrayed as a series of claims about the power of the intellect to know the essences of things, with resulting consequences for ontology and the foundations of natural philosophy. I illustrate this revised narrative by comparing three conceptions of the intellect in three philosophical settings, provided by several late scholastic Aristotelians, Descartes, and Locke. I have two aims: first, to exhibit the central role played by the conception of intellect or understanding in these authors, and, second, to locate their discussions of the cognitive faculties in relation to recent understandings of psychology, epistemology, logic, mind, and their relations. Early modern writings do not easily fit into the modern categories of epistemology and psychology; more generally, the early modern concern with the workings of mind does not coincide with recent conceptions of naturalism. These findings can help us to see problems with our current categories. (shrink)

The intellect is often defined as the capacity for thought. Thought has a property which philosophers have called ‘intentionality’. Intentionality is the relationship which thought has to that which the thought is about. Philosophers have tried to bring out the special nature of this relationship in several ways, by considering the semantic properties of verbs and constructions used to report thoughts. Instead of seeking a formal definition of intentionality, this chapter tries to illustrate the feature in connection with different (...) mental states and activities. (shrink)

One of the hallmarks of Descartes' philosophy is the doctrine that the human mind has a faculty of pure intellect. This doctrine is so central to Descartes' teaching that it is difficult to believe that any of his disciplines would abandon it. Yet this is what happened in the case of Malebranche. This paper argues that in his later philosophy Malebranche adopted a theory of divine illumination which leaves no room for a Cartesian doctrine of pure intellect. It (...) is further argued that Malebranche's abandonment of the Cartesian doctrine left a void in his philosophy which he filled with the theory of efficacious ideas. (shrink)

Can the intellect or the intellectual faculty be its own object of thought, or can it not think or apprehend itself? This book explores the ancient treatments of the question of self-intellection - an important theme in ancient epistemology and of considerable interest to later philosophical thought. The manner in which the ancients dealt with the intellect apprehending itself, took them into both the metaphysical and epistemological domains with reflections on questions of thinking, identity and causality. Ian Crystal (...) traces the origins from which the concept of self-intellection springs, by examining Plato's account of the epistemic subject and the emergence of self-intellection through the Aristotelian account, before the final part of the book explores the problem of how the intellect apprehends itself, and its resolution including Plotinus' reformulation and the dilemma raised by Sextus Empiricus. Crystal concludes that Plotinus recasts the metaphysical structures of Plato and Aristotle in such a way that he casts the concept of self-intellection in an entirely new light and offers a solution to the problem. (shrink)

I reconstruct Aristotle’s reasons for thinking that the intellect cannot have a bodily organ. I present Aristotle’s account of the aboutness or intentionality of cognitive states, both perceptual and intellectual. On my interpretation, Aristotle’s account is based around the notion of cognitive powers taking on forms in a special preservative way. Based on this account, Aristotle argues that no physical structure could enable a bodily part or combination of bodily parts to produce or determine the full range of forms (...) that the human intellect can understand. For Aristotle, cognitive powers with bodily organs are always spatiotemporally limited, but the understanding is not. Aristotle claims that our understanding applies to all instances of the thing understood wherever and whenever they exist. On Aristotle’s own account the intellect in its nature is only “potential,” it does not actually possess any form. Thus nothing prevents it from possessing all forms. (shrink)

This paper discusses some aspects of the controversies regarding the operation of the agent intellect on sensory images. I selectively consider views developed between the 13th century and the beginning of the 17th century, focusing on positions which question the need for a (distinct) agent intellect or argue for its essential "inactivity" with respect to phantasms. My aim is to reveal limitations of the Peripatetical framework for analyzing and explaining the mechanisms involved in conceptual abstraction. The first section (...) surveys developments of Aristotelian noetics and abstraction in Ancient and Arabic philosophy. The second section presents a discussion of some "positive" accounts on abstraction and the agent intellect, and some "negative" accounts. (shrink)

This article seeks to provide some support for the troublesome report of Damascius in the De Principiis that, for Porphyry, the first principle is the Father of the Noetic Triad—and thus more closely implicated with the realm of Intellect and Being than would seem proper for a Neoplatonist and faithful follower of Plotinus. And yet there is evidence from other sources that Porphyry did not abandon the concept of a One above Being. A clue to the complexity of the (...) situation may be provided by a passage from Proclus (In Parm. 1070, 155ff. Cousin) which criticises him for making the One the subject also of the Second Hypothesis of the Parmenides. Here, I consider a series of passages from Porphyry's Sententiae which seem to indicate a doctrine of the One essentially faithful to that of Plotinus, but modulated in the direction of closer linkage to the levels of reality below it. (shrink)

Such is the significance of the question concerning intellect and will that it has been discussed in both the Confucian and the Christian traditions and has even triggered two different schools of thought within each tradition. In Confucianism, it speaks of the fundamental divergence between lixue 理學 and xinxue 心學 in the Neo-Confucian movement. In the Christian tradition, it speaks of the difference between the Franciscans and the Dominicans. A comparative study of Zhu Xi, the leading master of lixue (...) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in China, and Eckhart, the scholastic Dominican master in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the Latin world, will give us... (shrink)

The disagreement between Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus on divine illumination is usually recognized as a high point in the history of medieval epistemology. Still, there is much obscurity surrounding that debate, including the specific nature of the disagreement between those two thinkers. In this paper, I argue that the point at issue is the relationship between sense and intellect. Henry of Ghent, who posits a close tie between sense and intellect, holds that the senses are (...) the only natural source of both content and certainty for the intellect. By contrast, Duns Scotus holds that, in our natural state, the senses are the source of content but not of certainty for the intellect, which can achieve knowledge of the truth of first principles true by virtue of the meaning of their terms independently of the sensory input it receives. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes's best known argument for dualism relies on claims about intellectual activity and not on claims about mental states generally to establish dualism. I explain that this must be so give his historical context, where arguments for the immateriality of the mind on the basis of the intellect were common. But sensation and other non-intellectual states were regarded as pertaining to the body-soul composite.

This paper analyses the ontological status of the ‘intellected thing’ (res intellecta) in Hervaeus Natalis. For Hervaeus an intellected thing is not a thing in the outer world, but something radically different, namely an internal, mind-dependent entity, something having a peculiar mode of being, ‘esse obiective’. While Hervaeus often says that the act of intellection is directed upon real things, this does not mean that the act is directed upon things existing actually outside the mind. Hervaeus argues that the act (...) of intellection is directed upon things existing ‘aptitudinally’ outside the mind, not actually outside the mind. A thing existing aptitudinally outside the mind is a mind-dependent entity, something having esse obiective. In order to establish this point, I will explain how the property ‘being intellected’ (esse intellectum) should be interpreted in Hervaeus’ philosophy. This property is a peculiar type of relation, namely a relation of reason that gives a peculiar ontological status to its bearer. To neglect the distinction between actually outside and aptitudinally outside could falsely lead one to ascribe to Hervaeus a theory of intellection where the mental act is directed upon mind-independent entities. (shrink)

Discussions about singular cognition, and its linguistic counterpart, are by no means exclusive to contemporary philosophy. In fact, a strikingly similar discussion, to which several medieval texts bear witness, took place in the late Middle Ages. The aim of this article is to partly reconstruct this medieval discussion, as it took place in Parisian question-commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, so as to show the progression from the rejection of singular intellection in Siger of Brabant to the descriptivist positions of John (...) Duns Scotus and John of Jandun, and finally to the singularism of John Buridan. All these authors accept some kind of intellectual access to individuals. Therefore, the conundrum is not whether we have some kind of intellectual knowledge of individuals, but rather whether we can know them singularly. This article begins by presenting the crucial obstacle to singular intellection in Siger. Thereafter, the author shows that Jandun and Scotus depart in fundamental ways from Siger’s account, but that for them the intellection of individuals is of a general character. Finally, she proposes that Buridan is a genuine singularist. (shrink)

This article examines Averroes’ interpretation, found in his Long Commentary on the De Anima, of a famous passage in Aristotle’s De An. III 5 which presents the intellect “producing all things, as a kind of positive state, like light”. Averroes, clearly heir to Alexander of Aphrodisias for whom hexis refers not to the intellect “agent” itself but to its product, defends nevertheless, via the comparison with light, the conception of the agent intellect as an hexis, which leads (...) us to the inevitable consequence that the agent intellect is the prime object of the material intellect, acting as a condition for all subsequent thoughts. (shrink)

The Dominican theologian Albert the Great was one of the first to investigate into the system of the world on the basis of an acquaintance with the entire Aristotelian corpus, which he read under the influence of Islamic philosophers. The present study aims to understand the core of Albert's natural philosophy. Albert's emblematic phrase, “every work of nature is the work of intelligence” , expresses the conviction that natural things are produced by the intellects that move the celestial bodies, just (...) as houses are made by architects moving their instruments. Albert tried to fathom the secret of generation of natural things with his novel notion of “formative power” , which flows from the celestial intellects into the sublunary elements. His conception of the natural world represents an alternative to the dominant medieval view on the relationship between the artificial and the natural. (shrink)

Saadia Gaon never thought much of academic discussions. His interest was rather in his contemporary, living in doubt and religious uncertainty. The author focuses on three conceptions - the backbone of his picture of a religious human being, namely belief, intellect and interpretation. Saadia's interpretation of belief and human intellect, based on the principles of Hebrew religion, underlines the specific Jewish understanding of belief, intellect and the interpretation itself.

To which science, if any, does the intellect’s study belong? Though the student of nature studies every other vital capacity, most interpreters maintain that Aristotle excludes the intellect from natural science’s domain. I survey the three main reasons that lead to this interpretation: the intellect (i) is not realized physiologically in a proprietary organ, (ii) its naturalistic study would corrupt natural science’s boundaries and leave no room for other forms of inquiry, and (iii) it is not, as (...) all other vital capacities are, a principle of movement and rest. I show that the third consideration is the most significant and then defend the view that the student of nature can (and ought to) study the intellect despite its not being a principle of movement. I argue that all of an organism’s vital activities have one and only one nature as their principle, namely, the organism’s soul considered as a unitary whole. The student of nature must concern herself with whatever activities are involved in the coming to be, development, and full realization of these natural forms. (shrink)

In this paper I claim that there are three primary dimensions to the issue of freedom in Leibniz’s work. The first, and most widely discussed, is the logical dimension. When discussing this dimension, Leibniz is concerned primarily about the relationship between freedom and modality: what does it mean for choice to be contingent? The second dimension is the theological one. When discussing this dimension, Leibniz is interested in considering such issues as the relationships between divine knowledge or providence and human (...) freedom, the nature of freedom in God, the angels, the demons, the blessed, the damned, etc., the relationship between human freedom and divine grace, and like matters. The third dimension treats freedom from the perspective of faculty psychology. In this mode, Leibniz considers how the intellect, will, and passions are related to one another in complete human acts. Questions such as: What is deliberation? What is choice? What is weakness of will?, etc. define this third dimension of the freedom discussion. In a forthcoming paper, an abstract of which appeared in the 1992 issue of this Review, I discuss the second dimension in some detail. In this paper, I take up the third. (shrink)

In this paper I claim that there are three primary dimensions to the issue of freedom in Leibniz’s work. The first, and most widely discussed, is the logical dimension. When discussing this dimension, Leibniz is concerned primarily about the relationship between freedom and modality: what does it mean for choice to be contingent? The second dimension is the theological one. When discussing this dimension, Leibniz is interested in considering such issues as the relationships between divine knowledge or providence and human (...) freedom, the nature of freedom in God, the angels, the demons, the blessed, the damned, etc., the relationship between human freedom and divine grace, and like matters. The third dimension treats freedom from the perspective of faculty psychology. In this mode, Leibniz considers how the intellect, will, and passions are related to one another in complete human acts. Questions such as: What is deliberation? What is choice? What is weakness of will?, etc. define this third dimension of the freedom discussion. In a forthcoming paper, an abstract of which appeared in the 1992 issue of this Review, I discuss the second dimension in some detail. In this paper, I take up the third. (shrink)

The notion of physical premotion (praemotio physica) is usually associated with the theological topic of divine concurrence (concursus divinus). In the present paper I argue that the Thomist Domingo Báñez (1528–1604) applied the concept of premotion (though not the expression “praemotio”) also in his psychology. According to Báñez, the active intellect (intellectus agens) communicates a kind of “actual motion” to the phantasma (i.e. the mental sensory image perceived by the imagination) in order to render it a collaborator of intellectual (...) cognition. Such an actual motion is, in other words, a premotion to the effect, as the phantasma is, in Báñez’s view, “elevated” to the production of an effect that transcends its proper powers. This Báñez’s theory was largely accepted in the subsequent development of Thomism. (shrink)

Le principal objectif de cet article est de démontrer la thèse suivante : l’essentiel de la théorie aristotélicienne de l’action humaine repose sur le fait que l’agent est, au sens propre, capable d’agir autrement. Dans cette perspective, une distinction est établie entre la théorie de l’action et la psychologie morale d’Aristote. La première est structurée par la notion d’un agent capable au moment de l’action de choisir entre des contraires, tandis que la seconde se concentre sur la notion de caractère (...) qui impose une fixité et une régularité aux actions de l’agent. La distinction proposée s’appuie sur une interprétation renouvelée de EN 1112a31-33, passage dans lequel Aristote affirme que l’intellect (pratique) est cause au même titre que la nature, le hasard et la nécessité. (shrink)

Analyzes Aristotle's doctrine of the intellect and sensation.

Intellectual receptivity is both the prerequisite for objective human knowledge and the condition of possibility for all human knowledge. My arguments are cast in Thomistic terms. In the first part, I review the most important arguments with which Aquinas defends the receptivity of the human intellect, especially the argument from intellectual media and the argument from actualization. In the second part, I attempt to resolve the apparent contradictions involved in the claim that the intellect is receptive, contradictions that (...) stem from the fact that the intellect is an active potency (since its proper act is to reason) and receptivity is the act of a passive potency. In the final part,I argue that knowledge of the proper object of the human intellect (material singulars) is possible if and only if the human intellect is receptive. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate whether Spinoza theory of intellect can be considered as an Averroistic, Themistian or Alexandrian theory of intellect. I identify key doctrines of these theories that are argumentatively and theoretically independent from Aristotelian hylomorphism and thus can be accepted by someone rejecting hylomorphism. Next, I argue that the textual evidence is inconclusive: depending on the reading of Spinoza's philosophy accepted, Spinoza's theory of intellect can or cannot be considered as an Averroistic theory.

La science cognitive moderne ne peut être comprise sans les progrès récents en informatique, intelligence artificielle, robotique, neuroscience, biologie, linguistique et psychologie. La philosophie analytique classique et l’intelligence artificielle traditionnelle présumaient que toutes les sortes de savoir devaient être représentées explicitement par des langages formels ou programmatiques. Cette thèse est en contradiction avec les découvertes récentes en biologie de l’évolution et en psychologie évolutive de l’organisme humain. La majeure partie de notre savoir est implicite et inconsciente. Elle n’est pas représentée (...) formellement, mais constitue un savoir incarné, qui s’acquiert par l’action et se comprend en interaction corporelle avec nos niches écologiques et nos environnements sociaux. Cela n’est pas seulement vrai pour nos aptitudes élémentaires, mais aussi pour nos facultés supérieures de catégorisation, de langage et de pensée abstraite. Science cognitive incarnée, l’intelligence artificielle, ainsi que la robotique, tentent de construire un intellect incarné en évolution artificielle. Du point de vue philosophique, il est admirable de voir à quel point les nouvelles idées d’intellect incarné et de robotique sont ancrées dans la philosophie du XXe siècle. (shrink)