Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence by John P. O’Callaghan (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 319 King's caveats that any survey of the Subtle Doctor be taken with a grain of salt and that one turn to the texts themselves (57). Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, California MARY BETH INGHAM Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence. By JOHN P. O'CALLAGHAN. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Pp. 368. $59.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-268-04217-9. How are language and thought related to the world? Aristotle initiated a tradition of inquiry into this question, which has become a central problem for modern philosophy. Given that it continues to occupy some ofthe most talented intellects in the fields of philosophy of mind and language, one may wonder whether anything new and genuinely useful can be learned from a study of Thomas Aquinas's position on the subject. That is, can something novel and substantive be said aboutAquinas's account, given the long tradition of commentary on his work? Furthermore, can a new interpretation of his views be of service to current thinking about these relationships? In Thomistic Realism and the Linguistic Turn, John O'Callaghan takes on the complex and ambitious challenge of accomplishing both these objectives. With some important exceptions, he manages to make a significant contribution in both of these areas. O'Callaghan offers an interpretation of Aquinas that is simultaneously traditional and innovative. He defends a traditional interpretation of Thomas's axiom that intelligible species and concepts are notwhat we understand, but that by which we understand the world. Reconsideration of this traditional view is timely since recent scholarship, in particular Robert Pasnau's influential book Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1997) has cast doubt upon the standard interpretation ofAquinas. Pasnau argues that, despite defending a type of qualified direct realism, St. Thomas ends up treating intelligible species as the immediate objects of cognition. O'Callaghan maintains on the contrary that Aquinas rejects a representationalist conception of knowledge, and that he holds a form ofextemalist realism. O'Callaghan is not the first to argue that Aquinas is an extemalist with respect to conceptualization. (Surprisingly, he does not mention Fr. John Jenkins's ground-breaking work on Aquinas's externalism.) His book does, however, give the most thorough and comprehensive defense of this position to date. It is unfortunate for those familiar with the long tradition ofreflection arising from Aquinas's work that O'Callaghan does not elaborate much on the innovativeness of his position with respect to the tradition. Aside from a brief 320 BOOK REVIEWS mention ofhis disagreementwith the "verbum mentis" interpretation ofAquinas, he is vague about the status of other traditional Thomistic interpretations. Curiously, he presents the book as an attempt to advance the "ThomisticAristotelian tradition." We learn very little about what members ofthis tradition other than Aquinas have thought, and O'Callaghan's argument entails some doubt as to whether there has been a coherent tradition of reflection on this subject. While O'Callaghan's basic thesis in the book is highly plausible, his treatment of certain essential components ofAquinas's position, such as the role that sensory perception plays in judgment and the cognition of singulars, should be strengthened. Concerning the contemporary relevance of O'Callaghan's study, critics have pointed out that its findings are substantially negative. Numerous positive elements of Aquinas's theory need to be developed more fully: the status of natural kinds, the viability of the categories of formal and final causality, the nature of the formal identity between the knower and known, the role of judgment, and the significant differences between Aquinas and contemporary externalists, among other things. At the same time, the book engages in positive consideration of some of these issues. O'Callaghan discusses how Aquinas's theory of cognition, which requires direct apprehension of the essences of natural kinds, can accommodate error, vagueness, and conceptual clarification. He also argues that St. Thomas's position provides a needed corrective to some moderns who fail to see an essential dependence of language and thought upon ourimmediate contactwith the world. He concludes that contemporaryattempts to repossess Aristotelian realism, such as John McDowell's Mind and...