Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy ed. by Gyula Klima, and: Bero Magni de Ludosia, Questions on the Soul. A Medieval Swedish Philosopher on Life by Robert Andrews (review)

Intentionality, mental representation, sensory perception and its reliability, sensory illusions, and the concomitant issue of epistemological skepticism are becoming an important cluster of related topics in research on medieval cognitive psychology. It is no wonder, because these topics are much more relevant to present-day discussions of cognition and sensory perception, as many of these issues remain unexplained to this date, and therefore any observations in these areas could still be of interest, while many other topics traditionally discussed in studies on medieval philosophy have only historical value and gradually fade into oblivion. Although the two publications included in this review are not exclusively, or not at all on Franciscan sources, both make important contributions to the discussion of a cluster of topics around the issue of intentionality, which was at the center of heated debates in Franciscan theological circles in the 1300's. The review will focus on sections dedicated to Franciscan authors, as well as on topics that are most pertinent to concerns of Franciscan authors in these areas.

Gyula Klima, ed., Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy

Among contributors to this collection of essays are many well known scholars. In addition to Klima's opening and closing general essays on the topic, essays are either on specific issues in medieval thought across several authors or periods (such as "concepts and meaning"; "singular thought"; "mental language"; "mental representation in animals and humans"; or "intersubjective sameness of mental concepts") or are dedicated to specific thinkers, from 1200's to the late Middle Ages: Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan, and a high number of Franciscan thinkers (John Duns Scotus, Peter Aureol, Walter Chatton, William Ockham, and Adam Wodeham).

In the introduction, Klima reminds the reader that intentionality is "one of the few medieval philosophical contributions preserved in modern philosophical thought." Even though this opinion, he notes, may not be entirely accurate, still an examination of these medieval debates can "shed new light" on relationships between medieval and modern thought and on some "fundamental questions" in the contemporary philosophy of mind (1). Klima's verdict, after having summarized individual contributions, is that "the new conceptions of concepts emerging with the via moderna open up the late medieval possibility of 'Demon-skepticism,' paving the way to the epistemological predicaments of early modern philosophy, still affecting many contemporary approaches in the field." This is the primary reason why essays in this volume "are not only contributions to our better understanding of history, but also… of our contemporary problems in the field" (8). One must definitely agree with this assessment.

A contrast between Aquinas and Duns Scotus is a common starting point in many accounts of medieval thought. In Giorgio Pini's "Two Models of Thinking: Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus on Occur-rent Thoughts" the topic of intentionality is included as one of the questions (no. 3) as he examines the two models of occurrent thoughts: "what accounts for an act of thinking being about something?" (81). Aquinas's position is that acts of thinking are actions, while for Scotus they are mental qualities. Aquinas's model is too much of a stretch: e.g., he creates an "intermediate" state for an intelligible species in the intellect between active and potential states. Ultimately he ends up with a highly problematic position that acts of thinking cannot be about extramental objects, i.e., cannot be directly intentional, for they only involve intellectual species internal to the mind. While many critics of Aquinas did not object to viewing acts of thinking as actions (94), Scotus in his works (including the Reportatio I-A) develops an entirely new, sophisticated position on...