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First published Fri May 28, 2004; substantive revision Fri Jan 28, 2011 The notions of mental representation and intentionality are intrinsically related in contemporary philosophy of mind, since it is usually thought that a mental state has content or is about something other than itself due to its representational nature. These notions have a parallel history in medieval philosophy as well, but it has been intentionality that has attracted medieval scholars' attention (for example, in Knudsen 1982, Pasnau 1997, Perler 2001 and Perler 2002). There have only been a few studies on mental representation (Tweedale 1990, Pasnau 1997 and Lagerlund 2007a). One major reason for the interest in intentionality in medieval philosophy is that it has been widely recognized that Franz Brentano was reviving a scholastic notion when he introduced intentionality asthe mark of the mental (Brentano 1924). But Brentano never used the terminology of representation to explicate intentionality. This was done much later, in post-Wittgensteinian philosophy of mind. In later medieval philosophy, it was, however, standard to explain the content of a thought by referring to its representational nature. There are a variety of theories of mental representation in medieval philosophy, which were intensely discussed from the twelfth century up to the time of Descartes. This article will briefly trace the history of the terminology and also give a brief outline of the main theories developed during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
1. The Ancient Background and the Formation of the Concept 2. Thomas Aquinas and the Conformality View 3. Peter Olivi and the Rejection of the Conformality View 4. Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus and the Introduction of Mental Content 5. William Ockham and Mental Language 6. John Buridan and Vague Concept Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries
representations collected in the phatasia to make new representations, which might not have any real object corresponding to them. The senses apprehend the sensible forms of the objects perceived and the estimative faculty apprehends theintentio or ma'na of the perceived object. Representations in the imagination are also the basis for intellectual activity, according to this view of cognition: In the intellect, the form of animal is of the sort that agrees with one and the same definition of many particular [things]. Thus, one form in the intellect will be related to many things, and it is in this respect that it is universal, because it is one intention in the intellect which is evident since, of those [things] represented by the form in the imagination, the intellect has plundered the intention of its accidents [and] acquired the form in the intellect. (Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina V, cap. 1, p. 237) Avicenna here describes the process of abstraction, or how the representation in the imagination of particular things becomes universal in the intellect. The universal forms are abstracted from representations in the imagination and flow from the active intellect into the passive. Note, however, that the terminology of representation is never used in relation to the intellect. It is always the internal senses that represent in Avicenna and not the intellect or the external senses (see Lagerlund 2007b, for a table of the whole range of terms translated by representation in Avicenna's works.) One of the reasons representation is only used for the internal senses is that representations are thought of as images. The notion of linguistic representations or representations as signs is not present in Avicenna's work or any other work of the time. It seems instead to derive from logic. Early logic works like Garlandus Compotista's Dialectica (17) and Abelard's Dialectica (II, 188) discussed a distinction between a word's signification by imposition and representation. A denominative term such as white signifies by imposition a substance that is white, but it signifies by representation the whiteness inhering in the substance. The white thing stands in for or is an instantiation of whiteness; white is re-presented in the object. Garlandus mentions the example of a traveler ('viator') who can be said to represent a road ('via'). The term traveler signifies by imposition the human being who is a traveler, but also represents the road the traveler travels on. It is exactly this usage of representation applied to mental signs that becomes important with Ockham and Buridan.
There are many problems associated with this view of mental representation. A famous problem is: why are the daffodils outside my soul not about my thought of the daffodils? The forms inside and outside my mind are the same, suggesting that mental representation is symmetrical. Aquinas has a famous answer to this problem, which is that the daffodils in the garden are not about my thought because of the mode of the form's presence in them. The forms in the daffodils are really present whereas in my mind the universal form is spiritually or intentionally present. The distinction between forms being really or spiritually present is central to Aquinas's theory of cognition. A form may be present somewhere without literally making whatever substance it informs into something else. Colors in the air, for example, do not make the air really colored: we see colors in the objects around us but not in the intervening air, although they must be there spiritually if sensation is to be a causal process. This means, of course, that the air must somehow contain the color, which entails that intentionality is not a mark of the mental for Aquinas. The air is not in itself a mind (for discussion, see Pasnau 1997, Chap. 2).
species has spiritual being, then they cannot: truly and naturally flow from a natural, corporeal form, [and] not really and truly inform a natural body, e.g. the air or the eye. (Sententiarum II, q. 73, 87.) On Aquinas' theory the species cannot effect the sense organ and cause a cognition, he seems to think. The species cannot hence fulfill the role they are supposed to play in a theory of cognition or a theory of vision. Olivi does not straight our reject all species, however, since he thinks memory utilizes species. These species are representations and they are constructed by us. He explains it in the following passage: Cognitive acts are effected by the [cognitive] power not, however, through its nude essence. Rather, in all [cognitive acts] an actual attention, actually terminated upon the object, is required. And therefore, when the exterior thing in-and-of-itself (per se) is not placed before the attention, there must be a memorative species placed before it in lieu of the object, which [the species] is not the origin of the cognitive act, except insofar as it serves as a term for or representative of the object. (Sententiarum II, q. 74, 113.) This is the most common usage of species after Olivi, that is, that species are representative.
4. Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus and the Introduction of Mental Content
For various reasons, the late thirteenth century saw an increased interest in epistemology. One of the reasons for this was certain developments of new theories of mental representations and intentionality. Some of these developments were due to problematic features of, on the one hand, Aquinas's view of mental representation and on the other, of Henry of Ghent's interpretation of Augustine's view of divine cognition. Aquinas seems to have held that the intelligible species is supposed to play a dual role both as a universal common to all of us thinking it and as my individual thought. One and the same entity seems not to be able to fulfill both these roles. Henry on the other hand reinterprets Augustines' doctrine of divine ideas and introduces a distinction between the ideas and the divine nature. The ideas are possibilia or the natures of possible things to be created (de Rijk 2005:8184). Both of these views contribute to the introduction of a distinction between the vehicle and the content of a representation. The distinction developed by Henry in relation to the divine nature was almost immediately taken up into the debates about human cognition. It was applied to Aquinas's theory of mental representation, taking the conformality view a step further by introducing a distinction between the thing representing and the thing represented. John Duns Scotus was instrumental in adapting this view to human cognition. Scotus's implemented Henry's distinction and treated the thing that does the representing as a mental act or concept, which ontologically speaking is an accident of the mind, and the thing represented as the form of the object thought about (which is why this is still a conformality account of mental representation). Scotus claimed that the accident or mental act is subjectively in the soul, whereas the object being represented is present objectively, or has objective being in the mind. He also said that the object exists sub ratione cognoscibilis seu repraesentanti or in keeping with the nature of something cognizable or represented(Ord. I, d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 382) to express the content side of the mental representation.
Scotus thus had a clear way of expressing what Brentano later called intentionality, that is, the way the object of thought exists in the mind. It has objective existence in the mind on his view, which later came to be regarded as the mark of the mental (see Normore 1986; Pasnau 2003; King 2007). Although the advantages of this approach over Aquinas's are clear, problems remains concerning the ontological status of these mental contents. The medieval debate here is famous and features a wide variety of opinions (for a survey, see Tachau 1988). Scotus himself says that thought objects have a diminished kind of being, which is supposed to be a state between real being and no being at all. Ockham would later subject this view to much criticism.
Klima 2001: xxxviii-xlii and 2009: 40-56) It has a descriptive content that enables it to narrow down its signification to only one thing. (For the significance of this difference from Ockham, see Klima 2009: 6989) Buridan thinks that we always cognize or conceive of something first as singular, but this also means that we first conceive of it as this or that, that is, we conceive of it as something. For him, this means that our concepts are from the very beginning loaded with some content and a fully singular concept picks out whatever it is of or represent in all circumstances. Such a concept is determinate and not vague, since it applies to only one thing, but it is also not what we first acquire, Buridan thinks. The first singular concepts acquired are so-called vague singular concepts. A vague concept is singular because it is about only one thing, but it is not determined what thing that is; examples of such concepts are this human, this cup, hence the name vague singulars. It is from these we arrive at determinate singular concepts by adding content and at universal concepts by abstracting away from singularizing circumstances. To explain how this process works, he uses an example that, after him, became a standard example used to explain singular cognition. In the example, Socrates approaches from afar. At first, I cannot tell exactly what I see approaching; something (a substance) is coming closer and closer to me. After a while, I see that it is an animal of some sort, but I cannot tell exactly what kind of animal it is. As it comes closer, I realize that it is a human being, and, finally, when he is close enough, I recognize Socrates (see Normore 2007). Although this example seems to have had a long tradition, nowhere else did it play as important a role as it does for Buridan and some of his followers. Cognition, it shows, is always in the first instance aboutthat thing, that animal, that human being, and finally about Socrates. Hence, it is always about a singular thing in the first instance. The example can be found in John Buridan, Nicholas Oresme, Marsilius of Inghen, Peter of Ailly, Gabriel Biel, as well as Thomas Hobbes, and all these authors used it in virtually the same way. The example can thus be said to reform the theory of thought developed by Ockham (see Lagerlund 2006 and Lagerlund forthcoming).
Bibliography
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Aquinas, Saint Thomas | Aristotle, General Topics: psychology | Auriol [Aureol, Aureoli], Peter | Buridan, John [Jean] | intentionality | intentionality: in ancient philosophy | intentionality: medieval theories of | mental representation | Ockham [Occam], William
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