Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1942. / Bibliography: p. 182-184.

Thesis advisor: Eileen C. Sweeney / Francis Mayronis was a Franciscan friar and one of John Duns Scotus’s primary students; he became a master of theology in 1323. His Commentary on the Sentences is preserved in more than 100 medieval manuscripts. In recent literature, Mayronis’s work has received considerable attention, especially in his cognitive theory and metaphysics. However, his ethical work has generally received very little attention. Mayronis occupies an important place in the early fourteenth century’s Franciscan intellectual tradition, particularly in the onset of the Scotist tradition. Mayronis not only creatively explicated and developed Scotus’s thoughts in his writings but also actively engaged in conversation with Peter Auriol and William Ockham as the “first” Scotist.My dissertation is organized to present Mayronis’s relational teleology in his notion of beatitude as the enjoyment of God. While generally maintaining a volitional agent-centered perspective that an agent or efficient cause is not determined to seek the good, Mayronis argues for the certitude of the ultimate end of the blessed and sees God, i.e., the final cause, as the total cause of the end. Mayronis harmonizes these seemingly contradictory causal powers of the final and efficient causes with the notion of habitus. First, Mayronis affirms the traditional view of habitus as an active power. In the present life, the free will gradually acquires a habitus toward the good through its own actions, and in heaven, grace or charity, i.e., supernatural habitus, is infused in the will of the blessed so that the will is eventually necessitated by the good. However, he could not maintain this position, i.e., the will’s habitus determines the will’s character, without abandoning Scotus’s emphasis on the will’s free aspect over its natural aspect since habitus is natural, though it is second nature. Hence, he develops a novel story of relation that completely replaces the role of habitus: God freely accepts someone due to a relational change to the person, rather than because the person has a supernatural habitus that is ‘acceptable’ to God. I begin by presenting Mayronis’s metaphysics of final causality in its historical context. For Plato and Aristotle, the end is formal. Plato considers the end as the form externally given by the divine craftsman, and Aristotle depicts nature’s motion toward the end as matter’s internal desire for its form. Then, Avicenna, while defining the final cause as the cause of causes, develops two ways the efficient cause can be central: the intellect can see something other than the good as its end, and the will can seek something not as determined by its goodness. I treat Averroes, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Mayronis in developing Avicenna’s notion of the final cause and the relationship between the final and efficient causes. In medieval teleology, we see fully developed agent-centered perspectives. In his unique rendering of Avicennian final causality, Mayronis shows that, although the final cause is the primary and necessary cause, it potentially causes our relations with God; then, we, as the efficient cause, contingently actualize the relations. Then, to situate Mayronis’s ethical teleology as a continuation of Scotus’s voluntarism, I argue for Duns Scotus’s ethical teleology against Thomas Williams’s view that sees Scotus’s ethics as proto-Kantian. I then present Mayronis’s notion of our intellect’s vision of God and our will’s enjoyment of God according to his metaphysics of final causality. First, I examine Mayronis’s cognitive theory that holds the vision of God, i.e., intuitive cognition, as a relation. I then argue for his relational teleology based on the premise that Mayronis views our enjoyment of God as a relation. For Mayronis, our ultimate end is our beatific enjoyment of God; it is neither our beatific act nor the object of the act, i.e., God, but the relation between the act and the object. Happiness is the relation to the Supreme Good, and misery is the lack of the relation. The purpose or goal of our life is neither merely internal nor external but relational. Finally, I present how Mayronis translates the role of habitus that grants the certitude of the enjoyment of the blessed into divine acceptance. For Mayronis, our moral life is not a long journey of accumulating habitus or virtues until we finally reach our destination; it is an everyday journey of love where we actualize the final cause, which potentially orders us to the Supreme Good. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

No description available.

The present dissertation concerns cognitive psychology--theories about the nature and mechanism of perception and thought--during the High Middle Ages (1250-1350). Many of the issues at the heart of philosophy of mind today--intentionality, mental representation, the active/passive nature of perception--were also the subject of intense investigation during this period. I provide an analysis of these debates with a special focus on Durand of St.-Pourçain, a contemporary of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Durand was widely recognized as a leading philosopher until the advent of the early modern period, yet his views have been largely neglected in the last century. The aim of my dissertation, then, is to provide a new understanding of Durand's cognitive psychology and to establish a better picture of developments in cognitive psychology during the period. Most philosophers in the High Middle Ages held, in one form or another, the thesis that most forms of cognition (thought, perception) involve the reception of the form of the object into the mind. Such forms in the mind explain what a given episode of cognition is about, its content. According to what has been called the conformality theory of content, the content of our mental states is fixed by this form in the mind. Durand rejects this thesis, and one of the primary theses that I pursue is that Durand replaces the conformality theory of content with a causal theory of content, according to which the content of our mental states is fixed by its cause. When I think about Felix and not Graycat, this is to be explained not by the fact that I have in my mind the form of Felix and not Graycat, but rather by the fact that Felix and not Graycat caused my thought. This is both a controversial interpretation and, indeed, a controversial theory. It is a controversial interpretation because Durand seems to reject the thesis that objects are the causes of our mental states. In the first half of the present dissertation, I argue that Durand does not reject this thesis but he rejects another nearby thesis: that objects as causes give to us 'forms'. On Durand's view, an object causes a mental state even though it does not give to us a new 'form'. In the second half of the dissertation I defend Durand's causal theory of content against salient objections to it.

The present dissertation concerns cognitive psychology--theories about the nature and mechanism of perception and thought--during the High Middle Ages (1250-1350). Many of the issues at the heart of philosophy of mind today--intentionality, mental representation, the active/passive nature of perception--were also the subject of intense investigation during this period. I provide an analysis of these debates with a special focus on Durand of St.-Pourçain, a contemporary of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Durand was widely recognized as a leading philosopher until the advent of the early modern period, yet his views have been largely neglected in the last century. The aim of my dissertation, then, is to provide a new understanding of Durand's cognitive psychology and to establish a better picture of developments in cognitive psychology during the period. Most philosophers in the High Middle Ages held, in one form or another, the thesis that most forms of cognition (thought, perception) involve the reception of the form of the object into the mind. Such forms in the mind explain what a given episode of cognition is about, its content. According to what has been called the conformality theory of content, the content of our mental states is fixed by this form in the mind. Durand rejects this thesis, and one of the primary theses that I pursue is that Durand replaces the conformality theory of content with a causal theory of content, according to which the content of our mental states is fixed by its cause. When I think about Felix and not Graycat, this is to be explained not by the fact that I have in my mind the form of Felix and not Graycat, but rather by the fact that Felix and not Graycat caused my thought. This is both a controversial interpretation and, indeed, a controversial theory. It is a controversial interpretation because Durand seems to reject the thesis that objects are the causes of our mental states. In the first half of the present dissertation, I argue that Durand does not reject this thesis but he rejects another nearby thesis: that objects as causes give to us 'forms'. On Durand's view, an object causes a mental state even though it does not give to us a new 'form'. In the second half of the dissertation I defend Durand's causal theory of content against salient objections to it.

Diss.--Bonn. / On spine: J. Duns Scotus.

No description available.

Ce travail examine et analyse les positions d'Avicenne, Thomas d'Aquin et Duns Scot concernant la connaissance des notions premières, à la lumière de leurs arguments pour cette position et de leurs autres engagements théoriques, en particulier aristotéliciens. Chacun à sa façon, ces philosophes affirment que l'étant ou l'existant est ce premier concept. Ils lui donnent une primauté logique, au sens où l'étant est présupposé par nos autres concepts. Ils lui donnent aussi une primauté cognitive, au sens où il est le premier objet à être conçu par l'intellect. / This work reviews and analyzes a view shared by Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus concerning the primary notions, examining their arguments in the light of their other philosophical commitments, especially Aristotelian ones. Each in their own way, these philosophers claim that being is this primary notion. Being has a twofold priority. In the logical order, being is presupposed by all other notions. In the cognitive order, being is the first conceived by the intellect.

Ce mémoire propose une étude critique des chapitres 14 à 17 de la première partie de la Summa logicae de Guillaume d’Ockham (v. 1285-1347), philosophe et théologien du bas Moyen-Âge. Ces quatre chapitres présentent la position d’Ockham dans la querelle des universaux, débat intellectuel marqué qui a opposé plusieurs écoles de pensée du milieu universitaire médiéval. Pour sa part, Ockham défend une position nominaliste selon laquelle 1. tout ce qui existe est de soi singulier; et 2. les universaux, ces concepts uniquement accessibles par l’esprit, n’existent pas. S’opposant au réalisme, Ockham s’y adresse notamment à l’un de ses collègues franciscain, Jean Duns Scot (v. 1266-1308). Ce mémoire a pour objectif d’identifier d’abord les mérites de la position nominaliste face au réalisme quant au statut des universaux et à la philosophie du langage et ensuite les tensions internes au nominalisme ockhamiste lorsque nous tentons de concilier celui-ci à l’ontologie et à la théologie catholique. Il s’agira donc de montrer que l’antiréalisme parvient à défaire le réalisme dans une perspective logique, mais que certains problèmes demeurent lorsque nous l’analysons dans une perspective ontologique ou théologique. Mots-clés : Guillaume d’Ockham, philosophie médiévale, Moyen-Âge, universaux, Jean Duns Scot, scolastique, ontologie, théologie catholique, logique, sémantique / This thesis proposes a critical study of chapters 14 to 17 of the first part of William of Ockham’s Summa logicae, a philosopher and theologian of the late Middle Ages (c. 1285-1347). These four chapters present Ockham's position in the problem of universals, a marked intellectual debate that opposed several philosophical and theological schools of the medieval academic world. For his part, Ockham defends a nominalist position according to which 1. everything that exists is inherently singular; and 2. universals, those concepts only accessible to the mind, do not exist. Opposing realism, Ockham addresses one of his Franciscan colleagues in particular, John Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308). This thesis’s first aim is to identify the merits of a nominalist position vis-à-vis realism in regard to the status of universals, and second, to mark the tensions internal to Ockham’s nominalistic approach in its conciliation with ontology and catholic theology. It will thus be shown that antirealism succeeds in defeating realism from a logical perspective, but that some problems remain when we analyse it from an ontological or theological perspective. Keywords: William of Ockham, medieval philosophy, Middle Ages, universals, John Duns Scotus, scholastic, ontology, catholic theology, logic, semantics.

No description available.