Duns Scotus's Theory of Cognition
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780199684885
Subjects: Cognition; Philosophy of mind; Duns scotus, john, approximately 1266-1308
Description: Richard Cross provides the first complete and detailed account of Duns Scotus's theory of cognition, tracing the processes involved in cognition from sensation, through intuition and abstraction, to conceptual thought. He provides an analysis of the ontological status of the various mental items (acts and dispositions) involved in cognition, and a new account of Scotus on nature of conceptual content. Cross goes on to offer a novel, reductionist, interpretation of Scotus's view of the ontological status of representational content, as well as new accounts of Scotus's opinions on intuitive cognition, intelligible species, and the varieties of consciousness. Scotus was a perceptive but highly critical reader of his intellectual forebears, and this volume places his thought clearly within the context of thirteenth-century reflections on cognitive psychology, influenced as they were by Aristotle, Augustine, and Avicenna. As far as possible, this book traces developments in Scotus's thought during the ten or so highly productive years that formed the bulk of his intellectual life.