Abstract
Buridan holds that the proper subject of psychology (i.e., the science undertaken in Aristotle’s De Anima) is the soul, its powers, and characteristic functions. He takes it as obvious, moreover, that such a science is possible. To the extent that the science of psychology includes the human or intellective soul, however, Buridan’s claim regarding its possibility is far from obvious. After all, the human soul is immaterial and, hence, neither it nor any of its acts is accessible to the senses. And yet, on Buridan’s broadly empiricist theory of knowledge, all knowledge takes its start in the senses and in what can be derived from the senses. How, then, is a science of the human soul possible? The closest Buridan comes to addressing this question is a single question in Book III, in which he considers how—despite its inaccessibility to the senses—we come to form a concept of the (human) intellect. Even here, however, crucial details of the account remain obscure. The chapter argues that, on Buridan’s account our general concept of intellect is inferentially derived from our experience of our own intellective states and rational activities. According to the author, Buridan’s notion of experience is a non-conceptual, non-discursive mode of self-awareness. On that interpretation, then, it turns out that, for Buridan, our concept of the intellect itself and, hence, the science of (human) psychology in general, is ultimately grounded in the phenomenal experience of our own intellective states.
I’m grateful to Jeffrey Brower for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
As Buridan lectured on De Anima multiple times, his commentary on this work exists in several versions. I rely mainly on his third and most mature redaction. References to, and English quotations of, this work are from the forthcoming critical edition and translation. (In some cases, however, I have slightly—and silently—modified the English translation.) I will have occasion, in what follows, to consider two other, earlier versions of Buridan’s lectures on De Anima, namely, (1) an earlier redaction, labeled in some of the manuscripts as the non de ultima lectura and (2) a sixteenth century edition made by George Lokert. Both of these earlier versions are collected and edited by Patar. See Buridan (1991). For a helpful summary of the various De Anima commentaries attributed to Buridan, as well as careful assessment of the veracity of their attribution to Buridan, see Bakker and de Boer (2011).
- 2.
- 3.
Here and in what follows, I move freely between speaking of the ‘intellect’, the ‘intellective soul’, and the ‘soul.’ Buridan holds that there is but one soul in human beings (hence, no ontological distinction to be drawn between the vegetative, sensitive, and intellective soul). See QDA II, q. 4; and III, q. 17. Buridan also denies that the (principle) powers of the soul are distinct from the soul itself (II, q. 5). Thus, on his view, ‘intellect’ refers to the human soul just insofar as it is the principle or power for rational thought. For more on Buridan on the unicity of soul, see Lagerlund (2004) and de Boer’s contribution to this volume.
- 4.
Buridan’s account of sense cognition is developed in Book II of his QDA. An overview of Buridan’s account of sense cognition can be found in Sobol (2001). See also Sobol’s chapter in the present volume.
- 5.
In fact, Buridan is inclined to identify the intelligible species with phantasms—namely, with acts of the cogitative power. See QDA III, q. 15. A detailed treatment of Buridan’s account of intelligible species, especially in connection with his views about the cognition of universals, can be found in Zupko (2013).
- 6.
This question about whether the intellect can cognize itself is taken up in all of the various redactions of Buridan’s De Anima commentary. Although my discussion focuses primarily on Buridan’s third and, hence, most mature treatment of this question, I’ll occasionally consider his treatment of the issue in earlier redactions. The basic line of argumentation is the same, however, in all three versions.
- 7.
In referring to the intellect’s knowledge of itself as “self-knowledge,” I do not mean to commit myself to the view that Buridan identifies the human person (i.e., that to which the first person pronoun refers) exclusively with the soul, rather than the soul-body composite. Even if this is in fact Buridan’s view (see, e.g., Lagerlund, op. cit.), nothing in my discussion turns on this, and so I mean to remain neutral on such matters.
- 8.
He writes “…this is apparent since we do come to knowledge of the intellect, which would not happen if the intellect did not intellectively cognize itself” (QDAL III, q. 9)
- 9.
It was common among medieval philosophers to represent Augustine’s contention that “the mind knows itself through itself (per seipsam)” as the claim that the mind or intellect knows itself immediately and through its own essence (per suam essentiam), rather than by recourse to any inferential or representational processes. And this is because, on the Augustinian picture, intellect is somehow immediately acquainted with itself. As Augustine himself famously remarks: “what is more present to the mind than the mind itself?” (De Trinitate 10.16)
- 10.
- 11.
QDANV III, q. 10. “…for if it did this it could always produce that species [in itself immediately] and it would. But, in that case, it would always intellectively cognize itself—which is false.”
- 12.
See also QDANV III, q. 10 where Buridan elaborates on the kinds of intellective states that serve as the basis for inferentially derived concepts of the intellect. In this context, he also gestures at reasons for including ‘incorporeal’ in this concept. Thus he writes: “From these things it follows that intellect understands itself through a discursive process from other things previously grasped by the intellect. [...] For example, we experience that we cognize a thing universally, that we infer to future things from things that happened in the past, and that we have doubts about the causes of sensible things (causes that are not sensed by us). We infer that all these cognitions do not pertain to a corporeal, extended sensory power. Quite the contrary: we experience that we have reasons for actions which conflict with sense-based cognitions [species] and appetites. Therefore, we conclude that there is in us some other cognitive power…and we call such power the ‘human intellect’.”
- 13.
E.g., with regard to the intellect itself, Buridan goes on to consider questions about whether it is active or passive; whether it is immaterial; whether there is only one or whether there are as many intellects as human beings. In connection with his investigation of the intellect’s operation he considers, for example, whether that operation requires intelligible species, and whether it grasps what is universal before what is singular or vice versa. Finally, in connection with its relation to the body, he considers whether it is the substantial form of the body, whether it inheres in the body, and whether it inheres in the body as a form distinct from the sensitive soul.
- 14.
It may be, moreover, that his account also presupposes that we likewise possess (perhaps implicitly) a kind of reflexive-awareness of our own intellect. After all, on his view the discursive process that yields a general concept of intellect includes, as an intermediary step, recognition that there exists “in oneself” a power or capacity for universal thought, syllogistic reasoning, etc. As he describes it, the discursive process is one in which we first “conclude that there is in us some …cognitive power… and we call such power the ‘human intellect’”.
- 15.
Buridan appears somewhat ambivalent regarding the precise characterization of a so-called reflexive power. While reflexivity is traditionally associated with the intellect just insofar as it is both immaterial and capable of reflecting on itself, Buridan associates reflexivity with the capacity for discursive or inferential cognitive processing. So understood, he sees no obvious conceptual connection between reflexivity and immateriality. Thus, in QDAN III.3, in the context of discussing Alexander’s arguments for materialism about the intellect, Buridan allows that one might legitimately argue that the capacity for discursive thought (and, hence, for reflexivity) belongs properly to material substances. In his earlier De Anima commentary, however, he suggests that it is the capacity for introspective, or self-directed discursive thought that ultimately distinguishes the intellect (from the senses) as a reflexive power. He writes: “It is customary to say that a sense does not sense itself, and that this is so give that an extended body is not reflexive on itself; but these ways of speaking are obscure. For it is not clear to me what we ought to understand by the intellect’s being reflexive on itself unless by this we have in mind a discursive process by which the intellect reasons discursively from things previously understood to an intellectively cognition of itself (and of other things not accessible to the senses). Taken in this way, we can say that sense does not sense itself—though perhaps an interior sense is in some way a discursive power when it comes to things are necessary for [its] life. Even so, it is not sufficiently discursive for comprehending itself and other interior things.” QDANV III, q. 11.
- 16.
And this holds, so far as I know, for all versions of his commentary. Interestingly, however, he does explicitly consider questions about the nature of our access to our sensory states. See QDA II, q. 22; q. 25.
- 17.
QDAP. Patar attributes this text to Buridan, but this attribution has recently (and, to my mind, quite compellingly) been called into doubt. See note 1 above.
- 18.
This follows only on the assumption that such knowledge comes by way of representations—an assumption which, I shall argue presently, Buridan rejects.
- 19.
PA is willing to allow, however, (again echoing arguments Buridan make regarding cognition proper to the intellect) that a given act of cognition qualifies as self-representing in cases where its content represents or applies to cognitive states in general. As he explains: “I possess the following thought: ‘Every act of intellective cognition is in the soul’.” But insofar as that thought applies to all acts of intellective cognition it applies to and, so, represents itself. But, again, this isn’t a cognition proper to one’s own intellective states.
- 20.
For the same reason, any form of state-reflexive cognition is denied of non-rational animals since “the sensitive power of brutes is not a reflexive power” (QDAP III, q. 11).
- 21.
One might wonder whether Buridan allows for the possibility that at least some token mental states can be singularly self-referential. After all, it is well-known that he explicitly acknowledges (and discusses at length various semantic paradoxes surrounding) self-referential sentences in spoken and written language (see Buridan (1982, trans. Hughes)). But it’s less clear whether he would acknowledge the existence of singularly self-referential (token) thoughts. I know of no passage in which he explicitly considers such a thing. What is more, the fact that he denies material supposition in mental language might be taken as evidence against such a possibility. (For Buridan on material supposition in mental language see Klima (2009, 29–32)). Perhaps he would allow, however, that by using a mental demonstrative (i.e., whatever act or concept corresponds to the spoken term ‘this’) one could form a singularly self-referential thought (e.g., a mental sentence corresponding to the written sentence ‘this thought is false’, or a concept corresponding to ‘this concept’). Even were this the case, however, it would in no way undermine the conclusion of this section—namely, that, in general, acts of intellective cognition are not self-reflexive or singularly self-referential. And the acts that Buridan says we “experience” and from which we derive our concept of intellect are not acts involving mental demonstratives. Hence, even if it turns out that mental demonstratives (or complex mental expressions involving them are self-reflexive) this has no significant bearing on the broader question regarding how we come to cognize our mental states in general.
- 22.
I take it that this mode of access to our states is, in fact, more widespread than the second-order, discursively-based mode of state reflexive awareness on which PA focuses and which Buridan himself would no doubt have also endorsed.
- 23.
This is my own terminology, not Buridan’s. As noted above, see note 15, the notion of reflexivity has a fairly narrow, technical meaning for Buridan. When he speaks of reflexive cognition he has in mind a specific kind of discursive or reflective form of self-awareness. I’m using the term ‘reflexive’ much more broadly to refer to any kind of self-directedness.
- 24.
I’ve considered later medieval accounts of self-knowledge at length elsewhere. See Brower-Toland (2012, 2013, forthcoming).
- 25.
Aquinas puts the distinction this way:
…it should be noted that each person can have a twofold cognition of the soul as Augustine says in Book IX of De Trinitate. [1] One of these is a cognition by which the soul of each person cognizes itself only with respect to that which is proper to it. [2] The other is that by which the soul is cognized in terms of what it shares in common with all souls. This latter cognition, which applies generally to all souls, is that by which the nature of the soul is cognized. However, the cognition which each person has of his own soul insofar as it is his own, this is cognition of the soul insofar as it exists in this very individual. It is through this cognition [viz., type 1] that one cognizes whether the soul exists as when someone perceives (percipit) that he has a soul. Through the other type of cognition [viz., type 2], however, one knows both the soul’s essence and its proper accidents. (DEVER 10.8c.)
Again, a similar distinction can be found in Peter Olivi:
It should be recognized that the soul knows itself in two ways. The first (1a) is by way of an experiential perception—similar in a way [to knowing something by] touch. In this way, the soul senses that it exists, lives, thinks, wills, sees, hears, and moves the body—and so on concerning other of its acts of which it knows and senses itself to be the principle and subject. And this inasmuch as there is no object and no act that it can actually know or consider without its thereupon knowing and sensing itself to be the subject (suppositum) of act by which it knows and considers. … Nevertheless, because the essential characteristics and properties of the soul are not sufficiently clear to everyone, they have to be studied and distinguished. Thus, although the mind senses and feels itself immediately through itself, it does not, nevertheless, know its nature by a genera and differentia distinguished from the generaand differentia of everything else. … The second way (1b) of knowing is via discursive reasoning. Through this reasoning it investigates the genus and differentia, which it does not know by means of the first mode [of self-knowledge]. … [In this reasoning process] it begins first from those things that it grasps and holds from itself through the first mode of knowing [—which things it grasps] as primary, infallible, and indubitable principles. For example, that it is a living thing, and that it is the principle and subject of all the aforementioned acts. (II Sent. 76, 146–7).
- 26.
See, for example, Aquinas’s claim that the soul is cognized through its acts (DEVER 10.8c). Similarly, in his Impugnatio quorundam articulorum Arnalidi Galliardi articulus 19, Olivi claims “I never apprehend my acts (for example, acts of seeing, speaking, and so on) except by apprehending myself seeing, hearing, cognizing, and so on. And it would seem this apprehension presupposes I I n the natural order an apprehension of the subject itself (ipsius suppositum). … For we apprehend our acts only as being predicated or attributed to us. Indeed, when, by a certain internal sense, we apprehend our acts, we distinguish experientially (as it were) between the acts themselves on the one hand, and the substance on which these acts depend and in which they exist on the other.” This text is edited by Sylvain Piron in Piron (2006).
- 27.
They do this in different ways: some use metaphors involving sensory modes of awareness or terminology suggestive of an analog to such modes of awareness. See, for example, the passage from Olivi cited at n. 25 above where he characterizes this notion of self-awareness as “an experiential perception—similar in a way [to knowing something by] touch.” Aquinas habitually uses the verb ‘percipere’ to characterize this mode of awareness—a very specific usage he seems to reserve largely for this particular type of cognition. See the passages quoted at nn. 25 and 26 above. Others indicate the non-cognitive nature of such self-awareness by insisting it is an experience that even characterizes states that are non-cognitive in nature E.g., Walter Chatton’s contention that such experiential awareness attends a conative state (even where such state is unaccompanied by any cognitive awareness): “It is the case, therefore, that if anyone has a proximate act of loving without any cognition of that proximate act, nevertheless, one will experience that act of loving, without any cognition of it. I confirm this in the second place since that which is experienced, namely the act of loving or thinking, does not exist except as an act received [in the mind]. But from the fact that the mind receives that act one is not entitled (contingit) to conclude that that act is its own object. Therefore, etc.” (Collatio et Prologus, Prol. Q.1, a.1, 26–27).
- 28.
Thus Aquinas says: “each person experiences (experitur) in himself that he has a soul and that the acts of the soul are occurring in him” (DEVER 10.8 sc 8). Cf. Chatton’s talk of “the experience by which [the soul] experiences something as an act.” (Collatio et Prologus. Prol. Q.2, a.5, 120–1).
- 29.
I have argued elsewhere, that this late-medieval notion of state- and subject-reflexive self-awareness is the medieval analogue to our own notion of phenomenal consciousness. As I cannot recapitulate such arguments here, I am content to leave this element of my interpretation of Buridan’s account as a working-hypothesis.
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Brower-Toland, S. (2017). Self-Knowledge and the Science of the Soul in Buridan’s Quaestiones De Anima . In: Klima, G. (eds) Questions on the Soul by John Buridan and Others. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51763-6_13
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