1/5/2024 0 Comments Ockham agent intellectUltimately, I believe, his attempt fails, though not for any lack of ingenuity, and his failure is itself instructive about the possible forms and limits of nominalism. The results are be instructive, since Ockham was struggling with difficulties that continue to plague philosophers who want to avoid a pure conventionalism and yet find realism about universals an unacceptable alternative. I want to explore the insights that nourished Ockham's positive views about nominalism and also threw him into such uncertainty. Ockham is sure that no form of realism about universals is acceptable, but doesn't seem to know what to put in its place. The text itself is heavily revised in a later redaction and a new alternative appended to the discussion. Instead, Ordinatio I d.2 q.8 is indecisive: several identifications of universals are presented but none clearly endorsed. Ockham's positive account should therefore avoid the realist commitments of his predecessors while managing to satisfy the demands of rigor and subtlety established in his critique. In qq.4-7 he criticizes positions holding that the universal is somehow a real existent outside the soul, presenting his view that universals are nothing but words as the conclusion to be drawn from the failure of these realist positions to stand up to his rigorous examination. This ringing declaration closes William of Ockham's lengthy discussion of universals in Ordinatio I d.2 qq.4-8 (pp.291-292). After examining Wodeham's arguments and the philosophical motivation behind his view, the paper turns to critical reactions to Wodeham's unique account."I do hold this, that no universal, unless perhaps it is universal by a voluntary agreement, is something existing outside the soul in any way, but all that which is of its nature universally predicable of many is in the mind either subjectively or objectively, and that no universal is of the essence or quiddity of any given substance." However, one philosopher from the first half of the fourteenth century, Adam Wodeham, explicitly defends the view that emotions are cognitions. Although medieval authors see a close relationship between emotions and those cognitions triggering them, they usually deny that emotions are simply kinds of cognition strictly speaking, emotions are thought to be movements of the human appetites. This paper examines how medieval philosophers of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries thought of the relationship between emotions, usually referred to as passions of the soul, and cognitions. The idea that emotions are cognitive mental states is at the heart of many modern accounts of the emotions. "Emotion and Cognition in Later Medieval Philosophy: The Case of Adam Wodeham." Emotion and Cognitive Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. Not only does Ockham subscribe to the truism that agents cannot will what they do not think of, he also upholds the Aristotelian doctrine that an agent’s own practical dictates are morally normative for willing, that not only right reason but erring conscience binds. Nevertheless, Adams reminds us that however distinctive, Ockham’s theories of will and morality are developed within the broad outlines of an Aristotelian theory of rational self-government, according to which it belongs to the intellect to deliberate and legislate, whereas implementation pertains to the will. Second, it “frees” will from reason’s rule: no matter what reason dictates,created willpower can disobey. First, it cuts will off from nature: the liberty of indifference turns created wills into neutral potencies unshaped by natural inclinations. By contrast with his great medieval predecessors, many estimate, Ockham has staked out a position fraught with disadvantages. In this article, Adams turns to Ockham's doctrine of the liberty of indifference: the notion that created willpower is power to will, to nill, or to do nothing with respect to any object.
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