Obvious maximus biography of william

Maurer, Armand. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Better suited for non-experts than Adams Spade, Paul Vincent, and Claude Panaccio. Edited by Edward N. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login. Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions.

For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Sign in Get help with access You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Conversely, one can reduce the number of ontological categories, and yet hold that there are universal entities in those remaining categories.

Moreover, as usually stated, it is a sentiment that most philosophers, medieval or otherwise, would accept. Few philosophers endorse an unnecessarily large ontology. In the fullest formulation of the Razor that Ockham gives, those conditions are spelled out in detail. They are: reason or reasoning from self-evident premisesexperience, and infallible religious authority namely, Sacred Scripture.

If, however, we can meet one of those conditions, then we have good reason to think that the less parsimonious claim is true over the more parsimonious claim. Ockham does not argue against the existence of universal entities on the basis of the Razor. That is, he does not think that we should refrain from affirming the existence of universal entities just because there are no good reasons for doing so in the absence of further evidence.

No, he holds that realist theories of universals, at least the realist theories that were prevalent at the time, are outright incoherent. They are either self-contradictory or incompatible with other statements that philosophers hold to be true. For Ockham, the only universals it makes sense to talk about are universal concepts, and, derivative from them, universal terms in spoken and written language.

In other words, there is no universal entity of felinity but only singular cats, which are relevantly and essentially similar to one another in and of themselves. There is, certainly, the universal concept of cat. Metaphysically, universal concepts are singular entities like all others. With respect to the exact ontological status of such conceptual entities, however, Ockham changed his view over the course of his career.

Metaphysically such an act is a singular quality of an individual mind, and is universal only in the sense of being a mental sign of several things at once and which is, then, predicable of those things in mental propositions. When it comes to paring down the number of basic ontological categories, Ockham is more cautious and frequently appeals to the Razor.

To understand his perspective on the ten Aristotelian categories, it is important to see that the view he claims to be targeting posits ten fundamental ontological categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, place, time, position, and habit. Ockham, by contrast, thinks that there are only two, namely substance and quality.

So, while he agrees with the tradition that there are ten semantic categories, viz. Ockham focuses considerable energy on two categories in particular, quantity and relation, while the remaining six categories are cursorily dealt with. When it comes to the category of relation, he admits that there are a handful of relational entities we should posit on theological grounds viz.

Outside these exceptions, he is adamant that there is no compelling reason to posit quantitative, relational, etc. He does so by employing a range of metaphysical, natural philosophical, and even theological arguments to show the absurdity of holding that these are entities distinct from substances or qualities. By obvious maximus biography of william of the Razor, then, we can dispense with the more ontologically committing view in favor of the more parsimonious view on which we are not required to posit the existence of all these additional accidental entities.

Thus, from the very fact that Socrates is white and Plato is white, Socrates is similar to Plato and conversely. Likewise, if both are black, or hot, [then] they are similar without anything else added. Translation by Spade; emphasis added. Because only substances and qualities exist, only substantial and qualitative terms are absolute.

And as connotative terms, they have nominal definitions that make conspicuous their primary and secondary significates. The first term of the definition signifies female animals and the second term signifies her offspring. Yet, both female animals and their offspring are just substances. With the appropriate application of connotation theory, then, we can paraphrase sentences using categorial terms, clarifying that they only require the existence of substances and qualities.

It is important to stress that Ockham is not denying that substances and their qualities are quantified, related, positioned, and so on. Ockham is denying, rather, that quantitative, relational, and position terms, e. All he seems to do is argue against metaphysical claims that are more ontologically committing than those that are less so.

While not denying this basic philosophical orientation, it should not detract from the recognition that there tends to be a positive flip side to all this. We have already seen that he does give an account of how material substances are extended. His account of the metaphysical structure of material substances, on the one hand, and of artifacts on the other, are also instructive in this regard.

In both cases, it is true that he denies that material substances and artifacts are wholes existing over and above their parts. In both cases, however, he provides an explanation of what sort of wholes they are on the basis of a consideration of their parts and how their parts are unified. But this does not mean that he has no positive account of the metaphysics of material substances.

On the contrary, he holds that a human being, for example, is identical to its conjoined essential parts, which are its rational and sensory souls as well as a corporeal form and its matter.

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In the natural order and in the absence of divine intervention, the essential parts of a material substance under particular conditions have an intrinsic disposition to unite in such a way that they form that one single material substance. Similarly, he denies the existence of an additional accidental form that would unify the parts of an artifact.

Rather, an artifact like a house, for instance, is identical to a collection of natural material substances, e. Ockham wrote a great deal in this area, although many of those topics we would now classify as metaphysical. As a nominalist about universals, Ockham had to deal with the Aristotelian claim in the Posterior Analytics that science pertains to certain propositions about that which is universal and necessary.

He discusses this issue in the Prologue to his Exposition of the Physics[ 33 ] and there agrees with Aristotle. It is only in this sense that science deals with the universal. This of course does not mean that for Ockham our scientific knowledge can never move beyond the level of language to actual things. In particular, we do not need them in the category of quantity.

For Ockham, there is no need for real mathematical entities such as numbers, points, lines, and surfaces as distinct from singular substances and qualities. Apparent talk about such things can invariably be parsed away via the theory of connotation in favor of talk about substances and qualities. Such an application of mathematics violates a traditional Aristotelian prohibition against metabasis eis allo genos, grounded on quite reasonable considerations.

The basic idea is that things cannot be legitimately compared in any respect in which they differ in species. But for Aristotle, straight lines and curved lines belong to different species of lines. Hence, they cannot be meaningfully compared or measured against one another. The same holds for rectilinear motion and circular motion.

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Although the basic idea is reasonable enough, Ockham recognized that there are problems. The length of a coiled rope, for example, can straightforwardly be compared to the length of an uncoiled rope, and the one can meaningfully be said to be longer or shorter than, or equal in length to, the other. For that matter, a single rope surely stays the same length, whether it is coiled or extended full-length.

To describe the one as curved coiled and the other as straight uncoiled is not to appeal to specifically different kinds of entities—curvature and straightness—but merely to describe the ropes in ways that can be expounded according to two different patterns. Since such talk does not have ontological implications that would require specifically different kinds of entities, the Aristotelian prohibition of metabasis does not apply.

Once one realizes that we can appeal to connotation theory, and more generally the theory of exposition, without invoking new entities, the door is opened to applying mathematical analyses all of which are exponible, for Ockham to all kinds of things, and in particular to physical nature. But they were important ones. He takes it for granted that humans not only can but frequently do know truths about the world, and focuses his attention instead on the mechanisms by which this knowledge comes about.

At the sensory level, the sensory species may be compared to the more recent notion of a sense impression. One recent author, describing the theory as it occurs in Aquinas, puts it like this:. Consider, for example, blueprints.

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In a blueprint of a library, the configuration of the library itself, that is, the very configuration that will be in the finished library, is captured on paper but in such a way that it does not make the paper itself into a library. Rather, the configuration is imposed on the paper in a different sort of way from the way it is imposed on the materials of the library.

What Aquinas thinks of as transferring and preserving a configuration we tend to consider as a way of encoding information. Stump The configuration of features found in the external object is also found in encoded form as a species in the organ that senses the object. Depending on the sense modality, it may also be found in an intervening medium.

For example, with vision and hearing, the species is transmitted through the air to the sense organ.

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Ockham rejected this entire theory of species. For him, both sensory and intellectual species are unnecessary for a successful theory of cognition, and he dispenses with them by appealing to the Razor. Moreover, he argues, species theory is not supported by experience. Introspection reveals no such species in our cognitive processes. But, their theories of intuitive and abstractive cognition are so different that it is hard to see any one thing they are all supposed to be theories of.

Nevertheless, at a first approximation, intuitive cognition can be thought of as perception, whereas abstractive cognition is closer to imagination, remembering, and generalizing or conceptual thought. The fit is not exact, however, since authors who had a theory of intuitive and abstractive cognition usually also allowed the distinction at the intellectual level as well.

Many medieval philosophers tended to deny that we can have direct intellectual cognition of an individual, believing that sensory cognition was of an individual while intellectual cognition was of a universal. It is important to note, however, that abstractive cognition does not necessarily have to do with abstraction in the sense of producing universal concepts from cognitive encounters with individuals.

What abstractive cognition abstracts from is the question of the existence or non-existence of the object. By contrast, intuitive cognition is very much tied up with the existence or non-existence of the object. Here is how Ockham distinguishes them:. For intuitive cognition of a thing is a cognition such that by virtue of it, it can be known whether the thing exists or not, in such a way that if the thing does exist, the intellect at once judges it to exist and evidently knows it to exist … Likewise, intuitive cognition is such that when some things are known, one of which inheres in the other or the one is distant in place from the other or is related in another way to the other, it is at once known by virtue of the incomplex cognitions of those things whether the thing inheres or does not inhere, whether it is distant or not distant, and so on for other contingent truths ….

Abstractive cognition, however, is that by virtue of which it cannot be evidently known of the thing whether it exists or does not exist. I, Prologue, q. For example, that this thing exists, that it is white, that is at such-and-such a distance from another thing, and so on. Peter Lombard, a conservative theologian, wrote the text as a reaction against some who at the time were applying Aristotle 's logic to theology.

It was required that every student working for a higher degree in theology would lecture and comment on the Book of Sentences which is what Ockham did at Oxford in - The obvious maximus biography of william was used as a framework for students to develop their own original positions and to debate with their teachers and fellow students. In June Ockham was granted a licence to hear confessions and by he completed study for his bachelor's degree.

Ockham lectured on logic and natural philosophy in a Franciscan school from to while he waited to return to university to study for his doctorate. During these years he wrote many deep works on philosophy and logic. Corcoran writes:- William of Ockham was certainly among the most imaginative, competent, and prolific of Medieval logicians. The scope of the apparently original concepts, problems, and results found in his works is impressive, if not astounding.

In particular Ockham wrote the monumental three-part Summa logicae during these four years which Corcoran says Ockham's opinions aroused strong opposition and he was summoned by the Franciscan provincial chapter [ 3 ] Indeed Ockham explained his views and no action was taken against him but clearly he had been singled out as unsuitable to teach, and the matter was not allowed to rest.

He was summoned to Avignon in to have his lectures and writings examined for heretical or mistaken teaching. Ockham went to France, crossing the Channel in the summer ofand continued to Provence where he now resided at the Avignon convent. Rather surprisingly, the person who was to read Ockham's commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard was John Lutterell who had been chancellor of Oxford University when Ockham studied there.

Perhaps Lutterell was the reason that Ockham was now being tested for he may have decided that Ockham's views were dangerous when he was a student at Oxford. Anyway Lutterell went through Ockham's work and made a list of 56 statement which he deemed to be erroneous or heretical. With the list being now the basis for the charge against Ockham, a commission was set up the try him.

First the commission decided that Ockham's teaching on physics, namely on time, motion and place, should be removed from the list of charges unless it was part of a theological statement. By there was a list of 51 charges against Ockham which was later reduced to One of the difficulties the commission had in attacking Ockham was that he was in fact a fairly conservative theological and his religious statements mostly had adherents among the leading Franciscans.

As a result, he was not formally condemned for his teaching. William of Ockham is most famous for his principle of parsimony, also known as Occam's Razor. This principle states that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. Among philosophers, William of Ockham ranks out of 1, Among people born inWilliam of Ockham ranks 1.