Ockham and John Buridan’s accounts of thought are on the one hand very similar, but on the other hand there are fundamental differences between them. This is particularly true when it comes to their view of mental representation. A case in point is their views of singular thought. It starts out from the same idea, that is, that thinking something singularly is having a singular concept in mind, but they disagree fundamentally on what a singular concept looks like and foremost on how it manages to latch onto the world. On Ockham’s account, as mentioned, a concept is singular because its cause was proper, as he calls it, and proper causes are necessarily tied to one object. But on Buridan’s account, a singular concept is singular because of its complexity. It has a descriptive content that enables it to narrow down its signification to only one thing.
Buridan thinks that we always cognize or conceive of something first as singular, but this also means that we first conceive of it as this or that, that is, we conceive of it as something. For him, this also means that our concepts are from the very beginning loaded with some content and a proper singular concept picks out whatever it is of or represent in all circumstances. Such a concept is not vague, since it applies to only one thing, but it is also not what we first acquire. The first singular concepts we acquire are the so-called vague singulars. A vague concept is singular because it is about only one thing, but it is not determined what thing that is; examples of such concepts are ‘‘this human,’’ ‘‘this cup,’’ hence the name ‘‘vague singulars.’’ It is from these we arrive at determinate singular concepts by adding content and to universal concepts by abstracting away from singularizing circumstances.
To explain how the process he is advocating works, he uses an example that, after him, became a standard example used to explain singular cognition. In the example, Socrates approaches from afar. At first, I cannot tell exactly what I see approaching; something (a substance) is coming closer and closer to me. After a while, I see that it is an animal of some sort, but I cannot tell exactly what kind of animal it is. As it comes closer, I realize that it is a human being, and, finally, when he is close enough, I recognize Socrates. Although this example seems to have had a long tradition, nowhere else did it play as important a role as it does for Buridan and some of his followers. Cognition, it shows, is always in the first instance about ‘‘that thing,’’ ‘‘that animal,’’ ‘‘that human being,’’ and finally about ‘‘Socrates.’’ Hence, it is always about a singuLar thing in the first instance. The example can be found in John Buridan, Nicholas Oresme, Marsilius of Inghen, Peter of Ailly, Gabriel Biel, and later authors, and all these authors used it in virtually the same way. The example can thus be said to reform the theory of thought developed by Ockham (see Lagerlund 2006, forthcoming).
See also: > Garlandus the Computist > HenrY of Ghent > Ibn Sina, Abti ‘All (Avicenna) > Intentionality > John Buridan > John Duns Scotus > Mental Language > Peter Abelard > Peter John Olivi > Species, Sensible and Intelligible > Thomas Aquinas > William of Ockham
World History
