Scotus adopts the standard medieval Aristotelian view that human beings alone, among the animals, have two different sorts of cognitive powers: senses and intellect. The
Senses differ from the intellect in that they have physical organs; the intellect is immaterial. In order for the intellect to make use of sensory information, therefore, it must somehow take the raw material provided by the senses in the form of material images and make them into suitable objects for understanding. This process is known as abstraction, from the Latin ahstrahere, which is literally ‘‘to drag out.’’ The intellect pulls out the universal, as it were, from the material singular in which it is embedded. This activity is performed by the active or agent intellect, which takes the ‘‘phantasms’’ derived from sense experience and turns them into ‘‘intelligible species.’’ Those species are actualized in the possible or receptive intellect, whose function is to receive and then store the intelligible species provided by the active intellect. Scotus denies that the active and passive intellect are really distinct. Rather, there is one intellect that has these two distinct functions or powers.
Phantasms do not, however, become irrelevant once the intelligible species has been abstracted. Scotus holds (just as Aquinas had held) that the human intellect never understands anything without turning towards phantasms (Lectura 2, d. 3, pars 2, q. 1, n. 255). That is, in order to deploy a concept that has already been acquired, one must make some use of sensory data - although the phantasms employed in using a concept already acquired need not be anything like the phantasms from which that concept was abstracted in the first place. I acquired the intelligible species of dog from phantasms of dogs, but I can make use of that concept now not only by calling up an image of a dog but also by (say) imagining the sound of the Latin word for dog. Scotus’ point is simply that there must be some sensory context for any act of intellectual cognition.
And even that point is not quite as general as my unqualified statement suggests. For one thing, Scotus believes that our intellect’s need for phantasms is a temporary state. It is only in this present life that the intellect must turn to phantasms; in the next life we will be able to do without them. For another thing, Scotus may have thought that even in this life we enjoy a kind of intellectual cognition that bypasses phantasms. He called it ‘‘intuitive cognition.’’
Scotus understands intuitive cognition by way of contrast with abstractive cognition. Abstractive cognition involves a universal, and a universal as such need not be exemplified. That is, my intelligible species of dog only tells me what it is to be a dog; it doesn’t tell me whether any particular dog actually exists. Intuitive cognition, by contrast, ‘‘yields information about how things are right now’’ (Pasnau 2003). Sensory cognition, as Scotus explicitly acknowledges, counts as intuitive cognition on this account. It is, after all, quite uncontroversial that my seeing or hearing a dog gives me information about some particular dog as it exists when I see or hear it. Scotus’ much bolder claim concerns intellectual intuitive cognition, by which the intellect cognizes a particular thing as existing at that very moment. Intellectual intuitive cognition does not require phantasms; the cognized object somehow just causes the intellectual act by which its existence is made present to the intellect. As Robert Pasnau rightly notes, intellectual intuitive cognition is in effect a ‘‘form of extrasensory perception’’ (Pasnau 2003).
In some places Scotus seems to think of this sort of intuitive cognition as a mere theoretical possibility, but in others he argues vigorously for the reality of intellectual intuitive cognition. Indeed, in the latter sorts ofpassages it becomes clear that intuitive cognition is quite pervasive in human thought. (For three different takes on what to make of Scotus’ apparently conflicting signals on this matter, see Day 1947, Pasnau 2003, and Wolter 1990a.) He argues, for example, that since the intellect engages in reasoning that makes reference to the actual existence of particular sensible objects, it must know that they exist. Abstractive cognition, of course, cannot provide such knowledge. Moreover, without intuitive cognition I could never know about my own intellectual states. Abstractive cognition could provide me with an abstract concept of thinking about Scotus, but I need intuitive cognition to know that I am in fact exemplifying that concept right this minute.
If these arguments represent Scotus’ considered views on intuitive cognition, then Scotus is making a bold exception to the general rule that in this life the intellect acquires knowledge only by turning to phantasms. It would seem that he has little choice, given the importance he attaches to our intuitive self-knowledge in his attack on skepticism. For our intellect is immaterial, as are its acts, and it is difficult to see how an immaterial act can be captured in a sensory phantasm. Even so, Scotus is enough of an Aristotelian about the functioning of our intellect on this side of heaven to insist that even though our brute acquaintance with those acts is independent of phantasms, the descriptions under which we know those acts must be capable of being captured in a phantasm. And our intuitive cognition of extramental singulars extends only to material singulars, that is, those that are capable of being captured in a phantasm. Scotus consistently denies that we can have intuitive cognition of nonsensible objects (such as angels) or universals in this life.
Scotus argues that the human intellect is capable of achieving certainty in its knowledge of the truth simply by the exercise of its own natural powers, with no special divine help. He therefore opposes both skepticism, which denies the possibility of certain knowledge, and illuminationism, which insists that we need special divine illumination in order to attain certainty. He works out his attack on both doctrines in the course of a reply to Henry of Ghent in Ordinatio 1, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4. (For the text and translation, see Wolter 1987:96-132.) Henry had argued that the natural cognitive powers of human beings are deficient in various ways that mean that certainty can be attained only by divine illumination. Scotus argues that if Henry is right about the limitations of our natural powers, even divine illumination is not enough to save us from pervasive uncertainty. So Henry’s arguments, far from showing that certainty is possible through divine illumination, actually lead to a pervasive skepticism. Scotus counters that we can show that skepticism is false. We can in fact attain certainty, and we can do so by the unaided exercise of our natural intellectual powers. There are four types of knowledge in which infallible certainty is possible. First, knowledge of first principles is certain because the intellect has only to form such judgments to see that they are true. (And since the validity of proper syllogistic inference can be known in just this way, it follows that anything that is seen to be properly derived from first principles by syllogistic inference is also known with certainty.) Second, we have certainty with respect to quite a lot of causal judgments derived from experience. Third, Scotus says that many of our own acts are as certain as first principles. It is no objection to point out that our acts are contingent, since some contingent propositions must be known immediately (that is, without needing to be derived from some other proposition). For otherwise, either some contingent proposition would follow from a necessary proposition (which is impossible), or there would be an infinite regress in contingent propositions (in which case no contingent proposition would ever be known). Fourth, certain propositions about present sense experience are also known with certainty if they are properly vetted by the intellect in the light of the causal judgments derived from experience.
World History
