Duns Scotus's Theory of Cognition

by Richard Cross

Richard Cross provides the first complete and detailed account of Duns Scotus's theory of cognition, tracing the processes involved in cognition from sensation, through intuition and abstraction, to conceptual thought. He provides an analysis of the ontological status of the various mental items (acts and dispositions) involved in cognition, and a new account of Scotus on nature of conceptual content. Cross goes on to offer a novel, reductionist, interpretation of Scotus's view of the ontological status of representational content, as well as new accounts of Scotus's opinions on intuitive cognition, intelligible species, and the varieties of consciousness. Scotus was a perceptive but highly critical reader of his intellectual forebears, and this volume places his thought clearly within the context of thirteenth-century reflections on cognitive psychology, influenced as they were by Aristotle, Augustine, and Avicenna. As far as possible, Duns Scotus's Theory of Cognition traces
developments in Scotus's thought during the ten or so highly productive years that formed the bulk of his intellectual life.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 2014

About the author

There is more than one person with this name in the Goodreads catalog. This entry is for Richard ^ Cross.

Richard Cross is John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy. He came to Notre Dame in 2007, having been a Fellow of Oriel College in the University of Oxford from 1993 to 2007. He specializes in medieval philosophy and theology, with a particular focus on Duns Scotus. He is currently at work on a multi-volume history of the metaphysics of Christology. A preliminary volume on Aquinas to Scotus appeared in 2002. Recently, he has published volumes on Reformation Christological Debates (OUP, 2019), and The Metaphysics of Christology in the Seventeenth Century (OUP, 2022). In press or in progress are three more volumes, one on discussions from Ockham to Biel; one on Early Scholastic Christology; and a final one on Latin Christology in late antiquity and the early middle ages. He is also preparing a critical edition of different versions of Peter Auriol's commentary on book 3 of the Sentences.