While many thirteenth-century scholastic philosophers thought that the human powers of sensation are distinct from the human intellect, this apparent consensus collapsed in the 1320s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. The proximate cause of this transformation was Walter Chatton’s rejection of William of Ockham’s arguments that the human powers of sensation are distinct from the human intellect. This article examines Chatton’s implicit and explicit motivations for rejecting Ockham’s arguments. I show that Ockham thinks that the senses are distinct from the intellect because (...) he holds that sensing is material and embodied in a way that thinking is not. I show that Chatton, on the other hand, sees no need to posit such a difference between sensation and thought with respect to materiality or embodiment because he thinks that nothing about the character of sensory experience shows it to be material or embodied in a way that thinking is not. (shrink)

This paper presents an original interpretation of the fourteenth-century debate over whether every volitio is a cognitio. This debate, I argue, was at its heart a debate about what constitutes the mark of occurrent mental states. Three participants in this debate – Adam Wodeham, Richard FitzRalph, and John of Ripa – articulated three distinct accounts of the mark of the mental. In doing so, they also developed several philosophical accounts of the intentionality of occurrent affective states.

Does human happiness consist in God, as the widespread medieval view that God is the last end of human beings would suggest, or does it consist in the experience of God, the view suggested by medieval readings of Aristotle? In response to this theological problem, the important fourteenth-century philosopher John of Ripa developed one of the most innovative and subtle late medieval theories of the metaphysics of awareness. This article provides an account of Ripa’s theory of awareness and shows how (...) the theory was both motivated by and intended to solve this central theological problem for late medieval thought. In Section 1, I present the theological problem. In Section 2, I examine Ripa’s innovative theory of the metaphysics of awareness. In Section 3, I show how Ripa uses his account of the metaphysics of awareness to offer a solution to the theological problem. (shrink)