Nawar (2022) Clear and Distinct Perception in the Stoics, Augustine, and William of Ockham.

Nawar, Tamer (2022). Clear and Distinct Perception in the Stoics, Augustine, and William of Ockham. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 96 (1):185-207.

 

There is a long history of philosophers attributing a privileged epistemic status to cognitive states seemingly caused by di rectly present objects.

In this paper, I examine three such epistemic accounts prior to the better-known discussions of Descartes, namely, those of the Stoics, Augustine, and William of Ockham. Although these accounts are rarely, if ever, considered together, there are im portant historical connections between them and they provide three distinct and historically important models of the relevant cognitive state and its connection with its objects.

Although he is often overlooked, Augustine also has an important place in the history of epistemology (notably for giving unprecedented attention to testimony and doxastic norms, responding to scepticism, and developing influential accounts of perception and intellection). Augustine, I suggest, offers an alternative model for thinking about the relevant kind(s) of epistemically privileged cognition. He thinks the direct presence of the object of cognition is necessary for, or at least highly conducive to, cognition being epistemically privileged in the relevant way, but does not think that the objects of sense-perception are directly pre sent to perceivers and seems to largely agree with the Academic scep tics on the deficiencies of ordinary sense-perception.

Instead, he offers an account wherein intellectual perception infallibly grasps directly present incorporeal objects.

Secondly, Augustine grants a privileged epistemic status to cognizance wherein the object of said cognizance is directly present (for example, De magistro 12.39–40; Nawar 2019). This, he thinks, is why (certain kinds of) perception are epistemically privileged when compared with imagination. However, what Augustine counts as be ing directly present might prove surprising. Thus, for instance, as he makes clear in De Trinitate 11, Augustine think that the objects we ordinarily perceive through sense-perception are not directly present to perceivers, and that sense-perception involves a series of distinct representational items (formae, species) in the perceiver’s sense organs, memory, and mind (Nawar 2021a, pp. 89–101). Equally, Augustine thinks that incorporeal objects—such as numbers—may be directly present to the mind (De magistro 12.40; De libero arbi trio 2.8.23–4; Nawar 2019). (Given that Augustine often says such directly present incorporeal objects are cognized through ‘intellectual perception’, it is not clear how apt it is to speak of such intellectual cognizance as ‘non-perceptual’,)

Thirdly, Augustine thinks that the kind of intellectual knowledge he defends as being immune to sceptical attack—such as arithmetical knowledge and certain kinds of self-knowledge—is infallible and epistemically secure because of its independence from the bodily senses. Simply put, many of the sources of error which occur in ordinary sense-perception, such as misrepresentation due to deficiencies in the medium (as occurs when one sees a bent stick in water) or the perceptual organ, are absent in intellectual cognition (Nawar 2019, pp. 248–59). Moreover, such intellectual cognition has a distinctive clarity or perspicuity which marks it out as such (for example, when compared with mere imagining) and in this respect also seems to differ from perceptual-type impressions (which Augustine thinks can not be discerned from, for instance, hallucinatory impressions).

Some may think that Augustine concedes too much to the Academic sceptics as far as ordinary sense-perception is concerned (his views of its epistemic limitations are persistent, but Augustine is flexible on whether or not we call the cognition attained through perception ‘knowledge’, for example, Retractationes 1.14.3),18 and that his account of intellection of directly present incorporeal items is ultimately mysterious. (After all, how can incorporeal items be di rectly present? See Nawar 2019.)

However, it deserves notice that such an account seems to enjoy a certain enduring appeal and that even more recent philosophers have shown sympathy with the view that there is a strongly ‘immediate’ connection between our intellects and items such as mathematical objects (G€ odel 1983, pp. 483–4; cf. Frege 1884,§105).

Although it might seem natural to construe Ockham’sepistemic account as being similar to some modern accounts of warrant which appeal to ‘normal’ conditions (for example, Goldman 1986), Ockham seems to show very little interest in explaining why the relevant processes are reliable or produce true judge ments or knowledge in ‘natural’ cases. That is to say, even if we put to one side the fact that Ockham is uninterested in responding to sceptics and does not think that intuitive cognition or evident cognizance has an accessible, discernible feature through which it may be identified as such (and, more generally, often shows little interest in offering guidance on how one should respond to appar ent evidence, for example, Quodlibet 4, q.6, OTh 9.327), Ockham simply doesn’t seem especially interested in explaining why mental states which come about in a certain way are likely to be accurate or why certain belief-forming processes are more reliable than others. It is thus puzzling why, for instance, Ockham explicitly follows Augustine in thinking that my knowledge that I think or I understand (ego intelligo) is more certain and evident (certius et evidentius) than the knowledge attained through ordi nary sense-perception (Ordinatio Prologue q.1, OTh 1.43).