William of Ockham (1285?-1347)

William of Ockham was born in the village of Ockham, near London. He entered the Franciscan order when he was very young, and his membership is part of what lead to his death. when he was probably 21 years old (1306), he was ordained as a subdeacon in Southwark. He probably began his formal theological training three years later, in 1309. After 5 years in theology he would have been eligible to begin lecturing on the Bible. He probably did this for two years, and then entered the final stage of his education: his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. He would have done this from 1317-1319 (when he was 32-34 years old). During this time he was licenced as a priest to hear confessions. Here is where his life begins to hit hard times.

Although he attained the official degree of "Formed Bachelor" (baccalarius formatus), he never attained the degree of "Master of Theology" (magister actu regens). He completed all the requirements, but the chancellor of the university, John Lutterel prevented William's degree. He was able to teach and write for several years, but in 1323 Lutterell went to Pope John XXII in Avignon with a list of 56 allegedly heretical claims from William's writings. William was summoned to defend himself, and the process took 2 years. In the end, 51 of the 56 were declared open to censure, but the pope never actually condemned any of them. Things might have been ok for William from this point on, had he not been a Franciscan.

The minister general of the Franciscan order asked William to research an issue that was becoming a big problem for some chapters of the Franciscan order. The issue was one of poverty, and Pope John XXII had a very definite view on the matter: he was against it. After researching the issue, William decided the Pope John was wrong, and furthermore that he was contradicting the Gospels and earlier papal pronouncements, so that he was actually no longer a true pope. This nicely fit in with William's political views and his antagonism towards Pope John XXII, because Pope John was trying to consolidate and increase papal authority over secular matters. William argued vehemently against this, and so he has been called by many later scholars, "the first protestant." In any event, William is excommunicated, and he flees to Bavaria for the protection of Louis of Bavaria who is also trying to contest the Pope's secular authority. While in Bavaria, William died, probably of the Black Death.

I only briefly touched on the formal distinction in Scotus. It is a focal point of Ockham's objection to Scotus, so I'll say a bit more about it now.

The Formal Distinction is the intermediate between two other types of distinction: the Real Distinction, and then Intentional Distinction. Here they are with examples.

You should get the idea that the middle distinction is on shaky ground. The real distinction is familiar from experience: there are real things (res, in Latin) that are separate and distinct from one another, like Socrates and Plato. On the other hand, there are purely mental constructs that exist in our minds for convenience or other purposes. Intentions are strictly mind-dependent, they are just ways of thinking of things. The famous modern example is "the evening star" as opposed to "the morning star." The evening star is the celestial body that shines most brightly in the evening, and the morning star is the celestial body that shines most brightly in the morning. It just so happens that the planet Venus is the evening star and the morning star. We can think of Venus in these two different ways, but they are just two ways of thinking about the same object.

Real distinction is distinction between real objects; intentional distinction is distinction between intentional objects, or thoughts. It is important to notice that the two are not the same. The most dramatic case is when it comes to thinking about non-existent things, e.g. people who are dead or not born yet, or mythological creatures like griffons (eagle-lion) or chimerae (lion-snake). Just because we can think of something doesn't mean it really exists, and just because we can distinguish things in thought doesn't mean that they can be separated in reality. Just because I can think about the morning star separately from the evening star, and just because I can think that the morning star could exist without the evening star (I haven't learned that they are both really just the planet Venus), it doesn't follow that the morning star could really exist without the evening star.

Notice that this is a potentially devastating blow against realism. Think back to Boethius' Aristotelian realism. Look at Boethius (25-27). Consider the line of Socrates' profile. Even though in reality the line of Socrates' profile couldn't possibly exist if Socrates' face didn't exist, nevertheless, in thought we can abstract one from the other. We can attend to, or think about just the line and forget about the face. That is, according to Beothius, how we know universals.

The problem with this is that it is far too easy. Again, just because we can distinguish two thoughts, it doesn't follow that they two are distinct in any real way. We cannot assume an isomorphism between thought and reality. Our thoughts about reality might differ from what reality is really like.

Hence the "formal distinction." The formal distinction is supposed to mark out something that is more than a figment of our imagination, just a way of thinking of things, but it is not supposed to mark out a real distinction. Things that are formally distinct are not "really distinct" just in the sense that they are not real things, i.e. res, i.e. primary substances. This is just what Aristotle has in mind by distinguishing between primary substances and secondary substances. Only the primary substances are real things, res, all other beings are ontologically dependent upon them, and so what it is for them to exist is not the same as what it is for primary substances to exist. Secondary substances, e.g. humanity or corporeality, are substances, and so are really exist, but they really exist in an ontologically dependent way. Their existence is less real than the reality of the primary substances. Scotus accepts a kind of Aristotelian realism, and so he is stuck with accepting the formal distinction in addition to the real distinction and the intentional distinction. Ockham thinks it is a weak spot in his philosophy.

One final comment. Notice the question in Ockham's Question 6: "Is a universal really outside the soul, distinct from the individual, although not really distinct." In English this sounds like a contradiction: "distinct but not really distinct" sounds like "distinct but not distinct." What you must realize is that "really" does not mean "truly." "Really" comes from the Latin res, meaning a real thing, object or entity. What he is asking is whether the distinction between universal and instantiation is a "real distinction" as above, or a "formal distinction" as above.

You can see that in Ockham's view, the formal distinction is at the heart of Scotus' view from his characterization in Question 6, (3) [henceforth 6.3]. "The nature of man," i.e. humanity, "is not of itself a this, because in that case it could not be anything else. If humanity were one particular, then there could only be one human, i.e. humanity. So there must be something in addition to humanity that Socrates has that makes him the particular human that he is. But now comes the crucial question: what is the distinction between humanity and this other added thing? If it is a real distinction, then we have two real things stuck together, but each of which could exist separately from the other. That sounds like Transcendent realism, which Scotus rejects. The alternative Scotus recommends is to say that the distinction is formal. What Ockham wants to show is that this is also impossible, and so the distinction can be nothing more than intentional.

I don't want to take you through Ockham's portrayal of Scotus' argument, because he is clearly very faithful. The one thing I do want to point out is the tremendous respect Ockham has for Scotus. In 6.6 Ockham says that Scotus "surpasses all others in the subtlety of his judgement" and he means this as perhaps the highest compliment one philosopher can pay another.

Ockham's first argument against Scotus comes in 6.25-27. The summary in 6.25 gives you the strategy: the so-called "formal distinction" has to degenerate either into the intentional distinction, or into the real distinction. In either case, realism fails and nominalism is established.

Now, there is something which seems unfair in 6.26. The argument goes by process of elimination but it skips the possibility which Scotus accepts. It rules out the following relations between the humanity in Socrates (Humanity) and the contracting difference in Socrates (Socrateity):

res to res,
res to intention, and
intention to res,

leaving only the following:

intention to intention.

He completely skips Scotus' alternative:

form to form.

We'll have to see if Ockham's argument can fix this oversight. The argument is in 6.27.

1. Hypothesis: Humanity and Socrateity are formally distinct.
2. For some predicate P, Socrateity is P and Humanity is not-P.
3. If for some predicate P, x is P and y is not-P, then x y.
4. Socrateity Humanity.
5. If Socrateity Humanity, then Socrateity and Humanity are two things (res).
6. Socrateity and Humanity are two things (res).

The central principle Ockham is relying on is in premise 3. The principle is usually associated with the later philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), and the principle is usually called "Leibniz' Law" or "Leibniz' Laws."

Indiscernibility of Identicals: (Identicals are indiscernible).

If x is identical to y, then for all predicates P, x is P if and only if y is P.

Identicality of Indiscernibles: (Indiscernibles are identical).

If for all predicates P, x is P if and only if y is P, then x is identical to y.

If Humanity and Socrateity are formally distinct, then there must be something true of one that is not true of the other. If that weren't so, then everything true of Socrateity would also be true of Humanity, and that leads to all sorts of absurd conclusions. A lot of Ockham's arguments work by spelling out how absurd that would be. For example, his second argument in 6.51 points out that one consequence of the identity of Socrateity and Humanity would be that every individual is her or his own species. Here's why.

a. Assumption: Whatever is true of Humanity is also true of Socrateity.
b. Humanity is a "lesser unity than numerical unity."
c. Socrateity is a "lesser unity than numerical unity."
d. Anything which is a "lesser unity than numerical unity" is a species.
e. Socrateity is a species.
f. There are as many species as there are individuals.

The conclusion is obviously absurd, but since Scotus himself accepts b & d, and the inferences seem valid, the problem must be in the assumption in a.

So Scotus had better deny that whatever is true of Humanity is also true of Socrateity. And of course he does. Some things are true of Socrateity that are not true of Humanity; for example, Socrateity is actually philosophical, but Humanity is only potentially philosophical. This gives Ockham what he needs to run his main argument.

The problem for Ockham's argument is that Leibniz' Laws don't say anything about res or forms or intentions, they mention only identity. It is perfectly possible to have three different versions of Leibniz' Laws, one of which applies to res, the second of which applies to forms and the third of which applies to intentions. If something is true of one intention, but not true of another intention, then the two intentions are not identical, i.e. they are not the same intention. If something is true of one form, but not true of another form, then the two forms are not identical, i.e. they are not the same form. Similarly, if something is true of one res, but not true of a form or an intention, then the res is not identical to the form or the intention.

In other words, Scotus can reject step 5 of the argument. Just because Socrateity and Humanity are not identical, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are non-identical res; they might be non-identical forms, or they might be non-identical intentions, or else they are non-identical because one is a res while the other is either a form of an intention.

Ockham gives a related argument in 6.45. Instead of pointing to Socrateity having something that Humanity lacks, he points to the fact that Humanity and Socrateity have to be exact opposites of one another: Humanity is, and Socrateity is not, common to several things.

1. Everything is really singular.
2. If everything is singular, then nothing is common to several things.
3. Nothing is common to several things.
4. If nothing is common to several things, then no universals exist
5. No universals exist.

This argument is important because of premise 1. The inferences are valid and 4 is a necessary truth, because it is a defining feature of universals that they be common to several things. Premise 2 also seems to be a necessary truth, and so 1 would seem to be the problem from Scotus' point of view. The shocking thing is that Ockham gets premise 1 from Scotus himself!

In the passage Ockham refers to in Scotus (34, p.64), Soctus never explicitly says that "everything is really singular." What he does do is quote the extremely famous slogan of the Arabic philosopher Avicenna (980-1037) that "equinity is only equinity." Although this sounds like a perfectly innocuous claim, it is on the contrary extremely potent. Since we've been talking about Socrateity, let me make the point with humanity instead of equinity.

According to the beginning of Scotus (34), Humanity is not of itself universal, but in just the same way Humanity is not of itself singular. What is it then? Answer: Humanity is only Humanity. Let's be concrete here. According to modern biologists, Humanity is the following:

primate-whole-upper-lip-downward-nostrils-brachiating-non-pronounced-canines-large-brained-ness.

When Scotus says that humanity is not "of itself universal" he is saying that this complex property is not "of itself" common to many things. That makes sense because in order for this complex property to be common to many things, there has to be a number of human beings in existence. This complex property could be uninstantiated. What would this complex property be then? Answer: just humanity. Humanity is just humanity.

Go the other way now. Socrates is human; Socrates instantiates this complex property. Why? Not "of itself." That makes sense because if you said that this complex property is instantiated in Socrates "of itself," that would mean that somehow embedded in this complex property is also the property of "being Socrates" or "being instantiated in Socrates." From that it would follow that every human being is Socrates. But that is absurd. Humanity is not singular "of itself," and so Humanity is just Humanity.

To sum this up, notice that the existence or reality of humanity depends crucially upon singular humans. Humanity cannot be instantiated in particulars without those particulars existing, and humanity cannot be common to many particulars without those particulars existing. Which means that the singular things, the particulars, are the determining factors.

Now we can almost see why Ockham thinks that Scotus accepts the singularity of all things. The next step is to ask yourself where you would look to find the universal Humanity. Obviously you would look to see primate-whole-upper-lip-downward-nostrils-brachiating-non-pronounced-canines-large-brained-ness. Where would you find that? Answer: in Socrates, Plato, Crito, and so on. But when you find that complex property in Socrates, it is not a generic property, it is very specific. Socrates doesn't simply have "generic-large-brain," he has Socrates' large-brain. Plato doesn't simply have "generic-large-brain," he has Plato's large brain. The complex property of Humanity never exists in a pure, generic state: it always exists in a particularized state. That is why Ockham thinks that according to Scotus, everything is really singular: every res is a singular res.

I think Ockham is right about this. I don't think that Scotus would object to premise 1. But I do think he would object to premise 2. Just because everything is singular, it doesn't follow that nothing is common to several things. Take brain size for example. Although elephants and whales have larger brains than we have in absolute size, if you calculate brain size relative to body weight, the primate brain is the largest of all mammals. Among primates, using the same relative calculation, our brain is three time the size of the average non-human primate brain. But our brain is not just a monkey brain that got bigger. Our prefrontal cortex (responsible for attention span, some kinds of memory, linguistic skills and perhaps other intellectual and social functions) is 200% larger than that of other primates, but our motor cortex is about 30% smaller than that of other primates. Although Socrates' pre-frontal cortex and Plato's pre-frontal cortex are each unique, they are the same with respect to giving to Socrates and Plato a functionality that seems not to be present in any other primate, in fact, it seems not to be present in any other living thing on the planet. We are capable of a level of verbal culture that no other living being on the planet is capable of. That is something that we share.

The same is true for every other component of the list of that complex definition of Humanity. Each component confers on the particulars who have it a type of functionality that particular who lack it don't have. That, in fact, is the very reason why scientists recognize precisely those components and not others. Although taxonomists are fond of saying that taxonomy is arbitrary, it is clear when they do their taxonomies that they are looking for only those attributes of organisms which confer upon their possessors some distinctive functionality or power which is significant in the life of the organism. Although there are qualitative distinctions among the functionalities of distinct organisms, one acorn weevil has a slightly longer snout than another acorn weevil, nevertheless both snouts function in exactly the same way in the two weevils, giving them the same kind of life.

At this point, the nominalist objection comes back: I've identified types of things by relying on types of lives. Is that any help? I think so, and the most dramatic way to make the point is remind you of sexism, racism and classism. Aristotle is notorious for his view that women are defective men, and that there are people who are naturally suited to being slaves. He was a sexist and a racist or just a classiest. This is clearest in his Politics. However, in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle finds himself having to admit that insofar as natural slaves are human beings, and insofar as women are human beings, there are moral duties ("relations of justice") to them, and there can even be the best kind of friendship with them (viii.11-12). When it comes right down to it, we are all the same because, although we choose to lead different lives, we all have the same specifying capacities.

The idea is that you have to distinguish between the actuality of a thing, and its potentialities. The potentialities give you the species, the actualities give you the haecceity. Women are no less able than men when it comes to political deliberation, and that is why the 19^th Amendment was passed, giving white women the vote. African Americans are no less able than Caucasian Americans in any human task, and that's why the Civil Rights movement was successful. We all have unique appearances and live unique lives, but that is our actuality. It turns out that our actualities are all supported by the exact same set of specifying capacities: Humanity.

If you look through the rest of Ockham's arguments against Scotus, you'll see that a lot of them turn on Scotus' admission that every res is a singular. I think that in one way or another, most of Ockham's arguments against Scotus are like the argument from singularity. But since I think Scotus can defend himself from that kind of argument, I don't think Ockham has a devastating argument against Scotus.

However, this does not necessarily mean that Scotus wins. If we look at Ockham's positive views, we will see that his concerns pose a deep problem for Scotus' theory in particular, and realism in general.

I think the best way to approach Ockham's own solutions to the problem of universals is to think of the problem epistemologically: how could we possibly know of the existence of universals? We get a clue as to how Ockham will approach this issue by what has come to be called "Ockham's Razor." Here are three formulations of it.

It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer.
Plurality should not be assumed without necessity.
No plurality should be assumed unless it can be proved:
    (a) by reason, or
    (b) by experience, or
    (c) by some infallible authority.

Since there is no authoritative teaching on the reality of universals (Aristotle is open to interpretation, and in any case is not infallible), and as Ockham as has argued, realism is contrary to reason, the only remaining alternative is to follow experience.

In his own answer to the problem of universals, Ockham wants to be very faithful to experience. What exactly do we experience when we observe Socrates and Plato? Answer: just Socrates or Plato, nothing more and nothing less. Now Scotus thinks that perception is complex, and always already involves universals, but Ockham disagrees. Let's pursue Ockham's line of thought.

What we experience when we observe Socrates is just Socrates. What, then, is the universal Humanity? Nothing. That would seem to put Humanity in with Griffons and Chimeras and even square circles. Universals would seem to be pure figments of our imaginations. Ockham wouldn't want to be stuck with this view for the same reason that he rejects the pure nominalism of Roscelin in 8.20: that makes all our groupings completely arbitrary. Picture it this way: when it comes to singular things, like Socrates, the word (name) "Socrates" has a precise and definite reference, i.e. Socrates.

"Socrates" Socrates

But when it comes to universal words, there is nothing for them to refer to

"humanity"

and so it is a "free-floating" word, and can pick out anything or everything. What he needs is some way to tie universal words down to more or less definite groups of singulars. His first suggestion is that concepts will do the trick (8.37). Your translator emphasizes the Latin word "fictum" which just means "a made thing." Think of the "fictum" as a kind of lens that focuses the meaning of a word on some things rather than other things:

"humanity" Concept of Humans Socrates, Plato, Crito, etc.

Ockham says that the concept or fictum has "objective being" for two reasons. First, it has being because "by every intellection something is understood" (8.9). If you were thinking of nothing, then you weren't thinking. So if you are thinking, when you are thinking about humanity, then you have to be thinking of something, and that something has to have some kind of being or reality. But as he has already argued, universals cannot have "subjective being," i.e. they can't exist as Aristotelian basic subjects of predication, other things are not ontologically dependent upon them. So they have a different kind of being.

The second reason for saying that a fictum has "objective being" is that these concepts are supposed to "stand for" or "supposit" extra-mental entities like Socrates and Plato. They are "objective" in the sense that they have "objectives" or things they point to or aim at or are about. Some people call this the "objective existence" theory.

There are a number of problems with this theory, but I only want to point to one source of trouble. At 8.71 Ockham confronts the question of how it is that one fictum is about one group of things, while another is about a distinct group. His answer is that the first is more similar to the first group than it is to the second group: a fictum is about whatever it most closely resembles. The problem is that a fictum much more closely resembles another fictum than it resembles any really existing singular thing. What is worse, while it is relatively easy to think of how a statue of Socrates can resemble Socrates, it is hard to see how a fictum could resemble human beings. With a statue you can measure proportions, and then go over to Socrates and measure his proportions, and see the physical similarity. But a fictum is a mental entity, it doesn't have physical proportions. So it is not at all clear how the similarity will work.

For this and other reasons Ockham later abandoned the "objective existence" theory. He later tried what your translator calls the "intellectio-theory." Others call this the "mental act" theory. This theory does away with the middle man. The clearest statement of the theory is in 8.91. The universality comes in the act of intellection itself. This is ontologically more parsimonious, and so better on the grounds of Ockham's Razor. Unfortunately it is not at all clear how this is going to solve the problem of the meanings of universal words. A universal is no longer a concept that is understood in a particular act of intellection; rather a universal is a way of intellecting. How is he going to distinguish the way of intellecting humanity from the way of intellecting animality? What is it that makes one way of intellecting be about humanity, and another way of intellecting about animality?

It is not clear that the second theory is really any better than the first, and Ockham seems never to have been completely satisfied with either. However, I think what we have here is the beginning of an extremely important research project.

Again, remember Ockham's question: how could we possibly know the existence of universals? We shouldn't turn traditional Aristotelianism into orthodox doctrine. Whatever groupings of singulars we accept must stand trial at the judgment seat of sensory experience. Instead of trying to learn about reality via logical deductions from the set of universals traditionally handed down from Aristotle & Plato, what must be done is unbiased, empirical research into what things are really like, and how their behavior can be explained. Armchair, a priori theorizing won't do. In other words, I see in Ockham the theoretical underpinnings of the rejuvenation of scientific methodology, and also the birth of the dispute between Rationalist and Empiricists.