Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Review
Author(s): John Boler
Review by: John Boler
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 73, No. 22 (Dec. 16, 1976), pp. 863-870
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025762
Accessed: 24-06-2016 20:30 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Journal of Philosophy

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 BOOK REVIEWS 863

well behaved, being compatible with his beliefs. In large part it

does make sense to identify a body from one such world to another.
Yes, but not always. Each belief world will include countless
bodies that are not separately recognizable objects of the believer's
beliefs at all, for the believer does believe still that there are count-
less such bodies. Questions of identity of these, from world to
world, remain as devoid of sense as they were in the possible worlds
of alethic modal logic. Yet how are they to be dismissed, if one is
to quantify into belief contexts? Perhaps the values of such var-
iables should be limited to objects that the believer has pretty de-
tailed views about. How detailed? I do not see the makings here
of a proper annex to austere scientific language.
The analogue of a rigid designator, for Hintikka's belief logic,
is a term 'a' such that if the believer knows that x = a he knows
what x is. Unlike the criterion for a rigid designator, this brings
matters gratifyingly close to home. It is very ordinary language in-
deed to speak of knowing who or what something is. However,
ordinarity notwithstanding, I make no sense of the idiom apart
from context. It is essentially indexical. You may ask who someone
is, hearing his name and seeking his face; you may ask the same,
seeing his face and seeking his name; you may ask the same, hear-
ing his name and seeing his face but wondering about his claim
to distinction. 'Who is he?' makes sense only in the light of the
situation. Failing such light, the right answer is another question:
'What do you want to know about him?' Correspondingly the no-
tion of knowing who someone is, or what something is, makes sense
only in the light of the situation. It all depends on what more
specific question one may have had in mind. Seeing then the cen-
tral role that this notion plays in Hintikka's logic of belief, I feel
further confirmed in my recalcitrance.

Harvard University W. V. QUINE

BOOK REVIEWS

IVilliam of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse.

GORDON LEFF. Manchester: University Press, 1975. 645 p. $47.50.

There has been a steady trickle of Ockham literature in English

over the years: translations of selections, E. A. Moody's classic on
5 Such variation is recognized by Hintikka, Knowledge and Belief (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell, 1962), p. 149n. For a study of it in depth see Steven E. Boer and William
G. Lycan, "Knowing Who," Philosophical Studies, xxviII, 5 (November 1975):
299-344.

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
864 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

Ockham's logic, a number of monographs in the Franciscan In-

stitute series, and occasional articles in a wide range of journals.
Ockham's political writings have probably received more attention
outside philosophical circles, but A. S. McGrade, The Political
Thought of William Ockham came out only last year. Some gen-
eral studies in other languages have appeared recently: notably A.
Ghisalberti, Guglielmo di Ockham: vita e pensiero (Milan, 1972)
and J. Miethke, Ockham's Weg zur Sozialphilosophie (Berlin, 1969).
But except for abbreviated versions in histories of philosophy and
encyclopedias, there has never been a general account of Ockham's
thought in English.
In proposing to fill this gap, Gordon Leff acknowledges the diffi-
culties peculiar to the present moment: the critical edition of Ock-
ham, now in preparation, is scarcely one-half complete, and the
amount of published material on Ockham is a misleading guide to
actual research developments. (Moody, for example, decided it
would be impossible to revise his early book without a complete re-
writing; though we now have many of Moody's later articles col-
lected in a recently published volume.) Still, "At a time when the
study of Ockham's thought in its different facets is becoming more
intensive, an attempt to present his outlook as a whole may not
be inappropriate" (ix). In fact, the imminent publication of more
specialized studies may make this project a now-or-(for the present
generation) never affair.
In an introduction interesting in its own right for comments
on the history of philosophy, Leff says that Ockham has had "to
suffer for being judged by his supposed influence upon others rather
than for his own achievement"; and he includes his own earlier
writings in this charge, characterizing the present book as "in the
nature of a retraction" (xiii). But as it happens, Professor Leff has
not altogether mended his ways, sometimes having changed only
the focus of his attention. Viewed for his influence on modern
philosophy, rather than just on the ockhamists of the later middle
ages, Ockham is contrasted favorably with such predecessors as
Scotus and Aquinas-but they are now too vaguely characterized:
somehow it seems that in stretching out our charity to shelter a
former enemy, we always manage to expose a previously com-
fortable neighbor to the cold.
For the most part, however, Leff sticks to his plan and provides a
quite readable account of the major themes in Ockham: In the In-
troduction, there is a brief but balanced presentation of the best

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 BOOK REVIEWS 865

information available on Ockham's life and writings. In the second

part of the book, Leff touches on a number of "theological" issues:
the existence and attributes of God, predestination and foreknowl-
edge, and so on. And, in the third part, he draws together Ockham's
discussions on some major topics: man, nature, and society. There
are indexes and a selective bibliography. It is an enormous under-
taking and will, perhaps, surprise readers unaware of the scope of
Ockham's philosophical concerns. Even its nearly 700 pages can
accommodate only fairly general accounts of many controversial
issues.
The first and largest section of the book is devoted to Ockham's
logic, in the broad sense of the term. And Leff covers the standard
topics: signification and supposition, intuitive and abstractive cog-
nition, absolute and connotative terms, definition and demonstra-
tion, and so on. In an advance over many accounts, he brings in
passages from a wide range of Ockham's writings and emphasizes
the development of Ockham's terminology [e.g., on the denomina-
tive (154)]. Moreover, he adds to the usual exposition of simple
cognition helpful accounts of sensory experience, memory and "the
word." Throughout his presentations, he stays with the texts them-
selves, using Ockham's examples and setting out the issues in
language very close to Ockham's. There are, as well, extensive quo-
tations of Latin texts in the footnotes and, of course, copious
references.
The controversies in interpretation discussed are from a limited
but influential set of writers: notably Boehner, Baudry, Hoch-
stetter, and Moody. These have done the initial work of setting the
record straight about the "older" charges that Ockham was a
philosophical and theological iconoclast. Leff sees his own con-
tribution as stressing the innovative character of Ockham's
thought; he thinks, for example, that Moody overreacted to the old
line by grouping Ockham too closely with Aquinas (5n). However,
Leff tends to avoid the more technical disputes even in Moody and
as well, for example, in H. Shapiro, T. K. Scott, and D. P. Henry,
all of whom are otherwise mentioned in the notes or bibliography.
Reference to Peter Geach is conspicuously absent.
It is a sign of our post-modern times, I suppose, that so many
claims for newness seem curiously dated. But the issue is important.
Changes in the interpretation of philosophers of the past are often
dependent upon changes in the philosophical atmosphere of the
historian; like all historians, we tend to plunder the present to

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
866 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

aid our understanding of the past. Some of these changes are no

more (and no less) important than changes in fashion; some are
simply trendy, and some can be distortions. But, when based on
careful work with the sources, reinterpretations raise basic questions
about just what is going on philosophically in a particular philoso-
pher's analyses and arguments. The current research on Ockham, it
seems to me, makes this sort of basic question more open than
Leff's account suggests.
There is a whole nest of problems, for example, associated with
the categories. Leff assures us that: "Ockham was saying of relation
only what he said of quantity and all the other categories, save sub-
stance and quality: namely, that they do not exist in themselves
but only by reference to substance and/or quality (236/7). But to
start on one strand, the idea that qualities "exist in themselves" is
already puzzling. Leff seems to be so sure that Ockham's de-
metaphysicizing of his predecessors is an unequivocal advance (e.g.,
237) that he fails to notice how many problems arise here. In
singling qualities out from the other accidents as something nam-
able in the direct way that substances are, Ockham introduces a new
subject. It is only against a caricature of Scotus that this can be
made to look like a reduction of subjects. Ockham's predecessors
were concerned about the categories as a theory of predicates;
whatever their problems, they held that to treat any term not in
the category of substance as a name was to perform an abstraction
of some kind. Ockham introduces a new, first-order name within
the category of quality-a misfit which, in fact, he never resolves-
and still leaves us with a distinction between names and predicates.
What benefit Ockham's analysis of the categories is for scientific
understanding is never made precise. His remarks on motion, as
many commentators have pointed out, are relevant (whether or not
there is any direct relation) to later inertial theories. But the theory
of individual forms capable, at least in theory, of existing inde-
pendently from their subjects seems to play no role at all in the
logical or mathematical developments that form the medieval
preparation for the new science.
Leff admits that Ockham was a bit out of the mainstream of the
scientific developments of his own day (561); though he claims that
Ockham has in fact provided the "justification" for those advances
(563). What lies unexamined here is the very difficult but important
issue of a possible change of explanatory model for science. An
emphasis on "functional analysis" in recent work in the philosophy

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 BOOK REVIEWS 867

of mind suggests that the final evaluation of aristotelian hylomorph-

ism is not yet in. But surely, a theory that substantial and qualitative
forms are "physical constituents" (568) could be an advance only by
uwittingly preparing the way for their total elimination.
The claim that Ockham's theory of relation is "nominalistic" is,
we are told (213), misguided: "Ockham's was a universe of individ-
uals; but not of discrete individuals" (214); a relative term sig-
nifies "more than one thing without itself corresponding to any-
thing as such"; "Relation, then, is not an independent thing but
a term expressing a relation between things" (217). But the under-
lying issue, of course, is just how we are to talk about "things." One
line of interpretation-not mentioned in Leff but found in H.
Shapiro and Ruth Saw '-associates Ockham's theory with an "onto-
logical commitment" scheme (like W. V. Quine's). This at least
gives some context for approaching the problems, though it high-
lights the puzzle in Ockham's "quantifying over" qualities. And it
leaves open-as Leff does-some questions about truth.
The idea that a proposition is true if and only if the subject and
predicate terms "stand for" the same thing (240/1) will not, on the
face of it, suit all the cases Ockham needs; especially if "Sortes is
white" presupposes the truth of both "Sortes exists" and "whiteness
is in Sortes" (259). When Leff deals with relational predicates, he
simply shifts-as Ockham himself does at times-to a different
truth formula: a proposition is true if it says things are such as
they are (or: complex predicates in true propositions signify things
to be such as they are) (243). That is not an unaristotelian way to
talk about truth, but it tends to unsettle what looked at first to be
a simplifying theory of Ockham's about predication.
Geach, for example, claims that Ockham's simple theory of
predication just won't handle relations. And D. P. Henry offers a
logical backing for Scotus's theory of formal distinctions which
shows Ockham's criticism to be an overreaction. These are contro-
versial interpretations, of course. But it seems clear we are not
going to get to the source of the trouble without an explicit-if not
necessarily formalized-treatment of logical form in Ockham.
My complaint is not intended as a dispute about details. When,
as any commentator must, Leff goes beyond the more literal exposi-
tion of the texts to explain their significance, he tends to pass over
these issues of basic philosophical context; and when he then goes

1 In her article in D. J. O'Connor, ed., A Critical History of Western Philoso-

phy (New York: Free Press, 1964).

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
868 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

on to identify who are the winners and losers, we are left still
wondering what the game was.
The impact carries through to the more wide-ranging hypotheses
suggested in Leff's subtitle. At the level of the history of ideas, Leff's
major concern is with Ockham's role, conscious or not, in the shift
from a medieval emphasis on metaphysical structures of the world
to modern philosophical attitudes which stress conceptual struc-
tures: how we know. Now any such broad generalization needs some
adjustment on both ends. There would, after all, be no such thing
as idealism in modern thought had not some philosophers then
been more than a little concerned with metaphysical structure.
And Scotus's most notorious metaphysical entities (the formalities)
are characterized by a faithful commentator as on the order of
"what a truly knowing mind would conceive" 2; an analogous point
could be made for Aquinas (cf. Summa Theologica, I, Question 79,
article 3). But suppose we grant the general contrast. There remain
the questions: To what extent does Ockham contribute to the
change? Does this help us to understand his own achievement
rather than his influence on others (xiii)?
One theme Leff stresses is Ockham's insistence on the starting
point of knowledge in experience of individuals-I take it that is
what he means by "an epistemology of individual cognition" (124).
I would not deny that there is something to this, but I find the ac-
count of Ockham's "individual cognition" unclear and the implied
pictures of his predecessors a distortion. For my part, it seems
more promising to stress the affinity of Ockham's empiricism with
the "atomism" of logical positivism-a theory not much in favor
now but nonetheless clear enough in its motivation.
Leff's other major theme in the history of ideas is Ockham's
emphasis on the "discrepancy between individual things and our
concepts of natures and essences" (125). "Ockham was the first
thinker systematically to explore their differences whilst accepting
their interdependence" (xx; cf., 77, 237, 315). Now explicit concern
for the subtitles of forms of language as over against forms of being
is at least as old as Anselm. And, to take only the better known fig-
ures, Abailard, Aquinas, and Scotus insistently repeat, each in his
own favorite terminology, Aristotle's charge against Plato's Forms:
that they result from attributing to things the properties of signs.
Ockham's extension of this problematic to the categories is surely

2 M. Grajewski, The Fornal Distinction of Duns Scotus (Washington, D.C.:

Catholic University of America Press, 1944).

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 BOOK REVIEWS 869

important, but we will not know its full significance until we know
what is going on in Ockham's handling of the categories-the prob-
lem I alluded to before.
It is possible, even, that Ockham's epistemology may turn out to
be altogether too naive. He seems, at times, to assume that one can
simply look at things and then look at thoughts and compare
them; and this may be a correlate to his alleged insensitivity to the
logical aspects of Scotus's handling of the formalities. Moreover, in
contrast to the sophistication Ockham shows in many of his analyses
of language and logic, the concept, in his system, would seem to be
a virtus dormitativa: whatever is needed to fill the gap created by
his dismissal of the apparatus of concept formation in earlier
scholastics. (T. K. Scott's article, criticizing Ockham's theory of
intuitive cognition in this regard, is mentioned in the bibliography
but not treated in the text.)
"Ockham is an innovator" (xiii). Yes, but of a peculiar sort.
Ockham nearly always identifies his position with the antiqui and
criticizes the moderni; and there is no reason to doubt the tradi-
tional and conservative motives that lie close to the surface in his
efforts to rehabilitate the true Aristotle. To this end, Ockham will
introduce new terminology or reorient and simplify problems
and distinctions-all with a confidence that is easiest to account for
given this very orthodox purpose. Moreover, while the well-known
razor is, in the accepted view, primarily an anti-metaphysical
weapon, it is instructive to see how freely Ockham used it on the
logical discussions of his contemporaries. If, for example, their
concern for the quasi-physical problems and the analytical tech-
niques characteristic of Sophismata prove to be as significant for
the history of science as some researchers hypothesize, Ockham's
handling of these and related issues may come to seem quite reac-
tionary indeed.
Leff correctly insists that his point about Ockham's role in the
transition to the modern period does not require that Ockham
was self-consciously ushering in a new age (563). The question still
remains, though, as to what part of the weight of the transition was
actually borne by Ockham's thought. To me, it seems more likely
that it was Ockham's terminology rather than his thought that was
influential. Consequently, I would turn inside out Leff's claim that
Ockham's philosophy served to justify the procedures of the new
science (563): I think the new science may have, in the historical
context, served to justify ockhamism. The important point for the

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
870 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

moment, though, is that the evidence for deciding among these

broad generalizations and hypotheses is simply not yet in. A casual
reader of Leff's account might not realize that he is supposed to be
still looking.
None of this means that I think Ockham's-or Leff's-work is un-
important in its own right. These are difficult times for turning out
a general account of any philosopher, and the special conditions
of research on medieval philosophy complicate the problem. But
we can be sincerely grateful for Professor Leff's having accepted
the risk, at the same time as we warn the nonspecialist that he did
not altogether get away with it. In concluding, let me stress again
the distinction between Leff's extensive collation and exposition
of Ockham's discussions of major themes, on the one hand; and,
on the other, the lines of interpretation with which I have been
quarreling. The latter, I think, will be more of use in closing a
chapter in the history of Ockham interpretation than in opening
one. The former, however, could well be a stimulus for readers-
and, one hopes, writers-who have not previously been intrigued
by the range and interrelationships of themes in Ockham.
The price of the book is unbelievable, but, apparently, not un-
usual. Although libraries seem to have been selected to pick up the
tab for publications in the nonpopular market, one wonders how
many of them can stay in the running. The result, of course, unless
some decent policy is developed in the meantime, will contribute
to the growing gulf between haves and have-nots in the society. To
judge from past performance, one cannot expect the academy to
respond to the issue until some future generation of scholars can
indulge the pleasure of debating such questions as whether chaining
books to the library walls is really a democratic or a repressive
policy. JOHN BOLER
University of Washington

Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning: Three Essays by Paul

Oskar Kristeller, edited and translated by EDWARD P. MAHONEY. Dur-
ham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1974. xii, 175 p. $7.50.

Renaissance Concepts of Man and Other Essays. PAUL OSKAR KRISTEL-

LER. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. vii, 183 p. $3.50 paper.

These two volumes contain nine lectures given by Kristeller on

various occasions on Renaissance and Medieval themes, plus a theo-

This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:30:15 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms