pini scotus on objective being

7/24/2019 Pini Scotus on Objective Being

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/pini-scotus-on-objective-being 1/32

1

Scotus on Objective Being*

Giorgio Pini

AbstractScotus’s views on objective being — i.e. the special way objects of thought are supposed to be inthe mind — have been recently interpreted in different ways. In this paper, I argue that Scotus’s

apparently contradictory statements on objective being can be made sense only if they are readagainst the background of his theory of essence. Specifically, I claim that a key point of Scotus’sposition is that objects of thoughts are in the mind but have mind-independent identity (they are

in the mind but not of the mind). I defend my interpretation by focusing on a usually neglectedpassage from Scotus’s Questions on the Metaphysics where Scotus provides an unusually explicit(if short) account of what he takes ‘to be objectively in the intellect’ to mean.

1. The problem

Between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth

century, a number of philosophers and theologians started to refer in theirwritings to the notion of objective being. By that expression, they wanted to

indicate that what is thought about is in the thinker’s intellect in a special way.

They considered it as uncontroversial that what is thought about is not in the

thinker’s intellect as one of its parts. But the way what is thought about is in

the thinker’s intellect should also be distinguished from the standard non-

mereological sense of ‘being in another thing’ that Aristotle had described,

namely the way an accident is in its subject, for example the way heat is in

the sun.1 Heat is in the sun as one of the sun’s characteristics: it is something

that modifies it and makes it be in a certain way, namely hot. By contrast,

when I think about the sun, the sun is not one of my characteristics or

modifications — when I think about the sun, I am not sun-like. Nevertheless,the sun can still be said to be in my intellect. The adverb ‘objectively’

(obiective) and the corresponding expression ‘objective being’ (esse

* A version of this paper has appeared in Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofia

medievale 26 (2015), pp. 337-367. In this paper, I use the following editions of Scotus’s works :

Ordinatio (= Ord .), in Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia, vols. I-XIV, cura et studio CommissionisScotisticae, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, Civitas Vaticana 1950-2013 (= ed. Vat. I-XIV) ; Lectura (=

Lect .), in Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia, vols. XVI-XXI, cura et studio Commissionis Scotisticae,Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, Civitas Vaticana 1960-2004 (= ed. Vat. XVI-XXI) ; Reportatio I-A (=

Rep. I-A). The Examined Report of Paris Lecture Reportatio I-A. Latin Text and English Translation,edd. A. B. Wolter, O. V. Bychkov, 2 vols., The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 2004and 2008 (= ed. Wolter and Bychkov I and II) ; Quodlibet (= Quodl .), q. 13, in Ioannis Duns ScotiOpera omnia, XXV, Vivès, Paris 1895 (= ed. Vivès XXV), pp. 507-586 ; Quaestiones super libros

Metaphysicorum Aristotelis (= Quaest . super Met .), edd. R. Andrews et al., Opera Philosophica,

vols. III and IV, The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 1997 (= OPh III and IV).1 Aristotle, Categories, 2, 1a24-25.



2

obiectivum) were intended to pick out precisely the special way something

thought about is in the thinker’s intellect.2

Soon after its introduction, the notion of objective being gained wide,

though not universal, acceptance. As is well known, it retained a central place

in cognitive psychology and metaphysics until the seventeenth century, when

Descartes famously used it in a key passage of his Meditations.3

Scotus was certainly not the first to claim that things are in the

intellect in a way that should be contrasted to the way an accident is in its

subject. For example, the same idea is found in Henry of Ghent, who referred

several times to the way something cognized is in the cognizer (ut cognitum in

cognoscente).4 Scotus was not even the first to make use of the adverb

‘objectively’ to pick out that way of being in the intellect. Again, he took that

expression from Henry of Ghent.5 Furthermore, the way Scotus referred to

objective being indicates that he expected his audience to be already familiar

with that notion. It was Scotus, however, who made objective being the focus

of sustained philosophical attention and tried to integrate it into his larger

theory of intellectual cognition. Moreover, it is probably because of Scotus

that the notion of objective being gained a permanent place in the medieval

and early modern philosophical lexicon. Accordingly, it is not surprising that a

number of recent studies have subjected Scotus’s notion of objective being to

close scrutiny. Because Scotus’s treatment is not as clear as one may desire, it

is also not surprising that scholars have differed about the correct

interpretation of his views on that topic. Specifically, a divide has emerged

2 In this paper, I will take take the following expressions as synonyms : “objectivebeing” (esse obiectivum), “intelligible being” (esse intelligibile), “cognized being” (esse cognitum),“being in opinion” (esse in opinione), “being in intellection” (esse in intellectione), “beingrepresented” (esse repraesentatum). See Ord ., I, dist. 36, q. un., nn. 34 and 47, ed. Vat. VI, pp.284 and 289. See R. Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, Oxford University Press, Oxford2014, p. 183.

3 R. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, III, in Oeuvres de Descartes publiées

par C. Adam et P. Tannery, Paris 1897-1913 ; 2nd ed. Vrin, Paris 1964-1974 (= AT), vol. VII, p.40. See C. Normore, “Meaning and Objective Being,” in A. O. Rorty ed., Essays on Descartes’

Meditations, University of California Press, Berkeley - Los Angeles - London 1986, pp. 223-241 ;N. J. Wells, “Objective Reality of Ideas in Descartes, Caterus, and Suárez,” Journal of the Historyof Philosophy , 28/1, 1990, pp. 33-61.

4 See for example Henrici de Gandavo Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, a. 58, q. 2,ed. I. Badius, Paris 1520 ; reprint, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 1953, vol. II, f. 130vI ; Quodlibet IV, q.

21, edd. G. A. Wilson, G. I. Etzkorn, Leuven University Press, Leuven 2011 (Opera omnia, VIII),p. 340.

5 See for example Henrici de Gandavo Quodl . IV, q. 21, p. 339, lin. 107-108 (whereHenry of Ghent slips the adverb ‘objective’ into a long quotation from Averroes) ; Quodl . V, q. 14,ed. Badius, Paris 1518 ; reprint, Leuven 1961, vol. I, f. 175rD. On this aspect of Henry of Ghent’s

theory of cognition, see M. E. Rombeiro, “Intelligible Species in the Mature Thought of Henry ofGhent,” Journal of the History of Philosophy , 49/2, 2011, pp. 181-220.



3

between the supporters of a non-reductionist approach and the supporters of a

reductionist approach to objective being.

On the one hand, some interpreters attribute to Scotus the view that

objective being is a special mode of existence. For something to be

objectively in the intellect is for it to have some special ontological status,

which cannot be reduced to anything more fundamental. For example, when

the sun is objectively in my intellect, the sun has a special mode of existence

in my intellect. That mode of existence is admittedly not as robust as the mode

of being that the sun has extramentally. But even though their ontological

status can be described as diminished in comparison with what exists

extramentally, mental objects do have some ontological status over and above

the cognitive acts that are directed at them. This has an important

consequence. Since to be objectively in the intellect is to enjoy some sort of

ontological status, it can (or rather, must) be given a causal account: there

must be something that gives an object of thought the mode of existence it has

in the intellect. This cause, as it turns out, is the divine intellect, which is said

to ‘produce’ things in objective being.6 On the other hand, some other

interpreters concede that Scotus may have started with such a non-

reductionist view about objective being, but they think that he eventually

embraced a reductionist or deflationist approach to objective being, according

to which objective being is not a special mode of existence — i.e., the mode

of being that something has when it is thought about. Rather, any reference to

objective being can be rephrased in terms of an act of the intellect’s having a

certain content. So when it is said that the sun has objective being in my

intellect, we should not think that the sun is actually in my intellect, albeit in a

diminished sense of ‘being’. Rather, when I think about the sun, the only thing

that exists in my intellect is the act by which I think about the sun. Since being

objectively in the intellect is nothing in itself and can be reduced to a

cognitive act’s being in the intellect (and an act of thinking is in my intellect in

the standard way an accident is in its subject), objective being cannot be

given a causal account: there is no cause of objective being, simply because

there is nothing to cause. Accordingly, any talk of ‘producing’ something in

6 Normore, “Meaning and Objective Being,” pp. 232-233 ; D. Perler, “What Am I

Thinking About? John Duns Scotus and Peter Aureol on Intentional Objects,” Vivarium, 32, 1994,pp. 72-89, esp. pp. 73-81; D. Perler, “What are Intentional Objects ? A Controversy among EarlyScotists,” in D. Perler, ed., Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality , Brill, Leiden - Boston2001, pp. 203-226. A similar interpretation of the way something is in the intellect as an object ofthought — but without reference to God’s role in producing something in intelligible being — is

found in R. Pasnau, “Cognition,” in T. Williams ed., The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, pp. 285-311, in part. pp. 289-290.



4

objective being should be interpreted as just meaning that somebody thinks

about that thing.7

It is interesting to notice that this divide among Scotus’s interpreters

mirrors a well-known exchange between Descartes and Caterus on the nature

of objective being. The interpreters who think that Scotus held a non-

reductionist approach to objective being make him the ancestor of Descartes,

who believed that objective being is a special mode of being, i.e. the mode of

being that something has when it is thought about, and who consequently

argued that that mode of being can and must be accounted for causally. By

contrast, when Scotus is interpreted as holding a reductionist approach to

objective being, he looks like an ancestor of Caterus, who held that objective

being is just an “extrinsic denomination,” namely that to say that something is

objectively in the mind is just to say that a cognitive act is directed at that

thing, and so no cause of objective being should be looked for in addition to

what causes a cognitive act.8

Both the non-reductionist and the reductionist interpretations of

Scotus’s views on objective being are based on solid textual ground. So it

looks as if both Descartes and Caterus could trace their lineage back to

Scotus. This may indicate that, unless Scotus radically changed his mind about

this topic (as suggested by the second group of interpreters), his approach to

objective being is confused and possibly incoherent. The problem is that in

this specific case the evidence that Scotus radically changed his mind is rather

weak.9

7 Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, pp. 182-199. As Cross indicates, he isdeveloping with some modifications the approach found in P. King, “Duns Scotus on Mental

Content,” in O. Boulnois, E. Karger, J.-L. Solère, G. Sondag eds., Duns Scot à Paris : Actes du

colloque de Paris, 2-4 septembre 2002, Brepols, Turnhout 2004, pp. 65- 88, esp. pp. 70-85.While Cross thinks that objective being can be completely reduced to mental entities such as actsand species, King thinks that objective being supervenes on acts and species. Both King and Crossthink that what Scotus is up to when he speaks about objective being is a theory of content ofthoughts, to be distinguished from a talk about objects of thoughts, i.e. extramental things aboutwhich those thoughts are about. Cross is explicitly committed to the claim that every thoughtnecessarily has a content but some thoughts have no object, i.e. are about nothing (such is thecase of abstractive thoughts that are about things that do not exist), while some other thoughtshave an object only contingently (such is the case of abstractive thoughts about things thatactually exist but may fail to do so).

8 Caterus, Primae objectiones, AT VII, pp. 92-93 ; Descartes, Responsio authoris ad

primas objectiones, AT VII, pp. 102-103. See C. Normore, “The Matter of Thought,” in H.Lagerlund ed., Representations and Objects of Thought in Medieval Philosophy , Ashgate,

Aldershot 2012, pp. 117-133, esp. pp. 120-121.9 The hypothesis of a change of mind on Scotus’s part is put forward by King, “Duns

Scotus on Mental Content,” pp. 83-84, and taken over by Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory ofCognition, pp. 191-192. Cross, however, is aware that the textual ground to argue for a change ofmind is rather weak, so he seems to opt for a change of emphasis rather than a radical evolution

on Scotus’s part ; see ibid ., p. 192 : « In fact, even in the Ordinatio Scotus claims that diminishedbeing is nothing real, but he does not make the point with such decisiveness or clarity ».



5

In this paper, I suggest that it is possible to give a plausible

interpretation of Scotus’s views on objective being without postulating any

radical change of mind on his part. My claim is that the coherence, and as a

matter of fact the true meaning of Scotus’s views on objective being emerges

once his theory of essence is taken into account — something to which both

reductionist and non-reductionist interpretations have given little if any

attention. Accordingly and perhaps surprisingly, I do believe that the ancestry

of both Descartes’ and Caterus’ views on objective being can be ultimately

traced back to Scotus. But this does not indicate any confusion on Scotus’s

part. Rather, it indicates that, once Scotus’s theory of essence is abandoned, it

becomes difficult if not impossible to keep together all his different claims on

objective being and to see them as parts of a unified account.

I will defend my claim by giving a detailed reading of a passage from

Scotus’s Questions on the Metaphysics that has been neglected in the

literature on this topic. While focusing on that passage, I will also refer to

what Scotus said elsewhere in order to provide as complete a picture as

possible about what Scotus held on that topic. I should also specify that I will

focus exclusively on the way something is objectively in a human intellect,

which is the topic of the passage from Scotus’s Questions on the Metaphysics I

will consider. By contrast, much of what Scotus said about objective being in

other writings concerns divine knowledge. In those writings Scotus’s main

problem is to show how things that have not yet been created can be in God’s

intellect as objects of thought. Other interpreters of Scotus have focused on

those passages. I actually think that another reason why sometimes inter-

preters have been baffled by Scotus’s views on objective being is that they

have moved too quickly from what Scotus said about the divine case to what

can be surmised about the human case. As will emerge in this paper, I too

think that the issue of objective being in the human intellect is linked to the

topic of divine cognition. But I also think that there are important differences

between the two cases. Accordingly, in what follows I will focus on the

human case and I will refrain from applying automatically what Scotus said

about divine cognition to human cognition.

2. Scotus’s theory of essence and some counterfactual scenarios

Scotus devotes a question on Bk. VII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the

classic issue of universals. Are universals something in reality? Are theysomething in our intellect?10

It is when addressing this topic that Scotus

presents his views on objective being. Scotus starts by distinguishing three

10 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, OPh IV, pp. 337-356.



6

senses of ‘universal’. Even though this may seem to have no direct bearing on

the topic of objective being, I think that it is central to Scotus’s approach to

the whole issue. In a preliminary sense, ‘universal’ means “the relation of

reason that what is predicable has with respect to what it is predicable of.”

This sense is not relevant to what follows and the details of Scotus’s

description should not detain us. Suffice it to say that what Scotus has in mind

is the property of being predicable of many items.11 Scotus then uses that

property to single out the other two senses of ‘universal’, which he describes

as, respectively, the proximate and the remote subjects of the property of

being predicable of many things. So, first, ‘universal’ means the proximate

subject of the property of being predicable of many items. This is just what

can be predicated of many items, which Scotus also describes as “a universal

actually indeterminate,” i.e. actually indeterminate to any of the items of

which it can be predicated. What is universal in that sense is something that is

ready for predication, so to speak. Scotus has in mind concepts such as horse

and dog , which are predicable of individual horses and of individual dogs,

respectively (as ‘concept’ is notoriously an equivocal term, I should clarify that

here I mean by ‘concept’ not an act but its object/content).

Second, ‘universal’ means the remote subject of the property of being

predicable of many items. I think that what Scotus has in mind is what

accounts for a certain concept’s having the property of being predicable of

many items, for example what accounts for the fact that the concept horse can

be predicated of individual horses. Scotus holds that what is universal in this

second sense is not “actually indeterminate,” i.e. it is not something that is

ready for being predicated of many items: it is not what possesses predicability

but what accounts for predicability.12

By distinguishing these two senses of ‘universal’, Scotus is implicitly

referring to his theory of essence, which is an interpretation of Avicenna’s

views on the same topic. As Scotus explains elsewhere, an essence can exist

in two ways: in the extramental world as instantiated in individuals and in the

intellect as an object of thought. For example, the essence horseness can exist

11 Ibid ., n. 38, p. 347 : « Circa huius quaestionis solutionem, primo distinguendum estde universali. Sumitur enim vel sumi potest tripliciter : Quandoque pro intentione secunda, quaescilicet est quaedam relatio rationis in praedicabili ad illud de quo est praedicabile, et huncrespectum significat hoc nomen ‘universale’ in concreto, sicut et ‘universalitas’ in abstracto ».

12 Ibid ., nn. 39-41, p. 347 : « Alio modo accipitur universale pro illo quod denominaturab ista intentione, quod est aliqua res primae intentionis, nam secundae intentiones applicanturprimis. Et sic accipi potest dupliciter : uno modo pro illo quod quasi subiectum remotumdenominatur ab ista intentione ; alio modo pro subiecto propinquo. Primo modo dicitur naturaabsolute sumpta universale, quia non est ex se haec, et ita non repugnat sibi ex se dici de multis.

Secundo modo non est universale nisi sit actu indeterminatum, ita quod unum intelligibilenumero sit dicibile de omni supposito, et illud est complete universale ».



7

in the extramental world as instantiated in Brunellus and Bucephalus or in

Mary’s intellect when she thinks about horses. But an essence can also be

considered in a third way, i.e. as it is in itself. Considered in that third way, an

essence is neither individual nor universal but has nevertheless its own

identity that is independent of its being instantiated extramentally in many

individuals and of its being in the intellect as an object of thought.13 I take that

the first sense of ‘universal’, as proximate subject of the property of being

predicable, is the essence as an object of thought. By contrast, the second

sense of ‘universal’, as the remote subject of the property of being predicable,

is the essence considered in itself. So, first, we may say that what is universal

is a concept or an object of thought (which for Scotus is an essence as it is in

the intellect as an object of thought), such as the concept horse. The concept

horse is universal because it is predicable of several individual horses, such as

Brunellus and Bucephalus. Second, we may say that what is universal is a

mind-independent essence, such as the essence of a horse, call it horseness.

According to Scotus, horseness is universal to the extent that it is what

accounts for the fact that the concept horse has the property of being

predicable of several individual horses. It is because the essence horseness

can be instantiated in many individual horses in the extramental world that

the concept horse can be predicated of many individual horses. Suppose, by

contrast, that the essence horseness could be instantiated in only one

individual. It would follow that the concept horse could be predicated of only

one individual and so would not be a universal (i.e. it would lack the property

of being predicable of many items).

A key point of Scotus’s theory of essence is that an essence can exist

in only two ways, i.e. as instantiated extramentally in individuals or in an

intellect as an object of thought. Specifically, an essence can exist in either

way separately or in both ways at the same time. For example, the essence

horseness may exist in individual horses even though nobody thinks about

what a horse is; or the essence horseness may exist in Mary’s intellect even

though there are no horses in the world — say, because they all became

extinct; finally, the essence horseness may exist both in individual horses in

the extramental world and in Mary’s intellect when both there are horses in

13 I base the following account on Ord ., II, dist. 3, pars 1, q. 1, nn. 29-38, ed. Vat. VII,

pp. 402-408. See also Lect ., II, dist. 3, pars 1, q. 1, nn. 28-34, ed. Vat. XVIII, pp. 236-238.Scholars have debated over the correct interpretation of Scotus’s theory of essence. I try to steeraway from the controversial aspects and to limit myself to what I take to be as neutral apresentation of Scotus’s views as possible. On Scotus’s theory of essence, see P. King, “DunsScotus on the Common Nature and the Individual Differentia,” Philosophical Topics, 20, 1992,

pp. 50-76; T. B. Noone, “Universals and Individuation,” in Williams ed., The CambridgeCompanion to Duns Scotus, pp. 100-128.



8

the extramental world and Mary thinks about what a horse is. But suppose that

there are no individual horses and nobody thinks about horses; then, there is

no essence horseness. So if by ‘uninstantiated essence’ it is meant ‘an essence

that is not instantiated in extramental individuals’, the only way Scotus admits

of uninstantiated essences is when they exist in somebody’s intellect as

objects of thought but not in extramental reality as individuals. By themselves,

essences do not have any mode of existence in addition to the one they have

in extramental individuals and the one they have as objects of thought in

somebody’s intellect.

So far, Scotus’s views on essences do not seem to be particularly

controversial, at least among those medieval authors who assumed that there

are real essences, that those essences can be objects of thought and that when

they are objects of thought they are in some way present in the intellect that

thinks about them. Scotus’s characteristic claim, however, is that even though

an essence such as horseness can only exist in two ways — in extramental

individuals and in the intellects of those who think about what a horse is —,

the essence horseness has its own identity independently both of its being

instantiated in extramental individuals and of its being thought about by those

who happen to think about it.14

Scotus’s way of making this point, which he takes directly from

Avicenna, is that the essence, taken in itself or absolutely, is neither particular

nor universal.15 This way of talking may be confusing and its precise meaning

has been subjected to some debate. I believe that what Scotus has in mind can

be grasped by considering the following two counterfactual scenarios.

Suppose, first, that there are individual horses in the world but that

there exists nobody (i.e. no intellectual cognizer) who can think about them.16

In that case, the essence horseness would exist only extramentally, as

instantiated in individual horses. Now Scotus would contend that even in that

scenario what a horse is (say, the set of properties that an item must have in

order to count as a horse) would not depend on which individual horses there

are or even on there being individual horses at all. Quite the contrary, Scotus

would claim that for something to be an individual horse depends (in an

explanatory sense) on what a horse is, not the other way around. So the idea is

that a replicable and not individual item is a constituent of individuals (say,

14 Ord ., II, dist. 3, pars 1, q. 1, n. 33, ed. Vat. VII, p. 403.15 Ord ., II, dist. 3, pars 1, q. 1, n. 31, ed. Vat. VII, pp. 402-403 ; Lect ., II, dist. 3, pars. 1,

q. 1, n. 30, ed. Vat. XVIII, p. 237. See Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, translated,introduced, and annotated by M. E. Marmura, Brigham Young University Press, Provo, Utah2005, Bk. V, ch. 1, par. 4, p. 149.

16 Incidentally, this would rule out even God, so Scotus would think of it as a perimpossibile case.



9

individual horses) in such a way that it is responsible for those individuals’

being the kind of individuals they are (say, horses rather than dogs). Such a

replicable item exists only within those extramental individuals but cannot be

identified to any of those individual, as none of those individuals is replicable.

Admittedly, if horses became extinct and there were nobody to think about

what a horse is, nothing would count either as a horse or as ‘what a horse is’

— in that scenario, there would be no essence horseness. But if there are

individual horses, what a horse is does not depend on them. We can make

this point by saying that the identity of an essence is independent of its

individual instantiations.

Now consider the reverse scenario. Suppose that there are no horses

in the world (because they became extinct) but that there are people who still

think about what a horse is. In that scenario, the essence horseness would

only exist in the intellects of those who think about what a horse is — its

existence would be merely mental. Now Scotus would contend that even in

that scenario what a horse is (again, this could be roughly described as the set

of properties that an item must have in order to count as a horse) does not

depend on the thoughts of those who think about what a horse is; actually,

what a horse is would not even depend on whether those people think about

horses at all. Quite the contrary, Scotus holds that for a thought to be a

thought about what a horse is (i.e., about horseness) depends on the essence

horseness, not the other way around. Admittedly, if all those who can think

about horses died or if they lost their ability to think about what a horse is

(say, because they completely forgot it) and there were no individual horses in

the world, then there would be nothing like ‘what a horse is’ — namely, there

would be no essence horseness. Again, an essence can exist in one of two

ways: as instantiated in individuals in the extramental world or as something

thought about in a mind. But if there are thoughts about horses, what it is to be

a horse does not depend on those thoughts, even if the essence horseness

were supposed to have no extramental existence.

Let us focus on the second scenario that I have described, namely the

case where there are only thoughts about the essence horseness but no

extramental horse. As I said, in that scenario Scotus would still contend that

what a horse is does not depend on the thoughts that the people who think

about horses have. So I believe that a key point of Scotus’s theory of essence is

what can be described as a distinction between extramental existence, on theone hand, and, on the other hand, mind-independence, and, similarly,

between mental existence, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, mind-

dependence. Something may have existence only in the mind, as an object of

thought, and still be mind-independent in some important sense. Scotus held



10

that all essences are like that: even if the essence horseness existed only

mentally as an object of thought, what a horse is would still be independent of

its being thought about.17 This point can be further illustrated by considering a

third counterfactual scenario. Suppose, as in the second scenario, that there

are no individual horses but that some people can still think about what a

horse is. But now suppose that all the people who think about horses start

having wrong ideas about what a horse is (perhaps because after horses

became extinct they started forgetting what a horse is). For example, suppose

that the people who think about what a horse is believe that the property of

being black is part of the essence horseness. In that case, the essence

horseness would exist only as a thought in the minds of those who could still

think about it. But even though all those who think about horseness went

wrong about what a horse is, that essence would retain its identity and would

still be something different from what those people think, so much so that

what they think can be judged to be a wrong conception of what a horse is.

Again, a thought about what a horse is depends on what a horse is, even if no

individual horse exists, not the other way around.

3. Two ways of being objectively in the intellect: habitually and

actually

Now that I have presented what I take to be the gist of Scotus’s theory

of essence, let me turn back to the passage from Scotus’s Questions on the

Metaphysics I have started to consider. In one of the senses of ‘universal’ that

Scotus introduces there, a universal is an object of thought or an essence as

thought about. And in the light of the interpretation of Scotus’s theory ofessence that I have just suggested, that object of thought, say the concept

horse, can be described as an essence having mental existence but also mind-

independence, i.e. mind-independent identity. It is about the essence so

conceived that Scotus now asks whether it is in the intellect or in reality.

Scotus intends to defend the view that in some sense the universal concept

17 This seems to be similar to the position that Wells attributes to Descartes with regardto ideas such as God and triangle : « Now, when Descartes insists that ‘idea’ taken as a cognitiveactivity of the mind is dependent upon the mind itself, functioning as an actual efficient cause, heis equally insistent that such is not the case with ‘idea’ taken ‘objectively’. That is, not only theidea of God taken ‘objectively’, but the idea of the triangle, taken ‘objectively’ as well, howeverintramental they may be, must be seen as independent of the mind. Something, a res, is in the

mind, but it is not of the mind » (Wells, “Objective Reality,” pp. 46-47). Clearly, there areimportant differences between Scotus and Descartes (among other things, Scotus argues againstthe claim that such objects of thoughts are essences and he definitely does not consider them as‘created’ by God — even though he concedes that they are in some sense produced by God. Seebelow). Nevertheless, I find it interesting to notice that there seems to be a striking point of

similarity between those two thinkers concerning the status of (at least a certain class of) objects ofthoughts.



11

horse is both in the intellect and in reality. But what is interesting is the way

he makes his point.

First as to Scotus’s contention that a universal concept such as horse

is in the intellect. Scotus starts with an important remark. He says that here he

is considering the way a universal is in the intellect objectively . As it happens,

Scotus also thinks that when I think about what a horse is (so when a universal

such as horse is in my intellect objectively or, equivalently, an essence such

as horseness is in my intellect as an object of thought), it is also the case that

some items are in my intellect as accidents are in their subjects. Specifically,

Scotus holds that there is an intelligible species (to account for dispositional or

first-actuality cognition, i.e. my state of knowing what a horse is even when I

do not think about horses) and an act of thinking (to account for occurrent or

second-actuality cognition, i.e. my state of actually thinking about horses).18

As is clear from what Scotus says elsewhere, what is in the intellect as an

accident is in its subject (i.e. ‘subjectively’, as that way came to be called) is a

representation or likeness of what is in the intellect objectively: both

intelligible species and acts of thinking — i.e. occurrent thoughts — are

representations or likenesses of what is thought about.19 As we shall see

shortly, Scotus thinks that objective and subjective being always accompany

each other in the intellect: something is thought about and so is present

objectively in the intellect by virtue of a representation, which is present in the

intellect subjectively, i.e. as a real accident is present in its subject. But what

Scotus is focusing on now is the way something is present in the intellect

18 On the intelligible species : Ord ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 1, ed. Vat. III, pp. 201-244 ;Lect ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 1, ed. Vat. XVI, pp. 325-348. On the act of thinking : Quodl ., q. 13, nn.

7-9, ed. Vivès XXV, pp. 137-141. See Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, pp. 81-121 ; G.Pini, “Two Models of Thinking: Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus on Occurrent Thoughts,”in G. Klima ed., Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy ,Fordham University Press, New York 2015, pp. 81-103, esp. pp. 91-103.

19 On the intelligible species as representing its object : Ord ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n.370, ed. Vat. III, p. 225. On the act of thinking as a likeness (similitudo) of the object : Quodl ., q.13, n. 12, ed. Vivès XXV, p. 526 ; Lect ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 2-3, n. 392, ed. Vat. XVI, p. 377. Bycalling species and acts ‘likenesses’ or representations of their objects, I take that Scotus onlywants to say that species and acts are the devices by which something becomes present in theintellect as an object of thought. Also, notice that species and acts are likenesses andrepresentations of their objects, but what is objectively present in the intellect (i.e. what can besaid to have objective being in the intellect) is not a likeness or representation of anything. Rather,for something to exist objectively in the intellect is for that thing to be represented by a species oran act present (subjectively) in the intellect. In this respect, I agree with Cross, Duns Scotus’s

Theory of Cognition, p. 166, note 34, against M. M. Tweedale, Scotus vs. Ockham : A MedievalDispute over Universals, 2 vols., Edwin Mellen Press, Lampeter 1999, vol. II, p. 410. Similarly,Wells mentions that Descartes has sometimes been interpreted as holding that an idea takenobjectively represents something (presumably, something extramental) ; Wells corrects thatinterpretation along the same line I have indicated (an idea taken objectjvely represents nothing,

rather it is represented by an idea taken as a cognitive activity of the mind). See Wells, “ObjectiveReality,” pp. 34-35.



12

objectively, i.e. as an object of thought, not the representation by which that

thing is made present in the intellect as an object of thought. So he is focusing

not on the intelligible species or the acts of thinking, which he thinks are

qualities inhering in the intellect just as accidents inhere in their subjects.

Rather, he is focusing on what the intelligible species and acts of thinking

represent or are directed at — what those representations and likenesses are

representations and likenesses of.

Scotus does not start by defining objective being. Rather, he starts by

dividing it into two kinds:

And I claim that something can be in the intellect objectively (which

is how we are now talking about ‘being in’) in two ways: in one way

habitually, in another way actually (or equivalently, in first or second act). In

the first way [something] is there [i.e. in the intellect] when it is there as what

immediately moves [scil ., the intellect] to an act of thinking. In the second

way [something is in the intellect objectively] when it is actually thought

about20.

I believe that what Scotus says here should be understood in the

following way. Something is objectively in the intellect habitually when the

intellect has the information about what that thing is but does not necessarily

think about it. Suppose for example that I have learned what a horse is but I

am not thinking about horses. In that case, the essence horseness is

objectively in my intellect habitually — I have a disposition to think about

horses even though I do not exercise that disposition. By contrast, something

is objectively in my intellect actually when I am actually thinking about it. So

the essence horseness is objectively in my intellect in an actual way when I

am actually thinking about horses. As Scotus says in this passage and

elsewhere, something is objectively in the intellect in a habitual way by virtue

of an intelligible species, which is in the intellect as an accident in its subject

and represents or “contains” what is said to be objectively in the intellect in a

habitual way, and what is represented in turn is said to “shine out” in the

species.21 Similarly, something is objectively in the intellect in an actual way

20 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 44, OPh IV, p. 348 : « Et distinguo quod dupliciterpotest aliquid esse in intellectu obiective, sicut modo loquimur de ‘esse in’. Uno modo

habitualiter, et alio modo actualiter ; sive in actu primo et secundo. Primo modo est ibi quandoest ibi ut immediate motivum ad intellectionem, secundo modo quando actualiter intelligitur ».

21 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 44, OPh IV, p. 349 : « … speciem intelligibilem —per quam obiectum est praesens primo modo ». On the object’s shining out in the intelligiblespecies, see Ord ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 386, ed. Vat. III, p. 235 ; Rep. I-A, dist. 3, q. 4, n. 118,

ed. Wolter and Bychkov I, p. 218. As interpreters have observed, that language is borrowed fromHenry of Ghent, Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3, ed. Badius, vol. II, f. 129vD-



13

by virtue of an act of thinking, which is also in the intellect as an accident is in

its subject and represents or is directed at what is said to be objectively in the

intellect in an actual way. So something comes to be present in the intellect as

an actual object of thought by way of an act of thinking directed at it. 22

But in the passage I have just quoted Scotus does not only distinguish

two ways of being in the intellect objectively, i.e. habitually and actually. He

also equates that distinction with another one, namely the distinction between

the object as what moves the intellect to an act of thinking and the object as

the term at which an act of thinking is directed. That distinction (which Scotus

again takes over from Henry of Ghent) can be described as the distinction

between the object as the cause of an act of thinking and the object as what

an act of thinking is about.23

Scotus thinks that in ordinary cases the object plays both the role of a

cause of an act of thinking and the role of its term. But he also argues that it is

not necessarily the case that the object play the role of a cause of an act of

thinking, for the same act may be caused directly by God. By contrast, it is

impossible for a certain act not to be about the object it is about. So while the

causal role of the object with respect of an act of thinking is contingent, its

role as the term of that act of thinking is necessary. Necessarily, a certain act is

about a certain object — its identity is determined by the object it is about.24

Because in the passage from his Questions on the Metaphysics that I am now

considering Scotus connects the way the object is present habitually in the

intellect with the way it acts as a cause of an act of thinking, and because

elsewhere Scotus makes it clear that an object is made present in the intellect

habitually by way of an intelligible species, it seems to follow that an

130rG. The point is that the species is a representation of the object, which comes to be presentin the intellect as an object of thought by being represented or contained in the intelligiblespecies. See a helpful discussion of this topic in Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, p. 35-39.

22 On acts of thinking as a qualities : Quodl ., q. 13, n. 25, ed. Vivès XXV, pp. 570-571 ;

Ord ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 4, n. 601, ed. Vat. III, p. 354 ; Rep. I-A, dist. 3, q. 6, nn. 169, 175-176,ed. Wolter and Bychkov I, pp. 234-237. On acts of thinking as likenesses of their objects, seeabove note 19. On the object as what the act of thinking is directed at and as made present in theintellect by way of an act of thinking : Lect ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 2-3, n. 393, ed. Vat. XVI, p. 377.See G. Pini, “Can God Create my Thoughts? Scotus’s Case against the Causal Account ofIntentionality,” Journal of the History of Philosophy , 49, 2011, pp. 39-63 ; Cross, Duns Scotus’s

Theory of Cognition, pp. 102-121 ; Pini, “Two Models of Thinking,” pp. 93-103.23 Rep. I-A, dist. 36, q. 1-2, nn. 10-11, ed. Wolter and Bychkov II, p. 383 : « Ad primam

quaestionem dico quod obiectum intellectus ad ipsum intellectum potest habere duplicemhabitudinem : una sicut motivi ad mobile, sicut dicit Philosophus III De anima et XII

Metaphysicae (intellectus movetur ab intelligibili). Aliam habitudinem habet tamquam terminantisactum potentiae, et haec est condicio universalis in obiecto, sive moveat potentiam sive non, quiaomni obiecto convenit terminare actum suae potentiae ».

24 Ord ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 2, nn. 477-478, ed. Vat. III, pp. 285-286. See Pini, “CanGod Create my Thoughts?,” pp. 52-56.



14

intelligible species is required in the process of intellectual cognition in order

to account for the causal production of an act of thinking. But because Scotus

distinguishes the way the object is present habitually in the intellect from the

way it is present actually in the intellect and because he thinks that it is the

task of the act of thinking — as opposed to the species — to make the object

present actually in the intellect, it follows that an act of thinking is about what

it is about because of the sort of act it is (and because, as such, an act is

related to a certain object) and not because it is caused by a certain

intelligible species. This fits with what Scotus holds elsewhere: if God creates

an act of thinking in an intellect where there is no corresponding intelligible

species, that act is still about the same object. Actually, Scotus had initially

entertained the idea that the object as present in the intelligible species (i.e.,

what here he calls “what is objectively present in the intellect in a habitual

way”) might play the role of both cause and term of an act of thinking. But he

came to abandon that idea and to embrace the view that the intelligible

species and the object habitually present in the intellect by way of that

intelligible species contribute only to the causal story resulting in the

production of an act of thinking (barring divine intervention), but they play no

role in accounting for what an act is about. The term of an act of thinking is

not the object as contained in or represented by the intelligible species; rather,

it is the object represented by that act itself.25

In the following lines of the passage from the Questions on the

Metaphysics that I am considering, Scotus claims that only if an intelligible

species is posited in the intellect (in the way an accident is in the intellect) is it

possible to distinguish between being objectively in the intellect habitually

and actually, and accordingly as a cause and as a term of an act of thinking.

The idea is that something can be objectively in the intellect habitually only if

represented by or contained in an intelligible species. If no intelligible species

is posited to inhere in the intellect, it seems that the only way something can

be objectively in the intellect is as the term of an act of thinking and at the

very moment the act of thinking occurs. But then it is not possible to

distinguish between being habitually in the intellect as a cause of an act of

thinking and being in the intellect actually as the term of an act of thinking.

Even Avicenna, who (Scotus thinks) held that no intelligible species is

temporally prior to the act of thinking, nevertheless posited an intelligible

species as present at the same time as an act of thinking occurs butnevertheless naturally — i.e. explanatorily — prior to that act. By contrast,

Henry of Ghent, who (in his mature view) believed that there is no the

25 Lect ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 2-3, nn. 391-393, ed. Vat. XVI, pp. 376-377. See Pini, “CanGod Create my Thoughts?,” pp. 50-52.



15

intelligible species either before or at the same time as an act of thinking

occurs, had no way to account for the role of an object as the cause of an act

of thinking.26

So the picture of intellectual cognition that emerges from these dense

paragraphs is the following. In ordinary cases (i.e. such that God does not

interfere with the ordinary working of secondary causes), an intelligible

species is present in the intellect (as an accident in its subject). That

intelligible species is a representation of an object, which by way of that

species is habitually present in the intellect and can accordingly play the role

of the cause of a subsequent act of thinking.27 Once an act of thinking is

produced, that act has its own object, which is something objectively present

in the intellect in actuality. That object is the term (as opposed to the cause) of

the act of thinking. Scotus concludes with a further point. Because the object

present in the intelligible species is the cause of the act of thinking, the object

habitually present in the intellect by virtue of the intelligible species is

naturally — i.e. explanatorily — prior to the object actually present in the

intellect by virtue of an act of thinking. As it happens, Scotus thinks that the

object habitually present in the intellect is also temporally prior to the object

actually present in the intellect, because he thinks that, once an intelligible

species is produced in the intellect, it remains there and can accordingly play

the role of the cause of a temporally posterior act of thinking directed at the

same object.28

26 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 44, OPh IV, p. 349 : « Ista esse, secundumpositionem Avicennae, simul sunt tempore, licet primum prius natura. Licet enim non ponatspeciem intelligibilem — per quam obiectum est praesens primo modo — manere in intellectu

nisi dum actu intelligit, tamen prius natura est obiectum praesens ut motivum quam ut intellectumactu, quia primum praecedit intellectionem ut causa, secundum sequitur sive concomitatur. Aliusautem [scil . Henricus de Gandavo], qui negat speciem intelligibilem, non videtur quomodo possitista duo esse distinguere, quia nullum esse habet obiectum in intellectu, secundum ipsum, nisiper actum intelligendi, et ita nullum esse primum, et ita nullo modo movebit intellectum ; cuiustamen contrarium tenet ipse ».

27 Scotus describes the object habitually present in the intellect by way of an intelligiblespecies as what « immediately » moves the intellect to an act of thinking ( immediate motivum adintellectionem : Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 44, OPh IV, p. 348) because once that object ispresent in the intellect by way of an intelligible species no further change must occur in theintellect (i.e. no further quality must be received in the intellect) in order for an act of thinking tooccur ; rather, the act of thinking itself is a new quality and its occurrence is a new change. See

Quodl ., q. 13, n. 4, ed. Vivès XXV, p. 509 : « Operatio autem potest esse nova sine novitatecuiuscumque alterius prioris absoluti in ipso operante… ». See Pini, “Two Models of Thinking,”

pp. 97-98.28 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, nn. 44-45, OPh IV, p. 349. Incidentally, this clarifies

that the object’s natural priority over an act of thinking — to which Scotus is committed in Ord ., I,dist. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 350, ed. Vat. III, p. 210 — is required only to account for an intelligiblespecies’s causation of an act of thinking : the object needs to be prior to the act that is directed at

it only if and because that object is one of the causes of that act. No priority of the object over theact is required in order to account for an act’s being about that object. So if God creates an act of



16

4. Formal and objective being

Scotus goes on to conclude that it is necessarily the case that auniversal be present objectively in the intellect in the first way, i.e. habitually,

but not in the second way, i.e. actually.29 Of course, Scotus’s point is not that

necessarily I have a disposition to think about something, say to think about

what a horse is. Rather, his point is that, if a certain universal (namely, a

certain object) is in my intellect, necessarily it is there in a habitual or

dispositional way. That object, say horseness, may be in my intellect also as

something actually thought, but this is contingent. Suppose, for example, that I

know what a horse is but I am not thinking about it. In that case, the essence

horseness is objectively present in my intellect in a habitual way, as

something that can cause an act of thinking directed at horses. But if I am not

actually thinking about what a horse is, it is not the case that the essencehorseness is objectively present in my intellect in an actual way. By contrast, if

I am actually thinking about what a horse is, the essence horseness is

objectively present in my intellect both actually, as the term of my act of

thinking, and habitually, as a cause of my act of thinking. On the face of it,

this claim seems to be in contrast with what Scotus says elsewhere, namely

that God can create an occurrent thought in my intellect even in the absence

of a corresponding intelligible species; for in that case, something would be

objectively present in my intellect in an actual way, i.e. as that at which my

act of thinking is directed, but not in a habitual way, i.e. as what causes my

act of thinking, since God and not the species or the object in the species

would then be the cause of my act of thinking. So it appears that Scotus’sclaim that a universal is present objectively in the intellect necessarily in the

first way, i.e. habitually, but not necessarily in the second way, i.e. actually, is

meant to refer only to ordinary cases of cognition, i.e. cognitive events caused

by natural causes (namely, our agent intellect and an intelligible species). By

contrast, Scotus’s claim about the necessary presence of an object in our

intellect in a habitual way is not meant to apply to cases of divine

intervention, i.e. cognitive events that God causes by sidestepping the

ordinary causal mechanisms.

thinking about horseness in my intellect, there needs to be no priority — either temporal ornatural — of horseness as is in the intellect over that act.

29 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 46, OPh IV, p. 340 : « Ad quaestionem igitur,quoad hoc membrum, dico quod universale tertio modo dictum non est in intellectu secundomodo ex necessitate, ita quod quasi illud esse sit ibi necessarium, sicut probant rationes contra

secundam opinionem, sed necessario est in intellectu primo modo, ita quod sine illoconcomitante obiectum non inest ei universalitas ».



17

That Scotus is here considering only cognitive events naturally caused

is confirmed by what he says immediately afterwards, where he identifies the

agent intellect and the extramental thing as the conjoined causes of the

intelligible species by which something is present in the intellect in a habitual

way.30 Scotus then proceeds to describe the action of the agent intellect in

some detail. What Scotus says about the agent intellect’s role in the

production of an intelligible species is not relevant to my purpose.31 But it is

interesting to notice that here Scotus specifies that when the intelligible

species is caused “formally” (formaliter ) in the intellect, the object is also

caused to be in the intellect, not formally but “objectively” (obiective).32 I take

it that ‘formally’ here means ‘as a form’, so it may be taken as a synonym of

‘subjectively’. The idea is that an intelligible species is caused to be in the

intellect as an accidental form inhering in its subject.33 As such, ‘to be caused

to be in the intellect formally’ is contrasted to ‘to be caused to be in the

intellect objectively’. Again, Scotus takes over the contrast between formally

and objectively from Henry of Ghent. The same contrast between formaliter

and obiective is found in Suárez and, more famously, in Descartes.34 But apart

from this historical point, it should be stressed that Scotus is here just

reiterating what he had maintained elsewhere. Intellectual cognition is an

event involving two processes, one ‘real’ and the other ‘intentional’.

Something becomes present in the intellect as an object by virtue of a real

quality that represents it. That quality is present in the intellect in the way an

accident is present in its subject, i.e. formally or subjectively as opposed to

objectively. If something is objectively present in the intellect in a habitual

way, the quality that makes it present is an intelligible species. If something is

objectively present in the intellect in an actual way, the quality that makes it

present is an act of thinking. Scotus holds that these two processes — real and

intentional — go hand in hand, for nothing can be present in the intellect as

an object of thought unless by virtue of a real item representing it, which in

turn is present in the intellect as an accident.35 Even though Scotus does not

care to make the point explicitly, it seems that the reverse also holds: if a

30 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 47, OPh IV, pp. 350-351.31 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, nn. 48-54, OPh IV, pp. 351-354.32 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 51, OPh IV, pp. 352-353.

33 Specifically, Scotus holds that intelligible species are qualities, see Quodl ., q. 13, n.32, ed. Vivès XXV, p. 582. See Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, p. 100.

34 Henrici de Gandavo Quodl . V, q. 14, ed. Badius, vol. I, f. 175rD. See Rombeiro,“Intelligible Species in Henry of Ghent,” p. 190. For Suárez’s and Descartes’ use of the oppositionbetween formaliter and obiective, see Wells, “Objective Reality,” pp. 42 and 45.

35 Ord ., I, dist. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 386, ed. Vat. III, p. 235. See Cross, Duns Scotus’sTheory of Cognition, p. 30.



18

representation is present in the intellect as an accident in a subject,

necessarily what is represented by it is present in the intellect as an object.

5. Objective being as a relation of reason to the intellect

So far, Scotus has considered how universals are in the intellect. As I

have stated above, I think that by ‘universal’ Scotus here means ‘an essence as

thought about’ (recall Scotus’s theory of essence, according to which essences

can exist extramentally as instantiated in individuals or mentally as thoughts).

An essence is in the intellect as an object of thought. And it can be there in

two ways, either habitually by way of an intelligible species representing it (as

when I know what a horse is but I am not necessarily thinking about what a

horse is) or actually by way of an act of thinking directed at it (as when I am

actually thinking about what a horse is).

This account spells out the necessary and sufficient conditions forsomething to be in the intellect as an object of thought. In a first way,

something is in the intellect as an object of a thought (in a habitual or

dispositional way) if and only if a certain quality, called ‘intelligible species’,

modifies the intellect as an accident modifies its subject. In a second way,

something is in the intellect as an object of thought (in an actual or occurrent

way) if and only if a certain quality, called ‘act of thinking’, modifies the

intellect as an accident modifies its subject. Both the intelligible species and

the act of thinking are described as likenesses (similitudines) of what is thought

about, which is variously described as what is contained in an intelligible

species or what shines out in an intelligible species or alternatively as the term

of an act of thinking or what an act of thinking is directed at.But an account of necessary and sufficient conditions for the

occurrence of an event (in this case, something’s being in the intellect as an

object of thought) is not the same thing as an account of what that event is. So

what is it for something to be in the intellect as an object of thought ? What is

objective being?

In a couple of paragraphs following the ones I have so far analyzed,

Scotus addresses the other half of the question that he has been considering.

After focusing on how a universal is something objectively in the intellect, he

now turns to asking whether it is something in reality (an sit in re). It is here

that Scotus gives what to my knowledge is the most explicit, if brief,

description of what he takes ‘to be objectively in the intellect’ to mean:

With regard to the second part of the question, namely whether [a

universal] is in reality, [my] answer [is this]: to be in the intellect in the first or

in the second way [i.e. habitually or actually] is nothing else than to have a



19

relation of reason to the intellect. Now it may well be the case that that which

is in reality has such a relation. Therefore, that which is universal is in

reality.36

First, let us consider Scotus’s description of objective being. For

something to be in the intellect as an object of thought (whether in

dispositional or occurrent cognition) is nothing else than for that thing to have

a relation of reason to the intellect. As Scotus implies elsewhere, what

characterizes a relation as a relation of reason is that it is a relation established

by the intellect. I think that this should be understood in the following way. A

relation of reason pertains to its terms not because of their natures but because

those terms are described in a certain observer-dependent way (and Scotus

thinks that the intellect plays a role in describing things in that way and so in

establishing the connection between those two terms). So two terms are

related to each other by a relation of reason if and only if there is no mind-

independent ground to relate the one to the other in that way; rather, it is an

observer’s intellect that conceives of those terms (namely, describes them) as

related in that way.37 For example, two black things are related by a real

relation of similarity in color, because they are similar in color (they both are

black) no matter whether anybody considers them as similar or not. By

contrast, something, for example a dog, can be described as sitting at the right

rather than at the left of a column only with reference to an observer who is in

a certain position with respect to the column — ‘to be on the right of’ and ‘to

be on the left of’ are relations that do not pertain to a column as such but only

if the column is considered in such a way that it may be described as having a

right and a left side, and this can be done only from the point of view of an

observer. Take the observer away and the column cannot be described as

having a right or a left side anymore. So when Scotus says that to be

objectively in the intellect is to be related to the intellect by a relation of

reason, he is making two claims. First, Scotus’s point is that for something to

exist in the intellect as an object of thought is not a property that pertains to

that thing considered in itself, but only as related to an intellect: it is a relation,

not an absolute or non-relative property. Second, Scotus also thinks that

something can be described as being in an intellect as an object of thought

36 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 58, OPh IV, p. 354 : « Quoad secundum membrumquaestionis, scilicet an sit in re, responsio : esse in intellectu primo modo vel secundo non est nisihabere relationem rationis ad intellectum. Illud autem, quod est in re, bene habet istamrelationem ; ergo illud quod est universale, est in re ».

37 Scotus’s discussions on relations of reason tend to be confusing. Here I have tried to

sum up what I take to be uncontroversial. For a treatment of relations of reason, see Quaest . superMet ., V, q. 11, nn. 37-44, OPh III, pp. 579-582.



20

only if an observer describes it in that way — considered in itself, a certain

thing is not related to an intellect in such a way as to be objectively there, just

as a column is not the sort of thing that has a right or a left side unless it is so

described by an observer.

I believe that Scotus’s point can be better understood if it is

considered as the other side of what he says about the way an intelligible

species or an act of thinking is related to its object. As is well known,

medieval thinkers thought of relations as having a direction. So what we

would describe as just one relation of similarity between two black things, say

a dog and a cat, would be described by a medieval thinker as actually two

relations, one grounded in the dog and directed at the cat and the other

grounded in the cat and directed at the dog.38 The relation of similarity

between two black things is a mutual relation: to one relation going in one

direction (say, from a black dog to a black cat) there corresponds another

relation going in the other direction (from the black cat to the black dog).

Some relations, however, are non-mutual: to the relation going from the first

to the second term there corresponds no relation going from the second to the

first term. In those cases, we may sometimes describe the second term as

related to the first term, but this is just a way of saying that the first term is

related to the second. For example, the relation linking an act of seeing and

what is seen is non-mutual: the relation between the act of seeing and its

object is real (when I see something, something happens to me) but the

corresponding relation between what is seen and an act of seeing is not (when

a thing is seen, nothing happens to that thing just because it is seen).

Nevertheless, we often talk about something’s being seen by somebody. In

that case, what we actually mean to say is that somebody sees something. So

those relations (which Aristotle called ‘third-kind relations’ to distinguish them

from other two kinds of relations, which are usually called ‘numerical’ and

‘causal’, respectively) are such that a certain term a is described as related to

another term b only by virtue of b’s being related to a. Aristotle thought that

this special kind of relations pertains to cognition in general: when I say that

something is cognized, what I actually mean to say is that somebody cognizes

that thing.39 Now Scotus holds that both intelligible species and acts of

thinking are really related to their terms (by a relation which he calls

‘measurability’), and their terms (as should be clear by now) is what they

38 See M. G. Henninger, Relations: Medieval Theories 1250-1325, Oxford UniversityPress, Oxford 1989, pp. 4-6.

39 Aristotle, Categories, 7, 6b1-6 ; Metaphysics, V, 15, 1021a26-b3 ; X, 1, 1053a31-b3.See Henninger, Relations, pp. 6-8.



21

represent, i.e. the thing thought about.40 It is that thing that is said to have

objective being in the intellect, as we know. So I think that what Scotus is

saying by describing “being objectively in the intellect” as “being related to

the intellect by a relation of reason” is that something can be said to be

objectively in the intellect only because an observer considers the object of

thought, on the one hand, and the intelligible species or the act of thinking

about it, on the other hand, and then describes the object of thought as the

foundation of a relation directed at the species or at the act of thinking, even

though, in itself, the thing that is thought about is not related to either the

species or the act of thinking. What that observer is actually saying when she

says that something has objective being in the intellect is that somebody

thinks about that thing, i.e. that there is an intelligible species or an act of

thinking directed at that thing in somebody’s intellect. For example, suppose

that I say that the essence horseness is objectively in my intellect. As it

happens, the essence horseness has no real, i.e. observer-independent,

relation to my intellect, just as a column in itself has no right or left side. What

I am actually saying is that my intellect is related to the essence horseness by a

real quality present in it, be that an intelligible species representing that thing

or an act of thinking directed at that thing.

Accordingly, Scotus’s description of “being objectively in the

intellect” as “having a relation of reason to the intellect” seems to confirm a

reductionist interpretation of objective being. Objective being is not a mode of

40 On measurability as obtaining between an intelligible species and its object : Rep. I-A, dist. 3, q. 4, n. 97, ed. Wolter and Bychkov I, p. 210. On measurability as obtaining betweenan act of thinking and its object : Quodl ., q. 13, nn. 11-13, ed. Vivès XXV, pp. 525-526. See

Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, pp. 85 and 153-163 ; Pini, “Two Models of Thinking,”pp. 101-103. I should stress that my interpretation of measurability differs from Cross’sinterpretation in some key respect. Cross holds that measurability is an intrinsic real feature of athought (Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, p. 166) ; it accounts for what Cross describes as athought’s having a certain content as opposed to being about objects (ibid ., pp. 150, 157, 167).When abstractive thoughts do have objects, Cross thinks that they are contingently related to them(ibid ., p. 113). But Cross’s usual way of describing abstractive thoughts is just as thoughts «lacking objects » but having content (ibid ., pp. 164-165). Very briefly, I doubt that there is anyroom in Scotus for the distinction between content and object as Cross draws it (as Cross says, heis here developing some ideas originally put forward by Peter King). As should be clear from myinterpretation of Scotus in this paper, I think that every thought is about an object. In the case ofabstractive thoughts, however, that object does not necessarily have extramental existence (asinstantiated in an extramental individual). Nevertheless, I believe that this does not mean thatsuch a thought lacks an object ; rather, it means that the object of that thought is an essence as

taken in itself, with a mind-independent identity (even though that essence may well exist only inthe mind as an object of thought). Consequently, I interpret the relation of measurability as agenuine (if potential) relation. And I believe that it is the relation of measurability that accounts forthe aboutness of a thought (again contrary to Cross, who thinks that aboutness is accounted for bythe other relation identified by Scotus as holding between thoughts and objects. i.e. the relatio

attigentiae). I say more about these differences between Cross’s and my interpretation in a reviewarticle to be published in the British Journal of the History of Philosophy .



22

being that pertains to things in themselves. Rather, to say that something has

objective being is only a way of saying that an intellect thinks about that thing,

either dispositionally or occurrently (and by having an intelligible species or

an act of thinking subjectively in itself, that intellect is really related to the

thing thought about). So any talk about being objectively in the intellect can

be rephrased in terms of the way an intelligible species or an act of thinking

are in the intellect, namely as an accident is in its subject (not objectively but

subjectively or formally).

Let us now consider Scotus’s following claim, namely that it may well

be the case that what is in reality has a relation of reason to the intellect. As is

clear from what Scotus says a few lines below, “what is in reality” is an

essence existing extramentally as instantiated in individuals, for example the

essence horseness existing in Brunellus and Bucephalus. So Scotus’s point is

that it may well be the case that an essence existing extramentally in

individuals is an object of thought.

Scotus concludes that in that case, i.e. when a thought is directed at

an essence that exists extramentally as instantiated in individuals, “that which

is universal is in reality,” even though not necessarily, because it is not

necessarily the case that an essence be instantiated extramentally in

individuals.41 On the face of it, this sounds confusing, but I believe that what

Scotus has in mind is the following. A certain essence, which in itself is

neither an individual nor a universal, can be at the same time instantiated

extramentally in individuals and present in an intellect as an object of thought.

Take for example the case of the essence horseness. In that case, what is

universal, i.e. the essence horseness, which is present objectively in those

who know what a horse is and maybe even think about it, also exists

extramentally as instantiated in Brunellus and Bucephalus. So we can say that,

in that case, that which is universal (i.e. the essence horseness, which happens

to be an object of thought, so it is a universal in the mind) is in reality

(because that essence also happens to be instantiated in extramental

individuals such as Brunellus and Bucephalus).

Notice that in order to make any sense of these lines it is necessary to

suppose that an essence, which can be either in the extramental world as

instantiated in individuals or in the intellect as a universal object of thought,

41 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 59, OPh IV, pp. 354-355 : « Potest igitur universaleesse in re, ita quod eadem natura est, quae in exsistentia per gradum singularitatis est determinata,et in intellectu — hoc est ut habet relationem ad intellectum tamquam cognitum ad cognoscens— est indeterminata. Ita quod sicut ista duo esse concurrunt per accidens in eadem natura, etposset utraque esse sine altera, ita etiam determinatio et indeterminatio praedicta. Ex hoc apparet

quod non est necesse illud, quod est universale, esse in re, licet possit, sicut necesse est ipsumesse in intellectu ».



23

has its identity independently of its existing extramentally as an individual or

mentally as a universal: it is the same essence (eadem essentia) that may exist

both extramentally and in the mind, i.e. that is related to the intellect as

something cognized is related to a cognizer. So what is related to the intellect

(which should be interpreted, as we know, as the term of a real relation

grounded in the intellect), i.e. what has objective being, is an essence taken in

itself.42 For what Scotus is saying is not that something mental also exists

extramentally. Rather, he is saying that something that in itself is neither

mental nor extramental, i.e. an essence, may exist at the same time both in the

mind (as an object of thought) and outside the mind (as instantiated in

individuals). In other words, Scotus is assuming his theory of essence, which I

have briefly presented earlier in this paper.

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that an important part of Scotus’s

theory of essence is that an essence may lack any extramental existence and

still be mind-independent. That is the case of essences existing only in the

mind as objects of thought, such as the essences of extinct animals (Scotus’s

own scenario actually involves the still-to-be-created essence of a rose).43

Such an essence is instantiated in no individual, so that essence lacks

extramental existence. Nevertheless, what I think about when I think about a

dodo or a pterodactyl is in some important sense mind-independent. When

there are extramental individuals instantiating a certain essence, the truth

value of some of our beliefs may change from true to false when something

changes in extramental reality: for example, my belief that some horses are

black would become false if all black horses died.44 But as Scotus remarks

elsewhere, it is the essence or quiddity taken in itself that is the per se object

of our intellect, i.e. what our thoughts are about. Furthermore, it is the essence

taken in itself that is what a metaphysician’s definitions (i.e. real definitions)

express. Finally, it is by virtue of the essence taken in itself that per se

propositions — which constitute the backbone of a real science — are true:

For althought it [scil ., the nature taken by itself] is never really

without some one of these features [scil . being universal or particular], yet it

is not any of them of itself, but is naturally prior to all of them. In accordance

42 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 59, OPh IV, p. 354 : « Potest igitur universale esse

in re, ita quod eadem natura est, quae in exsistentia per gradum singularitatis est determinata, etin intellectu — hoc est ut habet relationem ad intellectum tamquam cognitum ad cognoscens —est indeterminata ».

43 Lect . I, dist. 36, q. un., n. 26, ed. Vat. XVII, p. 469.44 Quaest . super Met ., VII, q. 18, n. 59, OPh IV, p. 354 : « Confirmatur : aliter in

sciendo aliqua de universalibus, nihil sciremus de rebus sed tantum de conceptibus nostris, necmutaretur opinio nostra a vero in falsum propter mutationem in exsistentia rei ».



24

with this natural priority the [quiddity or] the what-the-thing-is is the per se

object of the intellect and is per se, as such, considered by the

metaphysician and expressed by the definition. Propositions true [ per se] in

the first mode are true by reason of the quiddity so taken. For nothing is said

of a quiddity per se in the first mode unless it is included in it essentially,

insofar as the quiddity is abstracted from all features naturally posterior to

it45.

So an essence may well be in the mind as an object of thought, but its

identity as the essence it is is not mind-dependent. And this remains true even

if there is no extramental instantiation of that essence.

Such is the core of Scotus’s theory of essence, which I think centers

around what I have described as the distinction between, on the one hand,

‘extramental’ and, on the other hand, ‘mind-independent’. Unfortunately,

Scotus does not have a way to disambiguate linguistically between those two

cases. So he uses the expressions in re and realis both when he is talking about

an essence as instantiated extramentally in individuals and when he is talking

about an essence as a mind-independent item that may nevertheless happen

to have only mental existence. So when Scotus says that the essence is

something in re, he may mean both that it exists extramentally as instantiated

in an individual and that it has its own mind-independent identity (whether it

exists in individuals or as a thought in the mind). Once we get the point that

Scotus is making, however, I do not think that it is difficult to read him in a

charitable way and disambiguate his claims as the situation requires.46

But how is this relevant to objective being? As I have tried to make it

clear, Scotus’s idea is, I think, that for something to be objectively in the

intellect is nothing else than for a thought directed at it to exist in a thinker’s

mind (be that thought an intelligible species or an act of thinking). But the

term of that thinker’s thought, which may well exists only as a term of thought,

is an essence that has its own identity (i.e. it is what it is) independently of

45 Ord ., II, dist. 3, pars 1, q. 1, n. 32, ed. Vat. VII, p. 403 : « Licet enim numquam sitrealiter sine aliquo illorum, sed est prius naturaliter omnibus istis, — et secundum prioritatemnaturalem est ‘quod quid est’ per se obiectum intellectus, et per se, ut sic, consideratur ametaphysico et exprimitur per definitionem ; et propositiones ‘verae primo modo’ sunt veraeratione quiditatis sic acceptae, quia nihil dicitur ‘per se primo modo’ de quiditate nisi includitur inea essentialiter, in quantum ipsa abstrahitur ab omnibus istis, quae sunt posteriora naturaliter ipsa

». The English translation is by Paul Vincent Spade (Five Texts on the Medieval Problem ofUniversals : Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham, translated and edited by P. V.Spade, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis - Cambridge 1994, pp. 63-64).

46 A notorious case in which Scotus uses the adjective ‘real’ to refer to the mind-independent but not necessarily extramental status of the essence is in his defense of the claim

that the essence, considered in itself, has a real and less-than-numerical unity. See Ord ., II, dist. 3,pars 1, q. 1, n. 8, ed. Vat. VII, p. 395.



25

being the term of that thought. So objective being seems to have both an intra-

mental side and a mind-independent side: essences may exist only as objects

of thoughts, but what they are is independent of their being thought about.47

6. A hypothesis: priority among God’s thoughts

Admittedly, the distinction between ‘extramental’ and ‘mind-

independent’ may still require some clarification. Specifically, one might

concede that the reason why the distinction is introduced is more or less clear:

we want to account for the fact that something can be in a mind as an object

of thought but its identity — what that thing is — might not depend on the

mind’s thinking about it. For example, we want to account for the fact that

what essential properties a horse has is something that does not seem to

depend on our mind even though all horses may be extinct and exist only as

thoughts in our minds. But how is it possible to hold this view withoutconceding that essences do exist in themselves in some way or another

outside our mind, even though maybe just in a diminished way? But this is just

what Scotus wants to deny, when he criticizes Henry of Ghent for holding that

real, extramental essences must be posited as the objects of God’s mind.48

47 When discussing cases where thoughts are about still-to-be-created essences, Scotus

at least once distinguished between the term of an act of thinking and what « is opposed to theintellect » (obicitur intellectui ) : « Unde terminus intellectionis est esse essentiae vel esseexsistentiae, — et tamen illud quod obicitur intellectui, tantum habet esse deminitum in intellectu

» (Lect ., I, dist. 36, q. un., n. 26, ed. Vat. XVII, p. 469). I take that Scotus’s point is not todistinguish between mental content and a missing object, because here he states that a thoughtabout a still-to-be-created essence has both a term and something that is opposed to it. Rather, I

take that Scotus’s point is that what a thought is about or directed at — which may be an essenceas real (here : extramental) and instantiated even when no such essence is real or instantiated —should be distinguished from its purely mental status. What can acquire real status and beinstantiated is an essence that has its own mind-independent identity — i.e. it is the essence it isindependenty of being in a mind — even though it may well happen, as in the case discussed,that it exists only in the mind. So I take that Scotus’s distinction in this passage basically amountsto his distinction between an essence (which may be in the intellect as an object of thought) andthe mode in which that essence is thought about (as it happens, as a universal). See Ord ., II, dist.3, pars 1, q. 1, n. 33, ed. Vat. VII, p. 403 : « Non solum autem ipsa natura de se est indifferens adesse in intellectu et in particulari, ac per hoc et ad esse universale et particulare (sive singulare),— sed etiam ipsa, habens esse in intellectu, non habet primo ex se universalitatem. Licet enimipsa intelligatur sub universalitate ut sub modo intelligendi ipsam, tamen universalitas non estpars eius conceptus primi, quia non conceptus metaphysici, sed logici (logicus enim consideratsecundas intentiones, applicatas primis secundum ipsum). Prima ergo intellectio est ‘naturae’ ut

non cointelligitur aliquis modus, neque qui est eius in intellectu, neque qui est eius extraintellectum ; licet illius intellecti modus intelligendi sit universalitas, sed non modus intellectus ».Scotus’s point seems to be that the mode in which that essence is thought about is not what an actof thinking is directed at ; rather it is only part of what is « opposed to the intellect », i.e. thatmode is part of an essence’s mode of existing as an object of thought.

48 Ord ., I, dist. 36, q. un., ed. Vat. VI, pp. 271-281. See Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory ofCognition, pp. 185-189. It seems that Scotus miscontrues Henry of Ghent’s actual position, but



26

So what is the ground for such a mind-independent identity of an

essence even when that essence is nothing else than the term of a thought?

How can something that is only in the mind not depend on the mind for its

identity? Scotus seems to be committed to this position because of his theory

of essence (at least as I have described it). And it may well be the case that his

theory of essence is ultimately incoherent. It is also true that, to my

knowledge, nowhere does Scotus address the question of how something that

is only in the mind does not depend on the mind for its identity. He did argue

for the mind-independent identity of an essence,49 but he never indicated

what the ground for such an identity might be. So it may be surmised that an

essence’s being what it is independently of its being instantiated extramentally

and its being thought about should be assumed as a brute fact, something that

must be postulated in order not to incur a series of philosophical problems but

for which cannot be given any other justification and that may even turn out

to be ultimately confused.

This may well be the truth. But I also think that it is possible to gather

some indications about why Scouts held that the object of a thought — what a

certain thought is about: an essence — has a mind-independent identity even

when it exists only in the mind. My suggestion is to take into account two

claims that Scotus makes about the relationship between, on the one hand, a

thought (and here by ‘thought’ I mean either an act of thinking or an

intelligible species) and, on the other hand, its object. First, Scotus claims that

a human thought is related to its object as what is measurable (a thought) to

what can measure it (its object).50 Leaving aside the details of Scotus’s

analysis, which are not immediately relevant here, the main point that Scotus

wants to make is that a thought is linked to its object by a relation of

(explanatory) dependence: a thought is the thought it is because it is about the

object it is about. As Scotus explicitly says, the only reason why a relation of

measurability holds between a thought and its object is to account for the

(explanatory) dependence of the thought on the object.51 Notice that in the

this is not relevant here. See R. Cross, “Henry of Ghent on the Reality of Non-Existing Possibles —Revisited,” Archiv fu !r Geschichte der Philosophie, 92, 2010, pp. 115-132.

49 Ord ., II, dist. 3, pars 1, q. 1, nn. 8-28, ed. Vat. VII, pp. 395-402.50 See above note 40.51 Ord ., I, dist. 35, q. un., n. 28, ed. Vat. VI, p. 256 : « Non oportet ergo propter

intellectionem alicuius obiecti praecise, quaerere relationem, nec in utroque extremo nec in

altero, — ergo oportet aliquid aliud addere, propter quod sit relatio in utroque vel in altero ; illudautem non videtur nisi vel mutua coexigentia, si est relatio mutua, — vel dependentia in alteroextremo, si non est mutua… ». See also Lect ., I, dist. 35, q. un., n. 19, ed. Vat. XVII, p. 451.Scotus will change his mind about this point, but (as I interpret him) only with regard to the divinecase : when God cognizes something, even though it remains true that the thing cognized

depends on God’s cognition (and not the other way around), it is nevertheless possible to accountfor the dependence of the thing cognized on God’s cognition without positing a relation of



27

case of thoughts had by human beings (or more in general by rational

creatures) — which is the case I am focusing on in this paper — the direction

of dependence goes from thoughts to objects: we can understand what kind of

thing something is (say, a horse rather than a dog) even if we do not consider

that a thought is directed at it, but we cannot understand what kind of thought

a thought is (say, a thought about horses rather than a thought about dogs) if

we do not consider the thing it is about or directed at. Now consider the case

of God’s thoughts. Scotus thinks that in the divine case the dependence goes

the other direction, namely from object to thought: something is what it is

because a certain divine thought is about it (or maybe more properly, because

God has a certain kind of thought), not the other way around.52 I think that

these claims give us an indication of how to account for the mind-

independent status of an essence even when that essence is the object of a

human act of thinking. The point is not — as the proponents of the non-

reductionist reading of objective being think — that God produces a special

realm of items (namely, objects of thoughts) as enjoying special ontological

status independently of their being thought about by human beings (or more

in general, creatures). Rather, the point is that it is impossible for God to have

a thought of a human thought about, say, what a horse is prior to His having a

thought about what a horse is. So the mind-independent status of an essence

taken in itself (what a human thought is directed at or is about) is ultimately

due to the order of priority among God’s thoughts (or, more precisely, the

order of priority in which God conceives of different secondary objects of His

thought): the essence of a horse is (explanatorily) prior to a human thought

about that essence — and so that essence has its own mind-independent

identity —, because God’s thinking about the essence horseness is prior to His

thinking about a human thought about the essence horseness (namely, God

measurability — in fact, without positing any relation at all. Scotus, however, makes this claimabout divine cognition, and I see no reason to apply it to human cognition. See Rep. I-A, dist. 36,q. 1-2, n. 65, ed. Wolter and Bychkov II, pp. 402-403.

52 Rep. I-A, dist. 36, q. 1-2, n. 60, ed. Wolter and Bychkov II, pp. 399-400. Strictlyspeaking, God’s primary object of thought is His own essence; other things are only secondaryobjects of thought for God. This means that God knows all things apart from Himself by knowing

His own essence. Accordingly, it is not the case that God has different cognitive acts directed atdifferent created objects. Rather, by just one act of thinking God knows both Himself and all thethings that He can create, including those that He will create. In what follows, I will loosely speakas if God had different cognitive acts directed at different objects. This should interpreted asshorthand for the claim that God, by one act directed at Himself, also knows all other things. The

key point is that God’s thought is directed at those secondary objects of thought in an naturally(i.e. explanatorily) ordered way, i.e. first at some objects and then at other ones.



28

cannot think about a human thought about what a horse is unless He first

thinks about what a horse is, in a logical and non-temporal sense of ‘first’).53

7. The two concurrent interpretations of objective being in Scotus

Let me now turn back to the two interpretations of Scotus’s views on

objective being that I mentioned at the beginning of this paper. The first

interpretation, which can be described as ‘non-reductionist’, holds that

objective being is something over and above the obtaining of the necessary

and sufficient conditions for its occurrence in the (human) intellect. The idea

is that God produces objects of thought as enjoying a special ontological

status (“in intelligible being,” in esse intelligibili ).54 The human intellect can

latch onto those objects but they are what they are independently of their

being the targets of our thoughts (as Scotus said, the human intellect can

produce those objects in intelligible being, but not primarily).The second interpretation, which can be described as ‘reductionist’,

holds that objective being is not something over and above the obtaining of

the necessary and sufficient conditions for its occurrence in the (human)

intellect. The idea is that to say that something has objective being in the

(human) intellect is just to say that an intelligible species of a certain kind is in

the (human) intellect or that an act of thinking of a certain kind is in the

(human) intellect. So the presence of species and acts of thinking in the

(human) intellect (as accidents in their subject) is all that there is to intellectual

cognition. There is no need to postulate a special mode of being for objects of

53 The natural priority of an essence (for example, horseness) over a human thought

about that essence (namely, the intelligible species of horseness or an act of thinking about what ahorse is) is an instance of non-causal dependence. In ordinary cases, the essence of a horse is adirect cause of the intelligible species of horseness and an indirect cause (by virtue of anintelligible species) of a human thought about what a horse is. But the causal relation ofdependence of a thought on its object is contingent, as the possibility that God may create aspecies or an act of thinking in my mind indicates. And what is here relevant is not the causalstory by which a thought is brought about. Rather, what is relevant is what accounts for athought’s being about what it is about (as I have mentioned, Scotus clearly distinguishes betweenthese two relations). So the point is that both the essence horseness and a human thought aboutthat essence necessarily depends directly on God’s intellect, but there is a certain order in thatdependence : God’s thought about the essence horseness is naturally, i.e. explanatorily prior toGod’s thought about a human act of thinking about the essence of a horse. On natural priority inthe order of dependence, see Ioannis Duns Scoti Tractatus de primo principio, in Johannes DunsScotus, Abhandlung u !ber das erste Prinzip, ed. W. Kluxen, Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft,

Darmstadt 1974, ch. I, par. 4-6. See M. McCord Adams, “Essential Orders and SacramentalCausality,” in M. B. Ingham, O. Bychkov eds., John Duns Scotus, Philosopher , Proceedings of theQuatruple Congress on John Duns Scotus, Aschendorff, Mu !nster 2010, pp. 191-206 ; T. M. Ward, John Duns Scotus on Parts, Wholes, and Hylomorphism, Brill, Leiden - Boston 2014, pp. 98-102.

54 Ord . I, dist. 35, q. un., n. 32, ed. Vat. VI, p. 258 ; dist. 36, q. un., n. 28, ed. Vat. VI,

pp. 281-282. See Normore, “Meaning and Objective Being,” pp. 232-233; Perler, “What Am IThinking About?,” pp. 79-80.



29

thought. Rather, intelligible species and acts of thought are said to have the

content they have not because they are about certain mental or extramental

objects but because they have a certain “internal structure.”55

In light of what I have said so far, I think that each interpretation

captures an important aspect of Scotus’s position. The first, non-reductionist

interpretation captures the mind-independent status or identity that an essence

possesses even when it exists only in the mind. But it does not seem correct to

say, as the proponents of this interpretation are willing to say, that the way

something exists objectively in the mind is a special mode of existence that

cannot be reduced to any other mode of existence. This amounts to a

confusion between what I have described as the mind-independent status of

an essence, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, its extramental

existence. So these interpreters seem to be committed to the view that, if

something has mind-independent status, it must also exist in some special way

as something over and above the mental qualities that are present in the mind

as accidents in a subject. These interpreters hold that objects of thought are

produced by God in objective or intelligible being independently of whether

they are in a mind (and in particular, in our mind) as objects of thought or not.

By contrast, the second, reductionist interpretation captures precisely the point

that for an essence to be in the mind as an object of thought does not entail

anything over and above the presence of qualities such as intelligible species

and acts of thinking in the mind. But it does not seem correct to say, as the

proponents of this interpretation are willing to say, that the content of a

thought is entirely determined by something that is mind-dependent. Again,

this seems to amount to a confusion between what I have described as the

mind-independent status of an essence, on the one hand, and, on the other

hand, its extramental existence. Because these interpreters recognize that

something may be an object of thought even when it lacks any extramental

existence, they think that this entails that that thing — what they call the

‘content’ of a thought — has no mind-independent status. Saying that the

content of a thought is entirely determined by what is inside the mind may be

literally true, because an essence as an object of thought may well exist only

in the mind (for example, when I think about what a dodo is). But this way of

talking is misleading, because it neglects the key point that such a content has

nevertheless some mind-independent identity (what a dodo is is not

determined by the kind of thought I have; rather, what a dodo is determines

55 Cross stresses that there may not be such extramental objects in the case ofabstractive cognition. So Cross holds that it is actually a contingent fact that a thought (i.e. an

abstractive thought) be about anything at all. See Cross, Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition, pp.113, 153-167. See above, note 40.



30

what kind of thought I have). And I have suggested that in turn the mind-

independent status of objects of thought may depend on the order of priority

in which God conceives of His (secondary) objects of thought. (Strictly

speaking, this order of priority is not extramental, because it is in God’s mind,

but it is definitely outside the boundaries of our own minds; it also seems to

be independent of God’s mind, because the order in which God conceives of

His objects of thought is due to logical relations that God conceives but does

not establish by a voluntary act.)56 As Scotus once said, it is one thing what a

thought is directed at (which he held was a mind-independent essence) and

another thing what “is opposed to the intellect,” by which I take that he meant

what is present in the intellect and has just mental existence (which he held

was an essence as an object of thought ).57

Accordingly, to speak of content without object does not seem to

make justice to what Scotus had in mind. Rather, Scotus’s point seems to be

that any (abstractive) act of thinking is about something, i.e. an essence, and

that that essence has its own mind-independent identity even though it may

lack extramental existence. I have to admit, however, that this is only part of

the story, because it leaves out an important element, namely the divine

intellect and its role in the “production” of objective being. Very briefly, I

believe that Scotus’s talk of “producing something in intelligible being” is just

a way of saying that a certain intellect — whether divine or created —

cognizes something. So I subscribe to a reductionist reading of this expression.

But I also think that the case of the divine intellect is importantly different from

the case of the human intellect: as I have mentioned above, the divine

intellect is a measure of its objects, whereas the human intellect is measured

by its objects. Scotus’s repeated endorsement of this claim seems to amount to

the admission that the human intellect finds its objects as already given, in

some way, i.e. minimally as having the identity that they have, and it is

because those objects are the objects they are that the acts directed at them

are the acts they are (say, an act of thinking about horses rather than dogs). By

contrast, the divine intellect constitutes its own objects and make them be the

objects they are.58

56 Ord. I, dist. 3, pars 1, q. 4, n. 268, ed. Vat. III, pp. 163-164.57 See above note 47.58 As I have mentioned in note 51, however, I believe that Scotus did change his mind

about the relationship, or rather the lack of any relation between divine thoughts and theirobjects. Admittedly, the relationship among divine thought, objective being, and possibility

requires further investigation. As I have indicated, in this paper I focus only on human cognitionand on what it is to be objectively in a human (or more generally, created) intellect.



31

8. Overview of Scotus’s position

The main point of this paper is that Scotus’s views on objective being

are part and parcel with his theory of essence, so they can be correctlygrasped only if his theory of essence is correctly grasped. The way I have tried

to make my point is by focusing on a passage from Scotus’s Questions on the

Metaphysics and by supplementing what Scotus says in that passage with

what he says elsewhere in his works. At the same time, I have tried to position

my interpretation with regard to two recent interpretations of Scotus’s notion

of objective being. In my opinion, each of those two interpretations captures

an important aspect of Scotus’s position but they both miss the link between

his views on objective being and his theory of essence.

Because the method I have followed is rather circuitous and the

evidence that I have gathered is scattered, it may be helpful to conclude with

a brief overview of what I take Scotus’s position to be.Scotus holds that to think about something is for an intellect to be

qualitatively modified in some way, i.e. to have some qualities in the intellect.

Those qualities are “in” the intellect just as an accident is in its subject. They

can be of two kinds. First, there are so-called ‘intelligible species’, which

account for dispositional cognition (as when I know what a horse is but I am

not actually thinking about horses). Second, there are acts of thinking, which

account for occurrent cognition (as when I am actually thinking about horses).

Both intelligible species and acts of thinking are necessarily accompanied by a

relation (which is called ‘measurability’), which links those qualities to some

objects, which are what those thoughts (whether species or acts of thinking)

are about or are directed at. Intelligible species and acts of thinking are alsodescribed as representations or likeness of those objects. The objects of

thought are said to exist in the intellect that thinks about them “objectively,”

i.e. not as accidents modifying a subject but just as objects of thought. It

appears, however, that Scotus holds that to say that something exists

objectively in the intellect is just another way to say that in a thinker’s intellect

there is a thought (i.e. an intelligible species or an act of thinking) directed at

that thing. So objects of thought do not have a special way of existence in the

intellect over and above the existence of the thoughts directed at them. But

Scotus also holds that those objects of thoughts are essences that have their

identity independently of their being the targets of thoughts (i.e. independently

of their being what intelligible species or acts of thinking are directed at).Scotus’s point may be grasped by taking into account that the relation linking

thoughts (i.e. species and acts of thinking) to their objects is such that the

identity of a thought is determined by its object but the identity of an object is

independent of the thought that is about that object. For example, my thought



about horses is the kind of thought it is because it is about horses (rather than

dogs or cats). But horses are what they are independently of their being

thought about by me (or any other created thinker). The object of a thought is

an essence, and essences have mind-independent identity — they are what

they are independently of being thought about by any (created) thinker. Scotus

is aware that what is thought about may lack extramental existence. For

example, I may still think about horses when all individual horses are extinct.

In that case, the essence horseness has only mental existence: it exists only in

my intellect as an object of thought and lacks extramental existence. Even in

that case, however, Scotus thinks that the essence horseness has mind-

independent identity: what a horse is is independent of my thought about

what a horse is, even though it may exist just as an object of my thought. Even

when all individual horses are extinct, it is still the case that my thought about

what a horse is is the kind of thought it is because it is about horseness (even

though no such thing exists except in my mind as an object of thought) and

horseness is what it is (say, a certain property necessarily pertaining to horses)

independently of my thinking about it. Scotus’s point may be described by

saying that an essence has mind-independent identity even when it has only

mental existence, i.e. even when it exists only as an object of thought. Scotus

never explicitly indicates what accounts for the natural (i.e. explanatory)

priority of an object of thought over the thought that is about it (a priority that

holds even when the object exists only as an object of thought). But it is

possible to surmise that this is due to the order of priority holding in the way

God conceives of the secondary objects of His thought: God cannot think

about my thought about what a horse is unless He first think about what a

horse is (in some non-temporal sense of ‘first’). It appears that this

impossibility is logical — it is not due to God’s decision or to some of His

characteristics (say, His supreme goodness, which may have induced Him to

think first about certain things and then about what for a human being to have

a thought about those things amounts to be). This may raise further problems

for Scotus. The consideration of those problems, however, falls outside the

limits of this paper.

pini scotus on objective being

Documents