Year: 2020

[4.5.1] Gilbert of Poitiers on Individuals

A. L. KomáromiLeave a comment

Gilbert of Poitiers (Gilbert de la Porrée, 1085?–1154 AD) in different commentaries to Boethius’s De Trinitate, De Hebdomadibus, and Contra Eutychen et Nestorium proposes an original theory of individuals, according to which:

  • everything that exists is necessarily particular (individual);
  • an individual (subsistens) is a subsisting entity;
  • an essential property (subsistentia), is a particular essential property (or form) determining the being of just one individual;
  • each individual (subsistens) is an ordered bundling of properties, which Gilbert calls concretio, the set of all the properties that might be true of a given subject is the total form

Gilbert’s model of individuals is presented in the following OntoUML diagram:

Gilbert of Poitiers on individuals
ClassDescriptionRelations
Individual“An id quod est is an independent individual, such as Peter, my cat Felix, or this apple. Gilbert uses an alternative terminology: an id quod est, an individual, is also called a subsistens, a subsisting entity. […]
An individual is the sum, the collection of all its essential subsistentiae and particular accidental properties.”
TotalForm“Gilbert offers a very interesting theoretical tool for the consideration of an individual seen over a whole lifetime. He probably pursues the doctrinal aim of ensuring personal identity across time and of avoiding that an individual undergoing qualitative or quantitative change becomes a different individual. Gilbert introduces the concept of forma tota [total form] to refer to the set of all the properties that might be true of a given subject, including also those that will never be actualized. The sum of the essential properties and accidents thus constitutes the forma tota of the individual; the sum of the characteristics of Socrates is called Socrateitas and the sum of those of Plato, Platonitas. According to Gilbert, the tota forma of an individual—for example, Plato’s Platonitas— includes all its subsistences (its substantia tota) but also its quantitative and qualitative accidents—not only those it possesses actually (actu), but also those it possessed in the past and those it will or could possess in future according to the potentiality of its own nature. Expressed as bundle, the forma tota could be understood as the most comprehensive possible bundle. This total form belongs to just one concrete being. The individuality of a concrete being or, in Gilbert’s words, its numerical diversity, is caused by the particularity of its essential properties and rendered manifest by the fact that it possesses its own total form. An anonymous Porretan treatise is explicit when it speaks of the case of the individual Peter. The form which is composed of all the various properties, both essential and accidental, which are in Peter, and which make Peter different from all the other men, is called petritas. This form is particular, and explains how Peter is a being discrete from all other men.”characterizes Individual
Essential Property“An id quo —that is, an essential property—is also called subsistentia, a particular essential property or substantial form determining the being of just one individual. Each individual, or subsistens, is constituted of several subsistentiae. The interest and originality of Gilbert’s position lie in the fact that each of these subsistentiae is particular.”
E.g. The animality of Felix, the cat.		component of Essence; inherits from Property
Essence“All these subsistentiae taken together constitute the essence of an individual, which Gilbert calls tota substantia.“component of TotalForm
Accidental Property“Gilbert divides accidental properties into two groups:
accidents proper (that is, quantitative and qualitative properties) and extrinsic properties that he calls, following Boethius, ‘circumstances‘ (rei circumstantiae)”		inherits from Property
AccidentProper“The relation between accidents [proper] and essential properties is that of foundational relatedness; an accident must be attached to an essential subsistentia.
Gilbert insists on the fact that, in order to be a part of the bundle of properties which the individual or subject is, an accident must first be attached to an essential property: ‘For colour adheres (adest) to corporality in order that it might inhere in a body.’ So an accident adheres to a subsistentia; but an accident cannot adhere to just any subsistence; it must adhere to the subsistence which causes it, for it is the only one which can cause it. […] The real accidents inhere in the concretion (intrinsecus concretionis habitus)“
E.g. the blackness of the fur of Felix, the cat.		component of TotalForm; inherits from Accidental Property
Circumstantial
Property		“the circumstances [circumstantial properties] are just apposed (extrinsecus cuiuslibet appositionis habitus).”
E.g. The location on the fence of Felix the cat on a given moment.		component of TotalForm; inherits from Accidental Property
Property“We have seen that these properties are all particular.”

*I added the attribute validFromTo to mark the temporal validity of the Essential Property, Accident Proper, and Circumstantial Property. E.g. for Accident Proper: The weight of Felix the cat is 4 Kg from 04/07/2020 to 14/08/2020.

Sources

  • All citations from: Erismann, Christophe, “Explaining Exact Resemblance: Gilbert of Poitiers’s Conformitas Theory Reconsidered”, Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Volume 2, Edited by ROBERT PASNAU,2014
  • Bieniak, Magdalena: “Individuals as Wholes. Gilbert of Poitiers’s Theory of Individuality“, Mereology in Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, Proceedings of the 21st European Symposium of Medieval Logic and Semantics, edited by Fabrizio Amerini, Irene Binini, Massimo Mugnai, 2019
  • Adamson, Peter, “216. One of a Kind: Gilbert of Poitiers on Individuation“, History of Philosophy without any Gaps podcast

First published: 04/07/2020

[4.4.5] Abelard’s Philosophy of Mind

A. L. KomáromiLeave a comment

Peter Abelard (“Doctor Scholasticus”, 1079?-1142 AD), in the Treatise on Understandings (Tractatus de intellectibus) and Logica Ingredientibus describes the faculties and way of working of the human mind:

  • The main faculties are the senses, imagination, and reason, but sensation, perception, abstraction, and intentionality also have importance.
  • Understanding is based upon sensation.
  • The mind works with mental images, but “the image is not the act of understanding, and so there is no formal identity between understanding and thing.”

The following UML Use Case diagram presents Abelard’s model of the human mind:

Abelard on the human mind
FacultyRelated use caseRelations
5 SENSESUsing 5 SENSES: tasting, touching, smelling, hearing, seeingrelates to Extramental Item
SENSATIONGrasping sensibles with SENSATION:
● Abelard “viewed the power of sensation as a mental power by which the mind peered directly out at the world, as if ‘through a window’.”
● e.g. when we see a white horse, we sense the whiteness (an accident).		includes Using 5 SENSES;
extends (REASON) produces understanding of the metaphysical
structure of the Item represented by the metal image
PERCEPTIONGrasping insensibles with PERCEPTION:
●”Perception would seem to be almost automatic and very closely related to sensation”
● the “initial grasp of insensible items is accomplished by an act of perception that is more than simple sensation but less than an act of reason.”
● e.g. when we see a white horse, we precieve the horseness (the nature of the thing, insensible).		includes Using 5 SENSES;
extends (REASON) produces understanding of the metaphysical
structure of the Item represented by the metal image
IMAGINATION(IMAGINATION) creates/processes confused mental image of the Item (universal or particular) when that is not present or not sensible:
● we create confused mental images of items, because “our limited power of imagination precludes the formation of accurate images. Presumably we would be able to form accurate images were our imagination not so restricted by a dependence on sensation. We sense individuals as individuals; we do not sense the underlying metaphysical structure.”
● “At its more interesting the productive power allows the mind to form mental images of items that cannot be sensed – of immaterial objects, and perhaps of universals”
● e.g. Imagination is able to create the image of the particular horse “Spirit”, or of the image of universal “horseness”.		extends “(REASON) produces understanding of the metaphysical structure of the Item represented by the mental image“
REASON(REASON) produces understanding of the metaphysical structure of the Item represented by the mental image:
“A sound understanding is an understanding in concord or harmony with the status of the thing. […] A sound understanding is an act of attending to some nature or property of an item as that nature or property is found in the item.” (see also [4.4.1])		includes ABSTRACTION of universals (forms)
ABSTRACTIONABSTRACTION of universals (forms):
● “Universals are not subject to sense, not because they are insensible, but because they do not exist.”
● “Universal understandings are formed by abstraction. Abelard does not describe the process of forming abstract understandings, but the end results are understandings that are alone (sola) or apart from sense; bare (nuda) or stripped of some or all other forms; and pure (pura) or conceived of in abstraction from individuating conditions”.
INTENTION(INTENTION) directs attention to the Item sensed or to the mental image:
“The attention of the mind in thinking about some item, and not the representative qualities of the image determine the intentional object of the act of understanding.”		includes “(REASON) produces understanding of the metaphysical structure of the Item represented by the mental image“
REASONUnderstanding at the level of Opinion:
● Obviously, some understandings grasp a nature or property more fully and completely than others. To mark the degrees of accuracy Abelard uses the terms “opinion” (opinio), “knowledge” (scientia), and “intelligence” (intelligentia). The three terms mark, in ascending order, the depth or completeness of the grasp of a nature or property; opinion is the lowest level grasp, intelligence the highest. Knowledge is between the two.”
● “Abelard genuinely wavers in his use of ‘opinion.’ Sometimes ‘opinion’ is used to denote understandings with a very low-level grasp of the nature or property in question but which are nonetheless sound. Sometimes ‘opinion’ is used to denote unsound understandings. On either use opinion is at the opposite end of a spectrum from intelligence.”		inherits from “(REASON) produces understanding of the metaphysical structure of the Item represented by the mental image“
REASONUnderstanding at the level of Knowledge:
● “Knowledge is an understanding in which a nature or property is grasped to a degree somewhere between opinion and intelligence. Abelard will also call the habit of having such understandings of
a nature or property ‘knowledge’”.
● “Discrete individuals are the objects of knowledge.”		inherits from Q(REASON) produces understanding of the metaphysical structure of the Item represented by the mental image“
REASONUnderstanding at the level of Intellectinherits from “(REASON) produces understanding of the metaphysical structure of the Item represented by the mental image“

Sources

  • All citations from: Guilfoy , Kevin, chapter “Mind and cognition” in The Cambridge Companion to Abelard, © Cambridge University Press, 2006, ed. Jeffrey E. Brower
  • King, Peter and Arlig, Andrew, “Peter Abelard”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

First published: 13/8/2020
Updated: 14/3/2021