Immanence & Immediacy:

Epistemology in William of Ockham

by Brian Rose University of North Carolina at Asheville

28 April 2009

The esoteric task of Medieval philosophy is quintessentially defined by the desire to reconcile the

revealed truths of Scripture with the demonstrated truths of the Classical philosophers (namely, Plato and

Aristotle). The epistemological work of Aristotelian Scholastics (specifically, Aquinas) posits a species

account wherein cognition is mediated through various structures of mediums and species. These mediating

species represent a malignance within epistemology wherein all knowledge is intrinsically uncertain, the

cognitive agent is distant and removed from the cognized object, and the intellect is unable to legitimize the

alleged pureness of its own activity. Ockham’s ontological project is that of transposing the epistemological

significance of experience as being contained within the human entity. That is, it is an epistemology of

Immanence. Ockham’s analyses of cognition presuppose a passive intellect which is immediately engaged

with its environment. In doing so, Ockham establishes a foundation for epistemological certainty.

Aquinas’s species account represents cognition in terms of species structures, then Ockham’s act theory

constitutes nothing less than a sort precursory post-structuralist philosophy of Immanence which provides a

humanistic foundation for future epistemological discourse. It is my intention to enumerate a

poststructuralist comparison with Immanence through a rigorous, tripartite examination of Ockham’s

epistemological act theory, his account of deceptive and false judgments, and the problem of will and

intentionality.

In order to fully understand the significance of Ockham’s theory of cognition, it is necessary that it

is contextualized by the theory he is rejecting – that is, the Thomist species account of cognition. The

species account maintains that “the sensible species of [an object] are transmitted to some medium – for

example, air – between [the object] and the person, and the medium receives those species with spiritual

reception” (Stump 170). Sensible species are accidental forms of the object “imposed on the matter” of that

which is sensed. What Aquinas thinks of as transferring and preserving a configuration we tend to consider

as a way of encoding information. Aquinas calls it “the spiritual reception of a form,” or in the case of

sensory cognition, “the spiritual reception of sensible species.” (Stump 170). To say that the medium

receives the species with spiritual reception is to say that the accidental form is not imposed on the medium

itself. Aquinas’ species account of spiritual reception as ‘encoding’ information necessarily implies the

need for an agent to decode this information in the process of perception, and thus this imposes a distance

between the agent of perception and the actual reality it perceives; this distance is something that must be

transcended. Furthermore, if sensible species must be encoded, in a sense, in order to undergo spiritual

reception, what is the phenomenological process that will account for this manipulation so as not to impose

form upon the intellect? Aquinas posits a further mechanism in the process of cognition which he deems an

intellective power known as phantasia, which are phenomenal images that convey extramental objects to

the cognitive faculty.

This nebulous, ornate concept continues to obscure the mechanisms of perception so that not only

does one receive images as encoded within sensible species, but furthermore these images are only

available to the consciousness through an esoteric power that, by its own etymology, infers a merely

apparent quality to perception. Knowledge itself becomes the ghost of a ghost: a shadow upon the wall of

Plato’s cave. And though the agent of perception stands within the sensual world, he is forever cut off from

it by an epistemological bureaucracy.

Stump writes that “[t]he intellect abstracts a universal from the phantasm in phantasia . . . called

“the intelligible species,” [which] is received in the intellect with spiritual reception” (Stump 172). Even

still, this intelligible species does not constitute a cognition for Aquinas, but merely a means for cognition.

If, as Aquinas suggests, the intellect is said to abstract a universal from particular sensory input, are we to

suppose that all concepts in the mind, and therefore the complex syllogisms derived of these concepts, are

cognized by induction? That is to say, is all knowledge such that it constitutes a synthesis of phenomenal

patterns? In such cases where many objects of a single genus are perceived, it seems plausible to assert that

the intellect might abstract the universal from such a group. However, when one first perceives a single

member of this genus, with what other relative particulars may the intellect abstract any sort of universal?

If we assert that this is plausible, then we ascribe a creative faculty onto the intellect. And by this view, it

would appear that the intellect acts by creating something from nothing – by generating the universal in the

absence of a collective universality. In this case, all substantial knowledge is in question on the basis that it

derives its legitimacy entirely from the void space conceived between phenomenal stimuli. This constitutes

the quintessence of uncertainty – nothing less than nihilism. This is the uncertainty that Ockham seeks to

overcome in his epistemological theory.

Stump concludes her enumeration of the species account by stating, “Once the intellect has

abstracted the intelligible species from the phantasm, it turns that species into what Aquinas calls a

‘concept’ or an ‘intellected intention’” (Stump 173). This is the final process by which cognition is

complete. It would seem philosophically disingenuous to advocate the segregation of the perceptual

mechanism into such distinct components: the sensitive power which receives accidents and that which is

sensed to be, and the cognitive intellect which receives substances and that which is intelligible. Since it is

not the accidental form of sensible species but the substantial form of intelligible species to which the

intellect has access, are accidents completely unintelligible? Is that which is sensed to be distinct from that

which we intellectually abstract? If this is so, then what reliability can be claimed by the intellect as being

an accurate representation of a real world cohabitated by diverse agents of perception?

This criticism is dismissed by Stump, who writes, “It would be a mistake to suppose the individual

components of this process are, for Aquinas, psychologically separable or extended in time in a

subjectively discernible way” (Stump 174). If this is indeed a mistake, and these processes are indeed not

extended in time as to be subjectively discernable, then how is it that Aquinas justifies that he has

subjectively discerns them? This antireductionist caveat would seem fallacious at best on the part of

Aquinas, for he qualifies what would appear to be a very reductionist structure, a structure in which

accidental forms are essentially delivered unto the perceptual agent, and [through phantasia] are made

intelligible and thereby cognized. This structure can only operate under the condition that these species

possess some sort of actuality and are not merely a “means for cognizing the extramental object,” as

Aquinas posits.

And so Ockham rejected the species account for what is known as his act theory, derived largely

from the discourse of Duns-Scotus. This act theory was conceived on the foundational aspects of intuitive

and abstractive cognition. Ockham felt that the legitimacy of this epistemology was justified by the fact that

it is simpler, positing fewer intermediary mechanisms of cognition; a justification known today as

Ockham’s Razor. Ockham writes, “I say that a thing itself is seen or apprehended immediately, without any

intermediary between itself and the [cognitive] act” (Sent. I.27.3 [241]). Furthermore, just as no

intermediary is found between the object and its intuitive cognition, Ockham maintains the same is true

between the intuitive and abstractive cognition. He writes, ““[W]hiteness can be apprehended by sight

without the apparent beings’ being apprehended. Consequently, its being sensed does not require such

intermediary apparent being, and consequently it is pointless to postulate such being” (Apparent 228).

This immediacy to which Ockham’s theory lays claim is integral to an understanding of the

cognitive agent – the identity – as subsisting in a state of immanence. The force of cognition does not

reside outside of the agent, but is instead contained within it. It is because the species account places

epistemic contact and cognitive significance outside the self that Aquinas must compensate by supposing

the intellect as absolutely active. But Ockham need not make such claims, for to him knowledge is

immediately accessible to the agent, and as such its very reality is compelled toward a radically existential

quality.

Stump outlines three basic distinctions that Ockham gives regarding intuitive cognition. Ockham

maintains that intuitive cognition is identifiable insomuch as it is “[a] simple cognition which is proper to a

singular and first [in the order of generation]” (Quodl. I.13), it “cannot be caused or sustained unless the

object [of that cognition] exists” (Quodl. VI.6), and is “knowledge such that by virtue of it one can know

whether a thing exists or not” (Sent. I.Prol.I [31]). Furthermore, that which Ockham posits as abstractive

cognition is “defined as cognition that is not intuitive and abstracts from judgments of existence or

nonexistence” (Stump 183).

Stump continues, “[P]roponents of the distinction [between intuitive and abstractive cognition]

seem to want to claim that . . . [in the cognition wherein] we perceive some part of extramental material

reality, there are no mechanisms or processes. There is just direct epistemic contact between the cognizer

and the thing cognized” (Stump 184). It is this sense of immediacy in this act theory which represents

Ockham’s departure from earlier Medieval theories of cognition – a departure so radical that it echoes an

epistemological perspective which continues to define philosophical inquiry, however subliminally. It is

this deconstructionist effort that Ockham champions, this demystification of structural species, that allows

comparison to the post-structuralist Deleuze and his doctrine of Immanence. Pasnau maintains:

Ockham does not hold the view that cognition is an utterly mysterious, “primitive and sui generic” property, about which nothing more can be said. In some sense, his proportion might be called antireductionist in that he denies that a general reductive account of cognitive phenomena can be given. (This proposition finds its parallel today in philosophers who accept that mental states supervene on physical states but reject reductive materialism.) (Pasnau 62)

This mental ‘supervening’ can be seen in the post-structuralist attempt to dissolve the reductionist efforts of

structuralism, as well as the phenomenological annexation of the Scholastic problem of intentionality.

Ockham’s antireductionist account of cognition, in some sense, relies upon a post-structuralist

plane of immanence. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe this plane in What is Philosophy?:

“Concepts are like multiple waves, rising and falling, but the plane of immanence is the single waves that

rolls them up and unrolls them. . . . From Epicurus to Spinoza . . . and from Spinoza to Michaux the

problem of thought is infinite speed. But this speed requires a milieu that moves infinitely in itself – the

plane, the void, the horizon” (Deleuze 36). This ontological plane of immanence is fundamentally implicit

within Ockham’s epistemological act theory of immediate intuitive cognition.

Furthermore, this immediacy supposes a Cartesian certainty of subjective identity, as Ockham

writes, “[I]n the soul there is a single act of understanding by which, without any intermediary, the soul is

truly understood. This is what St. Augustine means” (Apparent 236). Herein one may observe the potential

for humanistic modernity intrinsic within Ockham’s claim of the soul’s immediate subjective

understanding of itself. For Descartes, this constitutes the foundation for all knowledge. This constitutes the

first cock-crow of Modern science, wherein the Western World departs from derelict Aristotelian structures

of species in lieu of a more basic, empiricist foundation.

Considering Ockham’s account of deceptive and false judgments, Ockham concedes that, since all

intuitive cognitions cause a correct judgment on the existence or nonexistence of an object, God cannot

cause an intuitive cognition that leads to a false judgment. He thus introduces an altogether new level of

consideration to his epistemology of intuition and abstraction, wherein we may begin to evaluate the limits

of our own certainty in a serious way. Still, as Stump writes, “There is no limitation on God’s power on his

own view, Ockham says, because he holds that God can cause a false belief directly in us, although this

will not be a case in which the judgment is formed in virtue of an intuitive cognition” (Stump 187).

Once again, this seems to contain elements echoed within Deleuze’s post-structuralist model. God,

as Ockham conceives, may serve as the imposition of an illusory quality of presence to a nonexistent

cognitive object. Yet the imposition of this quality of presence (leading to a false judgment) represents not

an intuitive cognition itself but rather a belief which is superimposed as an accident onto the intuitive

cognition imposed by God’s will. Thus while the intuitive cognitions independent of God’s influence

represent conceptual cognitions, a cognition imposed on the intellect by God is necessarily declarative: it is

propositional rather than conceptual. The nonexistent cognitive object is proposed to exist (by God) rather

than conceived to exist (by the intellect). For Ockham, deception occurs through propositions, not

conceptions; this implies a humanistic certainty that all false judgments do not occur in our perceptual

activity but rather in the manipulation of our perspective itself. As Deleuze writes:

In becoming propositional, the concept loses all the characteristics it possessed as philosophical concept: its self-reference, its endoconsistency and its exoconsistency. This is because a regime of independence (of variables, axioms, and undecidable propositions) has replaced that of inseparability. Even possible worlds as conditions of reference are cut off from the concept of the Other person that would give them consistency (so that logic finds itself oddly disarmed before solipsism). The concept in general no longer has a combination but an arithmetical number; the undecidable no longer indicates the inseparability of intensional components (zone of indiscernability) but, on the contrary, the necessity of distinguishing them to the requirement of reference, which renders all consistency (self-consistency) “uncertain.” (Deleuze 137-8)

Deleuze states that the propositional concept (considered herein as God’s imposition of a false belief onto

an intuitive cognition) is the ultimate source of uncertainty – just as Ockham maintains that only the

intuitive cognition proposed by God to be falsely perceived is the only means by which an intuitive

cognition could appear to produce a false judgment.

Ockham states, “To the inference that one who denies such apparent and intentional being denies

all deception (ludificationem), it should be said that this is not so. . . . Sometimes, [deception] occurs

through mirrors in nature. For a demon, with his knowledge of the natures of things, can set up various

mirrors in various in various ways, through which far away [or nonexistent] things will be seen” (Apparent

235). One may infer from this that the capacity for deception and false judgments is not contained within

the cognitive agent, but deception only exists through external influence. God or demons may distort the

reality that is cognized, but the act of cognition is certain and absolute. Stump maintains, “For Ockham the

reliability of the cognitive powers responsible for intuitive cognition is built into those powers themselves;

it is not possible for them to produce false judgments” (Stump 187). To suppose that reliability of

cognitions resides within the powers themselves is the quintessence of immanence; such epistemic certainty

cannot be claimed by the species account. This intrinsic sense of certainty regarding the “presence of

things” is infallible.

We may now proceed to an examination of intentionality – a topic which Heidegger suggests that

Scholasticism considers only in the context of the will. Much of Ockham’s epistemological claims rest on

his supposition of a will which is absolutely distinct from the intellect. This too represents a radical

departure from the Thomist conception of the will as absolutely subservient to the intellect. As Stump

posits, “Because for Ockham the intellect itself is largely determined by something outside the agent, if he

thought the will were also determined by the intellect, as Aquinas does, it is hard to see in what way the

will would be free” (Stump 193).

Aquinas portrays the intellect as an active agent – acting upon images rather than receiving them.

This contrasts with Ockham’s view of the intellect as pure passivity. Robert Pasnau writes, “[For Ockham,]

Intellect is no more active than a stone heated by the sun. Like the stone, intellect is just a recipient of

external impressions” (Pasnau 151). Several issues arise in this conceptualization. It is obvious that the

mind is able to actively abstract and intentionally move between distinct thoughts, and these abilities

cannot be explained by external causation – rather, Ockham maintains, they are derived of the independent

will. Within the Thomist account, the active powers of the intellect determine this motion, and the will

follows determinately. However, without any efficient causation, then the intellect acts alone and isolated

from its conceptual world. When Ockham inverts this dynamic so that the intellect is subverted under the

will, this problem is seemingly solved.

Aquinas’ account of active intellect erects rigid boundaries between the cognizer and cognized,

wherein it may not derive any of its motion from anything other than itself. This, due to the law of the

conservation of energy, is impossible – one cannot get something for nothing; there is no perpetual motion.

Thus while, for Ockham, the efficient cause of cognition exists outside of the cognizer, through a concept

of Immanence we may still maintain that this extrinsic causation subsumes the object within the cognizer

during the experience of cognition; this is what Husserl terms “intentional objects.” Verena Mayer writes:

Here the physical thing will be considered as the basis of the experience stream gradually constituted, so that there is no ‘chasm’ between the Self and the Outer World, nor between Immanence and Transcendence in Husserl’s sense. For Carnap, it is not the issue how the solipsistic subject managed to leap into the intersubjective world. The intersubjective world is much more than the natural setting provided contingently, so that the task of constitutional systems consists therein of reconstructing these provided ways. Thereby what is ‘meant’ by a particular experience is the material, as in what Carnap posits a physical thing – represented in Husserl’s intentional object. (Mayer 292)1

1 Auch hier wird etwa das physikalische Ding auf der Basis des Erlebnisstroms schrittweise konstituiert, d.h. es gibt keinen 'Abgrund' zwischen dem Ich und der Außenwelt oder zwischen Immanenz und Transzendenz im Sinne Husserls. Auch für Carnap ist die Frage nicht, wie das solipsistische Subjekt den Sprung in die intersubjektive Welt zustandebringt. Die intersubjektive Welt wird vielmehr als der natürlichen Einstellung gegeben vorausgesetzt und die Aufgabe des Konstitutionssystems besteht darin, diese Gegebenheitsweise zu rekonstruieren. Dabei ist ein Gegenstand, z.B. ein physikalisches Ding, nach Carnap das, was durch ein bestimmtes Erlebnis 'gemeint' ist, entsprechend Husserls intentionalem Objekt. (Mayer 292)

Stump concludes, “[For Ockham,] the states of the intellect are determined, ultimately, by something

outside the cognizer, either by some object that acts on the senses or by God himself, who acts directly on

the cognizer to produce some state of sense or intellect” (Stump 192). If the intellective agent, as Aquinas

conceives, is absolutely active and requires no efficient cause in order to perpetuate its activity, then it

follows that the intellect possesses no purpose for its activity. This would not only upset the Christian

conception that God has endowed the human intellect with a divine significance, but also the existentialist

conception that an identity must authenticate itself with a meaning behind all cognitive activity.

I have heretofore attempted to demonstrate comparisons between Ockham’s theory of cognition

and post-structuralist conceptions of Immanence; my purpose for this was to establish emphasize the

tension Ockham contributed to the Thomist methods of reductionism and structure – how his radical new

foundation for understanding, among other aspects of his philosophy, earned him excommunication. Stump

criticizes Ockham’s act theory, implying that he needs to explain “epistemic contact” in terms of

mechanistic reductionist structures. François Zourabichvili states, “[T]hought affirms an absolute relation

to exteriority, refuses the postulate of recognition, and affirms the outside in this world: heterogeneity,

divergence. When philosophy renounces the activity of foundation, the outside abjures its transcendence

and become immanent” (Zourabichvili). This moment of epistemic contact which Stump believes to be

lacking in Ockham’s act theory is easily reconciled by the coplanar ontological positions of subject and

object within the encompassing plane of Immanence. This immediacy of the identity within the world

“affirms an absolute relation to exteriority.” This immediacy and absolute relation between the cognitive

agent and the cognized world would seem a preferable conceptualization when contrasted against the

system of species mediation. The species account may allow for this “epistemic contact” in a structural

context, but it cannot adequately explain the underlying processes which propel the motion of these species

in contact with one another through mediums and materialist intentionality.

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Graham Birchill. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Mayer, Verena A. “Die Konstruktion der Erfahrungswelt: Carnap und Husserl.”

Erkenntnis 35:1 (July 1991): 287-303. JSTOR. Ramsey Library. UNC – Asheville. 20 April 2009 <http://www.jstor.org>.

Ockham, William of. “Apparent Being.” The Cambridge Translations of Medieval

Philosophical Texts. Ed. Robert Pasnau. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 219-244.

Ockham, William of. “In libros Sententiarum.” William of Ockham: Philosophical

Writings. Ed. & Trans. Philotheus Boehner. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1990. Ockham, William of. Quodlibetal Questions. Trans. Alfred J. Freddoso and Francis E. Kelley.

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Zourabichvili, François. “Deleuze. Une philosophie de l’événement.” Deleuze and

Rationalism conference, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University. 14–15 May 2007.