Epistemology

Central to Autrecourt's teaching is the view that all evident knowledge (with the exception of the certitude of faith) must be reducible to the first principle (primum principium), i.e., to the principle of non-contradiction. An inference yields evident knowledge only when the affirmation of its antecedent and the negation of its consequent are contradictory. This means that the antecedent and the consequent, or, more precisely, what is signified by the antecedent and the consequent, must be identical, “because if this were not the case, it would not be immediately evident that the antecedent and the opposite of the consequent cannot stand together without contradiction.” It is in the context of this theory that Autrecourt launches an attack on our claim to have certain knowledge of the existence of substances and causal relations. If A and B are two distinct entities, he says, one cannot infer with certainty (knowledge of) the existence of A from that of B or vice versa, for the affirmation of the one and the denial of the other does not result in a contradiction. On the basis of this principle, one may not infer (knowledge of) the existence of effects from knowledge of their causes, nor (knowledge of) the existence of substances from knowledge of their accidents. Autrecourt's theory about the evidentness of inferences was contested by his contemporaries and should be understood in the light of the late-medieval theory of consequences.
This view runs contrary to the Aristotelian position, according to which causal relations really exist and are discoverable by means of induction, so that the existence of substances can be inferred from the perceptible accidents inhering in them. The upshot of Autrecourt's view is that we do not have experience of causal relations or substances, nor does logic provide certain knowledge of them. There are no logical reasons to assume that there is an evident relation between a cause and an effect, or between a substance and an accident.
The position outlined above is developed in Autrecourt's correspondence. It has led historians of philosophy to characterize him as the most important, if not the only, “real” representative of medieval scepticism, as “the medieval Hume”, to use Hastings Rashdall's epithet. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that Autrecourt's scepticism is reserved for rationalist claims about the truth of our commitments to causality and substance, concepts for which we have no empirical proof. It is now generally agreed that he is not a sceptic at all when it comes to defending the reliability of sense-perception.
In his Letter to Bernard, Autrecourt takes on Bernard of Arezzo, who had argued that the intellect is neither certain of the existence of those things of which it has a clear intuitive cognition, nor of its own acts. Autrecourt reveals the full implications of this position by pointing out to Bernard that “you are not certain of those things which are outside of you. And so you do not know if you are in the sky or on earth, in fire or in water...Similarly, you do not know what things exist in your immediate surroundings, such as whether you have a head, a beard, hair, and the like.” He concludes that Bernard's stance is even worse than that of “the Academics,” that is, the ancient Skeptics.

5. Metaphysics

To Bernard's skeptical challenges Autrecourt replies that sense experience is reliable. This theme is not further developed in the letters to Bernard, however. For discussion of this topic we must turn to the Exigit ordo. In one section of this treatise, which is reminiscent of Aristotle'sMetaphysics IV, 5, Autrecourt addresses one of the central issues of metaphysics, namely the relation between appearance and reality. He addresses Protagoras' view that whatever is apparent is true: An omne illud quod apparet sit? (Does everything that appears exist?).
Autrecourt defends the thesis that what appears, is, and that what appears true, is true. He finds this view more plausible than its opposite, viz., that the intellect cannot possess certitude. Autrecourt does not have a meta-theory in which he defends his model of certain knowledge against alternative theories. His appeal that his theory is the more probable one, however, saves him from charges of dogmatism. His concept of appearance plays a key role in his doctrine of certain knowledge. It is used in a phenomenological sense, to describe perceptual experiences. According to Autrecourt, the intellect is certain of everything that is evident to it in the final analysis. This is the case for everything that appears in a proper sense (apparet proprie), i.e., that appears clearly in an act of the external senses (in actu sensuum exteriorum). He identifies appearances with the objects of immediate sensory experience, which are considered evident. In this way, he implies that sense perception is a reliable source of truth, i.e., that the apparent properties of an object are its actual properties.
But is sense perception reliable? Perceptual errors and dreams seem to indicate that things are not always as they seem. Autrecourt discusses several sceptical doubts (dubia), versions of what would later be called the “argument from illusion” and the “argument from dreaming”. These arguments work from the common sense assumption that things often appear to be other than they are: e.g., sweet food can appear bitter, a white object can appear red, in sleep it can seem to someone that he is flying through the air or fighting the Saracens.
Autrecourt responds to these sceptical doubts by distinguishing between appearance and judgment. Appearances are always veridical: experience cannot be other than it is. However, judgments made from experience can be erroneous, especially if they are based on images rather than on what is perceived “in the full light.” In other words, Autrecourt denies any conflict of appearances. Those not “in the full light” are not in themselves misperceptions because the experiences themselves are not illusory. They merely fail to give us the real properties of the object perceived. Potential conflict creeps in at the level of judgment, where ontological claims are made on the basis of appearances. Only those appearances that are “in the full light” reveal the true properties of the perceived object, and only they can provide the basis for true judgments. Appearances of objects that do not come to the perceiver “in the full light” are incomplete or contaminated, as if the observer were looking into a mirror. In other words, Autrecourt carefully distinguishes between ‘x appears F’ from ‘x is F’, for even if x is not really F, it can still appear Fand cause someone to believe that it is F. In this way, illusions and dreams turn into mistaken beliefs. Only clear appearances (apparentiae clarae) can cause veridical judgments.
A final topic taken up by Autrecourt in this context is the problem of the criterion: How can one discriminate between appearances that provide the basis for true judgments and those that do not? Like Aristotle, he holds that appearances from what we perceive under “normal” conditions cause true judgments. Also like Aristotle, he asserts that there is no further proof that the criterion on which the distinction between veridical and false judgments rests is correct. Both dismiss worries about the justification of the criterion as absurd. In the words of Autrecourt: “One must accept as true what appears in the full light. Now, concerning the minor premise of this argument, how can you have certainty? … One way of answering this would be to say that there is no way of proving the conclusion, but that the concept of certitude which is present comes as a certain natural consequence, and not as a conclusion. An example, among others, is that white and black are different. This concept of their difference is not gotten by way of conclusion.”
The reason why our senses can give us veridical access to the objects is, because these objects determine the contents of what appears. Autrecourt believes that there is a necessary connnection between the mental act and the object of which it is a mental act. The object “configurates” the mental act, which becomes identical to it. The metaphysical foundation of this theory is Autrecourt's realism: he assumes that the same universal nature manifests itself in numerically different objects in the world, and in the mind, although in the latter in a different mode of being (secundum aliud esse objectivum) (Kaluza, 1998; Perler, in Caroti and Grellard, 2006).

6. Natural Philosophy

The point of departure for Autrecourt's physics is a thesis which strikes him as more probable than its opposite, namely that all things are eternal. Autrecourt assures the reader that he is speaking as a natural philosopher, and that he is not contradicting Catholic faith. One of the implications of his thesis is that there is no generation or corruption in the universe. Autrecourt refutes Averroes's (and Aristotle's) doctrine of prime matter in which substantial forms are generated and corrupted. He replaces the theory of hylemorphism, which attributes the coming-to-be and passing-away of properties and of objects to forms that begin and cease to exist in matter, by atomism. Change in the natural world is caused by the movement of atoms. These atoms are to be understood as infinitely small parcels of matter which have properties.
As Autrecourt explicitly indicates, his discussion of the eternity of things is linked to his views on motion and on atomism. For this reason, he places the section on the divisibility of matter in between his treatment of eternity and of motion, “because some of the points to be raised about indivisibles will prepare us for the question of movement”. What Autrecourt means is that a number of arguments about the divisibility of space and time involve moving objects.
Autrecourt opens his discussion of atoms or indivisibles by restating Aristotle's position that no continuum is composed of indivisibles. He presents five arguments in support of this thesis, and places beside them his own counterarguments, which are meant to prove “with sufficient probability” the opposite conclusion. The section makes clear that Autrecourt is familiar with the contemporary debates at Paris about the divisibility of the continuum. It is not possible, however, to identify his opponents, and at times his discussion lacks coherence. In keeping with this atomistic view, he also holds that space and time consist of indivisible units, viz., points and instants, respectively.
The discussion of motion, which focuses on its ontological status, is placed in the larger context of a discussion of quantity. The reason is, that motion is one particular type of quantity, namely successive quantity (as distinct from permanent quantity). Autrecourt argues that material substance and its quantity are not distinct. The same holds true for other characteristic properties of a substance, the sensible qualities: they are not distinct from their substance. Autrecourt claims, for instance, that fire and its heat and water and its coldness are not distinct. At the background of this section is the late-medieval debate about the basic ontological categories, induced by Aristotle's Categories and Metaphysics. Given these preliminaries, it comes as no surprise that Autrecourt also defends the thesis that motion is not distinct from the mobile object.
Autrecourt argues that motion is not a thing distinct from the moving object. Following Ockham, he rejects the idea that motion is a positive thing inhering in the mobile object. Thus, the loss of motion should not be described as the destruction or corruption of an entity, and the eternity doctrine is saved.

ً

» Epistemology as “Thoroughly Empirical” 4.1 Knowledge and Epistemology
» Naturalism in Epistemology
» Epistemology Naturalized”
» Evolutionary Epistemology
» Al-Farabi's Psychology and Epistemology

Epistemology

5. Metaphysics

6. Natural Philosophy

Epistemology :: تعاليق

Epistemology

مواضيع مماثلة

مواضيع مماثلة