## 1. Life and Works



As with many of his contemporaries, we know very few dates with
certainty in the life of Peter Auriol (a.k.a. Peter Auriole, Peter
Aureol, Petrus Aureoli, the *Doctor Facundus*). On the basis of
his later career it seems reasonable to suppose that Auriol was born
around 1280, and we have evidence that he originated in the region
near the city of Cahors in France. We know that Auriol joined the
Franciscan order in the order's province of Aquitania, and we
surmise that this took place sometime before 1300. From the structure
of the contemporary Franciscan educational system we can deduce that
he studied in Paris sometime in the first decade of the fourteenth
century, but evidence that some scholars have presented that Auriol
heard Scotus in Paris or was definitely in Paris in 1304 is
inconclusive. Auriol's first written work, dealing with the
issue of Franciscan poverty (*Tractatus de paupertate et usu
paupere*), seems to have been composed in 1311 or at latest early
1312. In the latter year we know that Auriol was teaching in Bologna,
presumably at the Franciscan convent in that city. It was here that he
authored his *Tractatus de principiis naturae* (*Treatise on
the principles of nature*), his only non-theological work. By the
end of 1314, Auriol was in Toulouse, again apparently teaching at the
Franciscan convent, and it seems that the two treatises that he
authored in support of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary
(and in opposition to Dominican critics of that view) stem from this
time (*Tractatus de conceptione Beatae Mariae Virginis* and
*Repercussorium*). In one or both of these cities, Auriol must
have also been lecturing on the standard medieval theological
textbook, the *Sentences* of Peter Lombard, and his massive
commentary on the first book of the *Sentences*, his
*Scriptum super primum Sententiarum* -- more than 1100
folio pages in its early modern printing (Rome 1596) -- was
almost certainly substantially finished by the autumn of 1316 when
Auriol arrived in Paris, sent by the Franciscan order to earn his
doctorate. We used to think that Auriol read the *Sentences* at
Paris 1316-18, but new research has shown that he did this there
over the sole academic year 1317-18 (Duba and Schabel 2017, esp. pp.
159-165). No less a figure than Pope John XXII, Auriol's mentor,
wrote to the Chancellor of Paris in a letter dated July 14, 1318,
asking that Auriol be granted the doctorate. The letter served its
purpose, and by late 1318 he was the Franciscan regent master in
theology there. Auriol served as regent master in Paris until 1320 or
1321, lecturing on the Bible (from which resulted several extant
biblical commentaries), and holding at least one series of quodlibetal
disputations. In 1321, he was elevated by John XXII to the position of
Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence, but Auriol died soon after taking
office, probably on January 22, 1322. (See, for more details, Teetaert
1935, and esp. Buytaert 1952).



As should be clear from the above, Auriol's extant works are
predominantly theological in nature, having been composed in
connection with his duties as a theological student and teacher.
Nevertheless, especially his commentary on Peter Lombard's
*Sentences* is a treasure trove of philosophical thought
spanning a vast range of issues in metaphysics, epistemology and
philosophy of mind, natural philosophy, and ethics; it is in addition
his most important and influential work. We possess several versions
of Auriol's *Sentences* commentary. Besides the
*Scriptum*, which, as mentioned above, was mostly composed
before Auriol arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1316, we have
*reportationes* (student transcripts) of lectures that Auriol
held on all four books of the *Sentences*, some of which have
obviously been reworked to one degree or another by Auriol himself and
some of which are still found only in medieval manuscripts. A version
of his commentary on books II-IV was published in Rome in 1605 (along
with Auriol's single *Quodlibet* of sixteen questions).
In part because the project to critically edit all of Auriol's
works has been initiated only recently, the complex relationship
between these published texts and other versions, found only in
manuscripts, as well as the relationship between the published
*Scriptum* and the extant *reportationes* on book I of
the *Sentences,* is not entirely clear. (See however, Nielsen
2002; Schabel 2000a, pp. 67-76; Schabel 2000b; Duba 2000; for
more information on Auriol's works, see the bibliography on the
Peter Auriol Homepage (Other Internet Resources).)


## 2. The Character of Auriol's Thought and Some Noteworthy Positions



Auriol's thought is relentlessly systematic; one finds certain
basic ideas or devices that crop up time and again in extremely varied
philosophical and theological contexts. Given this, it seems clear
that at an early stage in his career Auriol settled on these basic
ideas and devices as those best representing his fundamental
convictions, and then applied them rigorously, so that his philosophy
and theology emerge from them like spokes from a hub. As a
consequence, Auriol's thought has the appearance of being
extremely unified.



Auriol also exhibits throughout his works a pronounced historical
bent. That is to say, when dealing with nearly every philosophical or
theological issue, he takes as his point of departure a detailed
analysis of earlier and contemporary ideas on the matter at hand,
offering for the most part accurate summaries of other positions and
generally perceptive critiques. On the basis of this analysis of
earlier positions, Auriol's own thought often takes shape as he
proposes positions that have the goal of avoiding the pitfalls he sees
in his predecessors' ideas. A recent study of Auriol's
citation practice in his *Scriptum* (Schabel 2009) has shown
that the top five university authors explicitly cited are, in reverse
order: Durand of St. Pourcain, Hervaeus Natalis, Henry of Ghent,
Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus. While these were the authors who
clearly had the greatest impact on Auriol's thought, he
responded throughout his works to many other theologians, including
William of Ware, Godfrey of Fontaines, Bonaventure, Richard of
Mediavilla (Middleton), Thomas Wylton, and Giles of Rome. Moreover,
Auriol is clearly extremely well-versed in ancient and Arabic thought.
(See e.g., Duba 2001.)



Finally, Auriol is well known for proposing unusual and sometimes
radical solutions to traditional problems. This was one of the reasons
why Auriol's thought was so provocative to his contemporaries
and to readers right into the seventeenth century. Recent research has
pointed to several areas of Auriol's thought as particularly
innovative. Among these areas can be mentioned the following.


### 2.1 The Categories



Auriol maintained that only five of the ten Aristotelian categories
actually exist in the extra-mental world (substance, quality,
quantity, action, and passion), the other five (relation, place, time,
position, and state/habit) being merely conceptual or mind-dependent,
i.e. resulting from an intellect conceiving one of the actual
categories to be other than it is in extra-mental reality. Thus, the
conceptual categories exist only potentially, but not actually, in
extra-mental reality; it is possible for the intellect, upon
acquaintance with one of the actual categories in extra-mental
reality, to form the concept of the corresponding conceptual category
(on Auriol's ideas on the category most broadly, see Amerini
2014). This theory has been studied most thoroughly with regard to
Auriol's ideas concerning the category of relation (cf. e.g.,
Henninger 1989, pp. 150-73; Brower 2018, sections 3.1 and 3.2;
Friedman 2013, pp. 550-56). In this context, Auriol maintains
that real relations are conceptual in nature, not existing in
extra-mental reality, and hence dependent upon the activity of the
mind; the three types of real relation originate from the
intellect's acquaintance with respectively quantity (e.g., a
relation of equality), quality (e.g., a relation of similarity), and
action and passion (e.g., a relation of causality). Moreover, Auriol,
in stark contrast to the medieval tradition before him, thinks of
relations as being *between* two terms, and not in a subject
towards a term. While the impact of Auriol's ideas on the
categories has not been studied in any depth, nevertheless it is
interesting that Gregory of Rimini devotes a great deal of his
discussion of the category of relation to a thorough attack on
Auriol's view (Henninger 1989, p. 173; for Auriol's more
general views on the ontology of accidents as well as some reaction to
those views, see Pasnau 2008, Pasnau 2011, pp. 213-220).


### 2.2 The Concept of Being



Auriol modified Scotus' view on the univocity of the concept of
being. While accepting Scotus' view that 'being' is
univocal both between God and creatures and between substance and
accidents, Auriol nevertheless heavily criticized Scotus for
maintaining that being was contracted to the most general genera
through various "qualitative differences" that themselves
were not included under the concept of being; on Scotus' view,
being itself became like a genus that was contracted through an
outside difference. Auriol rejected this view on the grounds that this
"outside difference" was an illusion; according to Auriol,
nothing escapes the concept of being. Instead Auriol maintains that
the concept of being is an *indeterminate* concept that grasps
all beings at once and equally. This concept of being itself has no
determinate content; instead it contains within itself implicitly all
other concepts that the intellect could possibly form. Being, then,
for Auriol is not contracted to its inferiors through any added
difference, but merely through explicating what is already contained
implicitly and indeterminately in the concept of being (Brown 1964;
Brown 1965; Goris 2002; Pickave 2004; Aertsen 2012, pp.
433-56). As with many other topics, the history of the reception
of Auriol's view on the univocity of the concept of being
remains to be written, but the important fifteenth century Thomist,
John Capreolus, copied half of his eleven page treatment of this issue
verbatim from Auriol's *Scriptum* only to reject
Auriol's view in favor of a more Thomistic one. (See Brown 1964,
p. 6, esp. n. 10.)


### 2.3 Future Contingents and Divine Foreknowledge



Auriol developed influential theories on future contingents and divine
foreknowledge. These take their starting point in two convictions that
Auriol firmly holds. First, he maintains that immutability and
necessity are mutually implicative, and thus, since God is immutable,
if he were to know the future, the future would be necessary. (This
same conviction led Auriol to reject, at least in some contexts, the
use of the popular later-medieval distinction between God's
absolute and ordained powers. For Auriol, there is no genuine
possibility in God to will other than he does.) Second, Auriol took as
a fundamental principle the existence of human free will (on
Auriol's theory of free will, see Hoffmann 2015; Alliney 2015).
These two principles lead Auriol to theorize that God does know the
future, but not as future; rather God knows the future
*indistantly*, as abstracted from all time; it is therefore
this special way of knowing the future that preserves human freedom
and avoids divine necessitarianism. In accordance with this view,
Auriol develops a three-valued logic, in which future-tensed
propositions are neutral, admitting of neither truth nor falsity,
thereby discarding the principle of bivalence (the principle claiming
that any proposition can have only one of two truth values).
Auriol's position on future contingents and divine foreknowledge
had a great deal of impact in the later Middle Ages, since it often
inspired refutations that nevertheless took into account the
criticisms that Auriol had made of, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Henry of
Ghent, and John Duns Scotus (Schabel 2000a). When Auriol's view
actually found an adherent in Peter de Rivo at the University of
Louvain (Leuven) in the period 1465-74, it occasioned a major
debate involving in the end Pope Sixtus IV, who in 1474 officially
condemned aspects of Auriol's view. Despite this condemnation,
however, it appears that Auriol's critique of earlier scholastic
views and some elements of his own theory on the topic influenced the
humanist Pietro Pomponazzi around 1520, and perhaps as well the
reformer Martin Luther (Schabel 2003).


### 2.4 Predestination and Free Will



In the related area of predestination, human free will is again a
motive force behind Auriol's ideas. Believing that earlier
explanations of the way God elected some to salvation and damned
others to eternal punishment left all too little room for human free
will, Auriol proposed a theory on which God offers his grace freely to
all human beings. Salvation comes to those who passively accept this
free offer of grace. Those whom God knows offer an obstacle to grace,
i.e. those who actively reject it, God damns to eternal punishment.
Thus, for Auriol, the central issue in predestination is how human
beings choose to react to God's free offer of grace: they are
judged on their reaction. Auriol believes that he has avoided any hint
of Pelagianism -- where human beings can merit salvation on their
own account -- because individuals do not *do* anything
actively in order to earn their salvation on his theory; they are only
required to passively accept grace by not offering an obstacle to it,
and this passive acceptance is, according to Auriol, a negative cause
of the person's salvation. Auriol's theory when first
proposed was an extremely innovative way of explaining the mechanics
of salvation, and it came in for scathing criticism from, among
others, Gregory of Rimini; but, whether through direct influence or
not, elements of Auriol's theory appear in the works of such
thinkers as William Ockham, Robert Holcot, and, on the eve of the
Reformation, Gabriel Biel (Halverson 1998).



In the rest of this entry, we'll look at two areas in which
Auriol provoked a significant response in part on account of his
radical solutions, two areas that also illustrate the systematic and
historical nature of his thought: his ideas on the relation between
cognition and reality (including his conceptualism) and his ideas on
intuitive and abstractive cognition.


## 3. Cognition and Reality: Conceptualism and the *esse apparens*



If there is one thing that is known about Peter Auriol, it is that he
was a "conceptualist." Indeed, Auriol has often been
viewed as a forerunner of William Ockham precisely on account of his
conceptualism. What is probably the very first monograph ever devoted
to Auriol (Dreiling 1913) deals with his conceptualism. Thus,
understanding Auriol's conceptualism is a good place to start
when dealing with Auriol's thought.



In fact, Auriol *is* a conceptualist. By this it is merely
meant that, for Auriol, only singulars (i.e. individuals) have real,
extra-mental existence. As Auriol writes: "every thing, insofar
as it exists, exists as a singular" (*omnis res, eo quod est,
singulariter est*). Moreover, Auriol states explicitly that there
is no principle of individuation -- individuals just are
individuals and their individuality needs no further explanation. This
is one of the most basic of Auriol's metaphysical principles,
and it necessarily entails that universality and universals are mental
phenomena, fabricated in some way by the intellect. Thus, for Auriol,
the individuality of singular things does not need explaining, but the
formation of universal concepts on the basis of these individuals does
need explaining. What is important for understanding Auriol's
conceptualism, then, is explicating his theory of intellectual
cognition: determining the process by which the intellect fabricates
these universal concepts, determining what these universal concepts
are, and what relation they have to really existing singulars in the
world.



While only individuals have real, extra-mental existence, every
individual by its very nature has several different ontological or
quidditative aspects. Auriol calls these quidditative aspects
*rationes* (a term that will remain untranslated in the rest of
this entry). Thus, Auriol claims that, e.g., Socrates has the
*rationes* substance, corporeality, sensitivity, rationality.
Moreover, *rationes* of the same kind found in different
individuals are "maximally similar" (*simillimae*).
e.g., Socrates' corporeality is totally like Plato's
corporeality, which is totally like the donkey Brunellus'
corporeality. It should be noted that these *rationes* are
non-universal characteristics, i.e. a *ratio* belongs to one
and only one individual. This is why Auriol emphasizes the maximal
similarity of *rationes* of the same kind: they are not the
same and they are not shared, they are merely as alike as they can be.
What is most important about these *rationes* in the present
context is that they are the basic unit of intellectual acquaintance:
every *ratio* of its very nature is able to serve as the basis
for a concept, although the concept that results from the intellection
of a *ratio* can be modified by the way that we conceive it
(our *modus concipiendi*), a purely psychological difference
with no immediate grounds in extra-mental reality. We might say that a
*ratio* directs our intellect to form one certain concept, this
core concept undergoing modification according to the way we conceive
it. Our universal concepts, then, have in these *rationes* a
direct basis in extra-mental individuals. (See, for more on this,
Friedman 1999, Woller 2015, pp. 36-79; for the term
'maximally similar' [as it is used in Ockham], see
Panaccio 1992, pp. 258-67.) What universal concept we actually
form, according to Auriol, depends on how closely our will makes the
intellect focus on the information we receive from the object of
cognition, and hence how strong an impression the object makes on the
intellect: the more closely focused, the stronger the impression, the
more specific the universal concept that is formed.



To understand further what universal concepts are, we need to know
what Auriol thinks concepts in general are. Central to this is
Auriol's theory of apparent existence or *esse apparens*,
that, at all levels, our cognitive faculties, in the very process of
cognizing, put the object of cognition into a special type of
existence, termed by Auriol "apparent existence" (*esse
apparens*). For Auriol, in line with the general medieval view,
our cognitive apparatus is divided into a sensory part (including the
five external senses, the common sense, which puts the sense data from
the five external senses together, and the imagination, which stores,
retrieves, and sometimes manipulates the sense data, as well as sends
them on to the intellect) and an intellectual part (including the
agent and the possible intellect). According to Auriol, in any
cognitive act -- whether sensory or intellectual -- the
cognitive power puts the object of cognition into this special type of
existence, and the object of cognition in this special type of
existence *is* the object as perceived. Thus concepts as well
as sensations are simply cognized things themselves in a type of
existence different from that which they have in extra-mental reality.
Auriol employs at least two different approaches to argue for this
view: one based on intellectual cognition, the other based on sensory
cognition. (Auriol's trinitarian theology provides further
arguments for this view; see Friedman 2013, esp. Ch. 9, section 4.)
We'll look at each of these in turn, in the process sketching
what it was about the theory of *esse apparens* that made it
quite radical and disturbing to Auriol's medieval readers. (For
the sake of precision, *esse apparens* will go untranslated
hereafter.)



**Intellectual cognition** (see Friedman 1999;
Adriaenssen 2014, esp. pp. 85-95; Friedman 2015; Adriaenssen
2017a, pp. 82-99): Auriol's solution to the question of
what a concept is takes its point of departure in the necessity of
explaining three things at once: essential predication; intellectual
acquaintance with extra-mental objects; and necessary, scientific
knowledge. Auriol holds that the first of these explanatory
requirements would not be fulfilled by any theory of concepts
according to which the concept is a type of representation or token of
the thing, if this representation has real -- albeit mental
-- being. Examples that he gives of solutions of this sort are
that a concept might be the intellectual act or an intelligible
species or any type of accident terminating an act of the
understanding. All of these representations have some real being of
their own. According to Auriol, these types of representational
theories of concepts would make explaining essential predication
impossible, since, assuming any of them, when I predicated, e.g.,
animal of human being, I would make a false predication, inasmuch as
the concept human being would not *be* the concept animal. The
ultimate problem with theories of universals of this sort, according
to Auriol, is that if they were correct, then universals would not be
universals at all, but would be particulars with their own real being.
Moreover, not only these same types of representational views of
concepts, but also any theory that holds concepts to be Platonic
Ideas, would hinder us in having intellectual acquaintance with
extra-mental objects, Auriol's second explanatory requirement.
On both these types of theories, our knowledge would extend only to
these really existing entities. We would, according to Auriol, be
intellectually blind to extra-mental reality. On the other hand, we
could certainly have intellectual acquaintance with extra-mental
objects, if our concepts were particular things in the extra-mental
world as they exist extra-mentally -- a final position Auriol
criticizes -- but we would be unable to have necessary,
scientific knowledge, Auriol's third explanatory requirement. In
fact, we would be unable to make universal judgments of any kind,
since there would be nothing universal about our knowledge; instead of
knowing that all mules are sterile, we would know only that this mule
is sterile and that that mule is sterile.



Having considered all these views and found them wanting, Auriol
offers his own alternative: the only way to explain at once essential
predication, intellectual acquaintance with extra-mental objects, and
necessary, scientific knowledge is to maintain that concepts
*are* extra-mental particulars, but having a different type of
existence (*modus essendi*) from the real existence they have
extra-mentally. This special type of existence Auriol terms *esse
apparens*, apparent being, but he uses many synonyms for it,
including "intentional" or "objective"
existence. (For other synonyms, see Tachau 1988, p. 90.) What
characterizes this type of existence is that it is a particular
extra-mental object, e.g., Socrates, but indistinguishably mixed
together (*indistinguibiliter* *immiscetur*) with
passive conception, i.e. the formation of a concept of Socrates. A
concept of Socrates *is* Socrates as conceived.



For Auriol, Socrates and a concept grasping Socrates, then, are the
same thing with differing types of existence. That they are "the
same thing" Auriol means quite literally. He says that "a
thing and its intention do not differ numerically with respect to
anything absolute"; they are the same thing strictly speaking.
What thing and intention differ by is a respect or a relation. And
this is no ordinary respect "fixed to or superimposed upon that
thing, as are other relations, rather it is utterly intrinsic and
indistinguishably joined to it." This intrinsic relation, Auriol
tells us, is the appearance of the thing as an object of perception
(*apparere*) to a perceiver (hence the term *esse
apparens*). For Auriol, then, it is intrinsic to each and every
thing to have two different types of being: real or extra-mental being
on the one hand, and intentional or objective being on the other.
Unlike real being, the thing's intentional being needs a
perceiver in order to actualize it. This is only to say that it is
through the act of conceiving that a thing is put into intentional
being.



In fact -- and here we return to conceptualism -- on the
basis of what Auriol has said, we can deduce that every particular
thing, e.g. Socrates, has several potential intentional existences:
one for each of Socrates' *rationes*, those basic units
of intellectual acquaintance that direct the mind to form certain
concepts of him. And, according to Auriol, all of these different
concepts of Socrates *are* Socrates. On Auriol's account,
this makes good sense: *rationes* are quidditative or essential
aspects without which a particular thing would not be the particular
thing that it in fact is. Thus, Socrates is not Socrates without being
a rational animal, i.e. without having the *rationes*
sensitivity and rationality. Socrates is every bit as much a human
being as he is Socrates, and on Auriol's theory the concept
'human being' is every bit as much Socrates as is the
concept 'Socrates'. Thus upon intellectual acquaintance,
Socrates (and in particular his *ratio* of rationality) directs
us to form the concept 'human being', and that concept
*is* Socrates, one of Socrates' several potential
intentional existences.



In this way Auriol attempts to deal with the problems he saw in other
theories of concepts. On the one hand, he attempts to get our
knowledge grounded as firmly as possible on extra-mental things: a
concept simply *is* the intellected extra-mental particular in
a different type of being from that which it has extra-mentally, a
type of being that is nevertheless intrinsic to the extra-mental
particular; the concept offers no barrier whatsoever between
conceiving mind and conceived object. At the same time, however,
Auriol wants to preserve the universality of universal concepts and
their use in essential predications and necessary, scientific
knowledge, and he thinks that his theory of concepts does just that.
Because *rationes* of the same kind found in different
individuals are "maximally similar," they all direct the
mind to form the same concept. Thus the concept 'human
being' arising from Socrates is the same as the concept
'human being' arising from Plato, since they are both
based on the maximally similar *ratio* of rationality. Auriol
is clear that a universal concept *is* all of its particulars,
rose *is* all particular roses, animal *is* all
particular animals. That is to say, animal is the concept and every
really existing animal at the same time.



**Sensory Cognition** (Wood 1982, pp. 214-17,
220-23; Tachau 1988, pp. 89-100; Denery 1998, pp.
28-39; Licka 2016; Pickave 2017; Bolyard 2021,
section 4.2.2): The intellect is not the only cognitive faculty that
functions by putting the cognized thing into *esse apparens*:
the sensitive faculties also work in this way according to Auriol. In
fact, Auriol uses sensory cognition, and his claim that the senses
form *esse apparens*, as further proof that the intellect does
so as well. In a famous passage in Auriol's works
(*Scriptum*, d. 3, q. 3, a.1, ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp.
696-99), one that was known to and criticized by William Ockham,
Auriol creates an account of sensory cognition that takes its point of
departure in a group of "experiences" that Auriol thinks
prove that the senses cognize by actively placing the object sensed in
*esse apparens*. Thus, if someone were on a ship moving down a
river, it would appear to that person that the trees on the shore were
moving; when a baton is twirled extremely rapidly, it appears to the
viewer that a colored circle hovers in the air; a stick placed halfway
into a bucket of water appears to be broken; if I press on my eye
while looking at a candle, it will appear that I see two candles; upon
looking directly at the sun, an afterimage appears. Auriol gives eight
experiences like these, but for him all of them lead to the same
conclusion: that in each of these cases, what *appears* to us
(i.e. our erroneous perception) does not correspond directly to
reality but is a result of the senses' putting the object into
*esse apparens*. Take the case of the twirling baton: what is
the circle that appears in the air? It can't be anything real
existing in the baton itself, since the baton is straight. Nor,
clearly, is the circle something real hovering in the air. Finally,
the circle is not something in vision or in the eye, since we are
seeing the circle and not our vision of it, and also since the circle
appears to be in the air. For Auriol, the only possible explanation
for the circle is that it appears to us because our sense of sight has
actively put the baton into *esse apparens*. More generally,
what we see in these cases is "only the appearance of the thing
or the thing in *esse apparens*." Sensory error, for
Auriol, is explained by appealing to the fundamental activity of the
senses. And Auriol insists that the senses are just as active in cases
where they function correctly; this is because, since activity is a
noble trait to have, if in erroneous visions our sense of sight
actively places the thing seen in *esse apparens*, it will
certainly do so in veridical visions. The difference between a
veridical sensory experience and an erroneous one is that in a
veridical one the way the object of cognition *appears* and the
way it *is* in extra-mental reality coincide. So in veridical
sensory experience we have no way to tell that the senses are placing
the thing into *esse apparens*. Thus, these experiences of
sensory error are of immense importance, since it is only through them
that we can discern the necessary role that *esse apparens* and
the activity of the senses play in all sensory cognition.



For Auriol, then, the senses necessarily put the cognized object into
*esse apparens* or intentional being; this is a condition of
our perceiving. Moreover, Auriol makes clear in this context that this
*esse apparens* is not a representation of the thing with its
own real being; rather it *is* the thing itself merely placed
in another type of existence. The *esse apparens* of a sensed
object is merely that object as sensed. (See on this particularly
Denery 1998, pp. 34-39.) Obviously, this corresponds to the
theory we have already seen Auriol holds concerning *esse
apparens* in intellectual cognition, and Auriol makes the
correspondence explicit. To go from sensory perception to intellectual
cognition, Auriol uses a common scholastic principle called by
Philotheus Boehner "The Principle of Hierarchy" (Boehner
1949, p. 298): given two faculties, one lower and one higher (like
sense and intellect), if the lower faculty can do something noble,
then the higher faculty can certainly do the same. The activity of the
senses, then, i.e. the fact that the senses put the object into
*esse apparens*, since it is noble, shows that the intellect
also puts its object into *esse apparens*. (Auriol's
theory of sensory perception is complicated by the fact that Auriol
seems to claim that some of the illusory sensory experiences he
mentions exist outside the mind, e.g., that the colored circle is
"in" the air and not "in" the mind. For
approaches to this complication, see Pasnau 1997, pp. 69-76;
Denery 1998, pp. 36-37; Licka 2016).



Three general claims can be made on the basis of this examination of
Auriol's ideas on cognition and reality. First, Auriol is a
conceptualist, holding that universals are nothing more than concepts
formed by the mind, although these universal concepts do have a direct
basis in the particular thing cognized (the *rationes*).
Second, a principle underlying Auriol's theory of cognition is
that cognitive faculties are fundamentally active. All cognition takes
place because a cognitive faculty *places* the object of
cognition into *esse apparens*, which is merely the object of
cognition in a different type of being than it has extra-mentally, the
being of being perceived. Thus, Auriol is part of one pronounced
strain of medieval thought (deriving from Augustine and ultimately
from Plato) that rejects that the soul and its powers are passively
affected by extra-mental objects. (See on this Tachau 1988, Friedman
2000.) Cognitive powers are, for Auriol, active. A third point, and
one that has been noted in a great deal of the secondary literature
(e.g., Tachau 1988; Denery 1998; Bolyard 2000; Friedman 2000) is that
by appealing to *erroneous* visions to show that both sense and
intellect produce *esse apparens* or make things appear, Auriol
has given error a central place in his account of cognition. To put
this in another way, Auriol does not have a real problem explaining
how we can have erroneous perception and intellection (in contrast to
many theories of knowledge); rather he needs to explain how we can
have veridical ones and just as importantly how we can know when we
are having veridical ones. This is roughly one of the functions that
the distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition served for
some medieval authors (in e.g., John Duns Scotus and William Ockham),
although as we will see, Auriol does not use it in this way. Indeed it
seems best to describe Auriol as a "reliabilist," holding
as a type of axiomatic principle that under normal circumstances our
God-given cognitive faculties represent the world in an adequate
manner. (See Bolyard 2000, p. 175; that Auriol is not the only
medieval thinker with this reliabilist attitude, see e.g., Stump 1998,
pp. 306-07.) No matter what Auriol thought, however, the
skeptical implications of Auriol's theory of *esse
apparens* did worry many of his medieval readers, and the theory
elicited a critical response because some thought that it posed too
sharp a break between cognition and reality. (For examples, see Wood
1982, Tachau 1988, Adriaenssen 2017b)


## 4. Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition and the Limits of Human Cognitive Abilities



John Duns Scotus, who introduced the distinction between intuitive and
abstractive cognition, took the view that intuitive and abstractive
cognition were distinct because they had different objects. Thus, for
Scotus, we have an abstractive cognition of an object when it is not
directly present to us, on account of there being some intervening
representation; an intuitive cognition can only come about when the
object of cognition is existing and directly present to us. For
Scotus, then, intuitive cognition carries along with it the guarantee
that the object of cognition exists; not so for abstractive cognition.
(See Tachau 1988, esp. pp. 68-81; Dumont 1989; Pini 2014.) It is
well known that William Ockham took exception to this view, holding
that we can, in certain extraordinary (i.e. supernatural) cases, have
intuitive cognition of non-existent objects. Auriol too objects to
Scotus' view.



For Auriol, in contrast to Scotus, intuitive cognition is possible
whether the object of cognition is present or absent. Likewise, an
abstractive cognition of an object that is actually present is
possible. The distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition
does not depend on the object at all; the very same object can be
cognized in both an intuitive and an abstractive way. According to
Auriol, whether we are having the one type of cognition or the other
depends exclusively on the characteristics of the cognition that we
are having, how the object appears to us. Auriol says explicitly that
intuitive and abstractive cognition are in fact simply two
fundamentally different ways that the *esse apparens* created
by the cognitive faculties can appear to us: "abstractive and
intuitive cognition differ ... for there are two modes of formal
appearance ... by which things appear objectively" (trans.
Pasnau 2002, p. 201, n. 111). In order to illustrate this, Auriol
claims that ocular cognition, i.e. the sense of sight, is fully
intuitive, while imaginary cognition, i.e. cognizing something through
the internal sense of the imagination, is fully abstractive. This is
the governing metaphor in Auriol's attempt to distinguish the
two types of cognition: sight is intuitive, imagination is
abstractive. Thus, describing sensory cognition, Auriol gives four
traits that together enable us to determine whether any particular
cognition is intuitive or abstractive. First, an intuitive cognition
is characterized by being *immediate* or *direct*, as
when we see an object before us. Not so abstractive or imaginary
cognition; it is mediate, requiring some type of discursive process.
Auriol gives the following example: an astronomer sitting in his room
can predict an eclipse through calculation, and he can even imagine it
on that basis, but this is something entirely different from seeing
the eclipse directly. A second characteristic of ocular or intuitive
cognition is the *presentness* of the object. The object of an
intuitive cognition seems to be present (whether it actually is or
not), whereas the object of an abstractive cognition does not have
this appearance of presence. Take the astronomer again. He can imagine
the eclipse, but in the very act of doing so he knows that the eclipse
is not present before him. The third and fourth characteristics that
Auriol mentions are roughly equivalent: an intuitive cognition carries
with it the *actualization* and *existence* of its
object; not so an imaginary, abstractive cognition. The astronomer can
imagine an eclipse, and even imagine an eclipse taking place right
now, but again, the very fact that he is imagining the eclipse bears
with it the recognition that it is not in fact actualized and
existing. Auriol sums up:



> 
> Therefore, it is rightly said that an intuitive cognition is a direct
> cognition as opposed to a discursive one, that it is present as
> opposed to the absent mode in which the imagination reaches even
> toward things that are present, and that it actualizes the object and
> posits its existence, since it makes the object's real existence
> and actual position appear, even if the object does not exist. And in
> contrast it is clear that an imaginary cognition lacks and abstracts
> from these four conditions. It extends to its object neither directly
> nor presently, nor by actualizing or positing existence, even if one
> imagines the object to exist and be actual and even if it is present.
> (trans. Pasnau 2002, pp. 206-07, n. 109).
> 



(The most complete discussion of Auriol on intuitive and abstractive
cognition is Boehner 1949; for the background and reception of
Auriol's view, see particularly Tachau 1988; for a translation
into English of Auriol's major text on intuitive and abstractive
cognition, his *Scriptum*, Prologue (aka Prooemium), q. 2, see
Pasnau 2002, pp. 178-218.)



Thus, what is central to Auriol's distinction between intuitive
and abstractive cognition is the character of the cognition as it
appears to us. The distinction between them is phenomenologically
determined. As mentioned above, in this way Auriol rejected
Scotus' view that intuitive cognitions are only of objects
present and existing. Auriol's rejection of Scotus'
distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition takes as one
of its starting points several "experiences" that recall
the experiences he employed to show that the senses put the object of
sensitive cognition into *esse apparens*. For example, upon
looking directly at the sun or any other luminous object, an
afterimage appears; thus a vision of the sun remains in the eye even
when the object itself is absent. In dreams, we can experience sights,
sounds, and tactile sensations, in the real absence of the objects of
sensation. Persons who are deceived by illusions often see things that
are not really there. In all of these sensations the object appears to
be actually present and existing, when it is not. Auriol concludes
that we can have an intuitive sensory cognition of non-existent
objects.



That was the characterization of intuitive *sensory* cognition
as opposed to abstractive cognition. What about intellectual
cognition? Auriol makes clear that the human intellect can have
intuitive cognition. To show this he first appeals to the Principle of
Hierarchy mentioned above: because the lower faculties, the senses,
can have intuitive cognition, therefore it is certain that the higher
faculty, intellect, can have intuitive cognition, since it is more
noble than the abstractive cognition that we know the intellect does
have. Moreover, on the basis of a famous passage from St. Paul's
I *Corinthians* (13:12 "For now we see in a mirror dimly,
but then face to face"), Auriol maintains that we are assured
that the beatific vision of God is an intuitive intellectual
cognition.



Although intuitive cognition is *possible* for an intellect,
Auriol, in contrast to William Ockham, nevertheless denies that we
*experience* intuitive cognition in this life. Because the
intellect of the wayfarer (*viator* -- the person in this
life) is dependent upon the senses and their cognition of particulars,
Auriol denies that we can have (or at least that we can know that we
have) intellectual cognition with the direct and present, ocular-like
cognition that is characteristic of intuitive cognition. Auriol says:
"Thus each of these cognitions should be posited within
intellect, although we do not experience intuitive cognition in this
life because of its conjunction with sensory intuition" (trans.
Pasnau 2002, pp. 210-11, n. 121.) Intuitive intellectual
cognition is reserved for the angels and for the blessed in heaven,
unencumbered by bodily senses. All of our intellectual cognition in
this life is characterized by the discursivity and mediacy that is the
mark of an abstractive cognition.



Above, it was mentioned that Auriol seems ultimately to be best
described as a reliabilist; he does not question that, given normal
conditions, our God-given cognitive faculties work as they should and
that they are self-correcting. He does not seem to have been concerned
about possible skeptical ramifications of his theory of *esse
apparens*. But with this said, by denying that human beings in
this life have intuitive intellectual cognition, he set the stage for
somewhat strictly limiting human intellectual abilities in his
philosophy.



This last point explains some interesting features of Auriol's
attitude towards human knowledge. In particular, despite the fact that
Auriol maintains that God could give a person in this life an
abstractive cognition of the divine essence, and that this abstractive
cognition would be able to serve as the basis for demonstrative
knowledge of all articles of the Christian faith (*Scriptum*,
Prologue, q. 2, ed. Buytaert, vol. 1, pp. 211-14; trans. Pasnau
2002, p. 213, n. 130 and p. 214, n. 133), nevertheless Auriol often
exhibits a noticeable pessimism when it comes to human cognitive
abilities. Thus, Auriol argues at length that in this life we are
unable to decide such issues as whether the universe is eternal or
created in time. (We know, of course, through Scripture that the world
is not eternal, but we could never decisively prove this by means of
unaided human reason.) Auriol argues that this is the case because we
do not have direct intellectual cognition of, e.g., temporal instants;
such cognition would allow us to resolve this problem. (See esp.
Nielsen 1996, esp. pp. 223-26, 232-35, 239-41; see
also Nielsen 1999.) Here we see that Auriol's rejection of
intuitive intellectual cognition in this life lies at the heart of a
somewhat pessimistic view of the reach of human reason: we do not have
direct intuitive knowledge of the world (much less of God), only
indirect abstractive knowledge, and this places fairly strict
limitations on just what our intellect can achieve unaided. The
disembodied soul of the blessed, having direct intuitive intellectual
cognition, will fare much better.



Auriol's theory of human intellectual cognition of singulars
also shows the influence of his rejection of intuitive intellectual
cognition in this life. Auriol is explicit that universal concepts
(formed through the Aristotelian process of abstraction) always appear
to us as abstractive cognitions, since what is universal abstracts
from any presentness and directness of the object of cognition (see
e.g. *Scriptum*, Prologue, q. 2, ed. Buytaert, p. 206, n. 111,
l. 87, Pasnau 2002, p. 207; cf. Friedman 1997, pp. 310-14).
There were, however, a number of members of the Franciscan order,
including John Duns Scotus, who was sometimes understood by
contemporaries to have claimed that singulars could be cognized as
singular by the intellect. (On this aspect of Scotus thought see,
e.g., Boler 1982, esp. Pini 2008.) Auriol rejects this Franciscan
tradition; because true intuitive intellectual cognition is barred to
us in this lifetime, we can have no direct intellectual cognition of
singulars at all. Auriol maintains in his theory of intellectual
cognition of singulars that we only form concepts of singulars through
the mediation of the senses and by means of a discursive process. (By
recognizing that the senses are now sensing a singular, the intellect
can reason that a singular must now exist and be present, but we have
no direct intellectual knowledge or concept of any singular.) Auriol
explicitly claims, however, that angels and the blessed, lacking
bodies and bodily senses, would have direct intellectual cognition of
singulars, just as God does by seeing his own essence. (On
Auriol's theory, see Friedman 2000.) A mild pessimism about
human cognitive abilities is thus systemic in Auriol's thought,
and has its most clear expression in his claim that we do not
experience intuitive intellectual cognition in this life.