Mental representations in later medieval scholasticism
pp. 35-51
in: J.C. Smith (ed), Historical foundations of cognitive science, Berlin, Springer, 1991Abstract
Starting from Aristotle's psychological theories as interpreted by the immensely influential Arab thinkers, Avicenna and Averroes, the scholastics of the high middle ages developed a program for understanding cognition in ways that, I believe, are philosophically interesting. But the whole topic is an area in the history of philosophy and science that languishes for lack of attention by scholars who are sufficiently sensitive to the significance of the problems the scholastics faced. The present mentalist turn in cognitive science, however, may help to awaken an interest in this side of scholastic philosophy. Both programs, the current computational mentalism and the scholastic, are very much concerned with mental representation and think more deeply about this subject than other approaches to cognition in Western philosophy and psychology. Of course, this concern with representations is embedded within two very different programs, and it will be part of my purpose here to state their differences explicitly. But in addition I shall try to delimit the area of common concerns.
