Universality and Immateriality

Abstract

This paper argues that Aquinas’ account of singular sensory and universal intellectual representation, crucial in one of his main arguments for the immateriality of the intellect, is reasonably defensible against such later critics as Scotus, Ockham and Buridan. As careful analysis of Buridan’s own account shows, it undermines both Scotus’ and Ockham’s, while along with Sutton’s plausible explication of the part of Aquinas’ doctrine Buridan also subscribes to, it actually commits Buridan to the main implication of Aquinas’ argument he criticized, namely, that the materiality of any cognitive representation implies its singularity (whence, by contraposition, the universality, i.e., the non-singularity of intellectual representation implies its immateriality).