Medieval philosophy a new history of western philosophy volume 2 ( PDFDrive ) 115

THE SCHOOLMEN best known for something he never said In discussing the freedom of the will to choose between alternatives he is alleged to have said that a donkey faced between two equally attractive bales of hay would be unable to eat either: hence ‘Buridan’s Ass’ became a byword for indecision Two other French thinkers were much inXuenced by Ockham’s epistemology: the Cistercian John of Mirecourt, and a secular canon Nicholas of Autrecourt, both of whom lectured in Paris in the 1340s, and both of whom incurred academic and ecclesiastical censure for their radical opinions In 1347 forty-one propositions taken from John’s writings were condemned by the chancellor of the Sorbonne, and more than Wfty of Nicholas’ theses were condemned by the papal legate John defended his writings in an apology; Nicholas recanted and continued his career John of Mirecourt’s epistemology was based on a development of Ockham’s theory of assent Assents may be evident or they may be given with fear of error Central truths of logic enjoy a supreme degree of evidence, but there is also natural evidence, based on experience of the world Natural evidence cannot produce absolute certainty, except in the case of one’s own existence, which cannot be denied without self-contradiction One cannot attain similar certainty about the existence of any other entity Even God’s existence cannot be proved with certainty, since the arguments for his existence are based on facts in the world involving only natural evidence Moreover, even if nothing other than myself existed, God could, by a miracle, make it appear that there is a real world out there It will be seen that John came very close, in anticipation, to the position Descartes reached at the beginning of his Second Meditation Nicholas of Autrecourt adopted an even more radical form of scepticism If we deWne intuitive awareness as involving a ‘judgement that a thing exists, whether or not it does exist’, then we can never be certain that what appears to the senses is true We cannot be certain of the existence of the objects of the Wve senses One of the condemned propositions that he was made to recant ran thus: ‘virtually no certainty can be obtained about things by natural appearances’ However, Nicholas qualiWed this sceptical claim with the remark that a modicum of certainty could be achieved in a short time if only people turned their mind to things themselves and not to the reading of Aristotle and his commentators (DB 553 V.) Unlike John, Nicholas did not see ‘I think, therefore I am’ as oVering a way out of the sceptical impasse—it certainly did not prove the existence of 96