ABSTRACT

William of Ockham (c.1287-1347) is known to be one of the major figures of the late Middle Ages. The scope and significance of his doctrine of human thought, however, has been a controversial issue among scholars in the last decade, and this book presents a full discussion of recent developments. Claude Panaccio proposes a richly documented and entirely original reinterpretation of Ockham's theory of concepts as a coherent blend of representationalism, conceptual atomism, and non reductionist nominalism, stressing in the process its special interest for current discussions in philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences.

chapter |3 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|16 pages

Intuition, Abstraction and Mental Language

chapter 2|23 pages

Intellectual Acts

chapter 3|17 pages

Concepts as Signs

chapter 4|21 pages

Connotative Terms in Mental Language

chapter 5|18 pages

The Role of Nominal Definitions

chapter 6|16 pages

Cognition and Connotation

chapter 7|25 pages

Concepts as Similitudes

chapter 8|19 pages

Logical Concepts

chapter 9|15 pages

The Meaning of Words

chapter |6 pages

Conclusion